‘Only for a moment, sir,’ said Shawn, departing.

Hugo felt that he was about to swoon, that he had suffered just as much as a man could suffer, and that Fate was dropping the last straw on the camel’s back.  His head fell forward.  He was beaten for that day by too many mysteries and too many tortures.  And then he observed that the pretty young woman who had stolen the cup of tea from the Indian judge was hastening towards him with the cup of tea in one hand and several pieces of bread-and-butter in the other.

‘Drink this, Mr. Hugo,’ she whispered, standing over him.  He hesitated. ’Drink it, I say, or must I throw it over you?’

He sipped, and sipped again, obediently.

‘Good, isn’t it?’ she questioned.

He looked up at her.  He was stronger already.

‘It’s very good,’ he said, with conviction.  ’Now a bit of bread-and-butter.  Thanks.’  Yes, the excellence and power of the Hugo tea was not to be denied, and he was deeply glad in that moment that he owned his private plantations in Ceylon.  ‘Who are you, may I ask?’ he demanded of his rescuer.

‘If you please, sir, I’m Albert’s wife.’

‘Albert?’

‘Albert Shawn, your detective, sir.’

‘Of course you are!’

‘You gave us a bedroom suite for a wedding present, sir.’

‘Of course I did!  By the way, where’s Albert?’

’He’s had an accident to his foot, and couldn’t come to-day.  You’re less pale than you were, sir.  Take this other piece.’

Then Simon returned, empty-handed, and Lily’s eye indicated to him her real opinion of the value of a male in a crisis.  She asked no questions concerning the events which had ended in Hugo’s collapse.  She merely dealt with the collapse, and in the intervals of dealing with it she explained to Simon how she had waited and waited in the dome, and then descended and tried in vain to enter the Safe Deposit, and been insulted by the messenger-boy, and had finally drifted to the restaurant, where she had caught sight of Hugo and himself, and guessed immediately that something in the highest degree unusual had occurred.

‘Come,’ said Hugo at last, in curt command, ‘I am better.’

He had recovered.  He was Hugo again.  And Simon was once more nothing but his body servant, and Lily nothing but an ex-waitress who had married rather well.  He thanked Lily, and told her to go and look after her husband as well as she had looked after him.

In the dome Simon ventured to show him the Evening Herald.  And, having read it, Hugo nodded his head and pressed his lips together.  He had ordered champagne and sandwiches, and was consuming them, at the same time opening a series of yellow envelopes which lay on a table.  These latter were reports from his detective corps, which had accumulated during the day.

‘Get a sheet of plain paper,’ he said to Simon, ’and write this letter.  Are you ready?  Yes, it will do in pencil; I even prefer it in pencil.