nd as he
read it, suspicion again seized upon Hillyard. After all, why should a
Commodore want to see him in a little street of the Adelphi. Perhaps,
after all, the indifferent official of Alexandria was right and the
Commodore had ambitions in the line of revues!

"I had better go and have it out with him," he decided, and, taking his
hat and stick, he walked eastwards to Charing Cross. He turned into a
short street. At the bottom a stone arch showed where once the Thames
had lapped. Now, beyond its grey-white curve, were glimpses of green
lawns and the cries of children at their play. Hillyard stopped at a
house by the side of the arch. A row of brass plates confronted him, but
the name of Commodore Graham was engraved on none of them. Hillyard rang
the housekeeper's bell and inquired.

"On the top floor on the left," he was told.

He climbed many little flights of stairs, and at the top of each his
heart sank a little lower. When the stairs ended he confronted a mean,
brown-varnished door; and he almost turned and fled. After all, the
monstrous thing looked possible. He stood upon the threshold of a set of
chambers. Was he really to be asked to collaborate in a revue? He rang
the bell, and a young woman opened the door and barred the way.

"Whom do you wish to see?" she asked.

"Commodore Graham."

"Commodore Graham?" she repeated with an air of perplexity, as though
this was the first time she had ever heard the name.

Across her shoulder Hillyard looked into a broad room, where three other
girls sat at desks, and against one wall stood a great bureau with many
tiny drawers like pigeon-holes. Several of these drawers stood open and
disclosed cards standing on their edges and packed against each other.
Hillyard's hopes revived. Not for nothing had he sat from seven to ten
in the office of a shipping agent at Alicante. Here was a card-index,
and of an amazing volume. But his interlocutor still barred the way.

"Have you an appointment with Commodore Graham?" she asked, still with
that suggestion that he had lunched too well and had lost his way.

"No. But he sent for me across half the world."

The girl raised a pair of steady grey eyes to his.

"Will you write your name here?"

She allowed him to pass and showed him some slips of paper on a table in
the middle of the room. Hillyard obeyed, and waited, and in a few
moments she returned, and opened a door, crossed a tiny ante-room and
knocked again. Hilly