how long do you propose being away?”

“Six months—a year, if you like.”

“I must return in a couple of months at latest, for I’ve business to attend to.”

“Very well, return whenever you please. What do you say to starting by the night mail on Saturday?”

Bob replied in the affirmative, and we ratified the agreement over a bottle of Pommery.

Later that night when I left the Club to walk home, my thoughts involuntarily wandered to the mysterious tragedy which I had discovered.

It was past one o’clock, and few people were about as I turned from Adam Street into the Strand. I was alone, and strolling along at an easy pace, passed down Drury Lane.

Suddenly I became conscious that some one had been following me, though the footsteps of the person seemed almost noiseless.

Thinking it might be some pickpocket, I buttoned my coat across the chest, and grasping my stick firmly, waited until I approached a gas-lamp, then turning suddenly, confronted a respectably-dressed man in the garb of a mechanic.

He was only a few yards from me, and at first I felt ashamed of exhibiting such fear, but a momentary glance sufficed to show that this person was also connected with the adventure of the never-to-be forgotten evening.

He was an elderly man, who bore a striking resemblance to the detective who had called upon me.

I stood aghast, for this man’s appearance had been so sudden and unexpected that I was too much confused for the moment to collect my thoughts.

He was apparently following me and keeping observation upon my movements. That fact instantly aroused in me a feeling of great indignation. I should have spoken, and probably an angry scene would have followed, had not he, with a celerity of movement which baffled my efforts, almost instantly gone off in an opposite direction.

I made no attempt to follow him.

It was intensely annoying to be tracked in this manner. Was I, Frank Burgoyne, to be watched like a suspected criminal or a ticket-of-leave man, because I had—unfortunately, as it 

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