you? Can you go?"

"Yes; I've appealed to my chief and got permission to pick this up
again. My holiday's due and I'll go to Italy instead of Scotland. I
was in it from the first, you know."

"I do know--I know all about it, from my old pal, Albert Redmayne.
He wrote me the most lucid dispatch that ever I read."

"You can go, Mr. Ganns?"

"I must go, boy. Albert wants me."

"Could you get off in a week?"

"A week! To-night."

"To-night, sir! Do you reckon that Mr. Redmayne is in any danger?"

"Don't you?'"

"He's forewarned and you see he's taking great precautions."

"Brendon," said Mr. Ganns, "run round and find when the night boat
sails from Dover, or Folkestone. We'll reach Paris to-morrow
morning, I guess, catch the _Rapide_ for Milan, and be at the Lakes
next day. You'll find we can do so. Then telegraph to this dame that
we start _a week hence_. You take me?"

"You want to get there before we're expected?"

"Exactly."

"Then you do think Mr. Albert Redmayne is in danger?"

"I don't think about it. I know he is. But as this mystery has only
just let loose on him and he's got his weather eye lifting, it will
be all right, I hope, for a few hours. Meantime we arrive."

He took another pinch of snuff and picked up the _Times_. "Will you
lunch with me here in the grillroom at two o'clock?"

"With pleasure, Mr. Ganns."

"Right. And telegraph, right now, that we hope to get off in a
week."

Some hours later they met again and over a steak and green peas
Brendon reported that the boat train left Victoria at eleven and
that the _Rapide_ would start from Paris on the following morning at
half past six.

"We reach Bevano some time after noon next day," he said, "and can
either go on to Milan and then come back to Como and travel by boat
to Menaggio, where Mr. Redmayne lives, or else leave the train at
Bevano, take steamer on Maggiore, cross to Lugano, and cross again
to Como. That way we land right at Menaggio. There's not much in it
for time."

"We'll go that way, then, and I'll see the Lakes."

Peter Ganns spoke little while he partook of a light meal. He
picked a fried sole and drank two glasses of white wine. Then he ate
a dish of green peas and compared their virtues with green corn. He
enjoyed the spectacle of Brendon's hearty appetite and bewailed his
inability to join him in red meat and a pint of Burton.

"Lucky dog," he said. "When I was young I did the like. I love food.
You need ne