Paul released Jane, who kept cool, defiant eyes on him.

“What do you think of it?”

He smiled.  “A bit disconcerting.”

“The whole house is like this.”

“It’s so new,” said Paul.

He looked about him again.  The long table was plainly laid for three at the far end.  The fare consisted of a joint of cold beef, a cold tart suggestive of apple, a bit of Cheshire cheese, and celery in a glass vase.  Of table decoration of any kind there was no sign.  A great walnut monstrosity meagrely equipped performed the functions of a sideboard.  The chairs, ten straight-backed, and two easy by the fireplace, of which one was armless, were upholstered in saddlebag, yellow and green.  In the bay of the red-curtained window was a huge terra-cotta bust of an ivy-crowned and inane Austrian female.  There was a great fireplace in which a huge fire blazed cheerily, and on the broad, deep hearth stood little coloured plaster figures of stags, of gnomes, of rabbits, one ear dropping, the other ear cocked, of galloping hounds unknown to the fancy, scenting and pursuing an invisible foe.

She watched him as he scanned the room.

“Who is Mr. Finn?” he asked in a low voice.

“Many years ago he was ‘Finn’s Fried Fish.’  Now he’s ’Fish Palaces, Limited.’  They’re all over London.  You can’t help seeing them even from a motor car.”

“I’ve seen them,” said Paul.

The argument outside the door having ended in a victory for the host, he entered the room, pushing Barney Bill gently in front of him.  For the first time Paul saw him in the full light.  He beheld a man sharply featured, with hair and beard, once raven-black, irregularly streaked with white—­there seemed to be no intermediary shades of grey—­and deep melancholy eyes.  There hung about him the atmosphere of infinite, sorrowful patience that might mark a Polish patriot.  As the runner of a successful fried fish concern he was an incongruity.  As well, thought Paul, picture the late Cardinal Newman sharpening knife on steel outside a butcher’s shop, and crying, “buy, buy,” in lusty invitation.  Then Paul noticed that he was oddly apparelled.  He wore the black frock-coat suit of a Methodist preacher at the same time as the rainbow tie, diamond tie-pin, heavy gold watch-chain, diamond ring and natty spats of a professional bookmaker.  The latter oddities, however, did not detract from the quiet, mournful dignity of his face and manner.  Paul felt himself in the presence of an original personality.

The maid came in and laid a fourth place.  Mr. Finn waved Paul to a seat on his right, Barney Bill to one next Paul; Jane sat on his left.

“I will ask a blessing,” said Mr. Finn.

He asked one for two minutes in the old-fashioned Evangelical way, bringing his guest into his address to the Almighty with an almost pathetic courtesy.  “I am afraid, Mr. Savelli,” said he, when he sat down and began to carve the beef, “I have neither wine nor spirits to offer you.  I am a strict teetotaller; and so is Miss Seddon.  But as I knew my old friend Simmons would be unhappy without his accustomed glass of beer—­”