"Too late now--before dressing," said the despairing girl. "I'll tell you when I hear." Her father knew she was right. They must make the best of it. "Put dinner on in twenty minutes," he whispered to her in an aside; then aloud to his guest, "What ... ah ... what shall we ... to put it plainly, Mr. Collop, what shall we say you are?" "Ah, I've got that all fixed," said Mr. Collop, his voice bravely riding the air. "Old Brailton told me what he was and I'm that. I'm a diplomat, I am. Tokio the last four years." The call on Marjorie's intelligence woke her to action. "It won't do," she said sharply. "Why not? Eh?" said Mr. Collop, with less ceremony than might have been expected from so recent an acquaintance. "Because," replied the young lady, a little acidly, "one of our guests, Miss Victoria Mosel, has just come back from Japan. She was there in September staying with our Ambassadress at Tokio." "Ah!" said Mr. Collop. "That makes it awkward like." "I think," began the Home Secretary timidly ... but the stronger will prevailed. "Make it Bogotar?" was Mr. Collop's suggestion. Time, which destroys love itself, and brings mighty states to ruin, the implacable master of ephemeral man, caught the unfortunate father and daughter in his iron grip. There was not a moment to spare. And it was as Mr. Collop, just back from his long but patriotic exile in "Bogotar," that the welcome stranger was led out and ritually introduced to the guests in the next room. There is no need to introduce a guest at such an hour, but this guest! Oh, yes! As the master of the house and his daughter were making that introduction their cup of agony was full. What made it worse was that McTaggart, being less of a man of the world, as the saying goes, than the rest of the prisoners, was quite openly startled, and instead of looking at Mr. Collop's determined face, his eyes at once fell to the plus-fours, and he said to himself, as his eyes fell lower still, "Thank God, he hasn't put on those brown boots with funny little tabs to them! But really! For a detective...." Then he looked up at the face--and he, of Fleet Street, knew his man. Lord Galton stared at the Apparition. He could make neither head nor tail of it. He was not of the Horse Pulling, privileged world. Then he remembered that your professional politicians had to herd with all manner of cattle and he shrugged his mental shoulders so violently that his physical shoulders perceptibly heaved. He turned his back upon the company and examined a picture until the nervous strain was over.