Every single member of the small sub-committee who came, in rather a formal group, to communicate to Mr. Keith the terms of the millionaire’s offer and to solicit his participation in the scheme, purposed to attend the funeral of Mr. Parker’s lady.  It was the right thing to do.  That impressive function, already a day overdue, had been irrevocably fixed for 10.30 a.m. at the instance of the Chief Medical Officer of Health.  Accordingly they reached the Villa Khismet at the matutinal hour of 9 a.m., convinced that the short interval would suffice to cajole out of Mr. Keith a sum sufficient to bind old Koppen to his promise.

It struck them afterwards that this was their flagrant, initial mistake.  They ought to have controlled their impatience and waited for a more opportune occasion.

And they would have waited, but for the fact that Mr. Hopkins, a person of dubious motives and antecedents, had insinuated himself into the deputation not without a purpose of his own.  This gentlemen insisted that delay was fatal.  Mr. Keith, he argued, would understand their impatience.  The millionaire was sailing in a day or two.  One might never get that cheque cashed, or even signed, before he left Nepenthe.  And then?  Why, then the scheme might fall through and—­he added to himself—­how was he going to get his share of the plunder?

The others, the respectable ones, gave way.  Vainly they remonstrated.  Vainly they pointed out that old Koppen was not a man to go back on his word; that a cheque could be made out in America as well as anywhere else; that the crux of the question was not the millionaire but his good friend Keith; that they might spoil all their chances by approaching the latter at such an unseasonable hour of the day.  It was weak of them.

They ought to have waited.  For Keith was fond of solitude at all times, and any one of his dozen gardeners could have told them that, like every other self-respecting scholar, he was in the habit of breakfasting not earlier than 9.30, and dangerous to approach before that meal.  Or they might have made enquiries concerning his mode of life among his fellow-countrymen on Nepenthe.  The bibliographer, for instance, would have informed them that Keith was “generally sick about eleven”—­meaning, by this playful nonsense, to insinuate that it was not safe to disturb him till after that hour.  Be that as it may, he was certainly irritable before breakfast-time on every single day of the year and, as it happened, irritable beyond the common measure on this particular morning, because the downpour of the previous afternoon had dashed to pieces—­among other material damage—­the tender blooms of certain priceless ipomaeas.  That alone was enough to infuriate an archangel.  Moreover, like everybody else—­he always conformed to custom—­he had been slightly tipsy overnight.  This had the singular effect of making him glum, ceremonious, and ready to take offence.