Mr Bunker opened his eyes and sat up.

"Bonker, I am in loff!"

Mr Bunker smiled and stretched himself out again.

"I have also been in love," he replied.

"You are not now?"

"Alas! no."

"Vy alas?"

"Because follies without illusions get so infernally dull, Baron."

The Baron smiled a little foolishly.

"I haf ze illusions, I fear." Then he broke out enthusiastically, "Ach, bot is she not lofly, Bonker? If she will bot lof me back I shall be ze happiest man out of heaven!"

"You have wasted no time, Baron."

The Baron shook his head in melancholy pleasure.

"You are quite sure it is really love this time?" his friend pursued.

"Qvite!" said the Baron, with the firmness of a martyr.

"There are so many imitations."

"Not so close zat zey can deceive!"

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Mr Bunker. "These first symptoms are common to them all, and yet the varieties of the disease are almost beyond counting. I myself have suffered from it in eight different forms. There was the virulent, spotted-all-over variety, known as calf-love; there was the kind that accompanied itself by a course of the Restoration dramatists; another form I may call the strayed-Platonic, and that may be subdivided into at least two; then there was——"

"Schtop! schtop!" cried the Baron. "Ha, ha, ha! Zat will do! Teufel! I most examine my heart strictly. And yet, Bonker, I zink my loff is anozzer kind—ze real!"

"They are all that, Baron; but have it your own way. Anything I can do to make you worse shall be done."

"Zanks, my best of friends," said the Baron, warmly, seizing his hand; "I knew you would stand by me!"

Mr Bunker gave a little laugh, and returning the pressure, replied, "My dear fellow, I'd do anything to oblige a friend in such an interesting condition."



CHAPTER IV.

The Baron was a few minutes late in joining the party at lunch, and when he appeared he held an open letter in his hand. It was only the middle of the next day, and yet he could have sworn that last night he was comparatively whole-hearted, he felt so very much more in love already.

"Yet anozzer introdogtion has found me out," he said as he took his seat. "I have here a letter of invitation vich I do not zink I shall accept."

He threw an amorous glance at Lady Alicia, which her watchful mother rightly interpreted as indicating the cause of his intended refusal.

"Who is it this time?" asked Mr Bunker.

"Sir Richard Brierley of Brierley Park, Dampshire. Is zat how you pronounce it?"

"Sir Richard Brierley!" exclaimed the Countess; "why, Alicia and I are going to visit some relatives of ours who live only six miles from Brierley Park! When has he asked you, Baron?"

"Ze end of next week."

"How odd! We are going down to Dampshire at the end of next week too. You must accept, Baron!"

"I shall!" exclaimed the overjoyed Baron. "Shall ve go, Bonker?"

"I'm not asked, I'm afraid."

"Ach, bot zat is nozzing. I shall tell him."

"As you please, Baron," replied Mr Bunker, with a half glance at Lady Alicia.

The infatuated Baron had already begun to dread the inevitable hour of separation, and this piece of good fortune put him into the highest spirits. He felt so amiable towards the whole world that when the four went out for a stroll in the afternoon he lingered for a minute by Lady Grillyer's side, and in that minute Mr Bunker and Lady Alicia were out of hail ahead. The Baron's face fell.

"Shall I come down to this place?" said Mr Bunker.

"Would you like to?"

"I should be sorry," he replied, "to part with—the Baron."

Lady Alicia had expected a slightly different ending to this sentence, and so, to tell the truth, Mr Bunker had intended.

"Oh, if you can't stay away from the Baron, you had better go."

"It is certainly very hard to tear myself away from so charming a person as the Baron; perhaps you can feel for me?"

"I think he is very—nice."

"He thinks you very nice."

"Does he?" said Lady Alicia, with great indifference, and a moment later changed the subject.

Meanwhile the Baron was growing very uneasy. Of course it was quite natural that Mr Bunker should find it pleasant to walk for a few minutes by the side of the fairest creature on earth, and very possibly he was artfully pleading his friend's cause. Yet the Baron felt uneasy. He remembered Mr Bunker's invariable success with the gentler sex, his wit, his happy smile, and his good looks; and he began to wish most sincerely that these fascinations were being exercised on the now somewhat breathless Countess, for his efforts to overtake the pair in front had both annoyed and exhausted Lady Grillyer.

"Need we walk quite so fast, Baron?" she suggested; and Lady Grillyer's suggestions were of the kind that are evidently meant to be acted upon.

"Ach, I did forged," said the Baron, absently, and without further remark he slackened his pace for a few yards and then was off again.

"You were telling me," gasped the Countess, "of something you thought of—doing when—you went—home."

"Zo? Oh yes, it vas—Teufel! I do not remember."

"Really, Baron," said the Countess, decidedly, "I cannot go any farther at this rate. Let us turn. The others will be turning too, in a minute."

In fact the unlucky Baron had clean run Lady Grillyer's maternal instincts off their feet, and he suffered for it by seeing nothing of either his friend or his charmer for an hour and a half.

That night he accepted Sir Richard's invitation, but said nothing whatever about bringing a friend.

For the next week Rudolph was in as many states of mind as there were hours in each day. He walked and rode and drove with Lady Alicia through the most romantic spots he could find. He purchased a large assortment of golf-clubs, and under her tuition essayed to play that most dangerous of games for mixed couples. In turn he broke every club in his set; the cavities he hewed in the links are still pointed out to the curious; but the heart of the Lady Alicia alone he seemed unable to damage. There was always a moment at which his courage failed him, and in that fatal pause she invariably changed the subject with the most innocent air in the world.

Every now and then the greenest spasms of jealousy would seize him. Why did she elect to disappear with Mr Bunker on the very morning that he had resolved should settle his fate? It is true he had made the same resolution every morning, but on this particular one he had no doubt he would have put his fate to the touch. And why on a certain moonlight evening was he left to the unsentimental company of the Countess?

He made no further reference to the visit to Brierley Park; in fact he shunned discussion of any kind with his quondam bosom friend.

The time slipped past, till the visit to St Egbert's was almost at an end. On the day after to-morrow all four were going to leave (where Mr Bunker was going, his friend never troubled to inquire).

They sat together latish in the evening in the Baron's room. That very afternoon Lady Alicia had spent more time in Mr Bunker's society than in his, and the Baron felt that the hour had come for an explanation.

"Bonker, I haf a suspection!" he exclaimed, suddenly. "It is not I, bot you, who are ze friend to ze beautiful Lady Alicia. You are not doing me fair!"

"My dear Baron!"

"It is so: you are not doing me fair," the Baron reiterated.

"My dear fellow," replied Mr Bunker, "it is you are so much in love that you have lost your wonted courage. You don't use your chances."

"I do not get zem."

"Nonsense, Baron! I haven't spent one hour in Lady Alicia's company to your twenty-four, and yet if I'd been matrimonially inclined I could have proposed twice over. You've had the chance of being accepted fifty times."

"I haf not been accepted vunce," said the Baron, moodily.

"Have you put the question?"

"I haf not dared."

"Well, my dear Baron, whose fault is that?"

The Baron was silent.

"Ask her to-morrow."

"No, Bonker," said the Baron, sadly; "she treats me not like a lover. She talks of friendship. I do not vish a frient!"

Mr Bunker looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling. "You don't think you have touched her heart?" he asked at length.

"I fear not."

"You must try an infallible recipe for winning a woman's heart. You must be in trouble."

"In trouble!"

"I have tried it once myself, with great success."

"Bot how?"

"You must fall ill."

"Bot I cannot; I am too healthful, alas!"

Mr Bunker smiled artfully. "They come to tea in our rooms to-morrow, you know. By then, Baron, you must be laid up, ill or not, just as you please. A grain of Lady Alicia's sympathy is worth more than a ton of even your wit."

The standard chosen for the measurement of his wit escaped the Baron, the scheme delighted him.

"Ha, Bonker! schoen! I tvig! Goot!" he cried. "How shall ve do?"

"Leave it to me."

The Baron reflected, and his smile died away.

"Sopposing," he said, slowly, "zey find out? Is it vise? Is it straight?"

"They can't find out. They go the next morning, and what's to prevent your making a quick recovery and pluckily going down to Brierley Park as the interesting convalescent? She will know that you've made a dangerous journey on her account."

The Baron's face cleared again.

"Let us try!" he said; "anyzing is better zan my present state. Bot, be careful, Bonker!"

"I shall take the most minute precautions," replied Mr Bunker.



CHAPTER V.

The next morning the two conspirators breakfasted early. The Baron seemed a little nervous now that it came so near the venture, but his friend was as cheerful as a schoolboy, and his confident air soon put fresh courage into Rudolph.

Mr Bunker's bedroom opened out of their common sitting-room, and so he declared that in the afternoon the Baron must be laid up there.

"Keep your room all morning," he said, "and look as pale as you can. I shall make my room ready for you."

When the Baron had retired, he threw himself into a chair and gazed for a few minutes round his bedroom. Then he rang his bell, ordered the servant to make the bed immediately, and presently went out to do some shopping. On the way he sent word to the Countess, telling her only that the Baron was indisposed, but that in spite of this misfortune he hoped he should have the pleasure of their company at tea. The rest of the morning he spent in his bedroom, prudently keeping out of the ladies' way.

