so where should they come to be
sould if it wasn't to Dunsloe?" The waiter had a telegram in his hand,
and he turned the address to Worlington Dodds. "Shure I niver heard
such a name, sorr. Maybe you could tell me who owns it?"

Dodds looked at the envelope. Strellenhaus was the name. "No, I don't
know," said he. "I never heard it before. It's a foreign name.
Perhaps if you were--"

But at that moment a little round-faced, ruddy-cheeked gentleman, who
was breakfasting at the next table, leaned forward and interrupted him.

"Did you say a foreign name, sir?" said he.

"Strellenhaus is the name."

"I am Mr. Strellenhaus--Mr. Julius Strellenhaus, of Liverpool. I was
expecting a telegram. Thank you very much."

He sat so near that Dodds, without any wish to play the spy, could not
help to some extent overlooking him as he opened the envelope.
The message was a very long one. Quite a wad of melon-tinted paper came
out from the tawny envelope. Mr. Strellenhaus arranged the sheets
methodically upon the table-cloth in front of him, so that no eye but
his own could see them. Then he took out a note-book, and, with an
anxious face, he began to make entries in it, glancing first at the
telegram and then at the book, and writing apparently one letter or
figure at a time. Dodds was interested, for he knew exactly what the
man was doing. He was working out a cipher. Dodds had often done it
himself. And then suddenly the little man turned very pale, as if the
full purport of the message had been a shock to him. Dodds had done
that also, and his sympathies were all with his neighbours. Then the
stranger rose, and, leaving his breakfast untasted, he walked out of the
room.

"I'm thinkin' that the gintleman has had bad news, sorr," said the
confidential waiter.

"Looks like it," Dodds answered; and at that moment his thoughts were
suddenly drawn off into another direction.

The boots had entered the room with a telegram in his hand. "Where's
Mr. Mancune?" said he to the waiter.

"Well, there are some quare names about. What was it you said?"

"Mr. Mancune," said the boots, glancing round him. "Ah, there he is!"
and he handed the telegram to a gentleman who was sitting reading the
paper in a corner.

Dodds's eyes had already fallen upon this man, and he had wondered
vaguely what he was doing in such company. He was a tall, white-haired,
eagle-nosed gentleman, with a waxed moustache and a carefully poin