“So,” Graham said, “is this sort of thing.  Too many cocktails, too much wine.  Paredes has the same pleasant, dangerous quality.”

A club servant entered.

“In the reception room, Mr. Blackburn.”

Bobby took the card, tore it into little bits, and dropped them one by one into the waste-paper basket.

“Tell him I’ll be right out.”  He turned to Graham.

“Sorry you don’t like my playmates.  I’ll probably run out after dinner and let the old man terrorize me as a cure for his own fear.  Pleasant prospect!  So long.”

Graham caught at his arm.

“I’m sorry.  Can’t we forget to-night that we disagree about Paredes?  Let me dine with you.”

Bobby’s laugh was uncomfortable.

“Come on, if you wish, and be my guardian angel.  God knows I need one.”

He walked across the hall and into the reception room.  The light was not brilliant there.  One or two men sat reading newspapers about a green-shaded lamp on the centre table, but Bobby didn’t see Paredes at first.  Then from the obscurity of a corner a form, tall and graceful, emerged with a slow monotony of movement suggestive of stealth.  The man’s dark, sombre eyes revealed nothing.  His jet-black hair, parted in the middle, and his carefully trimmed Van Dyke beard gave him an air of distinction, an air, at the same time, a trifle too reserved.  For a moment, as the green light stained his face unhealthily, Bobby could understand Graham’s aversion.  He brushed the idea aside.

“Glad you’ve come, Carlos.”

The smile of greeting vanished abruptly from Paredes’s face.  He looked with steady eyes beyond Bobby’s shoulder.  Bobby turned.  Graham stood on the threshold, his face a little too frank.  But the two men shook hands.

“I’d an idea until I saw Bobby,” Graham said, “that you’d gone back to Panama.”

Paredes yawned.

“Each year I spend more time in New York.  Business suggests it.  Pleasure demands it.”

His voice was deep and pleasant, but Bobby had often remarked that it, like Paredes’s eyes, was too reserved.  It seemed never to call on its obvious powers of expression.  Its accent was noticeable only in a pleasant, polished sense.

“Hartley,” Bobby explained, “is dining with us.”

Paredes let no disapproval slip, but Graham hastened to explain.

“Bobby and I have an engagement immediately after dinner.”

“An engagement after dinner!  I didn’t understand—­”

“Let’s think of dinner first,” Bobby said.  “We can talk about engagements afterward.  Perhaps you’ll have a cocktail here while we decide where we’re going.”

“The aperitif I should like very much,” Paredes said.  “About dinner there is nothing to decide.  I have arranged everything.  There’s a table waiting in the Fountain Room at the C——­ and there I have planned a little surprise for you.”

He wouldn’t explain further.  While they drank their cocktails Bobby watched Graham’s disapproval grow.  The man glanced continually at his watch.  In the restaurant, when Paredes left them to produce, as he called it, his surprise, Graham appraised with a frown the voluble people who moved intricately through the hall.