All the way down from the Capitol, Stroude knew that he was being followed. From the moment he had come out of the Senate office building upon the plaza, fragrant with forsythia in the March moonlight, he had been conscious of the man who trailed his sauntering footsteps. He had led him down a winding way past the Marshall statue and into the deserted wideness of Pennsylvania Avenue. He had thought to lose him when he stepped into the lobby of a big hotel, pausing for a word there with men he knew, men who made their greetings casual or portentous, according to their knowledge of the turning of the inner wheels of Washington; but he found the other man some twenty paces behind him as he crossed Lafayette Square, and his amused acceptance of the situation curdled to annoyance at the possibility of having to deal with an irresponsible crank determined on an interview. The day had been more than ordinarily difficult, one of the hardest Stroude had known since the turmoiled times of war. He had suffered under the sense of impending crisis knowing that his future hung on to-morrow’s balance; and his temper, always drawn like a taut bow, had been ready to snap a hundred times through the afternoon’s battle in the Senate chamber. Now, at the doorway of his house, that limestone palace of Georgian severity which loomed in stately classicism among the older residences of the neighbourhood, he poised the arrow of his wrath as he turned to confront the man behind him. “What do you want?” he snapped at him. The man came nearer. By the dim light of the hall lantern Stroude saw his shambling listlessness, and his hand went to his pocket with a thought of relief that the other sought only alms. The man, seeing the gesture, put up his hand arrestingly. “Remember me?” he inquired, almost too nonchalantly. His voice for all its soft slurring of the consonants, was threaded with a fibre of steel which edged the menace of his quiet poise. “Why not?” Stroude asked sharply, his shoulders lifting as if for defence. “Then I reckon you’re none too glad to see me?” “You haven’t come here to ask me that. You might as well tell me first as last what you want from me.”