and saw their booking-clerks in patient waiting behind the
counter. "Ah, there you are, eh? Well, it's all settled...."

Thus was the thing accomplished.

And shortly thereafter these two paused in parting at the door.

"Going my way?" enquired Mr. Iff.

Staff named whatever destination he had in mind.

"Sorry. I go t'other way. Take care of yourself. See you tomorrow."

"Good-bye," said Staff, and took himself briskly off.

But Mr. Iff did not at once go in the opposite direction. In fact, he
moved no more than a door or two away, and then stopped, apparently
fascinated by an especially stupid shop-window show.

He had very quick eyes, had Mr. Iff, so alert and observant that they
had made him alive to a circumstance which had altogether escaped
Staff's notice--a trifling incident that took place just as they were on
the point of parting.

While still they were standing in the doorway, a motor-cab, plunging
down Haymarket, had swooped in a wide curve as if meaning to pull in at
the curb in front of the steamship company's office. The cab carried a
solitary passenger--a remarkably pretty young woman--and on its roof a
remarkably large and ornate bandbox.

It was, in fact, the bandbox which had first fixed the interest of Mr.
Iff. Only an introspective vision, indeed, such as that of the
imaginative and thoughtful Mr. Staff, could have overlooked the approach
of a bandbox so big and upstanding, so profusely beflowered and so
prominently displayed.

Now before the cab could stop, its fare, who had been bending forward
and peering out of the window as if anxious to recognise her
destination, started still farther forward, seized the speaking-tube and
spoke into its mouthpiece in a manner of sharp urgency. And promptly the
driver swerved out from the curb and swung his car away down Pall Mall.

If it was mere inquisitiveness that held Mr. Iff rooted to the spot,
gaping at that uninteresting window show, it served to discover him in
the guise of an admirably patient person. Fully fifteen minutes elapsed
before the return of the motor-cab was signalled unmistakably by the
blatant bandbox bobbing back high above the press of traffic. And when
this happened, Mr. Iff found some further business with the steamship
company, and quietly and unobtrusively slipped back into the
booking-office.

As he did so the cab stopped at the curb and the pretty young woman
jumped out and followed Mr. Iff across the threshold--noti