I whistled for a hansom, and, as the cab turned up Whitehall, Big Ben chimed a quarter to eight.
Dinner was served by the time I reached the Cecil, and, as I entered the salon, and made my way towards the table where our seats were, I saw that my fears were realized. Anne was angry, and would not lightly forgive me for what she evidently considered an all but unpardonable breach of good manners.
I know Mary had arranged that Anne and I should sit together, but now the chair reserved for me was on Mary's left. Her husband sat at her right, and next him was Anne, deep in conversation with her further neighbor, who, as I recognized with a queer feeling of apprehension, was none other than Cassavetti himself!
Mary greeted me with a comical expression of dismay on her pretty little face.
"I'm sorry, Maurice," she whispered. "Anne would sit there. She's very angry. Where have you been, and why didn't you telephone? We gave you ten minutes' grace, and then came on, all together. It wasn't what you might call lively, for Jim had to sit bodkin between us, and Anne never spoke a word the whole way!"
Jim said nothing, but looked up from his soup and favored me with a grin and a wink. He evidently imagined the situation to be funny. I did not.
"I'll explain later, Mary," I said, and moved to the back of Anne's chair.
"Will you forgive me, Miss Pendennis?" I said humbly. "I was detained at the last moment by an accident. I rang you up, but failed to get an answer."
She turned her head and looked up at me, with a charming smile, in which I thought I detected a trace of contrition for her hasty condemnation of me.
"An accident? You are hurt?" she asked impulsively.
"No, it happened to some one else; and it concerns you, Cassavetti," I continued, addressing him, for, as I confessed that I was unhurt, Anne's momentary flash of compunction passed, and her perverse mood reasserted itself. With a slight shrug of her white shoulders she resumed her dinner, and though she must have heard what I told Cassavetti, she betrayed no sign of interest.
In as few words as possible I related the circumstances, suppressing only any mention of the discovery of Anne's portrait in the alien's possession, and our subsequent interview in my rooms. I remembered the man's terror of Cassavetti--or Selinski--as he had called him, and his evident conviction that he was in some way connected with the danger that threatened "the gracious lady," who, alas, seemed determined to be anything but gracious to me on this unlucky evening.