Frankness has always been my forte. Like many distinguished and good-looking people, I like being photographed and these new colored ones are really most interesting. “I would be most happy to oblige,” I said, and turned to see how Mr. M. would react to my taking the play out of his hands. Of course this odd little man couldn’t be a murderer. I’m not a profound student of men but that was now perfectly clear to me. Mr. M. merely treated us to another of his “Lord Burleigh nods” and then, “While you are posing Mr. Silchester, may I walk about?”

“Please look upon the place as your own,” left Mr. M. free to stroll away and he seemed quite content to use his fieldglasses looking at the birds and blooms.

“Now,” said Mr. Hess, all vivacity and I must confess, getting more likable every moment, “my idea is that we put the human interest, if I may so describe my collaborator, right in the middle of the scene. You will be the focus round which the garden is, as it were, draped.” Then he paused and exclaimed, “Why, of course, that’s the very word—why didn’t I think of it before? I wonder whether you would be kind enough to agree—it would make the picture really wonderful.”

Again I was a little at a loss, but the small man’s enthusiasm was quite infectious. “How can I help further?” I asked.

“Well, it was the word drape that shot the idea into my head, darting like one of these sweet birdkins. Don’t you think, Mr. Silchester, that men’s clothes rather spoil the effect here?”

He looked down on his own little store suit and smiled. It was true enough but a sudden qualm shook my mind. The thought of stripping and posing, with Mr. Mycroft in the offing—well, I felt that awkward blush again flowing all over me. Whether my little host guessed my confusion or not, his next words put me at ease. “Do you think that you’d consent to wear just for the photo a robe I have?”

My relief that I was not to be asked to disrobe but to robe made me say, “Of course, of course,” and without giving me any further chance to qualify my consent, off hurried little Hess. He was not gone more than a couple of minutes—not enough time for me to go back to where Mr. Mycroft was loitering near the gate at the other end of the pool—before once again he appeared, but nearly hidden even when he faced me. For what he was holding in his arms and over his shoulder was one of those Polynesian feather cloaks of which I had remarked to Mr. Mycroft that I thought they were one of the finest of all dresses ever made by man.