"An adaptation of the periscope!" he replied, taking a magnifying glass from his pocket, adjusting it, and bending over the mirror. "The lens is focussed upon Helzephron's table. With this magnifier I enlarge the image in the mirror. Ah! So that is the honourable gentleman!" A faint hissing noise came from him. His face stiffened into fixed and horrible intentness as he stared through his magnifier at the little oblong of mirror. "Shi-ban, Go-ban, hei!" he muttered. "There are two, then. I expect the younger man is the Honourable Herbert Gascoigne, of whom we have heard!" The hissing noise continued, the ecstasy of attention did not relax for two or three minutes. At last Danjuro looked up. His face, which had seemed carved out of jade, relaxed. "Will you take my seat?" he said politely, handing me his reading-glass. "A little drama will commence in a few minutes. It will interest you!" I gave him a glance of interrogation as we exchanged chairs. "We shall be in Cornwall to-morrow, and in advance of our friends," he whispered. "But, in order that we may carry out our preliminary inquiries quite undisturbed, I have thought out a little plan by which, if all goes well, Major Helzephron will be detained in London for a day or two--you will see." Trembling with eagerness I stared down at the mirror. The periscope was perfectly focussed. The addition of the reading-glass made everything perfectly clear. Two men in evening clothes were seated at a table. Their heads were close together, and they were talking earnestly. One was a tall, handsome boy of two-and-twenty, with a fair complexion and a reckless, dissipated cast of face. Young as he was, evil experience had marked him, and his smile was that of a much older man. But I scarcely cast a glance on him as I stared at the coloured, moving miniature of "Hawk Helzephron." The man's face was deeply tanned; above the brows a magnificent dome of white forehead went up to a thatch of dark red hair--the forehead of a thinker if ever I saw one. The face below was seamed and lined everywhere. The thin nose curved out and down like that of a bird of prey. The mouth was large, well-shaped, but compressed, the chin a wedge of resolution. And, as he talked, I saw a pair of slightly protruding eyes, cold and fierce. The whole aspect of the man was ferocious and formidable to a degree. "Watch!" whispered Danjuro. I watched, and this is what I saw. Into the picture came a thick-set, brutal-looking man, with a blazing diamond in his shirt-front. He was passing Helzephron's table when his dinner jacket caught a wine-glass and swept it to the floor. The hawk-faced man looked up with a scowl and said something just as the portly Nicholas and a waiter appeared in the background, as if passing casually by. The thick-set man bent down till his face was close to Helzephron's. He said something also, with an unpleasant smile. Instantly Helzephron leapt up and drove his fist full into the other's face.