he sank back to his seat after the enthusiasm at the fall of the last curtain.

In the entrance-hall he found Rufus Rintoul awaiting him, a handsome figure in opera hat, and coat that fitted his fine shoulders and slim waist to perfection.

"I've got a taxi," he said as McNeil reached him. "I didn't wait for the finish. I've no ear for music, and tragedy makes me laugh. Still, the lass is a credit to the family, indubitably. You'll come round to my flat!

For a moment McNeil hesitated. Was it wise! Then he nodded his assent. Surely he was man enough to look after himself. The momentary hesitation was not lost upon Rintoul.

"You'll be quite safe," he said with a smile. "There's no means of disposing of a body in Jermyn Street."

McNeil smiled in reply. "I flatter myself that I could afford the risk even if there were," he said.

A few minutes in the taxi brought them to their destination. Rintoul showed his guest into a comfortable room—a man's room, cigar-scented, and furnished with heavily-upholstered chairs, a desk, many book-shelves, and a tantalus. He produced glasses and a siphon, and drew two chairs to the fire.

McNeil smoked in silence and expectancy. He was here to learn what he could, not to talk, he kept reminding himself.

Rintoul glanced at him shrewdly, and surmised his attitude. He smiled to himself, and, coming to a decision, leant forward in his chair suddenly.

So you answered the advertisement," he said abruptly, his green eyes intent on his guest's face.

It would have taken & cleverer man than McNeil to hide all trace of an understanding of the question. He certainly recovered himself quickly, and turned a blank face on the questioner, but it was too late.

Rintoul laughed aloud.

"You needna answer, Major McNeil," he said with a certain exultation. exultation. "You've given me all the answer I need. It was hers, then! I guessed there could not be two such mad women in London. So you answered it, you struck her fancy, and you got the job, eh 1-Oh, I'm asking you nothing-I'm telling you."

"I really don't know what you are talking about, Mr Rintoul," protested McNeil, greatly chagrined now that he saw how he had been trapped. "I am quite out of my depth."

He knew that the denial was useless, that his host would

"That point being cleared

up," he said, "there comes the question of what you are going to do. Lead a desperate enterprise,' the advertisement said. That looks like engaging a gang, I fancy; but of course you won't confirm it. I hardly expect you to. Well, gang or no gang, Major McNeil, I'm ready for you. I wonder did she tell you about the will, or if you're working in the dark." He looked at his victim inquiringly, but McNeil smoked silently, and gazed into the glow of the fire. He was determined that his face should give no more away. Internally he was cursing his folly in coming to the flat.

took this means of insuring it. Wherever he is, he'll be chuckling at the success of his plan to-night."

He paused and awaited comment.

"An exceedingly interesting story," said McNeil.

"And you'll be wondering why I told it to you?" asked Rintoul, watching him closely. McNeil made no reply.

"Well, I'll tell you. I've nothing to hide. There's the will, and here's me the man who means to get the estate, by any means. There's no question of fair or foul, because there's no rules except the one -murder disqualifies. . . . It's a pity "—he paused, and sighed almost like a man disappointed in love because it makes the affair more complicated.

have been thinking o', to make him so squeamish at the last. However, one must just accept the inevitable. Now, Major McNeil, you're a sensible man, a Scotsman like myself. You must see plainly that a slip of a girl like my niece has no chance against a man like me. Yet I'm not a hard man, nor a mean man, and above all things I want to avoid trouble. Therefore I'm prepared to pay her out. In return for her relinquishing all claim to the estate, I'm prepared to settle on her a sum sufficient to bring her in five hundred a year for life. What do you think of that?

"I have no opinion to express, Mr Rintoul. The matter

"I'm extraordinarily pleased to have met you, Major McNeil," said Rintoul, his eyes twinkling with pleasure at the other's discomfiture. "Providence must have thrown us together to-night, I'm thinking. Nothing could have been more fortunate from my point of view. Well, we're sure to meet again. meet again. You'll be leading your band of heroes on your desperate enterprise, and desperate I'm telling you you'll find it if you get interfering with me. Good-night to you."

McNeil listened in silence, repeated his "good-night," and turned to go. Neither man offered to shake hands. Rufus Rintoul showed his guest out, and, returning, threw himself down in his chair and laughed, with the laughter of a man well satisfied with himself.