When, after a substantial lunch which he insisted upon getting up to eat, the Baron was allowed to enter the sick-room, he uttered an exclamation of astonishment,—and indeed his surprise was natural. The room was as full of flowers as a conservatory; chairs, wardrobe, and fireplace were most artistically draped with art hangings; a plate filled with grapes, a large bottle labelled "Two table-spoonfuls every half hour," and a medicine-glass were placed conspicuously on a small table; and, most remarkable feature of all, Mr Bunker's bath filled with water and alive with goldfish stood by the side of the bed. A couple of canaries sang in a cage by the window, the half-drawn curtains only permitted the most delicate light to steal into the room, and in short the whole arrangement reflected the utmost credit on his ingenious friend.

The Baron was delighted, but a little puzzled.

"Vat for are zese fishes and ze canaries?" he asked.

"To show your love of nature."

"Vy so?"

"There is nothing that pleases a woman more."

"My friend, you zink of everyzing!" exclaimed the Baron, admiringly.

When four o'clock approached he drew a night-shirt over his other garments and got into bed. Mr Bunker at first was in favour of a complete change of attire, but on his friend's expostulating against such a thorough precaution, he admitted that it would be perhaps rather like the historic blacking of Othello.

"Leave it all to me, my dear Baron," he said, reassuringly, as he tucked him in; and with that he went into the other room and awaited the arrival of their guests.

They came punctually. The Countess was full of concern for the "dear Baron," while Lady Alicia, he could not help thinking, appeared unusually reserved. In fact, his quick eye soon divined that something was the matter.

"She has either been getting a lecture from the dowager or has found something out," he said to himself.

However, it seemed that if she had found anything out it could have nothing to do with the Baron's indisposition, for she displayed the most ingenuous sympathy, and, he thought, she even appeared to aim it pointedly at himself.

"So sudden!" exclaimed the Countess.

"It is rather sudden, but we'll hope it may pass as quickly as it came," said Mr Bunker, conveying a skilful impression of deep concern veiled by a cheerful manner.

"Tell me honestly, Mr Bunker, is it dangerous?" demanded the countess.

Mr Bunker hesitated, gave a half-hearted laugh, and replied, "Oh, dear, no! that is—at present, Lady Grillyer, we have really no reason to be alarmed."

"I am so sorry," murmured Lady Alicia.

Her mother looked at her approvingly.

"Poor Baron!" she said, in a tone of the greatest commiseration.

"So far from home!" sighed Mr Bunker. "And yet so cheerful through it all," he added.

"What did you say was the matter?" asked the Countess.

Mr Bunker had thought it both wiser and more effective to maintain a little mystery round his friend's malady.

"The doctor hasn't yet given a decided opinion," he replied.

"Can't we do anything?" said Lady Alicia, softly.

Mr Bunker thought the guests were nearly worked up to the proper pitch of sympathy.

"Poor Rudolph!" he exclaimed. "It would cheer him immensely, I know, and ease my own anxiety as well, if you would venture in to see him for a few minutes. In such a case there is no sympathy so welcome as a woman's."

The Countess glanced at her daughter, and wavered for an instant between those proprieties for which she was a famous stickler and this admirable chance of completing the Baron's conquest.

"His relations are far away," said Mr Bunker, looking pensively out of the window.

"We might come in for a few minutes, Alicia?" suggested Lady Grillyer.

"Yes, mamma," replied Lady Alicia, with an alacrity that rather surprised their host.

With a pleasantly dejected air he ushered the ladies into the darkened sick-room. The Baron, striving to conceal his exultation under a rueful semblance, greeted them with a languid yet happy smile.

"Ah, Lady Grillyer, zis is kind indeed! And you, Lady Alicia, how can I zank you?"

"My daughter and I are much distressed, Baron, to find our host hors de combat," said the Countess, graciously.

"Just when you wanted to go away too!" added Lady Alicia, sympathetically.

The Baron emitted a happy blend of sigh and groan.

"Alas!" he replied, "it is hard indeed."

"You must hurry up and get better," said the Countess, in her most cheering sick-room manner. "It won't do to disappoint the Brierleys, you know."

"You must come down for part of the time," smiled her daughter.

These expressions of sympathy so affected the Baron that he placed his hand on his brow and turned slightly away to conceal his emotion. At the same time Mr Bunker, with well-timed dramatic effect, sank wearily into a chair, and, laying his elbow on the back, hid his own face in his hand.

Their guests jumped to the most alarming conclusions, and looked from one to the other with great concern.

"Dear me!" said the Countess, "surely it isn't so very serious, Mr Bunker; it isn't infectious, is it?"

The unlucky Baron here made his first mistake: without waiting for his more diplomatic friend to reply, he answered hastily, "Ach, no, it is bot a cold."

Lady Grillyer's expression changed.

"A cold!" she said. "Dear me, that can't be so very serious, Baron."

"It is a bad cold," said the Baron.

By this time the ladies' eyes were growing more used to the dim light, and Mr Bunker could see that they were taking rapid stock of the garnishings.

"This, I suppose, is your cough-mixture," said the Countess, examining the bottle.

The Baron incautiously admitted it was.

"Two table-spoonfuls every half hour!" she exclaimed; "why, I never heard of taking a cough-mixture in such doses. Besides, your cough doesn't seem so very bad, Baron."

"Ze doctor told me to take it so," replied the Baron.

The Countess turned towards Mr Bunker and said, with a touch of suspicion in her voice, "I thought, Mr Bunker, the doctor had given no opinion."

The Baron threw a glance of intense ferocity at his friend.

"In the Baron's desire to spare your feelings," replied Mr Bunker, gravely, "he has been a little inaccurate; that is not precisely an ordinary cough-mixture."

"Oh," said the Countess.

Lady Alicia's attention had been strongly attracted by the bath, and suddenly she exclaimed, "Why, there are goldfish in it!"

The Baron's nerve was fast deserting him.

"Ze doctor ordered zem," he began—"I mean, I am fond of fishes."

The Countess looked hard at the unhappy young man, and then turned severely to his friend.

"What is the matter with the Baron?" she demanded.

Mr Bunker saw there was nothing for it but heroic measures.

"The dog was destroyed at once," he replied, with intense gravity. "It is therefore impossible to say exactly what is the matter."

"The dog!" cried the two ladies together.

"By this evening," he continued, "we shall know the worst—or the best."

"What do you mean?" exclaimed the Countess, withdrawing a step from the bed.

"I mean," replied Mr Bunker, with a happy inspiration, "that this bath is a delicate test. No victim of the dread disease of hydrophobia can bear to look——"

But the Countess gave him no time to finish. Even as he was speaking the Baron's face had passed through a series of the most extraordinary expressions, which she not unnaturally put down to premonitory symptoms.

"It's beginning already!" she shrieked. "Alicia, my love, come quickly. How dare you expose us, sir?"

"Calm yourselves. I assure you——" pleaded Mr Bunker, coming hastily after them, but they were at the door before him.

The hapless Baron could stand it no longer. Crying, "No, no, it is false!" he sprang out of bed, arrayed in a tweed suit only half concealed by his night-shirt, and, forgetting all about the bath, descended with a great splash among the startled goldfish.

The Countess paused in the half-opened door and looked at him with horror that rapidly passed into intense indignation.

"I am not ill!" he cried. "It vos zat rascal Bonker's plot. He made me! I haf not hydrophobia!"

Most unkindest cut of all, Lady Alicia went off into hysterical giggles. For a moment her mother glared at the two young men in silence, and then only remarking, "I have never been so insulted before," she went out, and her daughter followed her.

As the door closed Mr Bunker went off into roar after roar of laughter, but the humorous side of the situation seemed to appeal very slightly to his injured friend.

"You rascal! you villain!" he shouted, "zis is ze end of our friendship, Bonker! Do you use ze pistols? Tell me, sare!"

"My dear Baron," gasped Mr Bunker, "I could not put such an inartistic end to so fine a joke for the world."

"You vill not fight? Coward! poltroon! I know not ze English name bad enoff for you!"

With difficulty Mr Bunker composed himself and replied, still smiling: "After all, Baron, what harm has been done? I get all the blame, and the sympathy you wanted is sure to turn to you."

"False friend!" thundered the Baron.

"My dear Baron!" said Mr Bunker, mildly, "whose fault was it that the plot miscarried? If you'd only left it all to me——"

"Left it to you! Yes, I left too moch to you! Traitor, it vas a trick to vin ze Lady Alicia for yourself! Speak to me nevermore!" And with that the infuriated nobleman rushed off to his own room.

As there was no further sign of him for the next half hour, Mr Bunker, still smiling to himself at the recollection, went out to take the air; but just as he was about to descend the stairs he spied Lady Alicia lingering in a passage. He turned back and went up to her.

She began at once in a low, hurried voice that seemed to have a strain of anger running beneath it.

"I got the two letters I wrote you returned to me to-day through the dead-letter office. Nothing was known about you at the address you gave."

"I am not surprised," he replied.

"Then it was false?"

"As an address it was perfectly genuine, only it didn't happen to be mine."

"Were you ever in the Church?"

"Not to my personal knowledge."

"Yet you said you were?"

"I was in an asylum."

She looked up at him with fine contempt, while he smiled back at her with great amusement.

"You have deceived me," she said, "and you have treated your other friend—who is far too good for you—disgracefully. Have you anything to say for yourself?"

"Not a word," he replied, cheerfully.

"You must never treat me again as—as I let you."

As a smile played for an instant about his face, she added quickly, "I don't suppose I shall ever see you again. In future we are not likely to meet."

