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and she will return your ring to your club by messenger in the morning. We will continue our busi-ness relationship because there is no other way. But your engagement to my daughter is broken, you are no longer welcome in my home, and you will make no attempts, now or in the future, to contact Iris.” He knocked loudly on the hatch with the head of his cane. “Stop the cab. Good-bye.”
    III. THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL
    A fine rain was falling, darkening even more the black pavement of Kensington Gore so that each yellow gaslight above had its mirror imaged fellow beaming back at it from the street below The doors to the hall were closed, the street empty save for a single figure that appeared sud-denly around the corner, a gentle-man in a hurry and heedless of the inclemencies of the weather, his hat and clothes bedewed with raindrops.
    Taking the steps two at a time he threw open one of the outer doors of the hall and came face to face with the ample uniformed figure of the commissionaire who prevented any further forward motion by the sheer bulk of his presence.
    “Performance begun, sir. Every-one seated.”
    “I wish to talk to someone in the audience,” said Washington while at the same time forcing himself into some form of composure, realizing that his sudden appearance out of the night might be misinterpreted. “It is a matter of some urgency—I’ll purchase a ticket if necessary.”
    “Dreadfully sorry, sir. Ticket win-dow closed.”
    Washington already had his purse in his hand as these words were spo-ken which led naturally to a further and hopefully more successful at-tempt at entry. He slipped two half crowns into the man’s hand.
    “Are you sure there is no way? Perhaps I could just step inside and look around for my party?” There was a glint of silver that although instantly vanished still seemed to work a miraculous change on the door-keeper’s manner, for he stepped back and waved entrance with his hand.
    “Perfectly understandable, sir. Walk this way.”
    The door closed silently behind his back and Washington looked around the partially tilled hall. In the darkness he could make only the fact that the audience seemed to be almost completely female and he wondered how he could possibly single out one singular and important female from all the others. They were listening in rapt silence to a small man with a gray and black skullcap who stood behind the lec-tern on the platform. Behind him, incongruously enough, there was a red plush divan upon which lay a rather fat and ordinary looking woman who was either unconscious, or sleeping. The juxtaposition of this strangely matched pair was so arrest-ing that, with no opportunity at the moment for seeking out Iris from the audience, despite himself, Washing-ton found himself listening to the speaker.
    “…Have heard what Madame Clotilda has said, spoken the name Martin Alhaja Gontran, almost, in the understanding of her experience, shouted this name signifying the im-portance of said name. This relates to what I have spoken of earlier in the outlining of my theory of the multi-serial nature of time. There are these points in time which I have named alpha-nodes, and it is upon the existence of these alpha-nodes that my theory depends. If they exist, my theory has some validity and may be explored; if they do not exist then time flows on like a river, a single mighty stream, instead of the multibranching, parallel rivulets that I postulate. If the alpha-nodes are not there then I am wrong.”
    “Hear, hear,” Washington said un-der his breath, searching for a singular dark and lovely head among all the rows of possibly dark and lovely heads before him.
    “The search for a major alpha-node has taken years and Madame Clotilda is the first clairvoyant to have made contact, so difficult is the task. At first, with the greatest diffi-culty, she spoke the single word Gon-tran and I searched long and deep for the meaning. I thought I had found the correct