When he went downstairs, another guest had arrived and was taking his dinner-card from the tray a footman was offering him. It was Mr. Barnsell. Barnsell was a sleek, brown, middle-aged man whose only interest in life was comfort; and as his means were limited and his tastes luxurious, the attainment of supreme comfort had become both an art and sport to him. "Ah, good evening, Hewer!" he said. "Good evening, sir," said Hewer without the slightest change of expression. He hated and despised Barnsell, for the reason that he was one of those people who demand a far higher standard of comfort from other people's houses and servants than he did from his own. When he stayed at the Torbys,--as he did for long periods,--he gave a great deal of trouble, and had been known to send a suit of clothes downstairs three times because it had not been properly pressed, although Hewer knew very well that at home his clothes were very sketchily taken care of by the housemaid. Hewer's only revenge was to force upward the whole scale of Mr. Barnsell's tips. Hewer himself did not care much about money and was very well paid by the Torbys, but in the interests of pure justice, he received Mr. Barnsell's crinkled bill with an air of cold surprise that made him double it next time. "Gad, Hewer," Mr. Barnsell was saying, "there's a pretty ugly situation outside there--a crowd around the door, and marching up Fifth Avenue. They nearly pulled my chauffeur off the box. If they'd laid a finger on me, I'd have let them have it, I can tell you." "I hope they did not hurt the chauffeur, sir." "Oh, no," said Barnsell positively; but Hewer knew from his tone that he had not waited to see. Immediately after this, terrible things began to happen to the Torbys' nice party--things that had never happened to any of their parties before. The meeting in Madison Square having been broken up by methods which the participants described as being a little short of massacre, and which the police said were too velvet-gloved to be effective, had drifted away into smaller groups, all looking for trouble. Perhaps it was the color of the Torby's carpet, or the size or ugliness of a house built in the worst taste of the '80's, or the delicious smell of terrapin which came floating out of the kitchen windows; but for whatever reason, a crowd had collected about the door and was mocking at and jostling the guests in such a threatening manner that the night watchman rushed in to tell a footman to telephone at once to the police, and poor fat little Mrs. McFarlane arrived with her tiara quite on one side and a conviction that she had just escaped being strung up to a lamp-post in the best style of the French Revolution. The McFarlanes, who took themselves seriously in every position, made a dramatic entrance into the drawing-room. Mr. McFarlane held up his hand for silence and then said: "We are in grave danger."