“I shall have something to say to you to-morrow morning,” Hamar remarked, in an undertone, to Lilian Rosenberg.

“And I to you,” was the furious reply.  “I shall not forget the disrespectful way in which you have just spoken of me, in alluding to the scent.”

She signalled to a taxi, and giving Kelson a friendly good-night, jumped into it and was speedily whirled away.

On the whole, the evening had been a disappointment.  She had wanted to see the Unknown—­the awful thing that had inspired Kelson and his colleagues with such unmitigated horror—­and instead she had seen only an obsessed policeman—­a cataleptic “copper”—­who, had he not spoken in a strangely uncanny voice, would certainly have seemed to her absolutely ordinary.

With regard to Hamar’s displeasure, she was not in the slightest degree disturbed.  He would never dare say anything to her.  And after all that had occurred he would never venture to “sack her.”  All the same she hated him.  There was just sufficient in her conduct to make the name he had called her by applicable—­therefore her bitterest wrath and indignation were aroused against him.  He had behaved unpardonably.  She could kill him for it.

“I’ll just show him,” she said to herself, “what that uncivil tongue of his can do.  He shall see that it can do him infinitely more harm than all Kelson’s love-making.  For one thing I’ll spoil his chances with Gladys Martin; and—­I wonder if I could make use of what I know about him, as a means of getting friendly again with Shiel.  At all events I’ll try.”

With this object in view she went round to Shiel’s lodgings, and was informed by the landlady that Shiel was ill.

“Nothing serious I hope?” she asked.

“It has been,” the landlady replied, “but he is better now.  It all came through his not taking proper care of himself.”

“May I see him, do you think?” Lilian Rosenberg inquired.

“I don’t know,” the landlady grumbled.  “He’s in a very touchy mood—­no one can do nothing right for him.  But maybe there won’t be any harm in your trying,” she added, her eyes wandering to the half-crown in Lilian Rosenberg’s fingers.

She opened the door somewhat wider, and Lilian Rosenberg entered.  Shiel was immensely surprised to see her.  Illness and solitude had very considerably subdued him, and though at first he showed some resentment, he speedily softened under her sympathetic solicitation for his health.  She put his room straight and dusted the furniture, got tea for him, and when she had completely won him over by these kindly actions, and made him beg her pardon for ever having spoken harshly to her, she broached the subject all the while uppermost in her mind—­the subject of Hamar and Gladys.

“He hasn’t the slightest intention of marrying her,” she said.  “All he wants is to make her his mistress, so as to be able to throw her over the moment he gets tired of her, and then marry some one of title.  He is tremendously taken with her of course—­her physical beauty, which he had the impudence to tell me surpassed that of any other woman he had seen, appeals strongly to his grossly sensual nature.  If she won’t give in to him now, she will be obliged to do so in six months’ time.”