ment had
enabled him to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune with
a philosophic "Right ho!" But now everything seemed different. Things
irritated him acutely, which before he had accepted as inevitable--his
Uncle Donald's moustache, for instance, and its owner's habit of
employing it during meals as a sort of zareba or earthwork against the
assaults of soup.

"By gad!" thought Ginger, stopping suddenly opposite Devonshire House.
"If he uses that damned shrubbery as soup-strainer to-night, I'll slosh
him with a fork!"

Hard thoughts... hard thoughts! And getting harder all the time, for
nothing grows more quickly than a mood of rebellion. Rebellion is a
forest fire that flames across the soul. The spark had been lighted in
Ginger, and long before he reached Hyde Park Corner he was ablaze and
crackling. By the time he returned to his club he was practically a
menace to society--to that section of it, at any rate, which embraced
his Uncle Donald, his minor uncles George and William, and his aunts
Mary, Geraldine, and Louise.

Nor had the mood passed when he began to dress for the dismal
festivities of Bleke's Coffee House. He scowled as he struggled morosely
with an obstinate tie. One cannot disguise the fact--Ginger was warming
up. And it was just at this moment that Fate, as though it had been
waiting for the psychological instant, applied the finishing touch.
There was a knock at the door, and a waiter came in with a telegram.

Ginger looked at the envelope. It had been readdressed and forwarded
on from the Hotel Normandie. It was a wireless, handed in on board the
White Star liner Olympic, and it ran as follows:

Remember. Death to the Family. S.

Ginger sat down heavily on the bed.

The driver of the taxi-cab which at twenty-five minutes past seven drew
up at the dingy door of Bleke's Coffee House in the Strand was rather
struck by his fare's manner and appearance. A determined-looking sort of
young bloke, was the taxi-driver's verdict.

CHAPTER V. SALLY HEARS NEWS

It had been Sally's intention, on arriving in New York, to take a room
at the St. Regis and revel in the gilded luxury to which her wealth
entitled her before moving into the small but comfortable apartment
which, as soon as she had the time, she intended to find and make her
permanent abode. But when the moment came and she was giving directions
to the taxi-driver at the dock, there seemed to her something
revoltingly Fil