The close time for impersonation efforts came to an end with the final withdrawal of Moritz and Augusta from the piano.  Blanche Boveal retired early, leaving the room in a series of laboured leaps that she hoped might be recognised as a tolerable imitation of Pavlova.  Vera Durmot, the sixteen-year-old flapper, expressed her confident opinion that the performance was intended to typify Mark Twain’s famous jumping frog, and her diagnosis of the case found general acceptance.  Another guest to set an example of early bed-going was Waldo Plubley, who conducted his life on a minutely regulated system of time-tables and hygienic routine.  Waldo was a plump, indolent young man of seven-and-twenty, whose mother had early in his life decided for him that he was unusually delicate, and by dint of much coddling and home-keeping had succeeded in making him physically soft and mentally peevish.  Nine hours’ unbroken sleep, preceded by elaborate breathing exercises and other hygienic ritual, was among the indispensable regulations which Waldo imposed on himself, and there were innumerable small observances which he exacted from those who were in any way obliged to minister to his requirements; a special teapot for the decoction of his early tea was always solemnly handed over to the bedroom staff of any house in which he happened to be staying.  No one had ever quite mastered the mechanism of this precious vessel, but Bertie van Tahn was responsible for the legend that its spout had to be kept facing north during the process of infusion.

On this particular night the irreducible nine hours were severely mutilated by the sudden and by no means noiseless incursion of a pyjama-clad figure into Waldo’s room at an hour midway between midnight and dawn.

“What is the matter?  What are you looking for?” asked the awakened and astonished Waldo, slowly recognising Van Tahn, who appeared to be searching hastily for something he had lost.

“Looking for sheep,” was the reply.

“Sheep?” exclaimed Waldo.

“Yes, sheep.  You don’t suppose I’m looking for giraffes, do you?”

“I don’t see why you should expect to find either in my room,” retorted Waldo furiously.

“I can’t argue the matter at this hour of the night,” said Bertie, and began hastily rummaging in the chest of drawers.  Shirts and underwear went flying on to the floor.

“There are no sheep here, I tell you,” screamed Waldo.

“I’ve only got your word for it,” said Bertie, whisking most of the bedclothes on to the floor; “if you weren’t concealing something you wouldn’t be so agitated.”

Waldo was by this time convinced that Van Tahn was raving mad, and made an anxious, effort to humour him.

“Go back to bed like a dear fellow,” he pleaded, “and your sheep will turn up all right in the morning.”

“I daresay,” said Bertie gloomily, “without their tails.  Nice fool I shall look with a lot of Manx sheep.”