It was three whole clays before Grant saw anything more of Hodson. Then the latter appeared in his room about seven o’clock in the evening and demanded a cocktail.

“Glad you’ve remembered my existence,” Grant grumbled good-humouredly, as he gave the necessary orders. “Stoneham and I have been pegging away. There are heaps of things I want to know about.”

Hodson nodded.

“There are big events close at hand,” he announced. “A great deal of what you suspect is true, with a few other trifles thrown in. Can you go to England to-morrow?”

“England!” Grant exclaimed. “Why, the Limitation of Armaments Conference starts here in a little over a fortnight.”

“You’ll be back for it,” the other assured him. “I want you to catch the Katalonia to-morrow morning. She sails at eight o’clock. Let me see, to-morrow’s Saturday. You’ll be in Plymouth Wednesday, and in London Wednesday night. Lord Yeovil will be expecting you. You can sail back on Saturday in the Sefaloni. You’ll probably return with Yeovil and his staff.”

“What am I to do in England?” Grant asked, trying to keep back an alien and most disturbing thought.

“Deliver despatches from Washington,” was the prompt reply. “I have them in my pocket. I came through from Washington to-day. Great Britain polices the eastern waters for the Limitation of Armaments Conference, and we want a sea-plane patrol over certain specified districts. There are a few other little matters to be enquired into, too.”

“Look here,” Grant expostulated. “You’re not sending me over to play messenger boy, are you?”

“Not likely!”

“What’s the game then? Do you want to get me out of the way?”

“Not precisely that. Where are you dining?”

“With you, anywhere, I was going up to the Lotos Club. Stoneham generally drops in there.”

“I’m tired,” Hodson confessed. “I’d like to hear some music and look at some pretty women. I’ll go round and have a bath and change and call for you in half an hour. We’ll get a corner table at Sherry’s. I think, as we’re saving empires, we can afford some terrapin and a bottle of champagne.”

“You’re serious about that trip to England—because I must have my fellow pack?”

“Serious! My God, I am!” was the emphatic answer. “You’ll be the chief spoke in the wheel for the next ten days. You won’t miss anything here, either. I’m gathering up some wonderful threads but I’m doing it silently. I’ll come round in half an hour. I’m on your floor.”

A fit of restlessness seized Grant. He gave his servant the necessary orders, interviewed the travel manager in the hotel and secured the best accommodation possible on the steamer. Then he permitted himself to think deliberately, opened up the closed chambers in his mind, welcomed reflection and memory. He would see Susan. He would find out what her silence really meant, what she thought or believed about him. In a sense, it was all very hopeless. He had been forced into an accursed position. He scarcely knew even now how to appraise it. And yet the big thing remained unaltered and still seemed to tower over everything else,—he loved Susan. There was not a grain of affection in his heart for anybody else. She was his only possible companion. Was he so much less fit for her than any other of the young men by whom she was surrounded? He tried to judge himself and his position fairly. The trouble was that it could never be represented to any one else in the same manner. He remembered and brooded with gloomy insistence over that slight vein of prudery in Susan, something altogether unconnected with the narrow ways, or any unduly censorious attitude towards life, which seldom in fact expressed itself in speech, but was more a Dart of herself, a sort of instinctive and supercilious shrinking from the small licences of a world which she never judged in words. Perhaps he had fallen for ever in her esteem; perhaps the one sin recorded against him would have cost him already what he had sometimes fancied that he had won. Now that he was going to see her so soon, he wondered how he had been content to wait to know the truth. Next Thursday he would be in London. It was the height of the season and she would certainly be there. Next Thursday or Friday they might meet. He told himself that he would know in the first ten seconds whether his disaster had been irredeemable.

The two men dined at Sherry’s in a retired corner. They dined, as Grant complained, like profiteers and gourmands. Hodson ordered caviare and lobster Newburg, terrapin, saddle of lamb, asparagus and champagne.

“A disgraceful meal,” Grant declared, as he sipped his cocktail. “Do you really think we shall get through it?”

“Of course we shall,” Hodson laughed. “To tell you the truth I’ve scarcely eaten anything for two days. They were a tough lot on the trains to Washington and back. I can manage better in the cities.”

“What do you mean?” his companion asked curiously.

“Well, the same powers that murdered that poor girl and translated it into suicide were out for me,” Hodson explained. “If they had known that it was you who started me off, I expect you’d be in the same position. My own little crowd are pretty useful though. And Poynter’s men are wonderful. There are two of them at the next table. They look all right, don’t they?”

“They look just like two successful business men talking over a deal,” Grant observed.

“Well, they aren’t,” Hodson assured him. “They’re two of Poynter’s shrewdest detectives. They’ve got guns in their pockets and their job is to see that no one tries to steal a march on me from the lounge. One of my men is down in the kitchen. I dared not eat anything on the train, for they were in with the chef there. I’ve been shot at twice in the last twenty-four hours. They nearly got me, too. It’s a great storm that’s gathering. Grant.”

“Exactly why are you sending me to England?”

“Listen,” was the earnest reply. “This is official. It comes from the White House. You know who owns the New Year now. You know the power at the back of the greater part of ou............