Abercromby Royle. That settled the matter. It also branded me in my visitor's blazing eyes as accessory before or after the flight, and the deliberate author of a false scent which had wasted a couple of invaluable days.

It was no use trying to defend myself, and Coysh told me it was none. He had no time to listen to a "jackanapes in office," as he called me to my face. I could not help laughing in his. All he wanted and intended to discover was the whereabouts of Mrs. Royle--the last thing I knew, or had thought about before that moment--but in my indignation I referred him to the post-office. By way of acknowledgment he nearly shivered my glass door behind him.

I mopped my face and awaited Delavoye with little patience, which ran out altogether when he entered with a radiant face, particularly full of his own egregious researches in Bloomsbury.

"I can't do with that rot to-night!" I cried. "Here's this fat little fool going to get on the tracks of Mrs. Royle, and all through me! The woman's an invalid; this may finish her off. If it were the man himself I wouldn't mind. Where the devil do you suppose he is?"

"I'll tell you later," said Uvo Delavoye, without moving a muscle of his mobile face.

"You'll tell me----see here, Delavoye!" I spluttered. "This is a serious matter to me; if you're going to rot about it I'd rather you cleared out!"

"But I'm not rotting, Gilly," said he in a different tone, yet with a superior twinkle that I never liked. "I never felt less like it in my life. I really have a pretty shrewd idea of my own, but you're such an unbelieving dog that you must give me time before I tell you what it is. I should like first to know rather more about these alleged peculations and this apparent flight, and whether Mrs. Royle's in it all. I'm rather interested in the lady. But if you care to come in for supper you shall hear my views."

Of course I cared. But across the solid mahogany of more spacious days, though we had it to ourselves, we both seemed disinclined to resume the topic. Delavoye had got up some choice remnant of his father's cellar, grotesquely out of keeping with our homely meal, but avowedly in my honor, and it seemed a time to talk about matters on which we were agreed. I was afraid I knew the kind of idea he had described as "shrewd"; what I dreaded was some fresh application of his ingenious doctrine as to the local quick and dead, and a heated argument in our extravagant cups. And yet 

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