They leaned a little forward. The swing doors were opened. A girl’s musical laugh rang out from the corridor. Tall and elegant, with her black lace skirt trailing upon the floor, her left hand resting upon the shoulder of the man into whose ear she was whispering, and whom she led straight to one of the writing tables, Miss Violet Brown swept into the room. On her right, and nearest to the two men, was Mr. Vincent Cawdor. “Now you can go and talk to your friends!” she exclaimed, lightly. “I am going to make Victor listen to me.” Cawdor left his two companions and sank on to the couch by Rounceby’s side. The young man, with his opera hat still on his head, and the light overcoat which he had been carrying on the floor by his side, was seated before the writing table with his back to them. Miss Brown was leaning over him, with her hand upon the back of his chair. They were out of hearing of the other three men. “Well, Rounceby, my friend,” Mr. Vincent Cawdor remarked, cheerfully, “you’re having a late sitting, eh?” “We’ve been waiting for you, you fool!” Rounceby answered. “What on earth are you thinking about, bringing a crowd like this about with you, eh?” Cawdor smiled, reassuringly. “Don’t you worry,” he said, in a lower tone. “I know my way in and out of the ropes here better than you can teach me. A big hotel like this is the safest and the most dangerous place in the world--just how you choose to make it. You’ve got to bluff ‘em all the time. That’s why I brought the young lady--particular friend of mine--real nice girl, too!” “And the young man?” Rounceby asked, suspiciously. Cawdor grew more serious. “That’s Captain Lowther,” he said softly--“private secretary to Colonel Dean, who’s the chief of the aeronaut department at Aldershot. He has a draft in his pocket for twenty thousand pounds. It is yours if he is satisfied with the plans.” “Twenty thousand pounds!” Marnstam said, thoughtfully. “It is very little--very little indeed for the risks which we have run!” Cawdor moved his place and sat between the men. He laid a hand upon Marnstam’s shoulder--another on Rounceby’s knee. “My dear friends,” he said, impressively, “if you could have built a model, or conducted these negotiations in the usual way, you might have asked a million. As it is, I think I am the only man in England who could have dealt with this matter--so satisfactorily.” Rounceby glanced suspiciously at the young man to whom Miss Brown was still devoting the whole of her attention. “Why don’t he come out and talk like a man?” he asked. “What’s the idea of his sitting over there with his back to us?” “I want him never to see your faces--to deal only with me,” Cawdor explained. “Remember that he is in an official position. The money he is going to part with is secret service money.” The two men were beginning to be more reassured. Rounceby slowly produced a roll of oilskin from his pocket.