"I did not bring you here," he declared, "to discuss the age of my unworthy rival. I brought you to tell me whether you consider that this _Lobster Americaine_ reminds you at all of Delmonico's, and to prove to you that we can, if we put our minds to it and speak plain and simple words to the _sommelier_, serve our champagne as iced even as you like it." Nora was not wanting in appreciation. "It's the best thing I've had to eat since I left New York, and for some time before that," she assured him. "There hasn't been much Delmonico's for me during the last few months. Too many of your lot poking about Fourteenth Street." He nodded. "After all," he said, "that was bound to come to an end when America declared war. You people did the only wise thing--brother to San Francisco, eh, your father to Chicago, and you over here?" "You do know things," she laughed. "I am a perfect dictionary as to your movements," he assured her. "Have you anything to do with the fact that my rooms have been searched by the police?" she asked abruptly. "Indirectly I fear so," he confessed. "You see, up to the present we haven't the least idea as to what has become of all those documents and plans which Mr. Jocelyn Thew so very cleverly brought over to this country." "Don't know where he's tucked them away, eh?" she enquired. "That's a fact," Crawshay confessed. "We discovered, a trifle too late, how they were brought over, but what has become of them since Jocelyn Thew's arrival in London we do not know. Every one concerned has been searched, no deposit has been made at any hotel or in any of the ordinary places where one might conceal securities. They have momentarily vanished." The girl's eyes twinkled. "Well," she exclaimed, "he does put it over you, doesn't he? I wonder whether you think that I am going to be any use to you--that you'll trap Jocelyn Thew through me?" "Not now," he answered. "I used to think so once." "Why have you changed your mind?" "Because," he told her bluntly, "I used once to think that you and he cared for one another." "And now?" "I have changed my mind," he admitted. "You know him so well that I need not remind you that where women are concerned he seems to have shown few signs of weakness. Personally, I have a theory that the time has come when he is likely to go the way of all other men." She leaned across the table. Those wonderful brown eyes of hers were lit with an indescribable interest. Crawshay for a moment lost the thread of his thoughts. They were certainly the most beautiful eyes he had ever looked into. "You think there is anything between those two--Katharine Beverley and him?"