opping his voice. "Poor Lady
Drelincourt and her one-year-old boy were found dead in bed one morning,
without even the suspicion of a mark of violence upon them.

"My lord was away from home when it happened, and the shock almost
unseated his reason, and for weeks after the sad event he was down with
brain fever. Though quite a young man, his hair turned snowy-white when
he realised the awful extent of his cruel loss, and awoke from his long
illness only to find that his dead had long been buried out of his
sight. Doctors and detectives were called in at the time, but
everything was in vain. The detectives were hopelessly at fault, and
the only theory the doctors could advance was that mother and child had
been chloroformed to death.

"The servants were old family retainers, and were entirely beyond
suspicion, being all of them passionately devoted to their sweet young
mistress, and bound to their loved master as much by his personal worth
and goodness as by the unbroken ties of voluntary servitude during three
generations.

"And now, Kenyon, will you undertake the case? The reward is already
well worth working for, great though the risks may be; but I can
undertake to _double it_ if you bring our man in alive. You will get a
fine sporting holiday up country, with all expenses liberally provided
for, and in point of fact it is the opportunity of a lifetime--or
perhaps I ought to say that to anyone but yourself it would be such."

The detective sat thinking for awhile, and then said, "See here, Mr
Driffield; this is a large order--a very large order--and I must just
reason the matter out in my own way; but I'll let you have my answer by
or before this time to-morrow. Your man may be only shooting in the far
interior, or camping out in this infernal secret territory of the
Mormons, or he may be--well, elsewhere."

The two then separated for the night, the lawyer going straight to the
telegraph station, and in a few minutes more the submarine cable had the
following message flashing over it:--

"To Drelincourt, London.

"Splendid man probably available; terms, two thousand and expenses.
Shall I secure him?

"Driffield."

Arrived at his hotel, the detective sought his own room, lighted his
pipe, and puzzled over his notebook for upwards of an hour, idly
drumming on the table with his fingers, and listlessly turning over the
leaves pregnant with flotsam and jetsam of criminal interest, and
glancing from ti