person refuses to play to the rules, and demands
ready money instead of shares in the next venture. This had happened
now, and it had flattened Mr. Windlebird like an avalanche.

He was a philosopher, but he could not help feeling a little galled that
the demand which had destroyed him had been so trivial. He had handled
millions--on paper, it was true, but still millions--and here he was
knocked out of time by a paltry twenty thousand pounds.

"Are you absolutely sure that nothing can be done?" persisted Mrs.
Windlebird. "Have you tried every one?"

"Every one, dear moon-of-my-delight--the probables, the possibles, the
highly unlikelies, and the impossibles. Never an echo to the minstrel's
wooing song. No, my dear, we have got to take to the boats this time.
Unless, of course, some one possessed at one and the same time of twenty
thousand pounds and a very confiding nature happens to drop from the
clouds."

As he spoke, an aeroplane came sailing over the tops of the trees beyond
the tennis-lawn. Gracefully as a bird it settled on the smooth turf, not
twenty yards from where he was seated.

* * * * *

Roland Bleke stepped stiffly out onto the tennis-lawn. His progress
rather resembled that of a landsman getting out of an open boat in
which he has spent a long and perilous night at sea. He was feeling more
wretched than he had ever felt in his life. He had a severe cold. He had
a splitting headache. His hands and feet were frozen. His eyes smarted.
He was hungry. He was thirsty. He hated cheerful M. Feriaud, who had
hopped out and was now busy tinkering the engine, a gay Provencal air
upon his lips, as he had rarely hated any one, even Muriel Coppin's
brother Frank.

So absorbed was he in his troubles that he was not aware of Mr.
Windlebird's approach until that pleasant, portly man's shadow fell on
the turf before him.

"Not had an accident, I hope, Mr. Bleke?"

Roland was too far gone in misery to speculate as to how this genial
stranger came to know his name. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Windlebird,
keen student of the illustrated press, had recognized Roland by his
photograph in the Daily Mirror. In the course of the twenty yards' walk
from house to tennis-lawn she had put her husband into possession of
the more salient points in Roland's history. It was when Mr. Windlebird
heard that Roland had forty thousand pounds in the bank that he sat up
and took notice.

"Lead me to hi