Then the scene changed, as scenes have the habit of doing in dreams. I seemed to be the center of a sub-cellar conference of highwaymen, presided over by Latreille himself. Then the voices shifted and changed, receded and advanced. I seemed to be threading that buffer-state which lies between the two kingdoms of Sleep and Wakefulness, the buffer-state that has no clear-cut outlines and twists like a weevil between ever-shifting boundaries. "Where's Sir 'Enery," said a voice from a mountain-top. Then an answering murmur of voices buzzed about me like bees, only an intelligible word or two seeming to reinforce the fabric of my imaginings as iron rods reinforce concrete-walls. And I continued to lie there in that pleasant borderland torpor, which is neither wakefulness nor slumber. I seemed to doze on, in no ponderable way disturbed by the broken hum of talk that flickered and wavered through my brain. "Then why can't Sir Henry work on the Belmont job?" one of the voices was asking. "I told you before, Sir Henry's tied up," another voice answered. "What doing?" asked the first voice. "He's fixing his plant for the Van Tuyl coup," was the answer. "What Van Tuyl?" "Up in Seventy-third Street. He's got 'em hog tied." "And what's more," broke in a third voice, "he won't touch a soup case since he got that safe-wedge in the wrist. It kind o' broke his nerve for the nitro work." "Aw, you couldn't break that guy's nerve!" "Well, he knows he's marked, anyway." Then came a lull, followed by the scratch of a match and the mumbling of voices again. "How'd he get through the ropes up there?" inquired one of these voices. "Same old way. Butlering. Turk McMeekin doped him up a half-dozen London recommends. That got him started out in Morristown, with the Whippeny Club. Then he did the Herresford job. But he's got a peach with this Van Tuyl gang. They let him lock up every night--silver and all--and carry the keys to bed with him!" "It's up to Sir 'Enery to make 'em dream he's the real thing," murmured another of the voices. "Sure!" answered still another voice that seemed a great distance away. Then the mumble became a murmur and the murmur a drone. And the drone became a sighing of birch tops, and I was stalking Big-Horn across mountain peaks of _café parfait_, where a pompous English butler served _pêches Melba_ on the edge of every second precipice. When I woke up it was broad daylight, and my wall-eyed waiter was there waiting for his second bill. And I remembered that I ought to phone Benson so he could have the coffee ready by the time I walked home through the mellow November air.