“Oh, that will be all right.  I just want to look the place over and lose a few chips in a good cause.  No, it won’t queer any of your Star connections.  We’ll be on the outside when the time comes for anything to happen.  In fact I shouldn’t wonder if your story would make you all the more solid with the sports.  I take all the responsibility; you can have the glory.  You know they like to hear the inside gossip of such things, after the event.  Try it.  Remember, at seven-thirty.  We’ll be a little late at dinner, but never mind; it will be early enough for the club.”

Left to my own devices I determined to do a little detective work on my own account, and not only did I succeed in finding an acquaintance who agreed to introduce us at the Vesper Club that night about nine o’clock, but I also learned that Percival DeLong was certain to be there that night, too.  I was necessarily vague about Kennedy, for fear my friend might have heard of some of his exploits, but fortunately he did not prove inquisitive.

I hurried back to our apartment and was in the process of transforming myself into a full-fledged boulevardier, when Kennedy arrived in an extremely cheerful frame of mind.  So far, his preparations had progressed very favourably, I guessed, and I was quite elated when he complimented me on what I had accomplished in the meantime.

“Pretty tough for the fellows who are condemned to ride around in that van for four mortal hours, though,” he said as he hurried into his evening clothes, “but they won’t be riding all the time.  The driver will make frequent stops.”

I was so busy that I paid little attention to him until he had nearly completed his toilet.  I gave a gasp.

“Why, whatever are you doing?” I exclaimed as I glanced into his room.

There stood Kennedy arrayed in all the glory of a sharp-pointed moustache and a goatee.  He had put on evening clothes of decidedly Parisian cut, clothes which he had used abroad and had brought back with him, but which I had never known him to wear since he came back.  On a chair reposed a chimney-pot hat that would have been pronounced faultless on the “continong,” but was unknown, except among impresarios, on Broadway.

Kennedy shrugged his shoulders—­he even had the shrug.

“Figure to yourself, monsieur,” he said.  “Ze great Kennedy, ze detectif Americain—­to put it tersely in our own vernacular, wouldn’t it be a fool thing for me to appear at the Vesper Club where I should surely be recognised by someone if I went in my ordinary clothes and features?  Un faux pas, at the start?  Jamais!”

There was nothing to do but agree, and I was glad that I had been discreetly reticent about my companion in talking with the friend who was to gain us entrance to the Avernus beyond the steel door.