“If you will,” she answered, “but my illness is of the soul.  I have become one of a type,” she went on, “of which you will find many examples here.  We started life thinking that it was clever to despise the conventional and the known and to seek always for the daring and the unknown.  New experiences were what we craved for.  I married a wonderful husband.  I broke his heart and still looked for new things.  I had a daughter of whom I was fond—­she ran away with my chauffeur and left me; a son whom I adored, and he was killed in the war; a lover who told me that he worshipped me, who spent every penny I had and made me the laughing-stock of town.  I am still looking for new things.”

“Sir Timothy’s parties are generally supposed to provide them,” Francis observed.

The woman shrugged her shoulders.

“So far they seem very much like anybody’s else,” she said.  “The fight might have been amusing, but no women were allowed.  The rest was very wonderful in its way, but that is all.  I am still hoping for what we are to see downstairs.”

They heard Sir Timothy’s voice a few yards away, and turned to look at him.  He had just come from below, and had paused opposite a man who had been standing a little apart from the others, one of the few who was wearing an overcoat, as though he felt the cold.  In the background were the two servants who had guarded the gangway.

“Mr. Manuel Loito,” Sir Timothy said—­“or shall I say Mr. Shopland?—­my invited guests are welcome.  I have only one method of dealing with uninvited ones.”

The two men suddenly stepped forward.  Shopland made no protest, attempted no struggle.  They lifted him off his feet as though he were a baby, and a moment later there was a splash in the water.  They threw a life-belt after him.

“Always humane, you see,” Sir Timothy remarked, as he leaned over the side.  “Ah!  I see that even in his overcoat our friend is swimmer enough to reach the bank.  You find our methods harsh, Ledsam?” he asked, turning a challenging gaze towards the latter.

Francis, who had been watching Shopland come to the surface, shrugged his shoulders.  He delayed answering for a moment while he watched the detective, disdaining the life-belt, swim to the opposite shore.

“I suppose that under the circumstances,” Francis said, “he was prepared to take his risk.”

“You should know best about that,” Sir Timothy rejoined.  “I wonder whether you would mind looking after Lady Cynthia?  I shall be busy for a few moments.”

Francis stepped across the deck towards where Lady Cynthia had been sitting by her host’s side.  They had passed into the mouth of a tree-hung strip of the river.  The engine was suddenly shut off.  A gong was sounded.  There was a murmur, almost a sob of relief, as the little sprinkling of men and women rose hastily to their feet and made their way towards the companion-way.  Downstairs, in the