Thus, said Dwight-Rankin, the dinner proceeded with a degree of animation, of gaiety, that was unusual even about Lady Surplice’s memorable table. The _morale_ of the diners was excellent: their address polite, their appetites suave, their wit easy and swift: their _ton_, in fine, irreproachable. While even His Highness the Prince de Finaleauseltz was so agreeably affected by the swift interchange of repartee and back-chat that, Dwight-Rankin assured me, he contributed on two separate occasions to the entertainment. However.... All was, therefore, going beautifully when the Lady Fay Paradise remarked, with amusement not untinged with repulsion, that someone had spilled the salt. “La!” cried Lady Pynte. “Who has spilled the salt?” cried Lady Surplice. “The Lord Chancellor has spilled the salt,” said Mr. Warp. “Hell!” said the Lord Chancellor. “Over your shoulder, over your shoulder!” cried Lady Pynte. “Oh, Percy!” cried my lady. “To spill the salt is _most_ unlucky!” “Oh, pouf!” said the Lady Amelia. “Oh, dear!” said Pamela Star. “I’m really very sorry,” said the Lord Chancellor. “_Need_ you have spilled the salt?” bitterly said Dame Warp. “Really, why all this fuss?” sighed Fay Paradise. “Fuss indeed!” cried Lady Surplice. “I’m really very sorry,” said the Lord Chancellor. “My father,” said His Highness, “lost his crown on the day he spilled some salt.” “Then to spill salt must be lucky,” remarked de Travest, “for your grandfather, sir, lost his head without having the chance to spill any salt.” “Well, all I can say is,” sighed my lady, “that I thank Heaven we are not dining thirteen.” “I’m really very sorry,” said the Lord Chancellor. It was exactly at that moment, said Dwight-Rankin, that someone at the table let out a yell. Who it was, no one can tell to this day. But someone, even as Lord Marketharborough spoke, sobbed: “But we are! We are thirteen!” You can’t, said Dwight-Rankin, describe in so many words the effect of that sob of terror. It must have been as though someone had turned a tap somewhere and let out the blood from all their faces. One might imagine them, said Dwight-Rankin, as all eyes, blanched eyes, staring frantically at the empty chair on which had been but a moment before the person of him who called himself Captain Charity. “But this is too much!” sobbed Lady Pynte. Lord Marketharborough, however, appeared to be quite unmoved. He said: “When is a chap not a chap? When he falls under the table before even the port has been round.” But Captain Charity wasn’t, said Dwight-Rankin, under the table. He wasn’t, in fact, anywhere to be seen in the large room. They looked everywhere, while the bewildered silence was broken only by the breathing of Dame Warp, who had notable adenoids. “Talbot!” cried Lady Surplice. “I’m afraid poor Talbot won’t be much use on _this_ occasion,” murmured Shelmerdene.