ext meeting of importance took place--the
next, that is to say, to which I myself was admitted: and it was again
in Mr. Sheppard's house in Wapping. There were gathered there, for the
first time mostly all the principal gentlemen in the affair; and this
was one more sign of how reckless they were becoming that I was admitted
there at all. But I think it was because Mr. Chiffinch and I had been
very discreet and careful that they thought that they had me in hand,
and that I was somewhat of an innocent fool, and revealed no more than
what they wished.

Before I went there--for I went by water this time, in a private wherry,
to Wapping Old Stairs, I went first to Mr. Chiffinch to see if there
were any news for me.

"Why, yes," he said, when he had me alone, "there is a little matter I
would like you to find out about. The Duke of Monmouth was here with my
Lord Grey, a day or two ago: they all dined with Sir Thomas Armstrong:
and all three of them went round the posts and the guardroom, and saw
everything. Now what was that for?"

"Sir Thomas Armstrong?" said I in astonishment. "Why he is--"

I was about to say he was one of His Majesty's closest friends and evil
geniuses; but I stopped. There was no need.

The page smiled.

"Yes," he said. "Well; Mr. Mallock? If you can find out anything--"

"And the Duke too!" I said. "Well; I was right, was I not?" (For what I
had found out was true enough--that His Grace was far more deeply
involved than we had at first suspected. We had known that he was their
_protege_, but not that he was so much in their counsel, and of one mind
with them.)

"His Grace will come to some disaster, I think," said Mr. Chiffinch very
tranquilly.

* * * * *

When I came to Wapping Old Stairs it appeared that the watermen there
knew well enough what was forward; for while one ran down to help me
from the wherry, a number of others stood watching as if they knew what
I had come for; and all saluted me as I went up. At the head of the
stairs, I looked back, and two more wherries with a gentleman in each
were just coming in.

Mr. Sheppard himself opened the door to me, and appeared a little
confused, looking over his shoulder into the entrance-hall where two or
three gentlemen were just going into the great parlour on the left. I
could have sworn that one of them was the Duke, from the way he carried
himself. With him was another whom I thought I knew, but he was