ive, or leap into the flames of the kitchen fire,
like OEnone, don't you know.'

'Bosh. Vatel was far from the sea, and he had not a fish-monger's shop
round the corner. Be modern.'

Logan rumpled his hair, 'Can't I get her to lunch at a restaurant and ply
her with the wines of Eastern France? No, she is Temperance personified.
Can't we send her a forged telegram to say that her mother is dying?
Servants seem to have such lots of mothers, always inconveniently, or
conveniently, moribund.'

'I won't have forgery. Great heavens, how obsolete you are! Besides,
that would not put her employer in a rage.'

'Could I go and consult ---?' he mentioned a specialist. 'He is a man of
ideas.'

'He is a man of the purest principles--and an uncommonly hard hitter.'

'It is his purity I want. My own mind is hereditarily lawless. I want
something not immoral, yet efficacious. There was that parson, whom you
say the woman's cat nearly devoured. Like Paul with beasts he fought the
cat. Now, I wonder if that injured man is not meditating some priestly
revenge that would do our turn and get rid of Miss Blowser?'

Merton shook his head impatiently. His own invention was busy, but to no
avail. Miss Blowser seemed impregnable. Kutuzoff Hedzoff, the puss,
stalked up to Logan and leaped on his knees. Logan stroked him, Kutuzoff
purred and blinked, Logan sought inspiration in his topaz eyes. At last
he spoke: 'Will you leave this affair to me, Merton? I think I have
found out a way.'

'What way?'

'That's my secret. You are so beastly moral, you might object. One
thing I may tell you--it does not compromise the Honourable Company of
Disentanglers.'

'You are not going to try any detective work; to find out if she is a
woman with a past, with a husband living? You are not going to put a
live adder among the eels? I daresay drysalters eat eels. It is the
reading of sensational novels that ruins our youth.'

'What a suspicious beggar you are. Certainly I am neither a detective
nor a murderer _a la Montepin_!

'No practical jokes with the victuals?'

'Of course not.'

'No kidnapping Miss Blowser?'

'Certainly no kidnapping--Miss Blowser.'

'Now, honour bright, is your plan within the law? No police-court
publicity?'

'No, the police will have no say or show in the matter; at least,' said
Logan, 'as far as my legal studies inform me, they won't. But I can take
counsel's opinion if you insist on it.'