Nugent Cassis threw up his hands desperately. Every vestige of his quiet business habit had vanished and instead he was a nerve-racked exasperated man who paced up and down jerking out half sentences, reproaches and forecasts of failure. "It's that fellow Frencham Altar given us away. Damn stupid introducing the type--man on a bench--Means ruin to the lot of us. Coming here are they? Refuse to see them. I knew there'd be a break down somewhere--felt it in my joints--If everything had gone according to schedule, Barraclough would have been back by now--Punctual man--reliable----" "Big stakes involve big risks," said Mr. Torrington sweetly. "And haven't we taken them?" Cassis barked. "Good Heavens alive! why--What's that?" There was a murmur of voices in the hall, the room door was thrown open, and Isabel Irish came in breathlessly. She threw a quick glance round the circle of faces as though seeking someone. "Where is he? Where's Tony? It's after eleven--half past--Why isn't he here?" Mr. Torrington rose and offered a chair, which she refused with a gesture. "We are waiting, my dear." "But why isn't he here?" she repeated. "How can we possibly say?" ejaculated Cassis testily. "In a venture of this kind----" She caught up the word "venture" and threw it back at him. "No message, nothing." Cranbourne was about to answer, but Torrington interrupted him to tell her of the dog rose Lord Almont had received. "That was from him--that was from Tony," she cried. "I gave him a spray of them on the night he started." "That's encouraging," said Lord Almont. But Cassis was not in a mood to be encouraged. "It may mean much or little," he snorted. "Still, there is nothing to prevent our hoping." Of all worldly trials, waiting is the severest, and tatters the nerves quicker than any other. Isabel Irish did not like Nugent Cassis--he belonged to the money people who had no real existence in her reckoning--but ordinarily speaking she would never have lashed out at him with such vehemence. The fire in her voice and eyes entirely robbed the little man of power to retort. Nor was the tirade she uttered levelled at him alone, everyone present came in for a share. One small girl with a shock of curly hair whipping with scorpions the heads of a mighty financial concern.