Through the lobby, in a buzz of excited comment, a man walked slowly, his eyes on the ground. He was a tall blond Englishman, not unlike Lord Harrowby in appearance. His gray eyes, when he raised them for a moment, were listless, his shoulders stooped and weary, and he had a long drooping mustache that hung like a weeping willow above a particularly cheerless stream. However, it was not his appearance that excited comment and caused Miss Meyrick to pale. Hung over his shoulders was a pair of sandwich boards such as the outcasts of a great city carry up and down the streets. And on the front board, turned full toward Miss Meyrick's dinner party, was printed in bold black letters: I AM THE REAL LORD HARROWBY With a little gasp and a murmured apology, Miss Meyrick turned quickly and entered the elevator. Lord Harrowby stood like a man of stone, gazing at the sandwich boards. It was at this point that the hotel detective sufficiently recovered himself to lay eager hands on the audacious sandwich man and propel him violently from the scene. In the background Mr. Minot perceived Henry Trimmer, puffing excitedly on a big black cigar, a triumphant look on his face. Mr. Trimmer's bomb was thrown. CHAPTER VI TEN MINUTES OF AGONY "All I ask, Mister Harrowby, is that you consent to a short interview with your brother." Mr. Trimmer was speaking. The time was noon of the following day, and Trimmer faced Lord Harrowby in the sitting-room of his lordship's hotel suite. Also present--at Harrowby's invitation--were Martin Wall and Mr. Minot. His lordship turned his gray eyes on Trimmer's eager face. He could make those eyes fishy when he liked--he made them so now. "He is not my brother," he said coldly, "and I shall not see him. May I ask you not to call me Mr. Harrowby?" "You may ask till you're red in your noble face," replied Trimmer, firm in his disrespect. "But I shall go on calling you 'Mister' just the same. I call you that because I know the facts. Just as I call your poor cheated brother, who was in this hotel last night between sandwich boards, Lord Harrowby." "Really," said his lordship, "I see no occasion for prolonging this interview." Mr. Trimmer leaned forward. He was a big man, but his face was incongruously thin--almost ax-like. The very best sort of face to thrust in anywhere--and Trimmer was the very man to do the thrusting without batting an eye. "Do you deny," he demanded with the air of a prosecutor, "that you had an older brother by the name of George?" "I certainly do not," answered Lord Harrowby. "George ran off to America some twenty-two years ago. He died in a mining camp in Arizona twelve years back. There is no question whatever about that. We had it on the most reliable authority."