Place me under arrest. I shall be delighted to see you perpetrate another blunder."

Without being aware of it, Brother Neel had hit the inspector on a weak spot. Mr. Byde's morbid mistrust of "appearances" has been alluded to before. He took refuge in a curt platitude, hoping that the other's fury might prevent him from remaining passive.

"Besides," resumed the temperance lecturer roughly, "you are in a foreign country, please to recollect. Ha! Place me under arrest? You will be careful to keep your hands off me, both of you. Where is your warrant to take me into custody? I was weak-by the Lord Harry, now I think of it, I was incredibly weak!-to yield in the first place to your meddling with my personal affairs. Arrest me at your peril!"

"Toppin can do it in a few minutes, if you'd like to see how it's to be done," observed the inspector. "I'm afraid you don't quite grasp the situation yet. A man believed to have had stolen property in his possession was found murdered in the mail-train which arrived in Paris from London early in the morning. The property in question was missing. You, who were a traveller by the same train, are now found, on the second evening after the murder, to have the missing property in your possession: I won't say 'secreted.' Now, the French police —with whom Mr. Toppin has official relations—are very actively occupied in seeking out traces of the crime; and if you were indicated to them you may depend upon it that without waiting twenty-four minutes, to say nothing of twenty-four hours, they would have you under arrest

as

"What! As a murderer?"

"As the individual implicated by the circumstances of the case."

"What!--I should be suspected of the murder of that man?"

"That is what would happen if Mr. Toppin, my colleague, called them in. That is what will happen, I am afraid; for, upon this evidence, unexplained"-the inspector touched the small portfolio-"we shall be bound to call upon our French colleagues.”

"But as we drove along just now, the evening newspapers were announcing the arrest of the assassin." "Yes?"

"Well, then-how--" Brother Neel was about to put an obvious question, but suddenly changed his tone. "That could not be❞—he recoiled, as he gazed from Inspector Byde to Detective Toppin, and from Detective Toppin to Inspector Byde.

"Oh, no," interposed Toppin impetuously-"a mistake, that case!"

"This is hard to bear!" exclaimed Brother Neel, striking his forehead with one hand, and clenching the other.

"Yes; and we can't waste any more time over it," said the inspector peremptorily. "Now, I will go farther with you than my duty requires me to go. You arrived in Paris yesterday morning by the night-mail from London, due here at 5.50. Not long after your arrival you returned to the post-office at the railway-station-come: you see we know more than you imagined! Make your explanation now, and have done with it. Otherwise--"

"I went back to the station post-office," answered Brother Neel readily enough-"because I had an urgent telegram to send off, and a letter. The letter was ad

dressed to the council of the I.O.T. A., and the telegram to the secretary of the I. O. T. A., informing him that the letter was on its way, and begging him to call the members of the Council together for business of the most important nature. This business is the same with regard to which you have demanded explanations. The reply from the Council may arrive to-morrow morning, or at any time I may receive a telegram. My object, however, in requesting the delay of twenty-four hours, was that I should be enabled to wire to the secretary at once, urging him to send me back by the very first post my own letter to the Council, with my own envelope bearing the stamps, post-mark, etc. He would, of course, do as I requested, and I should receive them back by to-morrow evening-that is to say, in twenty-four hours' time."

"What would that prove?" inquired Inspector Byde. "Prove? It would prove--" The speaker stopped short as though he measured his own situation for the first time with independent eyes. "Well, it would prove my good faith," he went on, with some embarrassment

"and yet I suppose that-I suppose that you would not admit it to prove anything!" He took a hasty turn or two about the room. "So far as that goes there would be nothing in the contents of my letter to the Council which you could not learn from me now, if——” He went abruptly to the mantelpiece, poured out a glass of water, and drank it nervously. "I am not my own master in this. The I. O. T. A. must not be compromised, and I ought not to move until I hear from them. If they are compromised by me—if the cause in general suffers through my instrumentality-why, my prospects would be entirely ruined! In one moment I should forfeit my position, I should lose my means of livelihood. My name

is known on temporance platforms from one end of England to the other; I should be a marked man, and cast out. What would become of me? At my age begin life again——how? How? Would you have me sink into crime or into genteel mendicancy? What work could I offer to perform-what work could I-I-tamely sit down to and drudge at after so many years of——"

“Ah, things are made very pleasant for you 'brethren' of the temperance bands," observed Mr. Byde irrelevantly, and with a sternness in which his idiosyncrasy asserted itself. You lay down the law to other people quite old enough to decide for themselves; you take their money and spend it on yourselves; and you are answerable to nobody but yourselves. I don't wonder that your lazy, prating, selfish life unfits you for useful work."

"I see that I must expect no mercy from you, Inspector Byde," was the reply. "I see that I must take my risk; I see that if I refuse to speak until I receive the sanction I have asked for-asked for, loyally—in the very interests of the people I serve, and with no other motive-I see that my struggle with the circumstances of the moment will be of no avail. You will do your duty-you must do your duty. In the absence of explanation from me, you will have to cause my arrest. The harm which I am seeking to stave off will be done irremediably. Perhaps I shall serve them best by speaking at once." He refilled the glass, and moistened his lips. "If you could await my letter, you would acknowledge that I have acted in good faith-in apparent good faith I mean, of course: oh, I comprehend your bias! If I had any doubts whatever upon the subject, the extraordinary observations you permitted yourself just now would extinguish them. I don't know, by the way,

whether it forms part of your duty, Mr. Inspector Byde, to lecture your prisoners”—the inspector waved his hand in deprecation, and, yes, a slight flush mounted to his cheeks" for that is what my position here amounts to!

-to lecture your prisoners on their choice of a vocation: but allow me to say that an attitude of that kind constitutes a gross abuse of your advantage. You will not believe my story, I suppose. But you shall hear it!"

"As briefly as possible," said the inspector, in a gentler tone.

Brother Neel threw himself into a fauteuil.

"I was a passenger from London with the man whose body lies at the Morgue. I know his name; he told it me in conversation. He gave me some idea, ostensibly, of his business position, too. Between London and Dover--"

"We are acquainted with your movements during the first part of your journey; and only one thing concerns us -how. did this property pass into your possession?"

"You may ask me why I have not come forward to identify this man, knowing what I know from his own lips? That is one point upon which I preferred to consult the Council of my society. The deceased and myself were fellow-passengers from Calais to Boulogne. There were individuals travelling with us whose looks neither of us liked, and whose society we both endeavoured to avoid. From a curious incident on the journey I half suspected that the deceased was a member of your own calling, instead of being, as he had related for the benefit of us all, a Mr. Remington, residing in the Park Lane neighbourhood. He changed compartments, and I must