“Come with me, Stafford:  I want to speak to you,” he said, hoarsely.  “You’ve arrived when I wanted you—­at the exact time.”

“Yes, I said I would come at eleven,” responded Stafford, mechanically.  “Jasmine expects me at eleven.”

“In here,” Byng said, pointing to a little morning-room.

As Stafford entered, he saw Krool’s face, malign and sombre, show in a doorway of the hall.  Was he mistaken in thinking that Krool flashed a look of secret triumph and yet of obscure warning?  Warning?  There was trouble, strange and dreadful trouble, here; and the wrenching thought had swept into his brain that he was the cause of it all, that he was to be the spring and centre of dreadful happenings.

He was conscious of something else purely objective as he entered the room—­of music, the music of a gay light opera being played in the adjoining room, from which this little morning-room was separated only by Indian bead-curtains.  He saw idle sunlight play upon these beads, as he sat down at the table to which Rudyard motioned him.  He was also subconsciously aware who it was that played the piano beyond there with such pleasant skill.  Many a time thereafter, in the days to come, he would be awakened in the night by the sound of that music, a love-song from the light opera “A Lady of London,” which had just caught the ears of the people in the street.

Of one thing he was sure:  the end of things had come—­the end of all things that life meant to him had come.  Rudyard knew!  Rudyard, sitting there at the other side of the table and leaning toward him with a face where, in control of all else, were hate and panic emotion—­he knew.

The music in the next room was soft, persistent and searching.  As Ian waited for Rudyard to speak he was conscious that even the words of the silly, futile love-song: 

“Not like the roses shall our love be, dear
Never shall its lovely petals fade,
Singing, it will flourish till the world’s last year
Happy as the song-birds in the glade.”

Through it all now came Rudyard’s voice.

“I have a letter here,” the voice said, and he saw Rudyard slowly take it from his pocket.  “I want you to read it, and when you have read it, I want you to tell me what you think of the man who wrote it.”

He threw a letter down on the table—­a square white envelope with the crest of the Trafalgar Club upon it.  It lay face downward, waiting for his hand.

So it had come.  His letter to Jasmine which told all—­Rudyard had read it.  And here was the end of everything—­the roses faded before they had bloomed an hour.  It was not for them to flourish “till the world’s last year.”

His hand reached out for the letter.  With eyes almost blind he raised it, and slowly and mechanically took the document of tragedy from the envelope.  Why should Rudyard insist on his reading it?  It was a devilish revenge, which he could not resent.  But time—­he must have time; therefore he would do Rudyard’s bidding, and read this thing he had written, look at it with eyes in which Penalty was gathering its mists.