This was virtual surrender, and the General had an easy task to brush away objections obviously raised in the hopes of their demolition. Short notice? Well, perhaps; but Americans were used to a less formal hospitality than ours, and would take it as a compliment. Brief shipboard acquaintance? Nonsense. Five days’ association on a "liner" was equivalent to a friendship of years. The chance of the Shermans being involved in a tragedy in which they had no concern? The General pledged his word that, whatever happened at Prior’s Tarrant, no harm should befall the Senator’s wife and daughter or breath of scandal assail them. Before he left the room the General had arranged to return later in the day, possibly bringing with him his Pathan servant, Azimoolah Khan, whose aid he meant to enlist in securing the Duke’s safety at his country-seat. In the meanwhile, he would go home and prepare the ladies for joining the party on the morrow, Beaumanoir’s formal invitations following by post. On his way down the broad staircase General Sadgrove chuckled audibly to himself: "I thought the prospect of entertaining Leonie in his ancestral halls would fetch him. Mustn’t have her falling in love with him, though, till he can show a clean sheet." A little lower down he stopped and stared at a huge canvas of the third Duke, but without heeding the bewigged and lace-ruffled counterfeit of the Georgian courtier. "Concentration!" he muttered. "The first axiom in a crime-problem is to concentrate the items. I shall have two of ’em now, by George, right under the same blanket—and with luck I’ll have three." In the hall Prince was hovering fatuously, assisted by a brace of tall flunkeys who fell under the General’s critical gaze. One of them was the absent-minded William, all unconscious that he had allowed "Inspector Chantrey’s" understudy to slip upstairs the night before. Him Sadgrove severely rejected, selecting his colleague. "There’s an apple-woman under the rails opposite," he said, producing a sovereign. "Run across and offer this for her basket and its contents. If she refuses, the chances are that she will almost immediately move away. In that case, if you can follow her a little distance, without letting her observe you, bring me back word directly she stops and speaks to anyone." The well-trained servant, with scarcely the blink of an eyelash for his extraordinary mission, started to fulfil it, and the General hastened on to the smoking-room, where Forsyth and Sybil were still on guard at the window. "Has the woman been doing any business?" he asked as he entered. "She has only had one customer, who got off a Hammersmith ’bus and walked on," replied Sybil, without removing her gaze. "And now—why, it’s one of our liveries—Steptoe, the first footman, is going up to her. Oh, but this is interesting. He is offering her a coin, and she is shaking her head." "Go on," said the General.