s of his
club, shaping a course through Whitehall and Charing Cross to Cockspur
Street, where, with the unerring instinct of a homing pigeon, he dodged
hastily into the booking-office of a steamship company.

Now Mystery is where one finds it, and Romantic Adventure is as a rule
to be come upon infesting the same identical premises. Mr. Staff was not
seeking mysteries and the last role in the world in which he could fancy
himself was that of Romantic Adventurer. But in retrospect he can see
quite clearly that it was there, in the humdrum and prosaic setting of a
steamship booking-office, that he first stumbled (all unwittingly) into
the toils of his Great Adventure.

When he entered, there was but one other person on the outer or public
side of the booking-counter; and he, sticking close in a far corner and
inaudibly conferring with a clerk, seemed so slight and unpretending a
body that Staff overlooked his existence altogether until circumstances
obliged him to recognise it.

The ignored person, on the other hand, showed an instant interest in the
appearance of Mr. Staff. You might have thought that he had been waiting
for the latter to come in--absurd as this might seem, in view of the
fact that Staff had made up his mind to book for home only within the
last quarter-hour. None the less, on sight of him this other patron of
the company, who had seemed till then to be of two minds as to what he
wanted, straightened up and bent a freshened interest on the cabin-plot
which the clerk had spread out upon the counter for his advisement. And
a moment after Staff had audibly stated his wishes, the other prodded a
certain spot of the chart with a thin and fragile forefinger.

"I'll take this one," he said quietly.

"Upper'r lower?" enquired his clerk.

"Lower."

"Then-Q," said the clerk....

Meanwhile Staff had caught the eye of an impregnable young Englishman
behind the counter; and, the latter coming forward, he opened
negotiations with a succinct statement:

"I want to book on the Autocratic, sailing tomorrow from Liverpool, if
I'm not mistaken."

"Quite so," said his clerk, not without condescension. "For yourself,
may I awsk?"

"For myself alone."

"Then-Q." The clerk fetched a cabin-plot.

"I'm afraid, sir," he said, removing a pencil from behind his ear the
better to make his meaning clear, "there's not much choice. It's quite
late to book, you know; and this is the rush season for westbound
traffic; e