speak to-night.”      

       “Oh, yes, he will speak,” muttered the one with the black pearl moodily.       “During these last hours of the session the House sits late, but when the Navy bill comes up on its third reading he will be in his place—and he will pass it.”      

       The fourth member, a stout and florid gentleman of a somewhat sporting appearance, in a short smoking-jacket and black tie, sighed enviously.     

       “Fancy one of us being as cool as that, if he knew he had to stand up within an hour and rattle off a speech in Parliament. I ‘d be in a devil of a funk myself. And yet he is as keen over that book he’s reading as though he had nothing before him until bedtime.”      

       “Yes, see how eager he is,” whispered the youngest member. “He does not lift his eyes even now when he cuts the pages. It is probably an Admiralty Report, or some other weighty work of statistics which bears upon his speech.”      

       The gentleman with the black pearl laughed morosely.     

       “The weighty work in which the eminent statesman is so deeply engrossed,”        he said, “is called ‘The Great Rand Robbery.’ It is a detective novel, for sale at all bookstalls.”      

       The American raised his eyebrows in disbelief.     

       “‘The Great Rand Robbery’?” he repeated incredulously. “What an odd taste!”      

       “It is not a taste, it is his vice,” returned the gentleman with the pearl stud. “It is his one dissipation. He is noted for it. You, as a stranger, could hardly be expected to know of this idiosyncrasy. Mr. Gladstone sought relaxation in the Greek poets, Sir Andrew finds his in Gaboriau. Since I have been a member of Parliament I have never seen him in the library without a shilling shocker in his hands. He brings them even into the sacred precincts of the House, and from the Government benches reads them concealed inside his hat. Once started on a tale of murder, robbery, and sudden death, nothing can tear him from it, not even the call of the division bell, nor of hunger, nor the prayers of the party Whip. He gave up his country house because when he journeyed to it in the train he would become so absorbed in his detective stories that he was invariably carried  

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