There was a note of rising anger in his tone. Katharine laid her fingers upon his hand. "Don't imagine things, please, Dick," she begged. "It is my own foolishness if I am disturbed. I really had nothing to do. Mr. Thew has been most considerate." "In any case," Jocelyn Thew went on, "I think that the matter had better be discussed another time, when we are alone. We might have to make reference to things which are best not mentioned in a public place." For a moment the young man's eyes challenged his. Then they fell. He shivered a little. "Why ever speak of them?" he demanded. "Ah, well, we'll see," Jocelyn Thew observed. "Now what about an hour or two at a music-hall? I have a box at the Alhambra." Katharine rose at once to her feet. They all made their way into the lounge. Whilst they waited for her to fetch her cloak, Beverley swung round to his companion. "Look here," he said, "for myself it doesn't matter--you know that--but what game are you playing? I don't know much about your life, of course, before those few days, but on your own showing you were out for big things. Are you known here? Is it anything--anything against the law, this business you're on? I don't care for myself--you know that. It's Katharine I'm thinking of." Jocelyn Thew knocked the ash from his cigar. He smiled deprecatingly at his companion. Certainly there was no man in that very fashionable restaurant who looked less like a criminal. "My dear Beverley," he expostulated, "you must remember that I am an exceedingly clever person. I am suspected of any number of misdemeanours. I will not say that there are not one or two of which I have not been guilty, but I have never left behind me any proof. I dare say the English police over here look on me sometimes just as hungrily as the New York ones. They feel in their hearts that I am an adventurer. They feel that I have been connected with some curious enterprises, both in the States and various other countries of the globe. They know very well that where there has been fighting and loot and danger, I have generally followed under my own flag. They know all this, but they can prove nothing against me. They can only watch me, and that they do wherever I am. They are watching me now, every hour of the day." "It isn't," the young man commenced, with a sudden break in his tone-- Jocelyn shook his head. "No, my young friend," he said, "the curtain fell upon that little episode. I doubt whether there is even a police record of it. It isn't the lives of individuals I am juggling with to-day. It's the life of a nation." "Are you a spy?" Beverley asked him hoarsely. "Your sister," Jocelyn Thew pointed out, "is waiting for us." CHAPTER XX