In that instant he dared not look at Shaw. He was shaken by an emotion that left him breathless and almost trembling. What was Doris's photograph doing in this man's room? In the momentary amazement and fury that overwhelmed him at the discovery, he told himself that it would not have been much worse to find her actual presence here. All this had taken but a moment. Shaw, hospitably busy with his decanter and siphon, had used the interval to fill two glasses, and was now offering one to his guest. "No, thanks." Laurie spoke with abrupt decision. "No?" Shaw looked pained. Then he smiled a wide smile, and Laurie, seeing it and the man's pointed teeth, mentally changed him again from the worm to the serpent. He understood Shaw's mental process. The fellow thought he was afraid to drink the mixture. But what did it matter what the fellow thought? "Perhaps, then, you will have a cigar, and sit down comfortably for our chat?" Shaw himself set the example by dropping into one of the easy-chairs and lighting a fat Perfecto. His smooth brown head rested in what seemed an accustomed hollow of the chair back. His wide, thin lips were pursed in sybaritic enjoyment of his cigar. He stretched himself in the warmth of the fire, sleek, torpid, and loathsome. "Mr. Shaw." "Y-e-s." Still standing, with his elbow braced against the mantel, the visitor tossed his cigarette into the fire and looked down into his host's projecting eyes. It appeared that Shaw roused himself with difficulty from the gorged comfort of the moment. There was a perceptible interval before he gave his guest his whole attention. Then he straightened in his chair, and the projecting eyes took on their veiled but watchful look. "Yes," he repeated, more briskly. In the brief interval Laurie had planned his little campaign. He would address this creature as man to man; for perhaps, after all, there was more of the man in him than he revealed. "I am going to ask you to be frank with me." "Yes?" Shaw let it go at that. "When we met on the street it appeared that you were as anxious as I am for this interview. Will you tell me at once why you brought me here, and what you wish to say?" "Willingly." Shaw flicked the ash off his cigar, and kept his eyes on its lighted end as he went on: "I brought you here because I want you out of the way." "Why?" "Because, my temperamental young friend, you are a nuisance. You are interfering with my plans. I can't be bothered with you." The sudden spark that in the old days would have warned Devon's friends of an impending outburst appeared now in his black eyes, but he kept his temper. "Would you mind confiding these plans to me?" he suggested. "They would interest me, profoundly." Shaw shook his sleek brown head. "Oh, I couldn't do that," he said, with an indulgent smile. "But I have a proposition to make to you. Perhaps you will listen to it, instead." "I'll listen to it," Laurie promised.