"The lady and the lunatic?" said he. "Well, perhaps not. Good-bye, and better luck."

"Good-bye," she answered coldly, and added as they parted, "my mother, of course, is extremely angry with you."

"There," he said with a smile, "you see I still come in useful."

She hurried away, and Mr Bunker walked slowly downstairs and out of the hotel.

"It seems to me," he reflected, "that I shall have to set out on my adventures again alone."



CHAPTER VI.

The Baron's natural good temper might have forgiven his friend, but all night he was a prey to something against which no temper is proof. The Baron was bitterly jealous. All through breakfast he never spoke a word, and when Mr Bunker asked him what train he intended to take, he replied curtly, as he went to the door, "Ze 5.30."

"And where do you go now?"

"Vat is zat to you? I go for a valk. I vould be alone."

"Good-bye, then, Baron," said Mr Bunker. "I think I shall go up to town."

"Go, zen," replied the Baron, opening the door; "I haf no furzer vish to see a treacherous sponge zat vill neizer be true nor fight, bot jost takes money."

He slammed the door and went out. If he had waited for a moment, he would have seen a look in Mr Bunker's face that he had never seen before. He half started from his chair to follow, and then sat down again and thought with his lips very tight set.

All at once they broke into a smile that was grimmer than anything the Baron had known.

"I accept your challenge, Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg," he said to himself; "but the weapons I shall choose myself."

He took a telegraph form, wrote and despatched a wire, and then with considerable haste proceeded to pack. Within an hour he had left the hotel.

* * * * *

When a servant, later in the day, was performing, under the Baron's directions, the same office for him, a series of discoveries that still further disturbed his peace of mind were jointly made. Not only the more sporting portions of his wardrobe but his gun and cartridges as well, had vanished, and, search and storm as he liked, there was not a trace of them to be found.

"Ze rascal!" he muttered; "I did not zink he was zief as well."

It is hardly wonderful that he arrived at Brierley station in anything but an amiable frame of mind. There, to his great annoyance and surprise, he found no signs of Sir Richard's carriage; there were no stables near, and, after fuming for some time on the platform, he was forced to leave his luggage with the station-master and proceed on foot to Brierley Park.

He arrived shortly before seven o'clock, after a dark and muddy tramp, and, still swearing under his breath, pulled the bell with indignant energy.

"I am ze Baron von Blitzenberg, bot zere vas no carriage at ze station," he informed the butler in his haughtiest tones.

The man looked at him suspiciously.

"The Baron arrived this morning," he said.

"Ze Baron? Vat Baron? I am ze Baron!"

"I shall fetch Sir Richard," said the butler, turning away.

Presently a stout florid gentleman, accompanied by three friends, all evidently very curious and amused about something, came to the door, and, to the poor Baron's amazement and horror, he recognised in one of these none other than Mr Bunker, arrayed with much splendour in his own ornate shooting suit.

"What do you want?" asked the florid gentleman, sternly.

"Have I ze pleasure of addressing Sir Richard Brierley?" inquired the Baron, raising his hat and bowing profoundly.

"You have."

"Zen I must tell you zat I am ze Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg."

"Gom, gom, my man!" interposed Mr Bunker. "I know you. Zis man, Sir Richard, has before annoyed me. He is vat you call impostor, cracked; he has vollowed me from Germany. Go avay, man!"

"You are impostor! You scoundrel, Bonker!" shouted the wrathful Baron. "He is no Baron, Sir Richard! Ha! Vould you again deceive me, Bonker?"

"You must lock him up, I fear," said Mr Bunker. "To-morrow, my man, you vill see ze police."

So completely did the Baron lose his head that he became almost inarticulate with rage: his protestations, however, were not of the slightest avail. That morning Sir Richard had received a wire informing him that the Baron was coming by an earlier train than he had originally intended, and, since his arrival, the spurious nobleman had so ingratiated himself with his host that Sir Richard was filled with nothing but sympathy for him in his persecution. After a desperate struggle the unfortunate Rudolph was overpowered and conveyed in the undignified fashion known as the frog's march to a room in a remote wing, there to pass the night under lock and key.

"The scoundrelly German impostor!" exclaimed a young man, a fellow visitor of the Baron Bunker's, to a tall, military-looking gentleman.

Colonel Savage seemed lost in thought.

"It is a curious thing, Trelawney," he replied, at length, "that the footman who attends the Baron should have told my man—who, of course, told me—that a number of his things are marked 'Francis Beveridge.' It is also rather strange that this impostor should have known so little of the Baron's movements as to arrive several hours after him, assuming he had hatched a plot to impersonate him."

"But the man's obviously mad."

"Must be," said the colonel.

The house party were assembled in the drawing-room waiting for dinner to be announced. The bogus Baron was engaged in an animated discussion with Colonel Savage on the subject of Bavarian shootings, and the colonel having omitted to inform him that he had some personal experience of these, Mr Bunker was serving up such of his friend's anecdotes as he could remember with sauce more peculiarly his own.

"Five hondred vild boars," he was saying, "eight hondred brace of partridges, many bears, and rabbits so moch zat it took five veeks to bury zem. All zese ve did shoot before breakfast, colonel. Aftair breakfast again ve did go out——"

But at that moment his attention was sharply arrested by a question of Lady Brierley's.

"Has Dr Escott arrived?" she asked.

The Baron Bunker paused, and in spite of his habitual coolness, the observant colonel noticed that he started ever so slightly.

"He came half an hour ago," replied Sir Richard. "Ah, here he is."

As he spoke, a well-remembered figure came into the room, and after a welcome from his hostess, the dinner procession started.

"Whoever is that tall fair man in front?" Dr Escott asked his partner as they crossed the hall.

"Oh, that's the Baron von Blitzenberg: such an amusing man! We are all in love with him already."

All through dinner the spurious Baron saw that Dr Escott's eyes turned continually and curiously on him; yet never for an instant did his spirits droop or his conversation flag. Witty and charming as ever, he discoursed in his comical foreign accent to the amusement of all within hearing, and by the time the gentlemen adjourned to the billiard-room, he had established the reputation of being the most delightful German ever seen. Yet Dr Escott grew more suspicious and bewildered, and Mr Bunker felt that he was being narrowly watched. The skill at billiards of a certain Francis Beveridge used to be the object of the doctor's unbounded admiration, and it was with the liveliest interest that he watched a game between Colonel Savage and the Baron.

That nobleman knew well the danger of displaying his old dexterity, and to the onlookers it soon became apparent that this branch of his education had been neglected. He not only missed the simplest shots, but seemed very ignorant of the rules of the English game, and in consequence he came in for a little good-natured chaff from Sir Richard and Trelawney. When the colonel's score stood at 90 and the Baron had scarcely reached 25 Trelawney cried, "I'll bet you ten to one you don't win, Baron!"

"What in?" asked the Baron, and the colonel noticed that for the first time be pronounced a w correctly.

"Sovereigns," said Trelawney, gaily.

The temptation was irresistible.

"Done!" said the Baron. With a professional disregard for conventions he bolted the white into the middle pocket, leaving his own ball nicely beside the red. Down in its turn went the red, and Mr Bunker was on the spot. Three followed three in monotonous succession, Trelawney's face growing longer and Dr Escott getting more and more excited, till with a smile Mr Bunker laid down his cue, a sensational winner.

His victory was received in silence: Trelawney handed over two five-pound notes without a word, and the colonel returned to his whisky-and-soda. Dr Escott could contain himself no longer, and whispering something to Sir Richard, the two left the room.

Imperturbable as ever, Mr Bunker talked gaily for a few minutes to an unresponsive audience, and then, remarking that he would join the ladies, left the room.

A minute or two later Sir Richard, with an anxious face, returned with Dr Escott.

"Where is the Baron?" he asked.

"Gone to join the ladies," replied Trelawney, adding under his breath, "d—— n him!"

But the Baron was not with the ladies, nor, search the house as they might, was there a trace to be seen of that accomplished nobleman.

"He has gone!" said Sir Richard.

"What the deuce is the meaning of it?" exclaimed Trelawney.

Colonel Savage smiled grimly and suggested, "Perhaps he wants to give the impostor an innings."

"Dr Escott, I think, can tell you," replied the baronet.

"Gentlemen," said the doctor, "the man whom you have met as the Baron von Blitzenberg is none other than a most cunning and determined lunatic. He escaped from the asylum where I am at present assistant doctor, after all but murdering me; he has been seen in London since, but how he came to impersonate the unfortunate gentleman whom you locked up this afternoon I cannot say."

Before they broke up for the night the genuine Baron, released from confinement and soothed by the humblest apologies and a heavy supper, recounted the main events in Mr Beveridge alias Bunker's brief career in town. On his exploits in St Egbert's he felt some delicacy in touching, but at the end of what was after all only a fragmentary and one-sided narrative, even the defrauded Trelawney could not but admit that, whatever the departed gentleman's failings, his talents at least were worthy of a better cause.



CHAPTER VII.

The party at Brierley Park had gone at last to bed. The Baron was installed in his late usurper's room, and from the clock-tower the hour of three had just been tolled. Sympathy and Sir Richard's cellar had greatly mollified the Baron's wrath; he had almost begun to see the humorous side of his late experience; as a rival Mr Bunker was extinct, and with an easy mind and a placid smile he had fallen asleep some two hours past.