McNeil plodded gloomily through the empty streets.

IT is a stale saying that truth is stranger than fiction, and a misleading one; because the strangest truths, as any journalist can testify, must often masquerade as fiction, in order to enjoy their lawful opportunity of exciting universal astonishment. Truth, declares Rudyard Kipling, is a naked lady who must be given a print petticoat before she appears in public. He said it apropos of a certain sea-serpent; but a sea-serpent is, after all, nothing but a zoological anachronism. There are stranger things. Nevertheless, I wish that it had fallen to the lot of Rudyard Kipling to narrate the curious events that I am about to recount, with meticulous accuracy indeed, but without, I fear, any of the dramatic instinct of a master of fiction.

It was on the 13th of December 1921, the eve of the first meeting of the Dail Eireann to decide whether it would or would not approve the Treaty signed in London some eight days previously by Mr Lloyd George and his colleagues and the Irish Plenipotentiaries. I had dined at the club, and was getting into my coat and hat, when Hambur came out of the card-room. We exchanged hellos, and he asked me if I was going anywhere in particular, and I told him, "No, only home," which,

where a grass-bachelor in lodgings is concerned, is nowhere in particular. Then come along round to Flannery's," he said. "We're going to consult the Sortes Virgilianæ. There's going to be an archbishop there, and it may be amusing. I said I would go along. It is the principal business in life of a good journalist to go. along. On the way Hambur, who is, I should mention, one of the foremost classical scholars of his day, explained to me what the Sortes Virgilianæ are. I gathered that many hundred years ago, when men put more faith in signs and omens and prophecies than they do now, the practice sprang up of inquiring into the future by the comparatively simple process of taking a key-any sort of key would do apparently-and thrusting it at random into a copy of Virgil.' A question had previously been put, and the text would then be read, beginning at the line on which the nose of the key rested. Naturally the business, as it became popular, attached unto itself a certain amount of solemn ritual. I cannot say what it is, and for all I know Hambur is the only man alive who knows exactly what it is. But I will make an affidavit that on this occasion all the formalities were duly observed. When we reached Flannery's the rest of the company were

already assembled. Everybody in Dublin, and most people in Ireland, know Flannery. He is the last surviving specimen of a type of Irishmen that has long been on the verge of extinction. Gifted with a mordant wit, an enormous agility of mind, a physical constitution that enabled them to excel and to exceed where others would have abandoned the chase from sheer exhaustion; steeped in an hereditary taste for literature, and classics in particular, they were nevertheless unable often enough to give to the world what they gave to their friends. A lack of singleness of purpose, an inconsequent curiosity, drove them hither and thither, with the result that while less-gifted beings were presenting posterity with the sound fruits of industrious scholarship, they were content to delight their intimates with what Kai Lung would call an unobtrusive display of versatile dexterity. Far be it from me to allot to a man like Flannery, who helps to make life interesting for the aristocracy of the living, a lower place than that of the scholar who plants intellectual pleasure-gardens for the feet of the thankless unborn, who show a steadilyincreasing preference for playing in the muck.

When we reached Flannery's the company, as I have said, was already congregated in his comfortable library. The archbishop was there, also a clever journalist over from Lon

don to write up the Dail Eireann meeting, and perhaps half a dozen other men, all of them distinguished in greater or lesser degree for their intellectual attainments. I suppose that with the exception of myself there was no one present who could not claim to be a sound classical scholar. Even the London journalist mirabile dictu-had managed to preserve a charming atmosphere of cap-and-gown through all the tempests of pseudo- American modernism that rave about Carmelite House.

Coffee and whisky-and-soda having been dispensed, and cigars and pipes lighted, we got to the business of the Sortes Virgilianæ. It was a familiar thing to all present but myself. I do not mean to say that the distinguished Roman prelate who was present consults omens habitually. But all had heard of them, their popularity lasting through centuries, and their astonishing accuracy. Some one present recalled how they had foretold the decapitation of King Charles I. to that unadaptable monarch. Other instances were recalled, and by the time the scene was set I was not the only one present in whom the feeling of idle curiosity had given way to a more disturbing emotion. For the first question which it had been decided to ask was no trivial one, but concerned a matter which, with the exception of the two journalists, was nearest at that