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 CHAPTER IV

IN WHICH HE SPENDS A QUIET NIGHT AT THE ELMS

I

" is a little difficult to know what to do with you, young man," said Peterson gently, after a long silence. "I knew you had no tact."

Drummond leaned back in his chair and regarded his host with a faint smile.

"I must come to you for lessons, Mr. Peterson. Though I frankly admit," he added genially, "that I have never been brought up to regard the forcible abduction of a harmless individual and a friend who is sleeping off the effects of what low people call a jag as being exactly typical of that admirable quality."

Peterson's glance rested on the dishevelled man still standing by the door, and after a moment's thought he leaned forward and pressed a bell.

"Take that man away," he said abruptly to the servant who came into the room, "and put him to bed. I will consider what to do with him in the morning."

"Consider be damned," howled Mullings, starting forward angrily. "You'll consider a thick ear, Mr. Blooming Knowall. What I wants to know—"

The words died away in his mouth, and he gazed at Peterson like a bird looks at a snake. There was something so ruthlessly malignant in the stare of 96