you saying about the Leithcourts, Charley?" exclaimed
Durnford, turning quickly from Hanbury. "I know some people of that
name--Philip Leithcourt, who has a daughter named Muriel."

"Well, they sound much the same. But if you know them, my dear old chap,
I really don't envy you your friends," declared the Major with a laugh.

"Why not?"

"Well, Gregg will tell you," he said. "He knows, perhaps, more than I
do. But," he added, "they may not, of course, be the same people."

"I first met them yachting over at Algiers," Jack said. "And then again
at Malta, where they seemed to have quite a lot of friends. They had a
steam-yacht, the _Iris_, and were often up and down the Mediterranean."

"Must be the same people," declared the Major. "Leithcourt spoke once or
twice of his yacht, but we all put it down as a non-existent vessel,
because he was always drawing the long bow about his adventures."

"And how did you first come to know him?" I asked of the Major eagerly.

"Oh, I don't know. Somebody brought him to mess, and we struck up an
acquaintance across the table. He seemed a good chap, and when he asked
me to shoot I accepted. On arrival up at Rannoch, however, one thing
struck me as jolly strange, and that was that among the people I was
asked to meet was one of the very worst blacklegs about town. He called
himself Martin Woodroffe up there--although I'd known him at the old
Corinthian Club as Dick Archer. He was believed then to be one of a
clever gang of international thieves."

"When I first met him he gave me the name of Hornby," I said. "It was in
Leghorn, where he was on board a yacht called the _Lola_, of which he
represented himself as owner."

"He left Rannoch very suddenly," remarked Bartlett. "We understood that
he was engaged to marry Muriel. If so, I'm sorry for her, poor girl."

"What!" cried Durnford, starting up. "That man to marry Muriel
Leithcourt?"

"Yes," I said. "Why?"

But his countenance had turned pale, and he gave no answer to my
question.

"If these same Leithcourts are really friends of yours, Durnford, old
fellow, I'm sorry I've said anything against them," the Major exclaimed
in an apologetic tone. "Only the end of my visit was so abrupt and so
extraordinary, and the company such a mixed one, that--well, to tell you
the truth, the people are a mysterious lot altogether."

"Perhaps our Leithcourts are not the same as those Jack knows," I
remarked, in order to escape from a rath