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Rh miss this opportunity." Something had happened even since their dance; she had observed something momentous, and was warning him to act quickly if he meant to act at all.

With unruffled amiability, amused, urbane, Lanyard bowed his petition across the table, and was rewarded by a bright nod of promise.

Lighting another cigarette, he lounged back, poised his wine glass delicately, with the eye of a connoisseur appraised its pale amber tint, touched it lightly to his lips, inhaling critically its bouquet, sipped, and signified approval of the vintage by sipping again: all without missing one bit of business in a scene enacted on the far side of the room, directly behind him but reflected in a mirror panel of the wall he faced.

The diplomatist charged with the task of discriminating the sheep from the goats in the lower lobby had come up to confer with his colleague, the maître d'hôtel of the upper storey. When Lanyard first saw the man he was standing by the elevator shaft, none too patiently awaiting the attention of the other, who, caught by inadvertence at some distance, was moving to join him, with what speed he could manage threading the thick-set tables.

Was this what Sophie had noticed? Had she likewise, perhaps, received some secret signal from the guardian of the lower gateway?

A signal possibly indicating that Ekstrom had arrived. …

They met at last, those two, and discreetly confabulated, the maître d'hôtel betraying welcome mitigation of that nervous tension which had heretofore so palpably affected him; and, as the other stepped back