“That’s right, Puce,” smiled Quillier. “We owe you one all right. But I am heartily glad that it was only a shock you had, and that you were quite yourself after all. And so here we are gathered together again by blind chance, eleven years older, eleven years wiser. Have a drink, Puce?” The gentleman from America was looking from one to the other of the two. The smile on the massive face seemed one of utter bewilderment. Quillier was shocked at the ravages of a mere eleven years on the man’s face. “I gave you two a scare!” echoed Mr. Puce. “Aw, put it to music, boys! What the hell! How the blazes did I give you two a scare?” Kerr-Anderson was quite delighted to explain. The scare of eleven years ago was part of the fun of to-day. Many a time he had told the tale to while away the boredom of Flanders and Mesopotamia, and had often wanted to let old Puce in on it to enjoy the joke on Quillier and himself but had never had the chance to get hold of him. They had thought, that night, that Puce was dead. Quillier, naked from the waist up, had rushed down to Kerr-Anderson, waiting in the dark porch, and had told him that Puce had kicked the bucket. Quillier had sworn like nothing on earth as he dashed on his clothes. Awkward, Puce’s corpse, for Quillier and Kerr-Anderson. Quillier, thank Heaven, had had the sense not to leave the empty revolver on the bed. They shoved back all the ghost properties into a bag. And as, of course, the house wasn’t Kerr-Anderson’s aunt’s house at all, but Johnny Paramour’s, who was away, they couldn’t so easily be traced. Still, awkward for them, very. They cleared the country that night. Quillier swearing all the way about the weak hearts of giants. And it wasn’t until the Orient Express had pitched them out at Vienna that they saw in the Continental _Daily Mail_ that an American of the name of Puce had been found by the caretaker in the bedroom of a house in Grosvenor Square, suffering from shock and nervous breakdown. Poor old Puce! Good old Puce! But he’d had the laugh on them all right.... And heartily enough the gentleman from America appeared to enjoy the joke on Quillier and Kerr-Anderson. “That’s good!” he laughed. “That’s very good!” “Of course,” said Quillier in his tired, deprecating way, “we took the stake, this boy and I. For if you hadn’t collapsed you would certainly have run out of that room like a Mussulman from a ham-sandwich.” “That’s all right,” laughed Mr. Puce. “But what I want to know, Quillier, is how you got me so scared?” Kerr-Anderson says now that Puce was looking at Quillier quite amiably. Full in the face, and very close to him, but quite amiably. Quillier smiled, in his deprecating way. “Oh, an old trick, Puce! A black rag over the head, a couple of yards of stuffed cloth for arms....” “Aw, steady!” said Mr. Puce. But quite amiably. “Say, listen, I shot at you! Nine times. How about that?”