bye. I will wire you in the morning."

He placed the mysterious letter in his note-book, gave them a parting
smile, and was gone.

He managed to catch the 8.15, which started punctually, the sole remnant
of railway virtue possessed by the Chatham and South Eastern line. A
restful porter, quickened into active life by a half-crown tip, found
him a vacant seat in a first-class smoking carriage, and Brett's hasty
glance round the compartment revealed that his travelling companions, as
far as Dover, at any rate, were severely respectable Britons bound for
the Riviera.

The harbour station at Dover wore its usual aspect of dejected misery.
The hurrying passengers pushed and jostled each other in their frenzied
efforts to board the steamer, for the average British tourist has a
rooted belief that such pushing and jostling and banging of apoplectic
portmanteaus against the legs of others are absolutely necessary if he
would not be left behind.

With an experience born of many voyages, Brett quickly noted the
direction of the wind and the vessel's bearings. A stiff breeze had
brought up a moderate sea, and the barrister dumped down his bag and
flung himself into a chair on what a novice would regard as the weather
side of the charthouse. He bore the discomfort for a few minutes, and
was rewarded for his foresight by possessing the most sequestered nook
on deck when the vessel turned her head seawards and began one of the
shortest, but perhaps the most disagreeable, voyages in the world.

Having retained his seat long enough to establish a proprietary right
therein, Brett rose and made a short tour of the ship. To distinguish
any one on deck was almost out of the question. The passengers were
huddled up in indefinable shapes, and there was hardly light sufficient
to effect a stumbling progress over the multitude of hand-baggage. So
the barrister dived down the companion-way and cannoned against a burly
individual who had propped himself against a bulkhead on the main deck
saloon.

Something hard in the man's pockets gave Brett a sharp rap, and when
they separated with mutual apologies, he laughed silently.

"Handcuffs!" he murmured. "Scotland Yard is always prepared for
emergencies. I will wager a considerable sum that as soon as Winter
reached headquarters his story about the letter caused a telegram to be
despatched to Dover. Here's a detective bound for Paris and prepared to
manacle Talbot the moment he sees him. What