is mother's, and one of my cylinders
is missing. Come on, Jimmy.--Good-by, Josephine dear! You'll forgive
us if we hurry off? I did tell you we had to go directly after dinner,
didn't I?"

"You did, dear," Josephine assented, walking towards the door with her
friend. "Come in and see me again soon."

There was the sound of voices in the hall. Lord Dredlinton started
eagerly.

"That's the fellow from Scotland Yard, I hope," he said. "Promised to
come round to-night. Perhaps they've news of Stanley."

The door was thrown open, and the new butler ushered in a tall, thin man
dressed in morning clothes of somewhat severe cut.

"Inspector Shields, my lord," he announced.

CHAPTER XIX

Lord Dredlinton's impatience was almost feverish. One would have imagined
that Stanley Rees had been one of his dearest friends, instead of a young
man whom he rather disliked.

"Come in. Inspector," he invited. "Come in. Glad to see you. Any news?"

"None whatever, my lord," was the laconic reply.

Dredlinton's face fell. He looked at his visitor, speechless for a
moment. The inspector gravely saluted Josephine and accepted the chair to
which she waved him.

"Upon my word," Dredlinton declared, "this is most unsatisfactory! Most
disappointing!"

"I was afraid that you might find it so," the inspector assented.

Josephine turned in her chair and contemplated the latter with some
interest. He was quietly dressed in well-cut but unobtrusive clothes. His
long, narrow face had features of sensibility. His hair was grizzled a
little at the temples. His composure seemed part of the man, passive and
imperturbable.

"Isn't a disappearance of this sort rather unusual?" she enquired.

"Most unusual, your ladyship," the man admitted. "I scarcely remember a
similar case."

"'Unusual' seems to me a mild word!" Dredlinton exclaimed angrily. "Here
is a well-known young man, with friends in every circle of life and
engagements at every hour, a partner in an important commercial
undertaking, who is absolutely removed from his rooms in one of the
best-known hotels in London, and at the end of three days the police are
powerless to find out what has become of him!"

"Up to the present, my lord," the inspector confessed, "we certainly
have no clue."

"But, dash it all, you must have some idea as to what has become of him?"
his questioner insisted. "Young men don't disappear through the windows
of the Milan Bar, do they?"

"If you a