Cornelius Blunn was a guest such as hotel proprietors dream of and very seldom have the chance to entertain. His demands were always on a magnificent scale and no spendthrift prince in the days when there were such beings could have shown less disposition to haggle. At the Great Central Hotel in New York he had a suite of five or six rooms, the most simple of which was his own bedchamber. Notwithstanding his affability and democratic habits, he was a person difficult of approach. In an outer room there were always two or three typists. In the next apartment were the travelling advisers connected with his various enterprises, who, with his direction and lavish cabling, influenced the destinies of his industrial ventures when he was from home. Then came a smaller chamber occupied by his secretary,—a somewhat colourless young woman of twenty-nine or thirty years of age, with thin sandy hair, and intelligent forehead, close-lipped, silent, a woman of deliberate ways and quiet speech. Beyond was a pleasant little reception room, with a lavishly furnished sideboard, plenty of magazines and easy-chairs, and, leading from it, Blunn’s sitting room, an apartment with a great writing table, a special telephone and very little else in the way of furniture. The chair occupied by his visitors was a comfortable one enough, but it faced the north light. Even Itash blinked behind his spectacles as he subsided into its depths.

“You have news, my young friend?” Blunn enquired of his caller.

“There is very little,” the latter answered, speaking with his usual deliberation. “Four more names have been sent in from our headquarters at San Francisco. They are all vouched for. They all desire places of responsibility. One of them, a fruit grower in California, is well known to me. His father was in the service of our family.”

Cornelius Blunn nodded.

“Good,” he said. “You have places for them?”

“For the first three,” Itash replied. “The man I spoke of last, I have sent for. I propose to take him into the Intelligence.”

“You have no other news?”

“There is no other news. May I smoke?”

Blunn nodded his permission. He sat back in his chair apparently studying his visitor. Itash was by no means a pleasant personality. The strength of his face lay rather in its cunning than in any other quality. His mouth was cruel. His eyes, as bright as beads, too shifty. His complexion was yellow even for an Oriental. His black hair reeked of the productions of the barber’s shop. The handkerchief which he had been holding in his hand seemed steeped with some powerful scent. The cigarette which he presently began to smoke had a pungent and almost sickly odour.

“Count Itash,” Blunn said at last, “you are a very clever young man of the Oriental school, but you have one fault. You are too fond of women.”

Itash removed his cigarette from his mouth. He seemed a little uncertain how to take the other’s speech. In the end he grinned.

“In your country,” he retorted, “it is wine and beer, and food. In mine it is flowers and women.”

“You may dabble in horticulture as much as you choose,” Blunn observed drily, “but women are dangerous.”

“I have learnt to manage them,” the young man declared.

“So far as your personal comfort is concerned, no doubt that is so,” Blunn acknowledged, “but you must remember that, to me, and many others, you do not exist as a young scion of the Japanese nobility who desires to achieve success as a diplomatist and walk meanwhile in the flowery ways. You are something more vital. You are a part depository of the greatest secret the world has ever known. Itash, if a single bead of the truth has sweated out of your carcass, you shall be looking for your own particular corner in hell before the moon changes.”

Blunn struck the table in front of him, not heavily, but with a sharp menacing tap. There were lines in his face now which few people ever saw. His cheeks seemed to have sagged a little, his eyes sunken. His lips had parted, and one of his teeth, always a slight disfigurement, had, for the moment, the appearance of a fang. Itash dropped his cigarette. The sudden attack had paralysed him. He looked like a person stricken through fear into idiocy.

“Pick that up,” Blunn directed, “and speak the truth, or nothing that I have ever threatened you with will count by the side of the things which shall surely happen. What have you told Cleo, the dancing girl of Monte Carlo?”

“Nothing, upon the tomb of my fathers!” the young man swore.

He picked up the cigarette. Blunn’s questioning eyes still held him.

“Upon the great matters,” he went on, “I have never spoken in my life with any human being, and as to women—they are my toys. I ............