The dinner, I believe, was excellent and the company was good, but down at my end I could eat little, and I did not want to talk. Here in this pleasant room, with servants moving softly about and a mellow light on the silver from the shaded candles, I felt the man was buttressed and defended beyond my reach. A kind of despairing hatred gripped me when I looked his way. For I was always conscious of that other picture—the Asian desert, Pitt-Heron's hunted face, and the grim figure of Tuke on his trail. That, and the great secret wheels of what was too inhuman to be called crime moving throughout the globe under this man's hand.
There was a party afterwards, but I did not stay. No more did Lumley, and for a second I brushed against him in the hall at the foot of the big staircase.
He smiled on me affectionately.
"Have you been dining here? I did not notice you."
"You had better things to think of," I said. "By the way, you gave me good advice some weeks ago. It may interest you to hear that I have taken it."
"I am so glad," he said softly. "You are a very discreet young man."
But his eyes told me that he knew I lied.