whose adventures would have filled a volume.

David Mullet, or “Red Mullet” as his friends called him on account of the colour of his hair, offered the Doctor a good cigar from his case, poured out two glasses of brandy and soda, and after a chat took out two notes of a thousand francs from the pocket-book he carried and handed them to his visitor, receiving a receipt in return.

“I’ve been a long time paying, I’m afraid, Doctor,” laughed the man airily. “But you know what kind of fellow I am! Sometimes I’m flush of money, and at others devilish hard up.”

“I’m hard up, or I wouldn’t press for this.”

“My dear Doctor, it’s been owing for two years. And I’m very glad to get out of your debt.”

“Well, Mr Mullet,” Diamond said, “eighty pounds is a lot to me just now. I haven’t had a square meal for days, and to tell the truth I’ve just been ordered out of my hotel.”

“My dear fellow, that’s happened to me dozens of times,” laughed the other. “I never feel sorry for the proprietor. I only regret that I can’t give tips to the servants. I suppose you’ll go back home—eh?”

“To-night, or by the first service in the morning.”

“By Jove, I’d like to see my little Aggie. I wonder,” exclaimed the man, “I wonder if I could manage to get across?”

“It isn’t far,” urged the Doctor.

But “Red Mullet” hesitated. He had a cause to hesitate. There was a hidden reason why for the past three years he had not put foot on English soil.

He shook his head sadly as he recognised that discretion was the better part of valour. He was too wary a man to run his neck into a noose.

“No,” he said, “I think that in a few weeks I’ll ask you to bring little Aggie over here to see me. You won’t mind the trip—eh?”

“Not at all,” was the reply. “Aggie will hardly know her father, I expect. She looks upon me as her parent.”

“That was what we arranged, Doctor. She was to take your name, and you were to bring her up as your own daughter. I have a reason for that.”

“So you told me six years ago.”

“Red Mullet” nodded, and stretched out his long legs lazily as he contemplated the smoke of his 

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