It was a bright morning, such as so often precedes a day of rain, when he turned into the deserted street. He had no particular aim or destination but he was in that mood which invites exercise. He walked down the Marylebone Road and through Portland Place without meeting anybody save an occasional policeman and so came to Piccadilly Circus where he bought a Sunday newspaper from an early vendor and passed down through Waterloo Place to the Park. The gates had only just been opened and beyond the park-keepers and a slouching tramp he met nobody. He sat on one of the garden seats by the side of the lake, pulled his overcoat about his legs for the morning was chilly and began to scan the headlines in the newspaper. There was nothing startling here, but he read the columns conscientiously. There was nothing in life which did not interest Michael Pretherston. He might have taken for his motto _homo sum_; _humani nihil a me alienum puto_. It was a saying of T.B. Smith’s that Michael could even write a readable volume on the psychology of dog-fights. Every little larceny, however sordid, every tiny embezzlement however paltry, every swindle whether it was carried out by the great confidence men who “worked London” or by the smaller fry in the half-crown line of business gave him food for reflection and some little scrap of information which he stored away for future use. He was in the midst of a long account of an East End arson charge when he heard his name called softly and looked up. He jumped to his feet. “Why, Kate,” he said, “haven’t you got any home?” The girl was standing a few feet from him with an odd look on her face. “I think it must be fate that brought me out this morning,” she said; “sit down, Mike, and tell me all the news.” She showed no sign of resentment of his uncavalier treatment. “Did you follow me here, or did I follow you?” “I tell you it was fate,” she said. “I could not sleep and I drove my Mercedes down.” “And how is the Princess Bacheffski?” he asked as she seated herself by his side. “The Princess--?” “Bacheffski--poor old Ralph! What a thing to put over him!” She leant forward, her chin on her palm, her elbow on her crossed knee. “You frighten me sometimes,” she said. “I have not been able to make up my mind whether you are clever or whether you are lucky.” “I am both lucky and clever,” he said. “Tell me something about your property in the Ural Mountains,” he said. “In Poland,” she corrected him. “Mines, I suppose?” “There are no mines on my property,” she said calmly; “would you be greatly surprised if I told you I had an estate in Poland?” “Nothing you said would surprise me, unless you told me you were going to be a good girl and respect the law relating to property.” He folded his paper and dropped it into a wire receptacle provided for that purpose and she followed the operations with amusement. “What a tidy soul you are,” she said; “fancy doing things you are told and obeying even by-laws.”