shoes off. But for goodness' sake don't
sneeze or fall or anything of that sort just outside the door."

Hilda returned in about ten minutes. She told us that she whistled
"Annie Laurie" on her way upstairs so as to give any one who might hear
her the impression that she was the boy employed by the hotel proprietor
to clean boots. The ruse, a brilliantly original one, was entirely
successful. The bridge party, as I learned next day, including Miss
Battersby, had gone to bed early. They did not play very much bridge.
Hilda brought Selby-Harrison's form of guarantee with her. It was
written on a sheet of blue foolscap paper and ornamented with a penny
stamp, necessary, so a footnote informed me, because the sum of money
involved was more than two pounds. I signed it with a fountain pen by
the light of a wax match which Lalage struck on the sole of her shoe and
obligingly held so that it did not quite burn my hair.

CHAPTER VII

It is only very gradually that one comes to appreciate Lalage. I had
known her since she was quite a small child. I even recollect her
insisting upon my wheeling her perambulator once when I was a schoolboy,
and naturally resented such an indignity. Yet I had failed to realize
the earnestness and vigour of her character. I did not expect anything
to come of the guarantee which I had signed for her. I might and
ought to have known better; but I was in fact greatly surprised when I
received by post the first copy of the _Anti-Tommy-Rot Gazette_. It was
not a very large publication, but it contained more print than I should
have thought obtainable for the sum of ten pounds. Besides the title of
the magazine and a statement that this issue was Vol. I, No. I., there
was a picture of a young lady, clothed like the goddess Diana in the
illustrations of the classical dictionary, who was urging on several
large dogs of most ferocious appearance. In the distance, evidently
terrified by the dogs, were three animals of no recognized species,
but very disgusting in appearance, which bore on their sides the words
"Tommy Rot." The huntress was remarkably like Hilda in appearance and
the initials "L.B." at the bottom left-hand corner of the picture told
me that the artist was Lalage herself. One of the dogs was a highly
idealized portrait of a curly haired retriever belonging to my mother.
The objects of the chase I did not recognize as copies of any beasts
known to me; though there was something in the a