where several grave-faced visitors were now awaiting a formal interview
with the agitated Professor Andrew Fraser. The young Major's face was
simply radiant, for Mattie Jones had just given him a letter and a
nosegay, sent by the young heiress, who had already read a dozen times
her lover's smuggled love missive of this fateful morning.

"To-day will decide all. And you will be to-morrow as free as any bird
of the air. Then, darling, it will be only you and I, all in all to each
other forever more! I will send for you. Wait for me. Our hold on Andrew
Fraser is the deadly grip of the criminal law. He must yield."

"The flowers are from Miss Nadine's breast; she sent them to you, with
her dearest love," cried Mattie, who rejoiced in the private assurance
that her own liberal-minded sweetheart was soon to be discharged
'for lack of evidence.' Captain Eric Murray had obtained a complete
deposition, which the magistrate representing the Parliament of Jersey
had accepted as State's evidence, under the special orders of the Home
Office.

In Andrew Fraser's study, the sallow face of Professor Alaric Hobbs was
seen bending over many documents and papers. He was not only busied as
a volunteer lawyer for Fraser, but was now the commentator and
collaborator of that famous interrupted work, "The History of Thibet."
"Say! Go light now on the old man!" prayerfully whispered Alaric Hobbs,
drawing Major Hardwicke into the study. "Captain Murray is a devilish
good fellow. He is going to make this great traveler, Frank Hatton,
my friend. And you'll both be benefactors to 'Science,' if you drop
masquerading and post me honestly on Thibet. You are a dead winner in
the little social game here. You get the girl--that's all you want.
She's a nice girl, too! I'll make the old boy come down and be
reasonable. I helped you out, you know. You owe me a good turn, you do."

"All right, Professor Hobbs. I believe I do owe you my wife to be. They
would have carried her off or injured her in some way," said the now
anxious Hardwicke.

"You bet your sweet life they would!" said the strange Western savant,
more forcibly than elegantly. "They would have had the ransom of a
prince, or else they would have chucked her in the channel! That was
their game!"

In the library, General Wragge, Captain Anstruther and Captain Murray
faced Professor Andrew Fraser, whose face was as set as a stone sphinx.
His feeble heart was thumping, for the stolen jewels we