His first night in London was like a bad dream to him. Lying half awake on his bed, doggedly, tenaciously awaiting the sleep he needed, at intervals even on its vision-haunted borderland, but never drifting across it, he remained always darkly conscious of his errand and of his sinister predicament. The ineffaceable scenes of the last three days obsessed him; his mind seemed to be unable to free itself. The quieter he lay, the more grimly determined he became that sleep should blot out these tragic memories for a few hours at least, the more bewildering grew the confusion in his haunted mind. Continually new details were evoked by his treacherous and insurgent memory--trifles terrible in their minor significance--the frightened boy against the wall snivelling against his ragged shirt-sleeve--the sprawling attitudes of the dead men in the dusty grass--and how, after a few moments, a mangled arm moved, blindly groping--and what quieted it. Incidents, the petty details of sounds, of odours, of things irrelevant, multiplied and possessed him--the thin gold-rimmed spectacles on the Burgomaster's nose and the honest, incredulous eyes which gazed through them at him when he announced checkmate in three moves. Did that tranquil episode happen years ago in another and calmer life?--or a few hours ago in this? He heard again the startling and ominous sounds of raiding cavalry even before they had become visible in the misty street--the flat slapping gallop of the Uhlan's horses on the paved way, the tinkling clash of broken glass. Again the thick, sour, animal-like stench of the unwashed infantry seemed to assail and sicken him to the verge of faintness; and, half awake, he saw a world of fog set thick with human faces utterly detached from limbs and bodies--thousands and thousands of faces watching him out of thousands and thousands of little pig-like eyes. His nerves finally drove him into motion and he swung himself out of bed and walked to the window. His hotel was the Berkeley, and he looked out across Piccadilly into a silent, sad, unlighted city of shadows. Only a single line of lighted lamps outlined the broad thoroughfare. Crimson sparks twinkled here and there--the lights of cabs. The great darkened Ritz towered opposite, Devonshire House squatted behind its grilles and shadowy walls on the right, and beyond the great dark thoroughfare stretched away into the night, melancholy, deserted save for the slight stirring of a policeman here and there or the passage of an automobile running in silence without lights. He had been standing by the window for ten minutes or so, a lighted cigarette between his lips, both hands dropped into the pocket of his pyjamas, when he became aware of a slight sound--a very slight one--behind him.