“You will excuse my getting up,” I said weakly.  “It doesn’t seem to agree with me.”

“Mr. Lyndon,” explained the doctor, “is fatigued.  I was just proposing that he should go to bed when I heard the car.”

“How in the name of Satan did he get here?” demanded the other man, still staring at me in obvious amazement.

“He came in through the window with the intention of borrowing a little food.  I had happened to see him in the garden, and being under the natural impression that he was—­er—­well, another friend of ours, I ventured to detain him.”

Savaroff gave a short laugh.  “But it’s incredible,” he muttered.

The girl was watching me curiously.  “Poor man,” she exclaimed, “he must be starving!”

“My dear Sonia,” said McMurtrie, “you reflect upon my hospitality.  Mr. Lyndon has been faring sumptuously on bread and milk.”

“But he looks so wet and ill.”

“He is wet and ill,” rejoined the doctor agreeably.  “That is just the reason why I am going to ask you to heat some water and light a fire in the spare bedroom.  We don’t want to disturb Mrs. Weston at this time of night.  I suppose the bed is made up?”

Sonia nodded.  “I think so.  I’ll go up and see anyhow.”

With a last glance at me she left the room, and Savaroff, taking off his coat, threw it across the back of a chair.  Then he came up to where I was sitting.

“You don’t look much like your pictures, my friend,” he said, unwinding the scarf that he was wearing round his neck.

“Under the circumstances,” I replied, “that’s just as well.”

He laughed again, showing a set of strong white teeth.  “Yes, yes.  But the clothes and the short hair—­eh?  They would take a lot of explaining away.  It was fortunate for you you chose this house—­very fortunate.  You find yourself amongst friends here.”

I nodded.

I didn’t like the man—­there was too great a suggestion of the bully about him, but for all that I preferred him to McMurtrie.

It was the latter who interrupted.  “Come, Savaroff, you take Mr. Lyndon’s other arm and we’ll help him upstairs.  It is quite time he got out of those wet things.”

With their joint assistance I hoisted myself out of the chair and, leaning heavily on the pair of them, hobbled across to the door.  Every step I took sent a thrill of pain through me, for I was as stiff and sore as though I had been beaten all over with a walking-stick.  The stairs were a bit of a job too, but they managed to get me up somehow or other, and I found myself in a large sparsely furnished hall lit by one ill-burning gas jet.  There was a door half open on the left, and through the vacant space I could see the flicker of a freshly lighted fire.

They helped me inside, where we found the girl Sonia standing beside a long yellow bath-tub which she had set out on a blanket.

“I thought Mr. Lyndon might like a hot bath,” she said.  “It won’t take very long to warm up the water.”