ls about with them. Of course they
know the police departments of foreign cities. All jewel dealers make a
point of that. Hargrave's father was an old friend of Sir Henry Marquis,
chief of the C. I. D., and the young man always went to see him when he
happened in London. That explains the freedom of his talk to Hargrave on
this night in the Empire Club in Piccadilly.

The young man went over and sat down by the fire. The big room was
empty. The sounds outside seemed muffled and distant. The incident that
had just passed impressed him. He wondered why people should imagine
that a purchasing agent of a jewel house must be a sort of expert in the
devices of mystery. As has been said, the thing's a notion. Everything
is shipped through reliable transportation companies and insured. There
was much more mystery in a shipload of horses--the nine hundred horses
that were galloping through the head of Sir Henry Marquis--than in all
the five prosaic years during which young Hargrave had succeeded his
father as a jewel buyer. The American was impressed by this mystery of
the nine hundred horses. Sir Henry had said it was a mystery in every
direction.

Now, as he sat alone before the fire in the colony room of the Empire
Club and thought about it, the thing did seem inexplicable. Why should
the metropolitan police care who imported horses, or in what port a
shipload of them was landed? The war was over. Nobody was concerned
about the importation of horses. Why should Sir Henry be so disturbed
about it? But he was disturbed; and he had rushed off to Paris to see an
expert on ciphers. That seemed a tremendous lot of trouble to take. The
Baronet knew the horses were on the sea coming from America, he said. If
he knew that much, how could he fail to discover the boat on which
they were carried and the port at which they would arrive? Nobody could
conceal nine hundred horses!

Hargrave was thinking about that, idly, before the glow of the coal
fire, when the second episode in this extraordinary affair arrived.

A steward entered.

"Visitor, please," he said, "to see Mr. Hargrave."

Then he presented his tray with a card. The jewel dealer took the card
with some surprise. Everybody knew that he was at the Empire Club. It is
a colony thing with chambers for foreign guests. A list of arrivals is
always printed. He saw at a glance that it was not a man's card; the
size was too large. Then he turned it over before the light of the fire