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58 had been giving him some assistance in a case was thrown on his hands for the evening.

"You are the most amiable of men, Max," chirruped Mr Carlyle; "but, really, I don't like to ask"

"Bring him by all means," assented the most amiable of men. "I expect two or three others to turn up to-night." So Mr Carlyle brought him.

"Mr Chatton, Max."

An unobtrusive young man, whose face wore a perpetual expression of docile willingness, shook hands with Carrados. Anything less like the sleek, competent self-assurance of the conventional private secretary it would be difficult to imagine. Mr Chatton's manner was that of a well-meaning man who habitually blundered from a too conscientious sense of duty, knew it all along, and was pained at the inevitableness of the recurring catastrophe.

"I have just taken up a case that might interest you, Max," said Mr Carlyle, as the three of them stood together. "Simple enough, but it involves a valuable old book that has been stolen. Gurnard's called me in"—and he proceeded to outline the particulars of the missing Virginiola.

"And you went down yourself to Gurnard's to look into it, Mr Chatton?" said Carrados, masking the species of admiration that he felt for his new acquaintance.

"Well, I don't know about looking into it," confessed Mr Chatton. "You see, it doesn't really concern Sir Roland at all now. But I thought that I ought to offer them any information—a description or something of that sort might be wanted—when I heard of their loss. Of course," he added, with a deepening of his habitual look of rueful perturbation, "we can't help it, but it's