Guy made a kind of hopeless gesture with his hands. "But what can you do?" he demanded. "You have seen the papers this morning--you know what's happening in Livadia? The odds are they will take her straight over there and marry her to Pedro right away." "Then I shall go over and fetch her back," replied Tony firmly. "I am not going to allow any silly old-fashioned ideas about the sanctity of marriage to interfere with my life's happiness." Guy opened his mouth to speak, but he was suddenly interrupted by the grinding scrunch of a second motor pulling up abruptly outside the house. Almost at the same moment the bell rang with a prolonged violence that echoed up from the basement. "I rather think that must be Congosta," said Tony. He crossed the hall, and pulling back the latch, opened the front door. The visitor was Señor Congosta, but his most intimate friends might have been pardoned if for a moment they had failed to recognize him. Hatless, dishevelled, and with a long smear of blood at the corner of his mouth, he looked as if he had been taking part in a rather closely contested Irish election. "So!" he observed, drawing himself up and glaring at Tony, "you have betrayed me." Tony stepped towards him. "Don't be silly," he said. "Come along in and sit down." He thrust his arm through the Livadian's, and before the latter could protest he had brought him to a chair and practically pushed him into it. "You had better have a drink right away," he added. "You look done to the world. Get the whisky, will you, Guy?" Guy started off to do as he was asked, and before the disgruntled Señor had properly recovered himself Tony turned back to him with a disarming smile. "Sorry to have been so snappy," he said. "I suppose you have just found out about Isabel, and of course you would think we were scoundrels--naturally." With an effort Congosta managed to regain his power of speech. "You know what has happened?" he demanded hoarsely. "You know where she is?" "I have just heard that she was decoyed away from Chester Square by a false telephone message at nine o'clock this morning. For the moment I have no idea where she is. If I had I shouldn't be sitting here." "Then you shall know!" gripping the arm of the chair, Congosta bent forward towards him. "She is a drugged and helpless prisoner on the _Vivid_. By now she is half-way down the Thames on her way to Livadia." There was a second's pause, and then Guy reappeared from the dining-room with the whisky and soda. "Do you hear that, Guy?" said Tony. "Señor Congosta says that Isabel is on board the _Vivid_, and that they have already started for Livadia." Guy came up and put down the tray he was carrying. "I knew it," he said hopelessly. "We shall never see her again--never." "And whose fault is that?" demanded Congosta, striking the arm of the chair with his fist. "Did you not promise me that she should be safe? Did I not leave the honour of my country in your hands?"