By his side, with a notebook in her hand, stood Mr.Fentolin's private secretary--a white-haired woman, with a strangely transparent skin and light brown eyes, dressed in somber black, a woman who might have been of any age from thirty to fifty.
Behind her was a middle-aged man whose position in the household no one was quite sure about--a clean-shaven man whose name was Ryan, and who might very well have been once an actor or a clergyman.

In the background stood Henderson, the perfect butler.
"It is perhaps opportune," Mr.Fentolin said quietly, "that you all whom I trust should be present here together.

I wish you to understand one thing.

You have, I believe, in my employ learned the gift of silence.

It is to be exercised with regard to a certain visitor brought here by my nephew, a visitor whom I regret to say is now lying seriously ill." There was absolute silence.