Dr. Hart’s bow was extremely formal. He was a pale dark man with a compact paunch and firm white hands. He was clad in the defiant tweeds of a firmly naturalized ex-Central-European. Mandrake gathered from his manner that either he had not met Nicholas Compline and didn’t wish to do so, or else that he had met him and had taken a firm resolve never to do so again. Nicholas, for his part, acknowledged the introduction by looking at a point some distance beyond Dr. Hart’s left ear, and by uttering the words “How do you do?” as if they were a malediction. Madame Lisse’s greeting to Nicholas was coloured by that particular blend of composure and awareness with which Austrian women make Englishmen feel dangerous and delighted. With something of the same air, but without a certain delicate underlining, she held out her hand to William and to Mandrake. Mandrake remembered that Nicholas had known Madame Lisse was coming to the party and saw him take up a proprietary position beside her. “He’s going to brazen it out,” thought Mandrake. “He’s going to show us the sort of dog he is with the ladies, by Heaven.” Mandrake was right. Nicholas, with a sort of defiant showmanship, devoted himself to Madame Lisse. He stood beside her in an attitude reminiscent of a Victorian military fashion-plate, one leg straight and one flexed. Occasionally he placed one hand on the back of her chair, while the other went to his blond moustache. Whenever Dr. Hart glared at them, which he did repeatedly, Nicholas bent towards Madame Lisse and uttered a loud and unconvincing laugh calculated, Mandrake supposed, to show Dr. Hart how vastly Nicholas and Madame Lisse entertained each other. Madame was the sort of woman whose natural habitat was the centre of a group of men and, with the utmost tranquillity, she dominated the conversation and even, in spite of Nicholas, contrived to instil into it an air of genuine gaiety. In this she was ably supported by Jonathan and by Mandrake himself. Even William, who watched his brother pretty closely, responded in his own odd fashion to Madame’s charm. He asked her abruptly if anybody had ever painted her portrait. On learning that this had never been done he started to mutter to himself, and Nicholas looked irritated. Madame Lisse began to talk to Mandrake about his plays, Jonathan chimed in, and once again the situation was saved. It was upon a conversation piece, with Madame Lisse very much in the centre of vision, that Mrs. Compline and Chloris made their entrances. Mandrake thought that Mrs. Compline could not be aware of the affair between Nicholas and Madame Lisse, so composedly did she acknowledge the introduction. But if this was the case, what reason had Chloris given for the broken engagement with Nicholas? “Is it not impossible that everybody but his mother should be aware of l’affaire Lisse?”

Mandrake speculated. “Perhaps she sees him as a sort of irresistible young god, choosing where he will, and, without resentment, accepts Madame as a votaress.” There was no doubt about Chloris’ reaction. Mandrake saw her stiffen and go very still when Jonathan pronounced Madame Lisse’s name. For perhaps a full second neither of the women spoke and then, for all the world as if they responded to some inaudible cue, Chloris and Madame Lisse were extremely gracious to each other. “So they’re going to take that line,” thought Mandrake, and wondered if Jonathan shared his feelings of relief. He felt less comfortable when he saw Mrs. Compline’s reaction to Dr. Hart. She murmured the conventional greeting, looked casually and then fixedly into his face, and turned so deadly white that for a moment Mandrake actually wondered if she would faint. But she did not faint. She turned away and sat in a chair farthest removed from the light. With the effect of entering on a cue, Caper brought in sherry and champagne cocktails.

The cocktails, though they did not perform miracles, helped considerably. Dr. Hart in particular became more sociable. He continued to avoid Nicholas but attached himself to Chloris Wynne and to William. Jonathan talked to Mrs. Compline; Mandrake and Nicholas to Madame Lisse. Nicholas still kept up his irritating performance — now, apparently, for the benefit of Chloris. Whenever Madame Lisse spoke he bent towards her and, whether her remark was grave or gay, he broke out into an exhibition of merriment calculated, Mandrake felt certain, to arouse in Chloris the pangs proper to the woman scorned. If she suffered this reaction she gave no more evidence of her distress than might be discovered in an occasional thoughtful glance at Nicholas, and it seemed to Mandrake that if she reacted at all to the performance, it was pleasurably. She listened attentively to Dr. Hart, who became voluble and bland. Chloris had asked if anyone had heard the latest wireless news. Hart instantly embarked on a description of his own reaction to radio. “I cannot endure it. It touches some nerve. It creates a most disagreeable — an unendurable—frisson. I read my papers and that is enough. I am informed. I assure you that I have twice changed my flat because of the intolerable persecution of neighbouring radios. Strange, is it not? There must be some psychological explanation.”

“Jonathan shares your dislike,” said Mandrake. “He has been persuaded to install a wireless next door in the smoking-room, but I don’t believe he ever listens to it.”

“My respect for my host grows with everything I hear of him,” said Dr. Hart. He became expansive, enlarged upon his love of nature and spoke of holidays in the Austrian Tyrol.

“When it was still Austria,” said Dr. Hart. “Have you ever visited Kaprun, Miss Wynne? How charming it was at Kaprun in those days! From there one could drive up the Gross-Glockner, one could climb into the mountains above that pleasant Weinstube in the ravine, and on Sunday mornings one went into Zell-amsee. Music in the central square. The cafés! And the shops where one might secure the best shoes in the world!”

“And the best cloaks,” said Chloris with a smile.

“Hein? Ah, you have seen the cloak I have presented to our host.”

“Nicholas,” said Chloris, “wore it when we went for a walk just now.”

Dr. Hart’s eyelids, which in their colour and texture a little resembled those of a lizard, half closed over his rather prominent eyes. “Indeed,” he said.

“I hope,” said Jonathan, “that you visited my swimming-pool on your walk.”

“Nicholas is going to bathe in it to-morrow,” said William, “or hand over ten pounds to me.”

“Nonsense, William,” said his mother. “I won’t have it. Jonathan, please forbid these stupid boys to go on with this nonsense.” Her voice, coming out of the dark corner where she sat, sounded unexpectedly loud. Dr. Hart turned his head and peered into the shadow. When Chloris said something to him it appeared for a moment that he had not heard her. If, however, he had been startled by Mrs. Compline’s voice he quickly recovered himself. Mandrake thought that he finished his cocktail rather rapidly and noticed that when he accepted another it was with an unsteady hand. “That’s odd,” thought Mandrake. “He’s the more upset of the two, it appears, and yet they’ve never met before. Unless — but no! that would be too much. I’m letting the possibilities of the situation run away with me.”

“Lady Hersey Amblington, sir,” said Caper in the doorway.

Mandrake’s first impression of Hersey Amblington was characteristic of the sort of man his talents had led him to become. As Stanley Footling of Dulwich, he would have been a little in awe of Hersey. As Aubrey Mandrake of the Unicorn Theatre, he told himself she was distressingly wholesome. Hersey’s face, in spite of its delicate make-up, wore an out-of-doors look, and she did not pluck her dark brows, those two straight bars that guarded her blue eyes. She wore Harris tweed and looked, thought Mandrake, as though she would be tiresome about dogs. A hearty woman, he decided, and he did not wonder that Madame Lisse had lured away Hersey’s smartest clients.