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    “This summer it was rented by the president of the Royal Academy.”
    “What’s that?” said Iff, sharply.
    “The Royal Academy,” explained Flynn, is an institution devised by divine Providence for the detection of British Artists. It brings them into notice by ostentatiously rejecting their works. The president is Lord Cudlipp.”
    “Wasn’t he a Joseph Thorne, or some such name?” asked Simon Iff.
    “Thornton, I think. Ennobled thirteen years ago,” corrected Flynn.
    “It was Thornley,” insisted the sculptor, Major.
    “Yes, Thornley; I remember now. I know him slightly; and I knew his father before him; an M.P and a biscuit manufacturer,” exclaimed the mystic.
    “A pity the son didn’t follow the father,” murmured Major. “I feel sure that his biscuits would have been delightful!”
    “You’re interrupting the court,” protested the editor “To proceed. Here we have Cudlipp in the Big House of Dubhbheagg, with a man and wife to cook for him, both old servants, with him thirty years. There are also his son Harry, his daughter Eleanor, her companionmaid, and—a man from the Quarter!”
    “This Quarter?”
    “Up in Montrouge his studio is, I think, one of those lost cottages with a garden in the middle of a block of houses. Well, this man, or rather boy, he’s not twentyyet, is, or wants to be, a marine painter like Cudlipp—”
    “God forbid!” groaned the Major.
    “Shut up! the boy’s name is Andre de Bry; he’s half Frenchf, half English, I believe, a pretty hot combination.”
    “So I’ve noticed, remarked Iff, as they turned into Lapérouse, crept up the narrow stair, and found a table by the window in the Salle de Miroirs.
    “Harry and Eleanor were born seventeen years ago, twins”
    “Which is dead?” interrupted Iff. The others stared.
    “Excuse an old man’s vanity!” laughed the mystic. “I really have to show off sometimes! You see, I know Jack’s passion for precision of language. He wouldn’t say the simple thing, ’They are twins,’ or ’They are seventeen years old,’ and he wouldn’t say ’They were twins,’ or ’were seventeen years old,’ so I knew that one, and one only, was dead.”
    “I hope your acuteness will continue through dinner,” laughed the editor. “We need it. Now, then, to business. Cudlipp had sort of adopted André de Bry, Used him to prepare his bigger canvases, and so on. De Bry had fallen in love with Eleanor. She returned bis passion De Bry was hopelessly poor—no, not hopelessly, for he had a rich uncle, who had a fad of independence. He wouldn’t give André a farthing; but if the boy succeeded in making himself a career, he promised to leave him every penny he had. The family is noble, much better than Cudlipp’s; so the boy was not a bad match for Eleanor, and, contigently, a very good one. He and Harry were perfectly good friends. There was, in short, no element of disagreement worth notice. The days passed pleasantly, either in painting or fishing, and the evenings in games. One can hardly imagine a more harmonious group.
    ”On the 18th of August the yacht, which supplied the island with stores from the mainland, called and left provisions for the party. To avert false conjecture from the start, I may say that it is absolutely impossible that some mysterious stowaway could have landed from the yacht and hidden somewhere on the island. The police subsequently went through the place with a fine tooth comb. It is thirty miles from the nearest land, is barely a quarter of a mile in its greatest length, has neither a cave nor a tree on it. So don’t talk about that! Well, the yacht weighed anchor on the afternoon of the 18th; that night a storm came up from the Atlantic, and raged for a whole week. It is physically impossible that any one should have landed on the rock during that period. Furthermore, the Big House stands on a quite unclimbable pinnacle—I’m a rock climber, as you know, and I went to see it, and