'Now, let me see. Wednesday?—No, I'm full up Wednesday. Thursday?—No. Suppose the President looks in at my studio between four and five on Friday?'
The visitor uttered a gasp.
'Good heavens, Mr Mulliner,' he exclaimed, 'surely you do not imagine that, with the vast issues at stake, these things can be done openly and in daylight? If the devils in the pay of Power A were to learn that the President intended to have his photograph taken by you, I would not give a straw for your chances of living an hour.'
'Then what do you suggest?'
'You must accompany me now to the President's suite at the Milan Hotel. We shall travel in a closed car, and God send that these fiends did not recognize me as I came here. If they did, we shall never reach that car alive. Have you, by any chance, while we have been talking, heard the hoot of an owl?'
'No,' said Clarence. 'No owls.'
'Then perhaps they are nowhere near. The fiends always imitate the hoot of an owl.'
'A thing,' said Clarence, 'which I tried to do when I was a small boy and never seemed able to manage. The popular idea that owls say "Tu-whit, tu-whoo" is all wrong. The actual noise they make is something far more difficult and complex, and it was beyond me.'
'Quite so.' The visitor looked at his watch. 'However, absorbing as these reminiscences of your boyhood days are, time is flying. Shall we be making a start?'
'Certainly.'