t it in your pocket, as usual," said Barbara.

I may say that I have a habit of losing things and setting the household
from the butler to the lower myrmidons of the kitchen in frantic search,
and calling in gardeners and chauffeurs and nurses and wives and
children to help, only to discover that I have had the wretched object
in my pocket all the time. So accustomed is Barbara to this wolf-cry
that if I came up to her without my head and informed her that I had
lost it, she would be profoundly sceptical.

But this time I was blameless. "I haven't touched it," I declared, "and
I saw it this morning."

"I don't know about this morning," said Barbara. "But I grant you it was
there yesterday evening, because Doria drew our attention to it."

"Doria!" I cried, and I rose, with mouth agape, and our eyes met in a
sudden stare.

"Good Heavens! do you think she has taken it?"

"Who else?" said I. "She came out from here to say good-bye to me in the
garden. She had the opportunity. She was preternaturally animated and
demonstrative at the station--your sex's little guileful way ever since
the world began. She had the stolen key about her. She's going straight
to Jaffery's flat to hunt for those manuscripts."

"Well, let her," said Barbara. "We know she can't find them, because
they don't exist."

"But, my darling Barbara," I cried, "everything else does. And
everything else is there. And there's not a blessed thing locked up in
the place!"

"Do you mean--?" she cried aghast.

"Yes, I do. I must get up to town at once and stop her."

"I'll come with you," said Barbara.

So once more, on altruistic errand, I motored post-haste to London. We
alighted at St. Quentin's Mansions. My friend the porter came out to
receive us.

"Has a lady been here with a key of Mr. Chayne's flat?"

"No, sir, not to my knowledge."

We drew breaths of relief. Our journey had been something of a strain.

"Thank goodness!" said Barbara.

"Should a lady come, don't allow her to enter the flat," said I.

[Illustration: And there, in a wilderness of ransacked drawers and
strewn papers, . . . lay a tiny, black, moaning heap of a woman.]

"I shouldn't give a strange lady entrance in any case," said the porter.

"Good!" said I, and I was about to go. But Barbara, with her ready
common-sense, took me aside and whispered:

"Why not take all these compromising manuscripts home with us?"

In my letter case I had the half-forgotten power of