A week had passed since Dulcie had promised to become my wife, and since
the amazing robbery in broad daylight at Holt Manor.

I had been five days back in town, where I had some estate business to
attend to. It was the evening of Hugesson Gastrell's house--warming
reception in his newly furnished mansion in Cumberland Place, and the
muster of well-known people was extraordinary.

Peers and peeresses, prosperous City financiers, celebrities of the
drama and of the operatic stage, luminaries of the law, diplomats, and
rich retired traders who had shed the "tradesman" and blossomed into
"gentleman," jostled one another in the rooms and on the stairs. It is
surprising how people will rush to the house of a wealthy man. At least
one Duke was present, a Cabinet Minister too, also a distinguished Judge
and two Archbishops, for I noticed them as I fought my way up into the
room where music was being performed, music the quality of which the
majority of the listeners gauged by the fees known to be paid to the
artists engaged, and by the amount of newspaper publicity those artists'
Press agents had succeeded in securing for them.

Nor were journalists lacking at this "interesting social function," as
some of them afterwards termed it in their papers. In London I move a
good deal in many kinds of society, and now I noticed, mingling in the
crowd, several men and women I was in the habit of meeting frequently,
though I did not know them to speak to--Press representatives whose
exclusive duty I knew it to be to attend social gatherings of this
description. As I edged my way through the dense throng I could hear my
favourite composition, Dvorak's "Humoresque," being played on the violin
by Beatrice Langley, who I had been told was to appear, and for a few
brief minutes the crowd was hushed. To my chagrin the music ended almost