"In that case, my dear Boyd, you ought really to see the folly of the thing."

"Perhaps I ought, but I don't," I answered, facing him with my back to the fire. "To you, my most intimate friend, I've explained, in strictest confidence, the matter which is puzzling me. I live in hourly dread of some catastrophe the nature of which I'm utterly at a loss to determine. Can you define intuition?"

My question held him in pensive silence. His manner changed as he looked me straight in the face. Unlike his usual careless self--for his was a curious character of the semi-Bohemian order and Savage Club type--he grew serious and thoughtful, regarding me with a critical gaze after removing his pipe from his lips."Well," he exclaimed at last. "I'll tell you what it is, Boyd. This intuition, or whatever you may call it, is an infernally bad thing for you. I'm your friend--one of your best and most devoted friends, old chap--and if there's anything in it, I'll render you whatever help I can."

"Thank you, Ambler," I said gratefully, taking his hand. "I have told you all this to-night in order to enlist your sympathy, although I scarcely liked to ask your aid. Your life is a busy one--busier even than my own, perhaps--and you have no desire to be bothered with my personal affairs."

"On the contrary, old fellow," he said. "Remember that in mystery I'm in my element."

"I know," I replied. "But at present there is no mystery--only suspicion."

What Ambler Jevons had asserted was a fact. He was an investigator of mysteries, making it his hobby just as other men take to collecting curios or pictures. About his personal appearance there was nothing very remarkable. When pre-occupied he had an abrupt, rather brusque manner, but at all other times he was a very easy-going man of the world, possessor of an ample income left him by his aunt, and this he augmented by carrying on, in partnership with an elder man, a profitable tea-blending business in Mark Lane.

He had entered the tea trade not because of necessity, but because he considered it a bad thing for a man to lead an idle life. Nevertheless, the chief object of his existence had always seemed to be the unravelling of mysteries of police and crime. Surely few men, even those professional investigators at Scotland Yard, held such a record of successes. He was a born detective, with a keen scent for clues, an ingenuity that was marvellous, and a patience and endurance that were 

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