e East, as you know, and Sir James is expecting
dispatches to-night. Maurice is not allowed to leave."

"Has he told Sir James yet?"

"He had not when I left," Lady Mary answered. "If he is forced to do so,
it will be ruin! Mr. Ruff, you must help us Maurice is such a dear,
but a mistake like this, at the very beginning of his career, would be
fatal. Here we are. That is my brother waiting just inside the hall."

A young man came up to them in the vestibule. He was somewhat pale, but
otherwise perfectly self-possessed. From the shine of his glossy black
hair to the tips of his patent boots he was, in appearance, everything
that a young Englishman of birth and athletic tastes could hope to be.
Peter Ruff liked the look of him. He waited for no introduction, but
laid his hand at once upon the young man's shoulder.

"Between seven-thirty and arriving here," he said, drawing him on one
side--"quick! Tell me, whom did you see? What opportunities were there
of stealing the paper, and by whom?"

"I finished it at five and twenty past seven," the young man said,
"sealed it in an official envelope, and stood it up on my desk by the
side of my coat and hat and muffler, which my servant had laid there,
ready for me to put on. My bedroom opens out from my sitting room. While
I was dressing, two men called for me--Paul Jermyn and Count von Hern.
They walked through to my bedroom first, and then sat together in the
sitting room until I came out. The door was wide open, and we talked all
the time."

"They called accidentally?" Peter Ruff asked.

"No--by appointment," the young man replied. "We were all coming on here
to the dance, and we had agreed to dine together first at the Savoy."

"You say that you left the paper on your desk with your coat and hat?"
Peter Ruff asked. "Was it there when you came out?"

"Apparently so," the young man answered. "It seemed to be standing in
exactly the same place as where I had left it. I put it into my breast
pocket, and it was only when I arrived here that I fancied the envelope
seemed lighter. I went off by myself and tore it open. There was nothing
inside but half a newspaper!"

"What about the envelope?" Peter Ruff asked. "That must have been the
same sort of one as you had used or you would have noticed it?"

"It was," the Honorable Maurice answered.

"It was a sort which you kept in your room?"

"Yes!" the young man admitted.

"The packet was changed, then, by some one in you