The valet advanced towards him with the air of an affable executioner stepping daintily to the block. “Mr. Marlowe, sir?” he inquired politely. Sam was startled. He could making nothing of this. “Eh? What?” “Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. S. Marlowe?” “Yes, that’s my name.” “Mine is Webster, sir. I am Mr. Bennett’s personal gentleman’s gentleman. Miss Bennett entrusted me with this note to deliver to you, sir.” Sam began to grasp the position. For some reason or other, the dear girl had been prevented from coming this afternoon, and she had written to explain and relieve his anxiety. It was like her. It was just the sweet, thoughtful thing he would have expected her to do. His contentment with the existing scheme of things returned. The sun shone out again, and he found himself amiably disposed towards the messenger. “Fine day,” he said, as he took the note. “Extremely, sir,” said Webster, outwardly unemotional, inwardly full of a grave pity. It was plain to him that there had been no previous little rift to prepare the young man for the cervical operation which awaited him, and he edged a little nearer, in order to be handy to catch Sam if the shock knocked him off the gate. As it happened, it did not. Having read the opening words of the note, Sam rocked violently; but his feet were twined about the lower bars and this saved him from overbalancing. Webster stepped back, relieved. The note fluttered to the ground. Webster, picking it up and handing it back, was enabled to get a glimpse of the first two sentences. They confirmed his suspicions. The note was hot stuff. Assuming that it continued as it began, it was about the warmest thing of its kind that pen had ever written. Webster had received one or two heated epistles from the sex in his time—your man of gallantry can hardly hope to escape these unpleasantnesses—but none had got off the mark quite so swiftly, and with quite so much frigid violence as this. “Thanks,” said Sam mechanically. “Not at all, sir. You are very welcome.” Sam resumed his reading. A cold perspiration broke out on his forehead. His toes curled, and something seemed to be crawling down the small of his back. His heart had moved from its proper place and was now beating in his throat. He swallowed once or twice to remove the obstruction, but without success. A kind of pall had descended on the landscape, blotting out the sun. Of all the rotten sensations in this world, the worst is the realisation that a thousand-to-one chance has come off, and caused our wrong-doing to be detected. There had seemed no possibility of that little ruse of his being discovered, and yet here was Billie in full possession of the facts. It almost made the thing worse that she did not say how she had come into possession of them. This gave Sam that feeling of self-pity, that sense of having been ill-used by Fate, which makes the bringing home of crime so particularly poignant.