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88 "you are surely not serious in what you propose? You will never attempt to carry out this masquerade?"

"My name's Trevelyan, if you please, Mackeller. You have just seen Lord Stranleigh disappear with all the pomp of the peerage."

Mackeller groaned.

"You talked of my nonsense in believing about secret agents and detectives, but this madcap scheme! It's perfectly absurd, and will be discovered before we've been in New York two days."

"Then Ponderby will disappoint me, that's all. Nevertheless, I've staked my money on Ponderby, and predict that for the first time in your life you will realise the true bearing of the British aristocracy. America is said to be the land of the free, and I want a slice of liberty. I want to knock round with the boys, dine at their clubs, accept what invitations I receive, and have a good time generally, while poor Ponderby sits in splendid gloom at the swell hotel. I have an idea, Peter, that we won't catch a weasel asleep. If Flannigan is all you say, he will arrange an interview with Lord Stranleigh. Half an hour's conversation with the stolid Ponderby will convince so shrewd a judge of men as Flannigan that he has encountered about the most wooden-headed fool that the universe has yet produced. I thus cherish a faint