to you, and without you noticing it?"

"The carriage was empty when we got home, your Grace."

"Was either of the doors open?"

"No, your Grace."

"You fellows have been up to some infernal mischief. You have made a mess of it. You never picked up the Duchess, and you're trying to palm this tale off on to me to save yourselves."

Barnes was moved to adjuration:

"I'll take my Bible oath, your Grace, that the Duchess got into the carriage outside Cane and Wilson's."

Moysey seconded his colleague:

"I will swear to that, your Grace. She got into the carriage, and I shut the door, and she said, 'Home, Moysey!'"

The Duke looked as if he did not know what to make of the story and its tellers.

"What carriage did you have?"

"Her Grace's brougham, your Grace."

Knowles interposed:

"The brougham was ordered because I understood that the Duchess was not feeling very well, and there's rather a high wind, your Grace."

The Duke snapped at him:

"What has that to do with it? Are you suggesting that the Duchess was more likely to jump out of a brougham while it was dashing through the streets than out of any other kind of vehicle?"

The Duke's glance fell on the letter which Knowles had brought him when he first had entered. He had placed it on his writing-table. Now he took it up. It was addressed:

"To His Grace

"The Duke of Datchet.

"Private!

"Very Pressing!!!"

The name was written in a fine, clear, almost feminine hand. The words in the left-hand corner of the envelope were written in a different hand. They were large and bold; almost as though they had been painted with the end of the penholder instead of being written with the pen. The envelope itself was of an unusual size, and bulged out as though it contained something else besides a letter.

The Duke tore the envelope open. As he did so something fell out of it on to the writing-table. It looked as though it was a lock of a woman's hair. As he glanced at it the Duke seemed to be a trifle startled. The Duke read the letter:

"Your Grace will be so good as to bring five hundred pounds (£500) in gold to the Piccadilly end of the Burlington Arcade within an hour of the receipt of this. The Duchess of Datchet has been kidnapped. An imitation duchess got into the carriage, which was waiting outside Cane and Wilson's and she alighted on the road. Unless your Grace does as you are requested the Duchess of Datchet's left-hand little finger will be at once cut off, and sent home in time to receive the Prince to dinner. Other portions of her Grace will follow. A lock of her Grace's hair is enclosed with this as an earnest of our good intentions.

"Before 5.30 p.m. your Grace is requested to be at the Piccadilly end of the Burlington Arcade with five hundred pounds (£500) in gold. You will there be accosted by an individual in a white top-hat, and with a gardenia in his button-hole. You will be entirely at liberty to give him into custody, or to have him followed by the police. In which case the Duchess's left arm, cut off at the shoulder, will be sent home for dinner--not to mention other extremely possible contingencies. But you are advised to give the individual in question the five hundred pounds in gold, because in that case the Duchess herself will be home in time to receive the Prince to dinner, and with one of the best stories with which to entertain your distinguished guests they ever heard.

"Remember! not later than 5.30, unless you wish to receive her Grace's little finger."

The Duke stared at this amazing epistle when he had read it as though he had found it difficult to believe the evidence of his eyes. He was not a demonstrative person as a rule, but this little communication astonished even him. He read it again. Then his hands dropped to his sides and he swore.

He took up the lock of hair which had fallen out of the envelope. Was it possible that it could be his wife's, the Duchess? Was it possible that a Duchess of Datchet could be kidnapped, in broad daylight, in the heart of London, and be sent home, as it were, in pieces? Had sacrilegious hands already been playing pranks with that great lady's hair? Certainly, that hair was so like her hair that the mere resemblance made his Grace's blood run cold. He turned on Messrs. Barnes and Moysey as though he would have liked to rend them:

"You scoundrels!"

He moved forward as though the intention had entered his ducal heart to knock his servants down. But, if that were so, he did not act quite up to his intention. Instead, he stretched out his arm, pointing at them as if he were an accusing spirit:

"Will you swear that it was the Duchess who got into the carriage outside Cane and Wilson's?"

Barnes began to stammer:

"I--I'll swear, your Grace, that I--I thought----"

The Duke stormed an interruption:

"I don't ask what you thought. I ask you, will you swear it was?"

The Duke's anger was more than Barnes could face. He was silent. Moysey showed a larger courage:

"Could have sworn that it was at the time, your Grace. But now it seems to me that it's a rummy go."

"A rummy go!" The peculiarity of the phrase did not seem to strike the Duke just then--at least, he echoed it as if it didn't. "You call it a rummy go! Do you know that I am told in this letter that the woman who had entered the carriage was not the Duchess? What you were thinking about, or what case you will be able to make out for yourselves, you know better than I; but I can tell you this--that in an hour you will leave my service, and you may esteem yourselves fortunate if, to-night, you are not both of you sleeping in gaol. Knowles! take these men to a room, and lock them in it, and set some one to see that they don't get out of it, and come back at once. You understand, at once--to me!"

Knowles did not give Messrs. Barnes and Moysey a chance to offer a remonstrance, even if they had been disposed to do so. He escorted them out of the room with a dexterity and a celerity which did him credit, and in a remarkably short space of time he returned to the ducal presence. He was the Duke's own servant--his own particular man. He was a little older than the Duke, and he had been his servant almost ever since the Duke had been old enough to have a servant of his very own. Probably James Knowles knew more than any living creature of the Duke's "secret history"--as they call it in the chroniques scandaleuses--of his little peculiarities, of his strong points, and his weak ones. And, in the possession of this knowledge, he had borne himself in a manner which had caused the Duke to come to look upon him as a man in whom he might have confidence--that confidence which a penitent has in a confessor--to look upon him as a trusted and a trustworthy friend.

When Knowles reappeared the Duke handed him the curious epistle with which he had been favoured.

"Read that, and tell me what you think of it."

Knowles read it. His countenance was even more of a mask than the Duke's. He evinced no sign of astonishment.

"I am inclined, your Grace, to think that it's a hoax."

"A hoax! I don't know what you call a hoax! That is not a hoax!" The Duke held out the lock of hair which had fallen from the envelope. "I have compared it with the