Frobisher realised his responsibilities with a sigh for his interrupted pleasure. His civilisation was the thinnest possible veneer, a shoddy thing like Tottenham Court Road furniture. "Come, you chaps must drop it," he cried. "I can’t have you fighting over my Smyrna carpet. Saltaur, you shall have your apology. Lefroy, do you hear me?" Strong arms interfered, and the two men were dragged apart. Lefroy’s teeth glistened in a ghastly grin; there was a speck of blood on his white shirt front. Saltaur’s laboured breathing could be heard all over the room. "I take you all to witness that it was no seeking of mine," he cried. "I was foully insulted. In a few days all the world will know that I have been made the victim of a discharged servant’s perjury. Frobisher, I am still waiting for my apology." Lefroy paused and passed his handkerchief across his face. He seemed to have wiped the leering expression from it. He looked a perfect picture of puzzled bewilderment. "What have I done?" he asked. "What on earth have I said?" "Beautiful," Frobisher murmured. "Artistic to a fault. What is he driving at?" Baron Jessop explained clearly and judiciously. He was glad to have an opportunity of doing so. Viewing the thing dispassionately, he was bound to say that Count Lefroy had been guilty of a grave breach of good taste. But he was quite sure that under the circumstances—— "On my honour, I haven’t the slightest recollection of it," Lefroy cried. "If there is one lady of my acquaintance I honour and respect it is Lady —— the charming woman whom Lord Saltaur calls his wife. A sudden fit of mental aberration, my lord. An old wound in the head followed by a spell in the sunshine. This is the third time the thing has happened. The last time in Serbia nearly cost me my life. My dear Saltaur, I am sorry from the bottom of my heart." "Funniest case I ever heard of," the puzzled Saltaur murmured. "All the same, I’m deuced sorry I threw that wine glass at you." "Oh, so you chucked a wine glass at me! Laid my cheek open, too. Well, I should have done exactly the same thing under the same circumstances. From this night I touch nothing stronger than claret. If I’d stuck to that, this wouldn’t have happened." The good-humoured Saltaur muttered something in reply, the threads of the dropped conversation were taken up again. Hafid, who had watched the sudden quarrel with Oriental indifference, had gone off to the conservatory for hot water to bathe Lefroy’s damaged face. There was just a lull for a moment in the conversation, a sudden silence, and then the smash of a crystal vessel on a tiled floor and a strangled cry of terror from Hafid. He came headlong into the room, his eyes starting, his whole frame quivering with an ungovernable terror. "Mr. Manfred," he yelled. "Lying on the floor in the conservatory, dead. Take it and burn it, and destroy it. Take it and burn it, and destroy it. Take it——"