Joicey was standing by a table, looking at Coryndon's card and twisting it between his fingers. He recognized his visitor when he glanced at him, and showed some surprise. The room was in twilight, as all the outside chicks were down, and there was a lingering faint perfume of something sweet and cloying in the air. Joicey looked sulky and irritated, and he motioned Coryndon to a chair without seating himself.
"Well," he said brusquely, "what's this about Rydal?" He pointed with a blunt finger to the card that he had thrown on to the table.
"That," said Coryndon, also indicating the card, "is merely a means towards an end. I have the good fortune to find you not only in your house, but able to receive me."
The colour mounted to Joicey's heavy face, and his temper rose with it.
"Then you mean to tell me—" He broke off and stared at Coryndon, and gave a rough laugh. "You're Hartley's globe-trotting acquaintance, aren't you? Well, Hartley happens to be a friend of mine, and it is just as well for you that he is. Tell me your business, and I will overlook your intrusion on his account."
Something inside Coryndon's brain tightened like a string of a violin tuned up to concert-pitch.
"In one respect you are wrong," he said amiably, and without the smallest show of heat. "I am, as you say, Hartley's friend, but I must disown any connection with globe-trotting, as you call it. I am in the Secret Service of the Indian Government."
"Oh, are you?" Joicey tore up the card and threw it into a basket beside the writing-table.
"It may interest you to know," went on Coryndon easily, "that my visit to you is not altogether prompted by idle curiosity." He smiled reflectively. "No, I feel sure that you will not call it that."
"Fire ahead, then," said Joicey, whose very evident resentment was by no means abated. "Ask your question, if it is a question."