The fire burned low, and for long nothing but the occasional sigh of the wind in the trees disturbed the silence. At length, had the Baron been awake, he might have heard the stealthiest of footsteps in the corridor outside. Then they stopped; his door was gently opened, and first a head and then a whole man slipped in.

Still the Baron slept, dreaming peacefully of his late companion. They were driving somewhere in a hansom, Mr Bunker was telling one of his most amusing stories, when there came a shock, the hansom seemed to turn a somersault, and the Baron awoke. At first he thought he must be dreaming still; the electric light had been turned on and the room was bright as day, but, more bewildering yet, Mr Bunker was seated on his bed, gazing at him with an expression of thoughtful amusement.

"Well, Baron," he said, "I trust you are comfortable in these excellent quarters."

The Baron, half awake and wholly astonished, was unable to collect his ideas in time to make any reply.

"But remember," continued Mr Bunker, "you have a reputation to live up to. I have set the standard high for Bavarian barons."

The indignant Baron at last recovered his wits.

"If you do not go away at vonce," he said, raising himself on his elbows, "I shall raise ze house upon you!"

"Have you forgotten that you are talking to a dangerous lunatic, who probably never stirs without his razor?"

The Baron looked at him and turned a little pale. He made no further movement, but answered stoutly enough, "Vat do you vant?"

"In the first place, I want my brush and comb, a few clothes, and my hand-bag. Events happened rather more quickly this evening than I had anticipated."

"Take zem."

"I should also like," continued Mr Bunker, unmoved, "to have a little talk with you. I think I owe you some explanation—perhaps an apology or two—and I'm afraid it's my last chance."

"Zay it zen."

"Of course I understand that you make no hostile demonstration till I am finished? A hunted man must take precautions, you know."

"I vill let you go."

"Thanks, Baron."

Mr Bunker folded his arms, leaned his back against the foot of the bed, and began in his half-bantering way, "I have amused you, Baron, now and then, you must admit?"

The Baron made no reply.

"That I place to my credit, and I think few debts are better worth repaying. On the other hand, I confess I have subsisted for some time entirely on your kindness. I'm afraid that alone counterbalances the debt, and when it comes to my being the means of your taking a bath in mixed company and spending an evening in a locked room, there's no doubt the balance is greatly on your side."

"I zink so," observed the Baron.

"So I'll tell you a true story, a favour with which I haven't indulged any one for some considerable time."

The Baron coughed, but said nothing.

"My biography for all practical purposes," Mr Bunker continued, "begins in that sequestered retreat, Clankwood Asylum. How and with whom I came there I haven't the very faintest recollection. I simply woke up from an extraordinary drowsiness to find myself recovering from a sharp attack of what I may most euphoniously call mental excitement. The original cause of it is very dim in my mind, and has, so far as I remember, nothing to do with the rest of the story. The attack was very short, I believe. I soon came to something more or less like myself; only, Baron, the singular thing is, that it was to all intents and purposes a new self—whether better or worse, my faulty memory does not permit me to say. I'd clean forgotten who I was and all about me. I found myself called Francis Beveridge, but that wasn't my old name, I know."

"Ha!" exclaimed the Baron, growing interested despite himself.

"And the most remarkable thing of all is that up till this day I haven't the very vaguest notion what my real name is."

"Zo?" said the Baron. "Bot vy should they change it?"

"There you've laid your finger on the mystery, Baron. Why? Heaven knows: I wish I did!"

The Baron looked at him with undisguised interest.

"Strange!" he said, thoughtfully.

"Damnably strange. I found myself compelled to live in an asylum and answer to a new name, and really, don't you know, under the circumstances I could give no very valid reason for getting out. I seemed to have blossomed there like one of the asylum plants. I couldn't possibly have been more identified with the place. Besides, I'm free to confess that for some time my reason, taking it all in all, wasn't particularly valid on any point. By George, I had a funny time! Ha, ha, ha!"

His mirth was so infectious that the Baron raised his voice in a hearty "Ha, ha!" and then stopped abruptly, and said cautiously, "Haf a care, Bonker, zey may hear!"

"However, Baron," Mr Bunker continued, "out I was determined to get, and out I came in the manner of which perhaps my friend Escott has already informed you."

The Baron grinned and nodded.

"I came up to town, and on my very first evening I had the good fortune to meet the Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg—as perhaps you may remember. In my own defence, Baron, I may fairly plead that since I could remember nothing about my past career, I was entitled to supply the details from my imagination. After all, I have no proof that some of my stories may not have been correct. I used this privilege freely in Clankwood, and, in a word, since I couldn't tell the truth if I wanted to, I quenched the desire."

"You hombog!" said the Baron, not without a note of admiration.

"I was, and I gloried in it. Baron, if you ever want to know how ample a thing life can be, become a certified lunatic! You are quite irresponsible for your debts, your crimes, and, not least, your words. It certainly enlarges one's horizon. All this time, I may say, I was racking my brains—which, by the way, have been steadily growing saner in other matters—for some recollections of my previous whereabouts, my career, if I had any, and, above all, of my name."

"Can you remember nozing?"

"I can remember a large country house which I think belonged to me, but in what part of the country it stands I haven't the slightest recollection. I can't remember any family, and as no one has inquired for me, I don't suppose I had any. Many incidents—sporting, festive, amusing, and discreditable—I remember distinctly, and many faces, but there's nothing to piece them together with. Can you recall one or two incidents in town, when people spoke to me or bowed to me?"

"Yes, vell; I vondered zen."

"I suppose they knew me. In a general sort of way I knew them. But when a man doesn't know his own name, and will probably be replaced in an asylum if he's identified, there isn't much encouragement for greeting old friends. And do you remember my search for a name in the hotel at St Egbert's?"

"Yah—zat is, yes."

"It was for my own I was looking."

"You found it not?"

"No. The worst of it is, I can't even remember what letter it began with. Sometimes I think it was M, or perhaps N, and sometimes I'm almost sure it was E. It will come to me some day, no doubt, Baron, but till it does I shall have to wander about a nameless man, looking for it. And after all, I am not without the consolations of a certain useful, workaday kind of philosophy."

He rose from the bed and smiled humorously at his friend.

"And now, Baron," he said, "it only remains to offer you such thanks and apologies as a lunatic may, and then clear out before the cock crows. These are my brushes, I think."

There was still something on the Baron's mind: he lay for a moment watching Mr Bunker collect a few odds and ends and put them rapidly into a small bag, and then blurted out suddenly, "Ze Lady Alicia—do you loff her?"

"By Jove!" exclaimed Mr Bunker, "I'd forgotten all about her. I ought to have told you that I once met her before, when she showed sympathy—practical sympathy, I may add—for an unfortunate gentleman in Clankwood. That's all."

"You do not loff her?" persisted the Baron.

"I, my dear chap? No. You are most welcome to her—and the countess."

"Does she not loff you?"

"On my honour, no. I told her a few early reminiscences; she happened to discover they were not what is generally known as true, and took so absurd a view of the case that I doubt whether she would speak to me again if she met me. In fact, Baron, if I read the omens aright—and I've had some experience—you only need courage and a voice."

The bed creaked, there was a volcanic upheaval of the clothes as the Baron sprang out on to the floor, and the next instant Mr Bunker was clasped in his embrace.

"Ach, my own Bonker, forgif me! I haf suspected, I haf not been ze true friend; you have sairved me right to gom here as ze Baron. I vas too bad a Baron to gom! You have amused me, you have instrogted, you have varmed my heart. My dear frient!"

To tell the truth, Mr Bunker looked, for the first time in their acquaintance, a little ill at ease. He laughed, but it sounded affected.

"My dear fellow—hang it! You'd make me out a martyr. As a matter of fact, I've been such a thorn as very few people would stand in their flesh. There's nothing to forgive, my dear Baron, and a lot to thank you for."

"I haf been rude, Bonker; I haf insulted you! You forgif me?"

"With all my heart, if you think it's needed, but——"

"And you vill not go now? You vill stay here?"

"What, two Barons at once? My dear chap, we'd merely confuse the butler."

"Ach, you vill joke, you hombog! But you most stay!"

"And what about my friend, Dr Escott? No, Baron, it would only mean breakfast and the next train to Clankwood."

"Zey vill not take you ven you tell zem! I shall insist viz Sir Richard!"

"The law is the law, Baron, and I'm a certified lunatic. Here we must part till the weather clears; and mind, you mustn't say a word about my coming to see you."

The Baron looked at him disconsolately.

"You most really go, Bonker?"

"Really, Baron."

"And vere to?"

"To London town again by the milk train."

"And vat vill you do zere?"

"Look for my name."

"Bot how?"

Mr Bunker hesitated.

"I have a little clue," he said at last, "only a thread, but I'll try it for what it's worth."

"Haf you money enoff?"

"Thanks to your generosity and my skill at billiards, yes, which reminds me that I must return poor Trelawney's ten pounds some day. At present, I can't afford to be scrupulous. So, you see, I'm provided for."

"Cigars at least, Bonker! You most smoke, my frient vizout a name!"

The Baron, night-shirted and barefooted as he was, dived into his portmanteau and produced a large box of cigars.

"You like zese, Bonker. Zey are your own choice. Smoke zem and zink of me!"

"A few, Baron, would be a pleasant reminiscence," said his friend, with a smile, "if you really insist."

"All, Bonker,—I vill not keep vun! I can get more. No, you most take zem all!"

Mr Bunker opened his bag and put in the box without a word.

