"What is he, English?" "Yes sir, I believe so." "You don't happen to know his business, do you?" "No, sir." "I ask--it's merely curiosity. Wait a moment." He turned, picked up a sovereign from a heap of coins on his night-table and gave it to the waiter. "No need to repeat to anybody what I have asked you." "Oh, no, sir----" "All right. Listen very attentively to what I tell you. When I arrived here this afternoon I desired the management to hire for my use a powerful and absolutely reliable touring car and a chauffeur. I mentioned the Edmeston Agency and a Mr. Louis Grätz. "Half an hour later the management informed me that they had secured such a car for me from Mr. Louis Grätz at the Edmeston Agency; that I was permitted sufficient gasoline to take me from here to Westheath, back here again, and then to the docks of the Holland Steamship Company next Sunday. "I've changed my mind. Tomorrow is Wednesday and a steamer sails from Fresh Wharf for Amsterdam. Tell the management that I'll take that steamer and that I want them to telephone the Edmeston Agency to have the car here at six o'clock tomorrow morning." "Very good, sir." "Go down and tell them now. Ask them to confirm the change of orders by telephone." "Very good, sir." A quarter of an hour later the bell tinkled in his room: "Are you there, sir? Thank you, sir. The car is to be here at six o'clock. What time would you breakfast, Mr. Guild?" "Five. Have it served here, please." "Thank you, sir." Guild went back to bed. Another detail bothered him now. If the man next door had ordered whiskey and soda for eleven, _to be placed on the night-table beside the bed_, why was he up and dressed and ready to open the door when the jingle of glassware awaited him? Still there might be various natural explanations. Guild thought of several, but none of them suited him. He began to feel dull and sleepy. That is the last he remembered, except that his sleep was disturbed by vaguely menacing dreams, until he awoke in the grey light of early morning, scarcely refreshed, and heard the waiter knocking. He rose, unlocked his door, and let him in with his tray. When the waiter went out again Guild relocked his door, turned on his bath, took it red hot and then icy. And, thoroughly awake, now, he returned to his room, breakfasted, dressed, rang for his account, and a few minutes later descended in the lift to find his car and chauffeur waiting, and the tall, many-medalled porter at salute by the door. "Westheath," he said to the smiling chauffeur. "Go as fast as you dare and by the direct route." The chauffeur touched his peaked cap. He seemed an ideal chauffeur, neat, alert, smiling, well turned out in fact as the magnificent and powerful touring car which had been as thoroughly and minutely groomed as a race-horse or a debutante.