“I do not like it,” Mr. Sabin answered drily.

“After all,” Felix remarked, “it is to some extent natural.  The very openness of your life here makes interference with you more difficult, and as to warning letters—­well, you have proved the uselessness of them.”

“Perhaps,” Mr. Sabin answered.  “At the same time, if I were a superstitious person I should consider this inaction ominous.”

“You must take account also,” Felix said, “of the difference in the countries.  In England the police system, if not the most infallible in the world, is certainly the most incorruptible.  There was never a country in which security of person and life was so keenly watched over as here.  In America, up to a certain point, a man is expected to look after himself.  The same feeling does not prevail here.”

Mr. Sabin assented.

“And therefore,” he remarked, “for the purposes of your friends I should consider this a difficult and unpromising country in which to work.”

“Other countries, other methods!” Felix remarked laconically.

“Exactly!  It is the new methods which I am anxious to discover,” Mr. Sabin said.  “No glimmering of them as yet has been vouchsafed to me.  Yet I believe that I am right in assuming that for the moment London is the headquarters of your friends, and that Lucille is here?”

“If that is meant for a question,” Felix said, “I may not answer it.”

Mr. Sabin nodded.

“Yet,” he suggested, “your visit has an object.  To discover my plans perhaps!  You are welcome to them.”

Felix thoughtfully knocked the ashes off his cigarette.

“My visit had an object,” he admitted, “but it was a personal one.  I am not actually concerned in the doings of those whom you have called my friends.”

“We are alone,” Mr. Sabin reminded him.  “My time is yours.”

“You and I,” Felix said, “have had our periods of bitter enmity.  With your marriage to Lucille these, so far as I am concerned, ended for ever.  I will even admit that in my younger days I was prejudiced against you.  That has passed away.  You have been all your days a bold and unscrupulous schemer, but ends have at any rate been worthy ones.  To-day I am able to regard you with feelings of friendliness.  You are the husband of my dear sister, and for years I know that you made her very happy.  I ask you, will you believe in this statement of my attitude towards you?”

“I do not for a single moment doubt it,” Mr. Sabin answered.

“You will regard the advice which I am going to offer as disinterested?”

“Certainly!”

“Then I offer it to you earnestly, and with my whole heart.  Take the next steamer and go back to America.”

“And leave Lucille?  Go without making any effort to see her?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Sabin was for a moment very serious indeed.  The advice given in such a manner was full of forebodings to him.  The lines from the corners of his mouth seemed graven into his face.