"Upon my word, the perspiration's standing out on his forehead in beads. He seems as if----" "As if he had been overworking and overeating. He wants a Turkish bath, I expect. Now then, Jones, what do you really think about the fall in South Africans? Will they recover in the next two months? That's what I want to know; that's what I want to be certain of." Sir William had just left the up-stairs apartments of the Pooles. He had rung for the lift and entered, without a word to the attendant, who had glanced fearfully at the tall, pale man with the flashing eyes and the wet face. Once or twice the lift-man noticed that the visitor raised his hand to his neck above the collar and seemed to press upon it, and it may have been fancy on the lift-man's part--though he was not an imaginative person--but he seemed to hear a sound like a drum beating under a blanket, and he wondered if the gentleman was troubled with heart-disease. Gouldesbrough pressed the little electric bell upon the oak table in front of him, and in a moment a waiter appeared. "Bring me a large brandy and soda," he said in a quiet voice. The waiter bowed and hurried away. The waiter did not know, being a foreigner, and unacquainted with the tittle-tattle of the day, that Sir William Gouldesbrough, the famous scientist, was generally known to be a practical teetotaller, and one who abhorred the general use of alcoholic beverages. When the brandy came, amber in the electric lights of the smoking-room, and with a piece of ice floating in the liquid, Sir William took a small white tabloid from a bottle in his pocket and dropped it into the glass. It fizzed, spluttered, and disappeared. Then he raised the tumbler to his lips, and as he did so the floating ice tinkled against the sides of the glass like a tiny alarum. "Nerves gone," the stock-broking gentleman close by said to his friend, with a wink. In five minutes or so, after he had lit a cigarette, Gouldesbrough rose and left the smoking-room. He put on his coat in the hall and went out of the front door. It was not yet late, and the huge crescent of electric lights, which seemed to stretch right away beyond Hove to Worthing, gleamed like a gigantic coronet. It was a clear night. The air was searching and keen, and it seemed to steady the scientist as he walked down the steps and came out from under the hotel portico on to the pavement. A huge round moon hung over the sea, which was moaning quietly. The lights in front of the Alhambra Music Hall gleamed brightly, and on the promenade by the side of the shore innumerable couples paced and re-paced amid a subdued hum of talk and laughter. The pier stretched away into the water like a jewelled snake. It was Brighton at ten o'clock, bright, gay, and animated. Sir William was staying at the Brighton Royal, the other great hotel which towers up upon the front some quarter of a mile away from the Palace, where Marjorie and Lady Poole were.