"You most write," said the Baron, "tell me vere you are. I shall not tell any soul, bot ven I can, I shall gom up, and ve shall sup togezzer vunce more. Pairhaps ve may haf anozzer adventure, ha, ha!"

The Baron's laugh was almost too hearty to be true.

"I shall let you know, as soon as I find a room. It won't be in the Mayonaise this time! Good-bye: good sport and luck in love!"

"Good-bye, my frient, good-bye," said the Baron, squeezing his hand.

His friend was half out of the door when he turned, and said with an intonation quite foreign either to Beveridge or Bunker, and yet which came very pleasantly, "I forgot to warn you of one thing when I advised you to try the role of certified lunatic—you are not likely to make so good a friend as I have."

He shut the door noiselessly and was gone.

The Baron stood in the middle of the floor for fully five minutes, looking blankly at the closed door; then with a sigh he turned out the light and tumbled into bed again.



PART IV.



CHAPTER I.

The Dover express was nearing town: evening had begun to draw in, and from the wayside houses people saw the train roar by like a huge glowworm; but they could hardly guess that it was hurrying two real actors to the climax of a real comedy.

From the opposite sides of a first-class carriage these two looked cheerfully at one another. The Channel was safely behind them, London was close ahead, and the piston of the engine seemed to thump a triumphal air.

"We've done it, Twiddel, my boy!" said the one.

"Thank Heaven!" replied the other.

"And myself," added his friend.

"Yes," said Twiddel; "you played your part uncommonly well, Welsh."

"It was the deuce of a fine spree!" sighed Welsh.

"The deuce," assented Twiddel.

"I'm only sorry it's all over," Welsh went on, gazing regretfully up at the lamp of the carriage. "I'd give the remains of my character and my chance of a public funeral to be starting again from Paris by the morning train!"

Twiddel laughed.

"With the same head you had that morning?"

"Yes, by George! Even with the same mile of dusty gullet!"

"It's all over now," said Twiddel, philosophically, and yet rather nervously—"at least the amusing part of it."

"All the fun, my boy, all the fun. All the dinners and the drinks, and the touching of hats to the aristocratic travellers, and the girls that sighed, and the bowing and scraping. Do you remember the sporting baronet who knew my uncle? Now, I'm plain Robert Welsh, whose uncles, as far as I am aware, don't know a baronet among 'em."

He smiled a little sardonically.

"And the baron at Fogelschloss," said Twiddel.

"Who insisted on learning my pedigree back to Alfred the Great! Gad, I gave it him, though, and I doubt whether the real Essington could have done as much. I'd rather surprise some of these noblemen if I turned up again in my true character!"

"Thank the Lord, we're not likely to meet them again!" exclaimed the doctor, devoutly.

"No," said Welsh; "here endeth the second lesson."

His friend, who had been well brought up, looked a trifle uncomfortable at this quotation.

"I say," he remarked a few minutes later, "we haven't finished yet. We've got to get the man out again, and hand him back to his friends."

"Cured," said Welsh, with a laugh.

"I wonder how he is?"

"We'll soon see."

They fell silent again, while the train hurried nearer and nearer London town. Welsh seemed to be musing on some nice point, it might be of conscience, it might also conceivably be of a more practical texture. At last he said, "There's just one thing, old man. What about the fee?"

"I'll get a cheque for it, I suppose," his friend replied, with an almost excessive air of mastery over the problem.

"Ha, ha!" laughed Welsh; "you know what I mean. It's a delicate question and all that, but, hang it, it's got to be answered."

"What has?"

"The division of the spoil."

Twiddel looked dignified.

"I'll see you get your share, old man," he answered, easily.

"But what share?"

"You suggested L100, I think."

"Out of L500—when I've done all the deceiving and told all the lies! Come, old man!"

"Well, what do you want?"

"Do you remember a certain crisis when we'd made a slip——"

"You'd made a slip!"

"We had made a slip, and you wanted to chuck the game and bolt? Do you remember also the terms I proposed when I offered to beard the local god almighty in his lair and explain it all away, and how he became our bosom pal and we were saved?"

"Well?"

"L300 to me, L200 to you," said Welsh, decisively.

"Rot, old man. I'll share fairly, if you insist. L250 apiece, will that do?"

Welsh said nothing, but his face was no longer the countenance of the jovial adventurer.

"It will have to, I suppose," he replied, at length.

It was with this little cloud on the horizon that they saw the lights of London twinkle through the windows, and were carried into the clamour of the platforms.

They both drove first to Twiddel's rooms; and as they looked out once more on the life and lights and traffic of the streets, their faces cleared again.

"We'll have a merry evening!" cried Welsh.

"A little supper," suggested Twiddel; "a music-hall——"

"Et cetera," added Welsh, with a laugh.

The doctor had written of their coming, and they found a fire in the back room, and the table laid.

"Ah," cried Welsh, "this looks devilish comfortable."

"A letter for me," said Twiddel; "from Billson, I think."

He read it and threw it to his friend, remarking, "I call this rather cool of him."

Welsh read—

"DEAR GEORGE,—I am just off for three weeks' holiday. Sorry for leaving your practice, but I think it can look after itself till you return.

"You have only had two patients, and one fee between them. The second man vanished mysteriously. I shall tell you about it when I come back. He boned a bill, too, I fancy, but the story will keep.

"I am looking forward to hearing the true tale of your adventures. Good luck to you.—Yours ever,

THOMAS BILLSON."

"Boned a bill?" exclaimed Welsh. "What bill, I wonder?"

"Something that came when I was away, I suppose. Hang it, I think Billson might have looked after things better!"

"It sounds queer," said Welsh, reflectively; "I wonder what it was?"

"Confound Billson, he might have told me," observed the doctor. "But, I say, you know we have something more practical to see to."

"Getting the man out again?"

"Yes."

"Well, let's have a little grub first."

Twiddel rang the bell, and the frowsy little maid entered, carrying a letter on a tray.

"Dinner," said he.

"Please, sir," began the maid, holding out the tray, "this come for you near a month agow, but Missis she bin and forgot to send it hafter you."

"Confound her!" said Twiddel, taking the letter.

He looked at the envelope, and remarked with a little start of nervous excitement, "From Dr Congleton."

"News of Mr Beveridge," laughed Welsh.

The doctor read the first few lines, and then, as if he had got an electric shock, the letter fell from his hand, and an expression of the most utter and lively consternation came over his face.

"Heavens!" he ejaculated, "it's all up."

"What's up?" cried Welsh, snatching at the letter.

"He's run away!"

Welsh looked at him for a moment in some astonishment, and then burst out laughing.

"What a joke!" he cried; "I don't see anything to make a fuss about. We're jolly well rid of him."

"The fee! I won't get a penny till I bring him back. And the whole thing will be found out!"

As the full meaning of this predicament burst upon Welsh, his face underwent a change by no means pleasant to watch. For a full minute he swore, and then an ominous silence fell upon the room.

Twiddel was the first to recover himself.

"Let me see the letter," he said; "I haven't finished it."

Welsh read it aloud—

"DEAR TWIDDEL,—I regret to inform you that the patient, Francis Beveridge, whom you placed under my care, has escaped from Clankwood. We have made every inquiry consistent with strict privacy, but unfortunately have not yet been able to lay our hands upon him. We only know that he left Ashditch Junction in the London express, and was seen walking out of St Euston's Cross. How he has been able to maintain himself in concealment without money or clothes, I am unable to imagine.

"As no inquiries have been made for him by his cousin Mr Welsh, or any other of his friends or relatives, I am writing to you that you may inform them, and I hope that this letter may follow you abroad without delay. I may add that the circumstances of his escape showed most unusual cunning, and could not possibly have been guarded against.

"Trusting that you are having a pleasant holiday, I am, yours very truly,

ADOLPHUS S. CONGLETON."

The two looked at one another in silence for a minute, and then Welsh said, fiercely, "You must catch him again, Twiddel. Do you think I am going to have all my risk and trouble for nothing?"

"I must catch him! Do you suppose I let him loose?"

"You must catch him, all the same."

"I shan't bother my head about him," answered Twiddel, with the recklessness of despair.

"You won't? You want to have the story known, I suppose?"

"I don't care if it is."

Welsh looked at him for a minute: then he jumped up and exclaimed, "You need a drink, old man. Let's hurry up that slavey."

With the first course their countenances cleared a little, with the second they were almost composed, by the end of dinner they had started plot-hatching hopefully again.

"It's any odds on the man's still being in town," said Welsh. "He had no money or clothes, and evidently he hasn't gone to any of his friends, or the whole story would have been out. Now, there is nowhere where a man can lie low so well, especially if he is hard up, as London. I can answer from experience. He is hardly likely to be in the West End, or the best class of suburbs, so we've something to go upon at once. We must go to a private inquiry office and put men on his track, and then we must take the town in beats ourselves. So much is clear; do you see?"

"And hadn't we better find out whether anything more is known at Clankwood?" suggested Twiddel. "Dr Congleton wrote a month ago; perhaps they have caught him by this time."

"Hardly likely, I'm afraid; he'd have written to you if they had. Still, we can but ask."

"But, I say!" the doctor suddenly exclaimed, "people may find out that I'm back without him."

Welsh was equal to the emergency.

"You must leave again at once," he said decisively, rising from the table; "and there's no good wasting time, either."

"What do you mean?" asked the bewildered doctor, who had not yet assimilated the criminal point of view.

