asses, a queer voice and a nasty habit of asking
unexpected questions.

In place of this commonplace personality, she encountered a handsome,
well-groomed gentleman--one who won confidence by his intellectual face,
and retained it by invisibly establishing a social equality.
Fortunately, there is yet in Britain an aristocracy wherein good birth
is synonymous with good breeding--a freemasonry whose passwords cannot
be simulated, nor its membership bought.

Brett read the wonder in the girl's eyes, and hastened to explain.

"The Earl of Fairholme," said Brett, "thought I might be of some service
in the matter of your brother's strange disappearance, Miss Talbot. I am
not a professional detective, but my friends are good enough to believe
that I am very successful in unravelling mysteries that are beyond the
ken of Scotland Yard. I have heard something of the facts in this
present affair. Will you trust me so far as to tell me all that is known
to you personally?"

"My uncle, General Fitzjames, has just gone to Scotland Yard," she
began, timidly.

"Quite so. Perhaps you prefer to await his return?"

"Oh, no, I do not mean that. But it is so hard to know how best to act.
Uncle expects the police to accomplish impossibilities. He says that
they should long since have found out what has become of Jack. Perhaps
they may resent my interference."

"My interference, to be exact," said Reggie, with the pleasant smile
that had fascinated so many women. Even Edith Talbot was not wholly
proof against its magic.

"I, personally, have little faith in them," she confessed.

"I have none."

"Well, I will do as you advise."

"Then I recommend you to take me into your confidence. I know Scotland
Yard and its methods. We do not follow the same path."

"I believe in you and trust you," said the girl.

So ingenuous was the look from the large, deep eyes which accompanied
this declaration of confidence, that many men would have pronounced Miss
Talbot to be an experienced flirt. Brett knew better. He simply bowed
his acknowledgements.

"What is it that you want to know?" she continued. "We ourselves are no
better informed than the newspapers as to what has actually happened,
save that four men have been killed as the result of a carefully-planned
robbery. As for my brother----"

She paused and strove hard to force back her tears.

"Your brother has simply vanished, Miss Talbot. If the criminals did not
scruple to leave four