Arnold handed his visitor two half-crowns, which the latter put gravely into his pocket.

“Come and lunch with me to-day at my rooms,” he invited.  “Lady Blennington and Fenella will be there.  If you bring with you a sufficient appetite, you may get value for your five shillings.  It is the only way you will ever get it back.”

“Then I must resign myself to being robbed,” Arnold answered.  “We haven’t time, nowadays, for luncheon parties.  On the whole, I think I should be justified in putting the amount down to petty cash.  I might even debit Mrs. Weatherley’s account with it.”

Sabatini took out his cigarette case.

“You will forgive me?” he said.  “In your offices, I believe, it is not the custom, but I must confess that I find your atmosphere abominable.  Last night I saw Fenella.  She told me of your disagreement with her and your baseless suspicions.  Really, Chetwode, I am surprised at you.”

“‘Suspicions’ seems scarcely the word,” Arnold murmured.

Sabatini sighed.

“You are such a hideously matter-of-fact person,” he declared.  “Fenella should have seen your attitude from the humorous point of view.  It would have appealed to me very much indeed.”

“I am sorry if your sister misunderstood anything that I said,” Arnold remarked, a little awkwardly.

“My dear fellow,” Sabatini continued, “there seems to have been very little ground for misunderstanding.  Fenella was positively hurt.  She says that you seem to look upon us as a sort of adventurer and adventuress—­people who live by their wits, you understand, from hour to hour, without character or reputation.  She is quite sure, in her own mind, that you believe Mr. Weatherley’s absence to be due to our secret and criminal machinations.”

“I am sorry,” Arnold replied, “if anything I said to your sister has given her that impression.  The fact remains, however, that Mrs. Weatherley has declined to give me any explanation of various incidents which were certainly more than bewildering.  One cannot help feeling,” he went on, after a moment’s hesitation, “that if my friendship were of any account to your sister—­which, of course, it isn’t—­she would look at the matter differently.”

“My dear Chetwode,” Sabatini declared, “my sympathies are entirely with you.  The trouble of it is, of course, that the explanations which you demand will probably leave you only the more bewildered.  When I came to London,” he continued, watching the smoke from his cigarette, “I said to myself, ’In this great black city all hopes of adventure must be buried.  Fenella will become a model wife of the bourgeoisie.  I myself, if I stay, shall probably become director of some city company where they pay fees, give up baccarat for bridge, imbibe whiskey and soda instead of the wine of my country; perhaps, even—­who knows?—­I may take to myself a wife and live in a villa.’  On the contrary, other things have happened.  Even here the earth has trembled a little under our feet.  Even now we listen for the storm.”