"We'll put our luggage straight on to a cab, drive off to other rooms—I know a cheap place that will do—and if by any chance inquiries are made, people must be told that you are still abroad. Nobody must hear of your coming home to-night."

"Is it——" began Twiddel, dubiously.

"Is it what?" snapped his friend.

"Is it worth it?"

"Is L500, not to speak of two reputations, worth it! Come on!"

The unfortunate doctor sighed, and rose too. He was beginning to think that the nefarious acquisition of fees might have drawbacks after all.



CHAPTER II.

The chronicle must now go back a few days and follow another up-express.

"I must either be a clergyman or a policeman," Mr Bunker reflected, in the corner of his carriage; "they seem to me to be on the whole the two least molested professions. Each certainly has a livery which, if its occupier is ordinarily judicious, ought to serve as a certificate of sanity. To me all policemen are precisely alike, but I daresay they know them apart in the force, and as all the beats and crossings are presumably taken already, I might excite suspicion by my mere superfluity. Besides, a theatrical costumier's uniform would possibly lack some ridiculous but essential detail."

He lit another cigar and looked humorously out of the window.

"I shall take orders. An amateur theatrical clergyman's costume will be more comfortable, and probably less erroneous. They allow them some latitude, I believe; and I don't suppose there are any visible ordination scars whose absence would give me away. I shall certainly study the first reverend brother I meet to see."

Thus wisely ruminating, he arrived in London at a very early hour on a chilly morning, and drove straight to a small hotel near King's Cross, where the landlord was much gratified at receiving so respectable a guest as the Rev. Alexander Butler. ("I must begin with a B." said Mr Bunker to himself; "I think it's lucky.")

It is true the reverend gentleman was in evening clothes, while his hat and coat had a singularly secular, not to say fashionable, appearance; but, as he mentioned casually in the course of some extremely affable remarks, he had been dining in a country house, and had not thought it worth while changing before he left. After breakfasting he dressed himself in an equally secular suit of tweeds and went out, he mentioned incidentally, to call at his tailor's for his professional habit, which he seemed surprised to learn had not yet been forwarded to the hotel.

A visit to a certain well-known firm of theatrical costumiers was followed by his reappearance in a cab accompanied by a bulky brown paper parcel; and presently he emerged from his room attired more consistently with his office, much to his own satisfaction, for, as he observed, "I cannot say I approve of clergymen masquerading as laymen."

His opinion on the converse circumstance was not expressed.

Much to his landlord's disappointment, he informed him that he should probably leave again that afternoon, and then he went out for a walk.

About half an hour later he was once more in the street where, not so very long ago, a very exciting cab-race had finished. He strolled slowly past Dr Twiddel's house. The blinds of the front room were down; at that hour there was no sign of life about it, and he saw nothing at all to arrest his attention. Then he looked down the other side of the street, and to his great satisfaction spied a card, with the legend "Apartments to let," in one of the first-floor windows of a house immediately opposite.

He rang the bell, and in a moment a rotund and loquacious landlady appeared. Yes, the drawing-room was to let; would the reverend gentleman come up and see it? Mr Bunker went up, and approved. They readily agreed upon terms, and the landlady, charmed with her new lodger's appearance and manners, no less than with the respectability of his profession, proceeded to descant at some length on the quiet, comfort, and numerous other advantages of the apartments.

"Just the very plice you wants, sir. We 'ave 'ad clerical gentlemen 'ere before, sir; in fact, there's one a-staying 'ere now, second floor,—you may know of 'im, sir,—the Reverend Mr John Duggs; a very pleasant gentleman you'll find him, sir. I'll tell 'im you're 'ere, sir; 'e'd be sure to like to meet another gentleman of the syme cloth, has they say."

Somehow or other the Rev. Mr Butler failed to display the hearty pleasure at this announcement that the worthy Mrs Gabbon had naturally expected.

Aloud he merely said, "Indeed," politely, but with no unusual interest.

Within himself he reflected, "The deuce take Mr John Duggs! However, I want the rooms, and a man must risk something."

As a precautionary measure he visited a second-hand bookseller on his way back, and purchased a small assortment of the severest-looking works on theology they kept in stock; and these, with his slender luggage, he brought round to Mrs Gabbon's in the course of the afternoon.

He looked carefully out of his sitting-room window, but the doctor's blinds were still down, and he saw no one coming or going about the house; so he began his inquiries by calling up his landlady.

"I have been troubled with lumbago, Mrs Gabbon," he began.

"Dearie me, sir," said Mrs Gabbon, "I'm sorry to 'ear that; you that looks so 'ealthy too! Well, one never knows what's be'ind a 'appy hexterior, does one, sir?"

"No, Mrs Gabbon," replied Mr Bunker, solemnly; "one never knows what even a clergyman's coat conceals."

"That's very true, sir. In the midst of life we are in——"

"Lumbago," interposed Mr Bunker.

Mrs Gabbon looked a trifle startled.

"Well," he continued with the same gravity, "I may unfortunately have occasion to consult a doctor——"

"There's Dr Smith," interrupted Mrs Gabbon, her equanimity quite restored by his ecclesiastical tone and the mention of ailments; "'e attended my poor dear 'usband hall through his last illness; an huncommon clever doctor, sir, as I ought to know, sir, bein'——"

"No doubt an excellent man, Mrs Gabbon; but I should like to know of one as near at hand as possible. Now I see the name of a Dr Twiddel——"

"I wouldn't recommend 'im, sir," said Mrs Gabbon, pursing her mouth.

"Indeed? Why not?"

"'E attended Mrs Brown's servant-girl, sir,—she bein' the lady as has the 'ouse next door,—and what he give 'er didn't do no good. Mrs Brown tell me 'erself."

"Still, in an emergency——"

"Besides which, he ain't at 'ome, sir."

"Where has he gone?"

"Abroad, they do say, sir; though I don't rightly know much about 'im."

"Has he been away long?"

Mrs Gabbon considered.

"It must 'ave bin before the middle of November he went, sir."

"Ha!" exclaimed Mr Bunker, keenly, though apparently more to himself than his landlady.

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"The middle of November, you say? That's a long holiday for a doctor to take."

"'E 'avn't no practice to speak of,—not as I knows of, leastways."

"What sort of a man is he—young or old?"

"By my opinion, sir, 'e's too young. I don't 'old by them young doctors. Now Dr Smith, sir——"

"Dr Twiddel is quite a young man, then?"

"What I'd call little better than a boy, sir. They tell me they lets 'em loose very young nowadays."

"About twenty-five, say?"

"'E might be that, sir; but I don't know much about 'im, sir. Now Dr Smith, sir, 'e's different."

In fact at this point Mrs Gabbon showed such a tendency to turn the conversation back to the merits of Dr Smith and the precise nature of Mr Bunker's ailment, that her lodger, in despair, requested her to bring up a cup of tea as speedily as possible.

"Before the middle of November," he said to himself. "It is certainly a curious coincidence."

To a gentleman of Mr Bunker's sociable habits and active mind, the prospect of sitting day by day in the company of his theological treatises and talkative landlady, and watching an apparently uninhabited house, seemed at first sight even less entertaining than a return to Clankwood. But, as he said of himself, he possessed a kind of easy workaday philosophy, and, besides that, an apparently irresistible attraction for the incidents of life.

He had barely finished his cup of tea, and was sitting over the fire smoking one of the Baron's cigars and looking through one of the few books he had brought that bore no relation to divinity, his feet high upon the side of the mantelpiece, his ready-made costume perhaps a little more unbuttoned than the strictest propriety might approve, and a stiff glass of whisky-and-water at his elbow, when there came a rap at his door.

In response to his "Come in," a middle-aged gentleman, dressed in clerical attire, entered. He had a broad, bearded face, a dull eye, and an indescribably average aspect.

"The devil! Mr John Duggs himself," thought Mr Bunker, hastily adopting a more conventional attitude and feeling for his button-holes.

"Ah—er—Mr Butler, I believe?" said the stranger, with an apologetic air.

"The same," replied Mr Bunker, smiling affably.

"I," continued his visitor, advancing with more confidence, "am Mr Duggs. I am dwelling at present in the apartment immediately above you, and hearing of the arrival of a fellow-clergyman, through my worthy friend Mrs Gabbon, I have taken the liberty of calling. She gave me to understand that you were not undesirous of making my acquaintance, Mr Butler."

"The deuce, she did!" thought Mr Butler. Aloud he answered most politely, "I am honoured, Mr Duggs. Won't you sit down?"

First casting a wary eye upon a chair, Mr Duggs seated himself carefully on the edge of it.

"It is quite evident," thought Mr Bunker, "that he has spotted something wrong. I believe a bobby would have been safer after all."

He assumed the longest face he could draw, and remarked sententiously, "The weather has been unpleasantly cold of late, Mr Duggs."

He flattered himself that his guest seemed instantly more at his ease. Certainly he replied with as much cordiality as a man with such a dull eye could be supposed to display.

"It has, Mr Butler; in fact I have suffered from a chill for some weeks. Ahem!"

"Have something to drink," suggested Mr Bunker, sympathetically. "I'm trying a little whisky myself, as a cure for cold."

"I—ah—I am sorry. I do not touch spirits."

"I, on the contrary, am glad to hear it. Too few of our clergymen nowadays support the cause of temperance by example."

Mr Bunker felt a little natural pride in this happily expressed sentiment, but his visitor merely turned his cold eye on the whisky bottle, and breathed heavily.

