disguise which he had assumed on arriving at Liverpool.

His presence, indeed, was sufficiently honest and prosperous to warrant not the slightest inquiry as to his bona fides at the hotel. In an hour he had comfortably settled himself in his new and temporary home, taking a small bedroom and a small sitting-room on the second floor.

Immediately on taking the room he had written a note to his friend, Lord Dunton, who was practically[Pg 25] the only man in the whole of London whom he considered he could trust.

[Pg 25]

Dunton called at about five o'clock, and the two men spent a couple of hours in a quiet corner chuckling over the vivid accounts in the various newspapers which told of the mysterious disappearance of the miner baronet from the Gigantic.

Every theory which could be advanced was exploited to the full—murder, suicide, lapse of memory, and accidents of every sort and description were set forth to account for Sir Paul Westerham's vanishment. There were interviews with the captain and purser of the Gigantic; interviews with a score of passengers, and, much to Westerham's amusement, numerous bearded portraits of himself in a miner's guise.

Then, over a whisky-and-soda, Westerham briefly outlined to Dunton the adventure with Melun in his cabin and of his voluntary disappearance.

“The only thing that troubles me,” Westerham concluded, “is whether you will stand by and see me through. It is practically impossible for me to achieve what I consider necessary unless I have at least one friend who will keep his mouth shut tight.”

“My dear fellow,” said Dunton, earnestly, “I assure you that if this is your whim I see no reason why I should not do my best not only to humour it but to help it. By Jove!” he added, “but it's a ripping good idea!”

For Lord Dunton, who was very light-haired, very blue-eyed, and very vapid, had in his composition a great tendency to what he called[Pg 26] “a ripping good lark.”

[Pg 26]

And so the two men arranged the matter between them.

They dined together very quietly in a little restaurant in Soho, where nobody who knew Dunton was likely to meet them, and where the cooking, if unpretentious, was at least good.

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