THREE months had passed since the Dower House had yielded up its grisly secrets. A long enough time for Gregory Penne to recover completely and to have served one of the six months’ imprisonment to which he was sentenced on a technical charge. The guillotine had been re-erected in a certain Black Museum on the Thames Embankment, where young policemen come to look upon the equipment of criminality. People had ceased to talk about the Head-Hunter. It seemed a million years ago to Michael as he sat, perched on a table, watching Jack Knebworth, in the last stages of despair, directing a ruffled Reggie Connolly in the business of love-making. Near by stood Adele Leamington, a star by virtue of the success that had attended a certain trade show. Out of range of the camera, a cigarette between her fingers, Stella Mendoza, gorgeously attired, watched her some time friend and prospective leading man with good-natured contempt. “There’s nobody can tell me, Mr. Knebworth,” said Reggie testily, “how to hold a girl! Good gracious, heavens alive, have I been asleep all my life? Don’t you think I know as much about girls as you, Mr. Knebworth?” “I don’t care a darn how you hold your girl,” howled Jack. “I’m telling you how to hold _my_ girl! There’s only one way of making love, and that’s _my_ way. I’ve got the patent rights! Your arm round her waist again, Connolly. Hold your head up, will you? Now turn it this way. Now drop your chin a little. Smile, darn you, smile! Not a prop smile!” he shrieked. “Smile as if you liked her. Try to imagine that she loves you! I’ll apologize to you, afterwards, Adele, but try to imagine it, Connolly. That’s better. You look as if you’d swallowed a liqueur of broken glass! Look down into her eyes—look, I said, not glare! That’s better. Now do that again——” He watched, writhing, gesticulating, and at last, in cold resignation: “Rotten, but it’ll have to do. Lights!” The big Kreisler lights flared, the banked mercury lamps burnt bluely, and the flood lamps became blank expanses of diffused light. Again the rehearsal went through, and then: “Camera!” wailed Jack, and the handle began to turn. “That’s all for you to-day, Connolly,” said Jack. “Now, Miss Mendoza——” Adele came across to where Michael was sitting and jumped up on to the table beside him. “Mr. Knebworth is quite right,” she said, shaking her head. “Reggie Connolly doesn’t know how to make love.” “Who does?” demanded Michael. “Except the right man?” “He’s supposed to be the right man,” she insisted. “And, what’s more, he’s supposed to be the best lover on the English screen.” “Ha ha!” said Michael sardonically. She was silent for a time, and then: “Why are you still here? I thought your work was finished in this part of the world.” “Not all,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve still an arrest to make.” She looked up at him quickly. “Another?” she said. “I thought, when you took poor Sir Gregory——”