baronet glanced irresolutely at his watch, and with an exclamation of annoyance snapped down the lid. “They can wait,” he muttered. He seated himself quickly and nodded at Lieutenant Sears.     

       “If you will be so kind as to begin, sir,” he said impatiently.     

       “Of course,” said the American, “you understand that I understand that I am speaking to gentlemen. The confidences of this Club are inviolate. Until the police give the facts to the public press, I must consider you my confederates. You have heard nothing, you know no one connected with       this mystery. Even I must remain anonymous.”      

       The gentlemen seated around him nodded gravely.     

       “Of course,” the baronet assented with eagerness, “of course.”      

       “We will refer to it,” said the gentleman with the black pearl, “as ‘The Story of the Naval Attache.’”      

       “I arrived in London two days ago,” said the American, “and I engaged a room at the Bath Hotel. I know very few people in London, and even the members of our embassy were strangers to me. But in Hong Kong I had become great pals with an officer in your navy, who has since retired, and who is now living in a small house in Rutland Gardens opposite the Knightsbridge barracks. I telegraphed him that I was in London, and yesterday morning I received a most hearty invitation to dine with him the same evening at his house. He is a bachelor, so we dined alone and talked over all our old days on the Asiatic Station, and of the changes which had come to us since we had last met there. As I was leaving the next morning for my post at Petersburg, and had many letters to write, I told him, about ten o’clock, that I must get back to the hotel, and he sent out his servant to call a hansom.     

       “For the next quarter of an hour, as we sat talking, we could hear the cab whistle sounding violently from the doorstep, but apparently with no result.     

       “‘It cannot be that the cabmen are on strike,’ my friend said, as he rose and walked to the window.     

       “He pulled back the curtains and at once called to me.     

       “‘You have never seen a London fog, have you?’ he asked. ‘Well, come 

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