criminately such resounding and often well-earned smacks among her
own; and Leonie sighed and leant confidingly against the stout, badly
corseted figure.

"How comfy," she whispered shyly. "How soft you are. Auntie never holds
me in her arms, and when Nannie does she's always full of bits of things
that stick _out_."

And then with a little scream of delight she was away, speeding over the
gravel in the wake of a lumbering great form wending its way in and out
of the crowd.

"Cut along, Sir, or you'll find her 'obnobbing with the gorilla next!
I've never _seen_ such a child for downright mischievousness."

Cuxson cut along as bidden and for all he was worth, pulling Leonie up in
front of the ticket office for elephant rides, and after purchasing
tickets sidetracked her to a tea-table.

* * * * * * * *

"Mind you bring Jingles when you come to stay!"

"Pwomise," called back Leonie from her Nannie's arms as she opened the
door to them and lifted the tired happy child from the taxi.

But she didn't because she never went.

CHAPTER VIII

"And make my seated heart knock at my ribs
Against the use of nature. Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings."--_Shakespeare_.

Big Ben announced the approaching hour of midnight, throwing the
sonorous notes to the soft spring wind which wafted them up to Harley
Street.

Save for the light thrown by the dancing flames of a log fire, and the
orange disc made on the desk by the light of a heavily shaded lamp, the
room was dark; the silence broken only by the occasional crackle of the
wood fire and the faint rustle as Sir Jonathan turned a page.

"Notes" was written in letters of brass across the thick book heavily
bound in leather, and of which the small key to the massive Bramah lock
was kept in a pocket especially made in every waistcoat Sir Jonathan
possessed.

Slowly he read through the page he had just written, crossing a t,
dotting an i, adding or scratching out a word of the writing which was
in no way more legible than that of any other surgeon; and when he had
read he ran his hand through the mass of snow-white hair, sighed, and
pushed the book further back on to the desk.

It is an eerie sound that of someone speaking aloud to himself, and
still more eerie when it occurs in the middle of the night when the
only part of the speaker to be clearly seen is the strong white hands
moving in the orange disc thro