He was in evening dress.  He carried a small portfolio in his left hand.  If the discovery of my presence startled him, as it could scarcely have failed to do, he allowed no sign of surprise to escape him.  Paul Lessingham’s inpenetrability is proverbial.  Whether on platforms addressing excited crowds, or in the midst of heated discussion in the House of Commons, all the world knows that his coolness remains unruffled.  It is generally understood that he owes his success in the political arena in no slight measure to the adroitness which is born of his invulnerable presence of mind.  He gave me a taste of its quality then.  Standing in the attitude which has been familiarised to us by caricaturists, his feet apart, his broad shoulders well set back, his handsome head a little advanced, his keen blue eyes having in them something suggestive of a bird of prey considering just when, where, and how to pounce, he regarded me for some seconds in perfect silence,—­whether outwardly I flinched I cannot say; inwardly I know I did.  When he spoke, it was without moving from where he stood, and in the calm, airy tones in which he might have addressed an acquaintance who had just dropped in.

’May I ask, sir, to what I am indebted for the pleasure of your company?’

He paused, as if waiting for my answer.  When none came, he put his question in another form.

’Pray, sir, who are you, and on whose invitation do I find you here?’

As I still stood speechless, motionless, meeting his glance without a twitching of an eyebrow, nor a tremor of the hand, I imagine that he began to consider me with an even closer intentness than before.  And that the—­to say the least of it—­ peculiarity of my appearance, caused him to suspect that he was face to face with an adventure of a peculiar kind.  Whether he took me for a lunatic I cannot certainly say; but, from his manner, I think it possible he did.  He began to move towards me from across the room, addressing me with the utmost suavity and courtesy.

’Be so good as to give me the revolver, and the papers you are holding in your hand.’

As he came on, something entered into me, and forced itself from between my lips, so that I said, in a low, hissing voice, which I vow was never mine,

‘The beetle!’

Whether it was, or was not, owing, in some degree, to a trick of my imagination, I cannot determine, but, as the words were spoken, it seemed to me that the lights went low, so that the place was all in darkness, and I again was filled with the nauseous consciousness of the presence of something evil in the room.  But if, in that matter, my abnormally strained imagination played me a trick, there could be no doubt whatever as to the effect which the words had on Mr Lessingham.  When the mist of the blackness—­real or supposititious—­had passed from before my eyes, I found that he had retreated to the extremest limits of the room, and was crouching, his back against