xtent!"

"That's all right, Jack," said I. "But a friend is one thing and an
accomplice is another. What's your game with Farrell? You haven't
told me yet, though you're asking what gives me the right to know."

He picked up his coat and hat and turned on me with a smile, very
faint and weary and a trifle absent-minded.

"To tell you the truth," said he, as if searching for something at
the back of his mind, "I haven't thought it out quite accurately.
It's near enough to warrant what preparations I'm making: but it
hasn't the shape of a clean proposition--which is the shape my
conscience demands. . . . Don't hurry me, Roddy: let me come around
again to-morrow. . . . I can't invite you to my flat, because I'm
making arrangements to shut it up, and these details get in the way,
all the time. . . . Tell you what.--Meet me, you two, at Prince's
Grill-room to-morrow, one-fifteen, and you shall have the plan of
campaign on a half-sheet of notepaper. I'm a brute, Roddy, to bother
you with these private affairs in the middle of your politics.
But one-fifteen to-morrow, if you can manage. Sure? Right, then.--
So long!"

He wagged, at the door, a benediction on us with his walking-stick
and went down the stairs, I strolled to the window and watched him
cross the turfed square of the court. Jimmy had taken up the poker
and started raking the lower bars of the grate.

"Queer how quietly the Professor takes it," began Jimmy. "I was
half-afraid--Oh, drop it, Otty, old man--I'm sorry!"

We had both wheeled about together, and I held a window cushion,
poised, ready to hurl.

"Of course I didn't mean that, really!" pleaded Jimmy, parrying with
the poker-point. "Sit down and let's talk. Is he mad? . . .
I don't like it."

NIGHT THE NINTH.

THE HUNT IS UP.

Well, I thought it over, and talked it over with Jimmy, and decided
that, much as I loved Jack Foe, he'd have to be more explicit with me
before I undertook this stewardship. You will say that, this being
the only decent decision open, I might have done without the thinking
and the talking. . . . And that's true enough. But, you see, I had
lived with Jack pretty long and pretty close, and this was the first
time I'd ever taken a miss with him. If anyone for the past ten or
fifteen years had suggested to me, concerning Jack Foe, that a day
might come when I shouldn't know where to find him, I--well, I should
have lost my temper. It was inconceivable, ev