At times, felt shoes scuffed the stone floor without, and high, scolding voices rose, exchanging unfathomable courtesy with his clerks.  One after another, strange figures, plump and portly in their colored robes, crossed his threshold, nodding their buttoned caps, clasping their hands hidden in voluminous sleeves.

“My ‘long speakee my goo’ flien’,” chanted each of these apparitions; and each, after a long, slow discourse that ended more darkly than it began, retired with fatuous nods and smirks of satisfaction, leaving Rudolph dismayed by a sense of cryptic negotiation in which he had been found wanting.

Noon brought the only other interval, when two solemn “boys” stole in with curry and beer.  Eat he could not in this lazaret, but sipped a little of the dark Kirin brew, and plunged again into his researches.  Alone with his lamp and rustling papers, he fought through perplexities, now whispering, now silent, like a student rapt in some midnight fervor.

“What ho!  Mustn’t work this fashion!” Heywood’s voice woke him, sudden as a gust of sharp air.  “Makee finish!”

The summons was both welcome and unwelcome; for as their chairs jostled homeward through the reeking twilight, Rudolph felt the glow of work fade like the mockery of wine.  The strange seizure returned,—­exile, danger, incomprehensibility, settled down upon him, cold and steady as the rain.  Tea, at Heywood’s house, was followed by tobacco, tobacco by sherry, and this by a dinner from yesterday’s game-bag.  The two men said little, sitting dejected, as if by agreement.  But when Heywood rose, he changed into gayety as a man slips on a jacket.

“Now, then, for the masked ball!  I mean, we can’t carry these long faces to the club, can we?  Ladies’ Night—­what larks!” He caught up his cap, with a grimace.  “The Lord loveth a cheerful liar.  Come ahead!”

On the way, he craned from his chair to shout, in the darkness:—­

“I say!  If you can do a turn of any sort, let the women have it.  All the fun they get.  Be an ass, like the rest of us.  Maskee how silly!  Mind you, it’s all hands, these concerts!”

No music, but the click of ivory and murmur of voices came down the stairway of the club.  At first glance, as Rudolph rose above the floor, the gloomy white loft seemed vacant as ever; at second glance, embarrassingly full of Europeans.  Four strangers grounded their cues long enough to shake his hand.  “Mr. Nesbit,—­Sturgeon—­Herr Kempner—­Herr Teppich,”—­he bowed stiffly to each, ran the battery of their inspection, and found himself saluting three other persons at the end of the room, under a rosy, moon-bellied lantern.  A gray matron, stout, and too tightly dressed for comfort, received him uneasily, a dark-eyed girl befriended him with a look and a quiet word, while a tall man, nodding a vigorous mop of silver hair, crushed his hand in a great bony fist.

“Mrs. Earle,” Heywood was saying, “Miss Drake, and—­how are you, padre?—­Dr. Earle.”