"Then you ...?"
"It is my work. I owe the spirit of my patron this man's blood, and I shall pay the debt. Were he to hide in the depths of the sea, sooner or later I shall find him. There is no power strong enough in life to keep us two apart."
He had dropped his voice. The words hissed like a knife upon a strop.
"I wish you good luck," I said at length, and was about to say more, to express my gratitude again, when he cut me short.
"I am leaving for Paris in half an hour," he said, "and must bid you farewell, Sir John. Convey my humble compliments to Miss Shepherd," and with a low bow and a frigid handshake he was gone.
Six weeks afterwards, on the day before my wedding, I received a magnificent Japanese vase of the old Satsuma enamel, but the card enclosed bore no address.
I did not see this extraordinary being again for nearly two years. Of that meeting I shall write in the following short epilogue.