"Are you, Mr. Calendar?" Kirkwood's smile robbed the retort of any flavor of incivility.

Encouraged, the man entered, premising that he would detain his host but a moment, and readily surrendering hat and umbrella. Kirkwood, putting the latter aside, invited his caller to the easy chair which Brentwick had occupied by the fireplace.

"It takes the edge off the dampness," Kirkwood explained in deference to the other's look of pleased surprise at the cheerful bed of coals. "I'm afraid I could never get acclimated to life in a cold, damp room—or a damp cold room—such as you Britishers prefer."

"It is grateful," Mr. Calendar agreed, spreading plump and well cared-for hands to the warmth. "But you are mistaken; I am as much an American as yourself."

"Yes?" Kirkwood looked the man over with more interest, less matter-of-course courtesy.

He proved not unprepossessing, this unclassifiable Mr. Calendar; he was dressed with some care, his complexion was good, and the fullness of his girth, emphasized as it was by a notable lack of inches, bespoke a nature genial, easy-going and sybaritic. His dark eyes, heavy-lidded, were active—curiously, at times, with a subdued glitter—in a face large, round, pink, of which the other most remarkable features were a mustache, close-trimmed and showing streaks of gray, a chubby nose, and duplicate chins. Mr. Calendar was furthermore possessed of a polished bald spot, girdled with a tonsure of silvered hair—circumstances which lent some factitious distinction to a personality otherwise commonplace.

His manner might be best described as uneasy with assurance; as though he frequently found it necessary to make up for his unimpressive stature by assuming an unnatural habit of authority. And there you have him; beyond these points, Kirkwood was conscious of no impressions; the man was apparently neutral-tinted of mind as well as of body.

"So you knew I was an American, Mr. Calendar?" suggested Kirkwood.

"'Saw your name on the register; we both hail from the same neck of the woods, you know."

"I didn't know it, and—"

"Yes; I'm from Frisco, too."

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