"Confound him!" he thought; "I'll give him something to snort at if he is going to conduct himself like this."

"Have a cigar?" he asked aloud.

Mr Duggs seemed to regard the cigar-box a little less unkindly than the whisky bottle; but after a careful look at it he replied, "I am afraid they seem a little too strong for me. I am a light smoker, Mr Butler."

"Really," smiled Mr Bunker; "so many virtues in one room reminds me of the virgins of Gomorrah."

"I beg your pardon? The what?" asked Mr Duggs, with a startled stare.

Mr Bunker suspected that he had made a slip in his biblical reminiscences, but he continued to smile imperturbably, and inquired with a perfect air of surprise, "Haven't you read the novel I referred to?"

Mr Duggs appeared a little relieved, but he answered blankly enough, "I—ah—have not. What is the book you refer to?"

"Oh, don't you know? To tell the truth, I forget the title. It's by a somewhat well-known lady writer of religious fiction. A Miss—her name escapes me at this moment."

In fact, as Mr Bunker had no idea how long his friend might be dwelling in the apartment immediately above him, he thought it more prudent to make no statement that could possibly be checked.

"I am no great admirer of religious fiction of any kind," replied Mr Duggs, "particularly that written by emotional females."

"No," said Mr Bunker, pleasantly; "I should imagine your own doctrines were not apt to err on the sentimental side."

"I am not aware that I have said anything to you about my—doctrines, as you call them, Mr Butler."

"Still, don't you think one can generally tell a man's creed from his coat, and his sympathies from the way he cocks his hat?"

"I think," replied Mr Duggs, "that our ideas of our vocation are somewhat different."

"Mine is, I admit," said Mr Bunker, who had come to the conclusion that the strain of playing his part was really too great, and was now being happily carried along by his tongue.

Mr Duggs for a moment was evidently disposed to give battle, but thinking better of it, he contented himself with frowning at his younger opponent, and abruptly changed the subject.

"May I ask what position you hold in the church, Mr Butler?"

"Why," began Mr Bunker, lightly: it was on the tip of his tongue to say "a clergyman, of course," when he suddenly recollected that he might be anything from the rank of curate up to the people who wear gaiters (and who these were precisely he didn't know). An ingenious solution suggested itself. He replied with a preliminary inquiry, "Have you ever been in the East, Mr Duggs?"

"I regret to say I have not hitherto had the opportunity."

"Thank the Lord for that," thought Mr Bunker. "I have been a missionary," he said quietly, and looked dreamily into the fire.

It was a happy move. Mr Duggs was visibly impressed.

"Ah?" he said. "Indeed? I am much interested to learn this, Mr Butler. It—ah—gives me perhaps a somewhat different view of your—ah—opinions. Where did your work lie?"

"China," replied Mr Bunker, thinking it best to keep as far abroad as possible.

"Ha!" exclaimed Mr Duggs. "This is really extremely fortunate. I am at present, Mr Butler, studying the religions and customs of China at the British Museum, with a view to going out there myself very shortly. I already feel I know almost as much about that most interesting country as if I had lived there. I should like to talk with you at some length on the subject."

Mr Bunker saw that it was time to put an end to this conversation, at whatever minor risk of perturbing his visitor. He had been a little alarmed, too, by noticing that Mr Duggs' dull eye had wandered frequently to his theological library, which with his usual foresight he had strewn conspicuously on the table, and that any expression it had was rather of suspicious curiosity than gratification.

"I should like to hear some of your experiences," Mr Duggs continued. "In what province did you work?"

"In Hung Hang Ho," replied Mr Bunker. His visitor looked puzzled, but he continued boldly, "My experiences were somewhat unpleasant. I became engaged to a mandarin's daughter—a charming girl. I was suspected, however, of abetting an illicit traffic in Chinese lanterns. My companions were manicured alive, and I only made my escape in a pagoda, or a junk—I was in too much of a hurry to notice which—at the imminent peril of my life. Don't go to China, Mr Duggs."

Mr Duggs rose.

"Young man," he said, sternly, "put away that fatal bottle. I can only suppose that it is under the influence of drink that you have ventured to tell me such an irreverent and impossible story."

"Sir," began Mr Bunker, warmly,—for he thought that an outburst of indignation would probably be the safest way of concluding the interview,—when he stopped abruptly and listened. All the time his ears had been alive to anything going on outside, and now he heard a cab rattle up and stop close by. It might be at Dr Twiddel's, he thought, and, turning from his visitor, he sprang to the window.

Remarking distantly, "I hear a cab; it is possibly a friend I am expecting," Mr Duggs stepped to the other window.

It was only, however, a hansom at the door of the next house, out of which a very golden-haired young lady was stepping. "Aha," said Mr Bunker, quite forgetting the indignant role he had begun to play; "rather nice! Is this your friend, Mr Duggs?"

Mr Duggs gave him one look of his dull eyes, and walked straight for the door. As he went out he merely remarked, "Our acquaintance has been brief, Mr Butler, but it has been quite sufficient."

"Quite," thought Mr Bunker.



CHAPTER III.

That was Mr Bunker's first and last meeting with the Rev. John Duggs, and he took no small credit to himself for having so effectually incensed his neighbour, without, at the same time, bringing suspicion on anything more pertinent than his sobriety.

And yet sometimes in the course of the next three days he would have been thankful to see him again, if only to have another passage-of-arms. The time passed most wearily; the consulting-room blinds were never raised; no cabs stopped before the doctor's door; nobody except the little servant ever moved about the house.

He could think of no plan better than waiting; and so he waited, showing himself seldom in the streets, and even sitting behind the curtain while he watched at the window. After writing at some length to the Baron he had no further correspondence that he could distract himself with; he was even forced once or twice to dip into the theological works. Mrs Gabbon had evidently "'eard sommat" from Mr Duggs, and treated him to little of her society. The boredom became so excessive that he decided he must make a move soon, however rash it was.

The only active step he took, and indeed the only step he saw his way to take, was a call on Dr Twiddel's locum. But luck seemed to run dead against him. Dr Billson had departed "on his holiday," he was informed, and would not return for three weeks. So Mr Bunker was driven back to his window and the Baron's cigars.

It was the evening of his fourth day in Mrs Gabbon's rooms. He had finished a modest dinner and was dealing himself hands at piquet with an old pack of cards, when he heard the rattle of a cab coming up the street. The usual faint flicker of hope rose: the cab stopped below him, the flicker burned brighter, and in an instant he was at the window. He opened the slats of the blind, and the flicker was aflame. Before the doctor's house a four-wheeled cab was standing laden with luggage, and two men were going up the steps. He watched the luggage being taken in and the cab drive away, and then he turned radiantly back to the fire.

"The curtain is up," he said to himself. "What's the first act to be?"

Presently he put on his wide-awake hat and went out for a stroll. He walked slowly past the doctor's house, but there was nothing to be seen or heard. Remembering the room at the back, he was not surprised to find no chink of light about the front windows, and thinking it better not to run the risk of being seen lingering there, he walked on. He was in such good spirits, and had been cooped up so continually for the last few days, that he went on and on, and it was not till about a couple of hours had passed that he approached his rooms again. As he came down the street he was surprised to see by the light of a lamp that another four-wheeler was standing before the doctor's house, also laden with luggage.

Two men jumped in, one after another, and when he had come at his fastest walk within twenty yards or so, the cabman whipped up and drove rapidly away, luggage and men and all.

He looked up and down for a hansom, but there were none to be seen. For a few yards he set off at a run in pursuit, and then, finding that the horse was being driven at a great rate, and remembering the paucity of stray cabs in the quiet streets and roads round about, he stopped and considered the question.

"After all," he reflected, "it may not have been Dr Twiddel who drove away; in fact, if it was he who arrived in the first cab, it's any odds against it. Pooh! It can't be. Still, it's a curious thing if two cabs loaded with luggage came to the house in the same evening, and one drove away without unlading."

With his spirits a little damped in spite of his philosophy, he went back to his rooms.

In the morning the consulting-room blinds were still down, and the house looked as deserted as ever.

He waited till lunch, and then he went out boldly and pulled the doctor's bell. The same little maid appeared, but she evidently did not recognise the fashionable patient who disappeared so mysteriously in the demure-looking clergyman at the door.

"Is Dr Twiddel at home?"

"No, sir, he ain't back yet."

"He hasn't been back?"

"No, sir."

Mr Bunker looked at her keenly, and then said to himself, "She is lying."

He thought he would try a chance shot.

"But he was expected home last night, I believe."

The maid looked a little staggered.

"He ain't been," she replied.

"I happen to have heard that he called here," he hazarded again.

This time she was evidently put about.

"He ain't been here—as I knows of."

He slipped half-a-crown into her hand.

"Think again," he said, in his most winning accents.

The poor little maid was obviously in a dilemma.

"Do you want him particular, sir?"

"Particularly."

She fidgeted a little.

"He told me," he pursued, "that he might look in at his rooms last night. He left no message for me?"

"What name, sir?"

"Mr Butler."

"No, sir."

"Then, my dear," said Mr Bunker, with his most insinuating smile, "he was here for a little, you can't deny?"

At the maid's embarrassed glance down his long coat, he suddenly realised that there was perhaps a distinction between lay and clerical smiles.

"He might have just looked in, sir," she admitted.

"But he didn't want it known?"

"No, sir."

"Quite right, I advised him not to, and you did very well not to tell me at first."

