Hillyard sat up in his chair.  He had been four days in London, and the engrossing menace of those days had quite thrust from his recollections the telegram which had, as he thought, befooled him.

“The friend of mine is possibly Paul Bendish,” he said stiffly.

“Think that was the name.  Graham’s the man I am speaking of,” and the sailor paused.  “Commodore Graham,” he added.

Hillyard’s indignation ebbed away.  What if he had not been fooled?  The quenched hopes kindled again in him.  There was all this talk of war—­alarums and excursions as the stage-directions had it.  Service!  Suddenly he realised that ever since he had left Senga, a vague envy of Harry Luttrell had been springing up in his heart.  The ordered life of service—­authority on the one hand, the due execution of details on the other!  Was it to that glorious end in this crisis that all his life’s experience had slowly been gathering?  He looked keenly at his companion.  Was it just by chance that he had crossed the hall in the midst of all this thistle-down discussion and dropped in the chair by his side?

“But what could I do?”

He spoke aloud, but he was putting the question to himself.  The sailor, however, answered it.

“Ask Graham.”

He wrote an address upon a sheet of notepaper and handed it to Hillyard.  Then he looked at the clock which marked ten minutes past three.

“You will find him there now.”

The sailor went after his cap and left the club.  Hillyard read the address.  It was a number in a little street of the Adelphi, and as he read it, suspicion again seized upon Hillyard.  After all, why should a Commodore want to see him in a little street of the Adelphi.  Perhaps, after all, the indifferent official of Alexandria was right and the Commodore had ambitions in the line of revues!

“I had better go and have it out with him,” he decided, and, taking his hat and stick, he walked eastwards to Charing Cross.  He turned into a short street.  At the bottom a stone arch showed where once the Thames had lapped.  Now, beyond its grey-white curve, were glimpses of green lawns and the cries of children at their play.  Hillyard stopped at a house by the side of the arch.  A row of brass plates confronted him, but the name of Commodore Graham was engraved on none of them.  Hillyard rang the housekeeper’s bell and inquired.

“On the top floor on the left,” he was told.

He climbed many little flights of stairs, and at the top of each his heart sank a little lower.  When the stairs ended he confronted a mean, brown-varnished door; and he almost turned and fled.  After all, the monstrous thing looked possible.  He stood upon the threshold of a set of chambers.  Was he really to be asked to collaborate in a revue?  He rang the bell, and a young woman opened the door and barred the way.

“Whom do you wish to see?” she asked.

“Commodore Graham.”