it was my fault that we
came in so soon. Poor sort of host, eh, Jimmy? Fact is, I'm nervous
to-night. Every damned newspaper I've picked up seems to be launching
thunderbolts at the B. & I. And now this is the third day and there's
no news of Stanley."

"Every one seems to know about his disappearance," Jimmy remarked. "They
were all talking about it at the club to-day."

"What do they say?" Lord Dredlinton asked eagerly. "They all leave off
talking about it when I am round."

"Blooming mystery," the young man pronounced. "That's the conclusion
every one seems to arrive at. A chap I know, whose chauffeur pals up with
Rees' valet, told me that he's been having heaps of threatening letters
from fellows who'd got the knock over the B. & I. He seemed to think
they'd done him in."

Dredlinton shivered nervously.

"It's perfectly abominable," he declared. "Here we are supposed to have
the finest police system in the world, and yet a man can disappear from
his rooms in the very centre of London, and no one has even a clue as to
what has become of him."

"Looks bad," Jimmy acknowledged.

"I don't understand much about business affairs," Sarah remarked, "but
the B. & I. case does seem to be a remarkably unpopular undertaking."

Dredlinton kicked a footstool out of his way, frowning angrily.

"The B. & I. is only an ordinary business concern," he insisted. "We
have a right to make money if we are clever enough to do it. We speculate
in lots of other things besides wheat, and we have our losses to face as
well as our profits. I believe that fellow Wingate is at the bottom of
all this agitation. Just like those confounded Americans. Why can't they
mind their own business!"

"It isn't very long," Josephine remarked drily, "since we were rather
glad that America didn't mind her own business."

"Bosh!" her husband scoffed. "If English people are to be bullied and
their liberty interfered with in this manner, we might as well have lost
the war and become a German Colony."

"Don't agree with you, sir," Jimmy declared, with most unusual
seriousness. "I don't like the way you are talking, and I'm dead off the
B. & I. myself. I'd cut my connection with it, if I were you. Been
looking for trouble for a long time--and, great Scot, I believe they're
going to get it!"

"Damned rubbish!" Lord Dredlinton muttered angrily.

"Heavens! Jimmy's in earnest!" Sarah exclaimed, rising. "I am sure it's
time we went. We are overdue at h