He smiled approvingly and made a pretence of turning away.

"Oh, by the way," he added, stopping as if struck by an after-thought, "Is he still in town? He promised to leave word for me, but he has evidently forgotten."

"I don't know, sir; 'e didn't say."

"What? He left no word at all?"

"No, sir."

Mr Bunker held out another half-crown.

"It's truth, sir," said the maid, drawing back; "we don't know where 'e is."

"Take it, all the same; you have been very discreet. You have no idea?"

The maid hesitated.

"I did 'ear Mr Welsh say something about lookin' for rooms," she allowed.

"In London?"

"I expect so, sir; but 'e didn't say no more."

"Mr Welsh is the friend who came with him, of course?"

"Yes, sir."

"Thanks," said Mr Bunker. "By the way, Dr Twiddel might not like your telling this even to a friend, so you needn't say I called, I'll tell him myself when I see him, and I won't give you away."

He smiled benignly, and the little maid thanked him quite gratefully.

"Evidently," he thought as he went away, "I was meant for something in the detective line."

He returned to his rooms to meditate, and the longer he thought the more puzzled he became, and yet the more convinced that he had taken up a thread that must lead him somewhere.

"As for my plan of action," he considered, "I see nothing better for it than staying where I am—and watching. This mysterious doctor must surely steal back some night. Now and then I might go round the town and try a cast in the likeliest bars—oh, hang me, though! I forgot I was a clergyman."

That night he had a welcome distraction in the shape of a letter from the Baron. It was written from Brierley Park, in the Baron's best pointed German hand, and it ran thus—

"MY DEAR BUNKER,—I was greatly more delighted than I am able to express to you from the amusing correspondence you addressed me. How glad I am, I can assure you, that you are still in safety and comfort. Remember, my dear friend, to call for me when need arises, although I do think you can guard yourself as well as most alone.

"This leaves me happy and healthful, and in utmost prosperity with the kind Sir Richard and his charming Lady. You English certainly know well how to cause time to pass with mirth. About instruction I say less!

"They have talked of you here. I laugh and keep my tongue when they wonder who he is and whither gone away. Now that anger is passed and they see I myself enjoy the joke, they say, and especially do the ladies, (You humbug, Bunker!) 'How charming was the imitation, Baron!' You can indeed win the hearts, if wishful so. The Lady Grillyer and her unexpressable daughter I have often seen. To-day they come here for two nights. I did suggest it to Lady Brierley, and I fear she did suspect the condition of my heart; but she charmingly smiled, she asked them, and they come!

"The Countess, I fear, does not now love you much, my friend; but then she knows not the truth. The Lady Alicia is strangely silent on the matter of Mr Bunker, but in time she also doubtless will forgive. (At this Mr Bunker smiled in some amusement.)

"When they leave Brierley I also shall take my departure on the following day, that is in three days. Therefore write hastily, Bunker, and name the place and hour where we shall meet again and dine festively. I expect a most reverent clergyman and much instructive discourse. Ah, humbug!—Thine always,

RUDOLPH VON BLITZENBERG."

"P.S.—She is sometimes more kind and sometimes so distant. Ah, I know not what to surmise! But to-morrow or the next my fate will be decided. Give me of your prayers, my reverent friend!

R. VON B."

"Dear old Baron!" said Mr Bunker. "Well, I've at least a dinner to look forward to."



CHAPTER IV.

Dr Twiddel, meanwhile, was no less anxious to make the Rev. Alexander Butler's acquaintance than the Rev. Alexander Butler was to make his. Not that he was aware of that gentleman's recent change of identity and occupation; but most industrious endeavors to find a certain Mr Beveridge were made in the course of the next few days. He and Welsh were living modestly and obscurely in the neighbourhood of the Pentonville Road, scouring the town by day, studying a map and laying the most ingenious plans at night. Welsh's first effort, as soon as they were established in their new quarters, was to induce his friend to go down to Clankwood and make further inquiries, but this Twiddel absolutely declined to do.

"My dear chap," he answered, "supposing anything were found out, or even suspected, what am I to say? Old Congleton knows me well, and for his own sake doesn't want to make a fuss; but if he really spots that something is wrong, he will be so afraid of his reputation that he'd give me away like a shot."

"How are you going to give things away by going down and seeing him?"

"If they have guessed anything, I'll give it away. I haven't your cheek, you know, and tact, and that sort of thing; you'd much better go yourself."

"I? It isn't my business."

"You seem to be making it yours. Besides, Dr Congleton thinks it is. You passed yourself off as the chap's cousin, and it is quite natural for you to go and inquire."

Welsh pondered the point. "Hang it," he said at last, "it would do just as well to write. Perhaps it's safer after all."

"Well, you write."

"Why should I, rather than you?"

"Because you're his cousin."

Welsh considered again. "Well, I don't suppose it matters much. I'll write, if you're afraid."

It was these amiable little touches in his friend's conversation that helped to make Twiddel's lot at this time so pleasant. In fact, the doctor was learning a good deal about human nature in cloudy weather.

With great care Welsh composed a polite note of anxious inquiry, and by return of post received the following reply:—

"MY DEAR SIR,—I regret to inform you that we have not so far recovered your cousin Mr Beveridge. In all probability, however, this cannot be long delayed now, as he was seen within the last week at a country house in Dampshire, and is known to have fled to London immediately on his recognition, but before he could be secured. He was then clean shaved, and had been passing under the name of Francis Bunker. We are making strict inquiries for him in London.

"Nobody can regret the unfortunate circumstance of his escape more than I, and, in justice to myself and my institution, I can assure you that it was only through the most unforeseen and remarkable ingenuity on your cousin's part that it occurred.

"Trusting that I may soon be able to inform you of his recovery, I am, yours very truly,

"ADOLPHUS S. CONGLETON.

Their ardour was, if possible, increased by Dr Congleton's letter. Mr Beveridge was almost certainly in London, and they knew now that they must look for a clean-shaved man. Two private inquiry detectives were at work; and on their own account they had mapped the likeliest parts of London into beats, visiting every bar and restaurant in turn, and occasionally hanging about stations and the stopping-places for 'buses.

It was dreadfully hard work, and after four days of it, even Welsh began to get a little sickened.

"Hang it," he said in the evening, "I haven't had a decent dinner since we came back. Mr Bunker can go to the devil for to-night, I'm going to dine decently. I'm sick of going round pubs, and not even stopping to have a drink."

"So am I," replied Twiddel, cordially; "where shall we go?"

"The Cafe Maccarroni," suggested Welsh; "we can't afford a West-end place, and they give one a very decent dinner there."

The Cafe Maccarroni in Holborn is nominally of foreign extraction,—certainly the waiters and the stout proprietor come from sunnier lands,—and many of the diners you can hear talking in strange tongues, with quick gesticulations. But for the most part they are respectable citizens of London, who drink Chianti because it stimulates cheaply and not unpleasantly. The white-painted room is bright and clean and seldom very crowded, the British palate can be tickled with tolerable joints and cutlets, and the foreign with gravy-covered odds and ends. Altogether, it may be recommended to such as desire to dine comfortably and not too conspicuously.

The hour at which the two friends entered was later than most of the habitues dine, and they had the room almost to themselves. They faced each other across a small table beside the wall, and very soon the discomforts of their researches began to seem more tolerable.

"We'll catch him soon, old man," said Welsh, smiling more affably than he had smiled since they came back. "A day or two more of this kind of work and even London won't be able to conceal him any longer."

"Dash it, we must," replied Twiddel, bravely. "We'll show old Congleton how to look for a lunatic."

"Ha, ha!" laughed Welsh, "I think he'll be rather relieved himself. Waiter! another bottle of the same."

The bottle arrived, and the waiter was just filling their glasses when a young clergyman entered the room and walked quietly towards the farther end. Welsh raised his glass and exclaimed, "Here's luck to ourselves, Twiddel, old man!"

At that moment the clergyman was passing their table, and at the mention of this toast he started almost imperceptibly, and then, throwing a quick glance at the two, stopped and took a seat at the next table, with his back turned towards them. Welsh, who was at the farther side, looked at him with some annoyance, and made a sign to Twiddel to talk a little more quietly.

To the waiter, who came with the menu, the clergyman explained in a quiet voice that he was waiting for a friend, and asked for an evening paper instead, in which he soon appeared to be deeply engrossed.

At first the conversation went on in a lower tone, but in a few minutes they insensibly forgot their neighbour, and the voices rose again by starts.

"My dear fellow," Welsh was saying, "we can discuss that afterwards; we haven't caught him yet."

"I want to settle it now."

"But I thought it was settled."

"No, it wasn't," said Twiddel, with a foreign and vinous doggedness.

"What do you suggest then?"

"Divide it equally—L250 each."

"You think you can claim half the credit for the idea and half the trouble?"

"I can claim all the risk—practically."

"Pooh!" said Welsh. "You think I risked nothing? Come, come, let's talk of something else."

"Oh, rot!" interrupted Twiddel, who by this time was decidedly flushed. "You needn't ride the high horse like that, you are not Mr Mandell-Essington any longer."

With a violent start, the clergyman brought his fist crash on the table, and exclaimed aloud, "By Heaven, that's it!"



CHAPTER V.

As one may suppose, everybody in the room started in great astonishment at this extraordinary outburst. With a sharp "Hollo!" Twiddel turned in his seat, to see the clergyman standing over him with a look of the keenest inquiry in his well-favoured face.