Having worked Mallinson to a sufficiently amusing pitch of indignation, and having hinted his moral that the subjugation of Miss Le Mesurier would be effected only by the raider, Fielding complacently dismissed him and repaired to Beaufort Gardens for lunch. He found Drake upon the doorstep with a hand upon the knocker, and the two gentlemen exchanged greetings. 'I have just left Mallinson,' said Fielding. Drake's hand fell from the knocker. 'Tell me!' he said. 'Mallinson perplexes me in many ways. For instance, he shows me little good-will now--' 'Does that surprise you?' Fielding interjected, with a laugh. Drake coloured and replied quickly, 'You didn't let me finish. If he dislikes me, what made him talk about me as his friend to--to the Le Mesuriers before I returned to England?' 'Your name in print. You verged on--well, notoriety. You may laugh, but that's the reason. Mallinson's always on the rack of other people's opinions--judges himself by what he imagines to be their standard of him. Acquaintanceship with a celebrity lifts him in their eyes, he thinks, so really in his own.' Drake remained doubtfully pondering what credit acquaintanceship with him could confer on any one. He was led back to his old view of Mallinson as a man tottering on a rickety base. 'Will he do something great?' he asked, his forehead puckered in an effort to calculate the qualities which make for greatness. Fielding chuckled quietly, and answered: 'Unlikely, I think. Clever, of course, the man is, but it is never the work he does that pleases him, but the pose after the work's done. That's fatal.' Drake looked at Fielding curiously. 'That's a criticism which would never have occurred to me.' He glanced at his watch. 'We have five minutes. Shall we walk round the Gardens?' Fielding chuckled again and assented. He saw the curtain rising on his comedy. For five minutes they paced up and down the pavement, with an interchange of simple questions on Drake's part, and discriminating answers on Fielding's--answers not wholly to encourage, but rather to promote a state of doubt, so much more interesting to the spectator. When after the five minutes had elapsed they entered the house, they found that Mrs. Willoughby had arrived. Clarice introduced Stephen Drake to Mrs. Willoughby. He saw a woman apparently in the early twenties, tall, with a broad white forehead, under masses of unruly black hair, and black eyebrows shadowing eyes of the colour of sea-shallows on an August morning. The eyes were hard, he noticed, and the lips pressed together; she bowed to him without a word. Hostility was evidently to be expected, and Drake wondered at this, for he knew Mrs. Willoughby to be Clarice's chief friend and confidante. Mrs. Willoughby fired the first shot of the combat as soon as they had sat down to lunch. She spoke of unscrupulous cruelty shown by African explorers, and appealed to Drake for correction, she said, but her tone implied corroboration.