So complacent, so insolently unselfconscious had Ashe become in the course of three months, owing to his success in inducing the populace to look on anything he did with the indulgent eye of understanding, that it simply did not occur to him, when he abruptly twisted his body into the shape of a corkscrew, in accordance with the directions in the lieutenant’s book for the consummation of Exercise One, that he was doing anything funny.

And the behavior of those present seemed to justify his confidence.  The proprietor of the Hotel Mathis regarded him without a smile.  The proprietor of the Hotel Previtali might have been in a trance, for all the interest he displayed.  The hotel employees continued their tasks impassively.  The children were blind and dumb.  The cat across the way stropped its backbone against the railings unheeding.

But, even as he unscrambled himself and resumed a normal posture, from his immediate rear there rent the quiet morning air a clear and musical laugh.  It floated out on the breeze and hit him like a bullet.

Three months ago Ashe would have accepted the laugh as inevitable, and would have refused to allow it to embarrass him; but long immunity from ridicule had sapped his resolution.  He spun round with a jump, flushed and self-conscious.

From the window of the first-floor front of Number Seven a girl was leaning.  The Spring sunshine played on her golden hair and lit up her bright blue eyes, fixed on his flanneled and sweatered person with a fascinated amusement.  Even as he turned, the laugh smote him afresh.

For the space of perhaps two seconds they stared at each other, eye to eye.  Then she vanished into the room.

Ashe was beaten.  Three months ago a million girls could have laughed at his morning exercises without turning him from his purpose.  Today this one scoffer, alone and unaided, was sufficient for his undoing.  The depression which exercise had begun to dispel surged back on him.  He had no heart to continue.  Sadly gathering up his belongings, he returned to his room, and found a cold bath tame and uninspiring.

The breakfasts—­included in the rent—­provided by Mrs. Bell, the landlady of Number Seven, were held by some authorities to be specially designed to quell the spirits of their victims, should they tend to soar excessively.  By the time Ashe had done his best with the disheveled fried egg, the chicory blasphemously called coffee, and the charred bacon, misery had him firmly in its grip.  And when he forced himself to the table, and began to try to concoct the latest of the adventures of Gridley Quayle, Investigator, his spirit groaned within him.

This morning, as he sat and chewed his pen, his loathing for Gridley seemed to have reached its climax.  It was his habit, in writing these stories, to think of a good title first, and then fit an adventure to it.  And overnight, in a moment of inspiration, he had jotted down on an envelope the words:  “The Adventure of the Wand of Death.”