ools' party, incorporating some
entirely new notions into the original scheme. In the morning Miss
Mildred Smith visited the handkerchief counter of a leading department
store, where she made selections and purchases from the stocks, going
thence to a shop dealing in harness and leather goods. Here she gave a
special commission for immediate execution.

Toward dusk of the evening of April first a smallish unobtrusive-looking
citizen procured admittance to Mrs. Hadley-Smith's home, on East
Sixty-third Street just off Fifth Avenue. With the air of a man having
business on the premises he walked through the front door along with a
group of helpers from the caterer's. Once inside, he sent a name by the
butler to Mrs. Hadley-Smith, who apparently awaited such word, for
promptly she came downstairs and personally escorted the man to a small
study at the back of the first floor; wherein, having been left alone,
he first locked the door leading to the hall and drew the curtains of
the windows giving upon a rear courtyard, and proceeded to make himself
quite at home.

He ate a cold supper which he found spread upon a table and after that
he used the telephone rather extensively. This done, he lit a cigar and
stretched himself upon a sofa, smoking away with the air of a man who
has finished his share of a given undertaking and may take his ease
until the time arrives for renewed action upon his part. Along toward
nine-thirty o'clock, when he had smoked his third cigar, there came a
soft knock thrice repeated upon the door, whereupon he rose and unlocked
the door, but without opening it to see who might be outside he went
back to his couch, lay down and lit a fourth cigar. For the next little
while we may leave him there to his comfortable solitude and his smoke
haze.

Meanwhile the Hon. Sidney Bertram Goldsborough, so called and so
registered at the Hotel Atminster, grew decidedly peevish over the
unaccountable failure of his order to arrive from a theatrical
costumer's, where he had selected it some three days earlier. He was
morally sure it had been sent hours earlier by special messenger from
the costume shop. In answer to his vexed inquiries the parcels
department of the hotel was equally sure that no box or package
consigned to Mr. Goldsborough had been received. Finally, after ten
o'clock, the missing costume was brought to the gentleman's door with a
message of profound regret from the assistant manager, who expressed