est known
to himself, on tiptoe.

For the first two days Messrs. Cox and Piper waited with exemplary
patience for the remittance, the demands of the landlord, a man of
coarse fibre, being met in the meantime by the latter gentleman from
his own slender resources. They were both reasonable men, and knew from
experience the difficulty of raising money at short notice; but on the
fourth day, their funds being nearly exhausted, an urgent telegram was
dispatched to Mrs. Cox.

Mr. Cox was alone when the reply came, and Mr. Piper, returning to the
inn-parlour, was amazed and distressed at his friend's appearance.

Twice he had to address him before he seemed to be aware of his
presence, and then Mr. Cox, breathing hard and staring at him strangely,
handed him the message.

"Eh?" said Mr. Piper, in amaze, as he read slowly:
"'_No--need--send--money--Uncle--Joseph--has--come--back_.--Berry,' What
does it mean? Is she mad?"

Mr. Cox shook his head, and taking the paper from him, held it at arm's
length and regarded it at an angle.

"How can you be there when you're supposed to be dead?" he said, at
length.

"How can I be there when I'm here?" rejoined Mr. Piper, no less
reasonably.

Both gentlemen lapsed into a wondering silence, devoted to the attempted
solution of their own riddles. Finally Mr. Cox, seized with a bright
idea that the telegram had got altered in transmission, went off to the
post-office and dispatched another, which went straight to the heart of
things:

"_Don't--understand--is--Uncle--Joseph--alive?_"

A reply was brought to the inn-parlour an hour later on. Mr. Cox opened
it, gave one glance at it, and then with a suffocating cry handed it
to the other. Mr. Piper took it gingerly, and his eyebrows almost
disappeared as he read:

"Yes--smoking--in--drawing-room."

His first strong impression was that it was a case for the Psychical
Research Society, but this romantic view faded in favour of a simple
solution, propounded by Mr. Cox with much crisp-ness, that Mrs. Berry
was leaving the realms of fact for those of romance. His actual words
were shorter, but the meaning is the same.

"I'll go home and ask to see you," he said, fiercely; "that'll bring
things to a head, I should think."

"And she'll say I've gone back to London, perhaps," said Mr. Piper,
gifted with sudden clearness of vision. "You can't show her up unless
you take me with you, and that'll show _us_ up. That's her artfulness;
th