Number Seventeen | Page 8

but stopped and faced him again with a
suddenness that argued an impulsive temperament.
"Now, I remember," she said. "Dad told me you had written novels and
some essays. Have you ever really seen Romney's portrait of Lady
Hamilton as Joan of Arc?"
Those fine eyes of hers pierced him with a glance of such candid
inquiry that he cast pretence to the winds.
"No," he said.
"Then you just invented the comparison as an excuse for colliding with
the chair?"
"Yes. At the same time I throw myself on the mercy of the court."
"It was rather clever of you."
He laughed, and their eyes met, at very close range.

"May I share the joke?" said a voice, and Theydon knew, before he
turned, that the man he had last seen disappearing around the corner of
Innesmore Mansions in a heavy rainstorm was in the room.
"Why did you tell me that Mr. Theydon was a serious scientific
person?" cried the girl. "He is anything but that. He can talk nonsense
quite admirably."
"So can a great many serious scientific persons, Evelyn. Glad to see
you, Mr. Theydon. Professor Scarth's letter paved the way for
something more than a formal meeting, so I thought you wouldn't mind
giving us an evening. My wife is not in town. She is a martyr to hay
fever, and has to fly from London to the sea early in May to escape. If
caught here in June nothing can save her. Tonight, as it happens, you're
our only guest, but my daughter is going to a musicale at Lady de
Winton's after dinner, so you and I will be free to soar into the
empyrean through a blaze of tobacco smoke."
Standing there, in that delightful drawing room, made welcome by a
man like Forbes, and admitted to a degree of charming intimacy by a
girl like Forbes's daughter, Theydon tried to believe that his meeting
with those ill-omened detectives at Waterloo Station was, in some sort,
a figment of the imagination.
But he was instantly and effectually brought back to a dour sense of
reality by Evelyn Forbes's next words. She, by chance, looked at
Theydon just as she had looked at him the previous night.
"Were you at Daly's Theater last night?" she inquired suddenly.
"Yes," he said. Then, finding there was no help for it, he went on:----
"You and I have hit on the same discovery, Miss Forbes. We three
stood together at the exit. I was waiting for a taxi, and saw you get into
your car. Now you know just why I fell over the chair."
Forbes glanced up quickly.

"Don't tell me Tomlinson forgot to move that infernal chair again!" he
cried. "Really, I must get rid either of our butler or the Canaletto, yet I
prize both."
"Don't blame Tomlinson, Dad," laughed the girl. "If Mr. Theydon
hadn't made an unconventional entry we would have talked about the
weather, or something equally stupid."
At that moment Tomlinson himself, imperturbable and portly,
announced that dinner was served. The three descended the stairs,
chatting lightly about the musical comedy witnessed overnight. It was
no new revelation to Theydon that truth should prove stranger than
fiction, but the trite phrase was fast assuming a fresh and sinister
personal significance. He believed, and not without good reason, that
no man living had ever undergone an experience comparable with his
present adventure.
When he left that house he was going straight to two officers of the law
whose bounden duty it would become to call upon Mr. Forbes for a full
and true explanation of his visit to Mrs. Lester-- provided, that is, he
(Theydon) told them what he knew. Talk about a death's-head grinning
at a feast! At that bright dinner-table he was a prey to keener emotion
than ever shook a Borgia entertaining one whom he meant to poison.
In sheer self-defense he talked with an animation he seldom displayed.
Evelyn was evidently much taken by him, and, fired by her manifest
interest, he indulged in fantastic paradox and wild flights of fancy.
Seemingly his exuberance stimulated Forbes, himself a well-informed
and epigrammatic talker.
An hour sped all too soon. The girl rose with a sigh.
"It's too bad that I should have to go," she said. "I shall be bored stiff at
Lady de Winton's. But I can't get out of it except by telling a positive
fib over the telephone. Dad, next time you ask Mr. Theydon to dinner,
please let me know in good time, and neither of you will be rid of me
so easily."

She shook hands with Theydon. While she was giving her father a
parting kiss the guest moved to the door and held it open. As she
passed out she smiled and her