in my hand. 

 "May I take it away and keep it till to-morrow morning, to work out my plot with?" I asked.  "The big one I don't care about. I give you my word I'll send this back in twenty-four—no, let's say twenty-five hours. I have an engagement for the twenty-fourth hour." 

 "All right," replied Yelverton good-naturedly.  "You might bring the box-ticket with you. Ha, ha!" 

 "I will," I laughed.  "And as to the dossier, may I sit somewhere out of your way and glance through it in case there's anything we can work up to strengthen the realism of our scenario? Of course, we'll guarantee to use nothing that might recall the Callender-Graham case to the public or dramatic critics." 

 "You can sit in the outer office and browse over the bundle till lunch-time, if you like," said Yelverton.  "There's a table there in a quiet corner. I shall be off on business before you finish, I expect. See you later—at the Felborn Theatre, your first night. Wish you luck." 

 I thanked him and got up. Carr Price followed suit. 

 "Weren't you a bit premature mentioning the Felborn?" he reproached me in the next room, beyond earshot of Mr. Yelverton's secretaries and stenographers. 

 "No," I reassured him.  "To-morrow, at this time or a little later, you'll know why. Meanwhile, don't worry, but take my word—and a taxi to the theatre. Tell Felborn I'm on the spot, and there's a truce between Odell and me, an armistice of twenty-four"—I pulled out my watch—"no, twenty-two and a half hours. Ask him to lend me his private office to-morrow morning from nine till ten o'clock. After that time you and he had better hold yourselves ready to be called in to discuss dates." 

 "You're either the wonder child of the British Empire or its champion fool," remarked Price somewhat waspishly, as he prepared to leave me alone with the Callender-Graham dossier. 

 "You've got till to-morrow to make up your mind which," said I, sitting down to my meal of manuscripts in order not to waste a minute out of the twenty-two and a half hours which remained to me. It would not have been wise to add that I didn't know which myself. 

 Many of the papers I passed over rapidly. Others gave me information that I couldn't have got from Odell without a confession of ignorance, or from the Misses Callender without 

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