.

Sir Alfred glanced toward the closed door. Without a doubt they were
alone.

"I don't know," he said. "Mistakes of this sort don't often occur. As I
looked around to-night, Ronnie, I thought--I couldn't help thinking that
our position was somewhat wonderful. Does it mean that this is the first
breath of suspicion, I wonder? Was it really only my fancy, or did I
hear to-night the first mutterings of the storm?"

"No one can possibly suspect," Granet declared, "no one who could have
influence enough to override your immunity from censorship. It must have
been an accident."

"I wonder!" Sir Alfred muttered.

"Can't you decode it?" Granet asked eagerly. "There may be news."

Sir Alfred re-entered the larger library and was absent for several
minutes. When he returned, the message was written out in lead pencil:--

Leave London June 4th. Have flares midnight Buckingham Palace, St.
Paul's steps, gardens in front of Savoy. Your last report received.

Granet glanced eagerly back at the original message. It consisted of a
few perfectly harmless sentences concerning various rates of exchange.
He gave it to his uncle with a smile.

"I shouldn't worry about that, sir," he advised.

"It isn't the thing itself I worry about," Sir Alfred said
thoughtfully,--"they'll never decode that message. It's the something
that lies behind it. It's the pointing finger, Ronnie. I thought we'd
last it out, at any rate. Things look different now. You're serious, I
suppose? You don't want to go to America?"

"I don't," Granet replied grimly. "That's all finished, for the present.
You know very well what it is I do want."

Sir Alfred frowned.

"There are plenty of wild enterprises afoot," he admitted, "but I don't
know, after all, that I wish you particularly to be mixed up in them."

"I can't hang about here much longer," his nephew grumbled. "I get the
fever in my blood to be doing something. I had a try this morning."

His uncle looked at him for a moment.

"This morning," he repeated. "Well?"

Granet thrust his hands into his trousers pockets. There was a frown
upon his fine forehead.

"It's that man I told you about," he said bitterly,--"the man I hate.
He's nobody of any account but he always seems to be mixed up in any
little trouble I find myself in. I got out of that affair down at Market
Burnham without the least trouble, and then, as you know, the War Office
sent him down, of all the people on earth, to hold an inqu