The newspaper excitement lasted exactly four days. On the fourth day, speaking at the Annual Congress of the British Association, Sir William Farran, that great physician, in the course of an illuminating address on “The first causes of disease,” announced as his firm conviction that all the ills that flesh is heir to arise primarily from the wearing of boots, and the excitement that followed the appearance in Cheapside of a converted Lord Mayor with bare feet will long be remembered in the history of British journalism. It was enough, at any rate, to blot out the memory of the Reale case, for immediately following the vision of a stout and respected member of the Haberdasher Company in full robes and chain of office entering the Mansion House insufficiently clad there arose that memorable newspaper discussion “Boots and Crime,” which threatened at one time to shake established society to its very foundations. “Bill is a brick,” wrote Angel to Jimmy. “I suggested to him that he might make a sensational statement about microbes, but he said that the _Lancet_ had worked bugs to death, and offered the ‘no boots’ alternative.” It was a fortnight after the inquiry that Jimmy drove to Streatham to carry out his promise to explain to Kathleen the solution of the cryptogram. It was his last visit to her, that much he had decided. His rejection of her offer to equally share old Reale’s fortune left but one course open to him, and that he elected to take. She expected him, and he found her sitting before a cozy fire idly turning the leaves of a book. Jimmy stood for a moment in an embarrassed silence. It was the first time he had been alone with her, save the night he drove with her to Streatham, and he was a little at a loss for an opening. He began conventionally enough speaking about the weather, and not to be outdone in commonplace, she ordered tea. “And now, Miss Kent,” he said, “I have got to explain to you the solution of old Reale’s cryptogram.” He took a sheet of paper from his pocket covered with hieroglyphics. “Where old Reale got his idea of the cryptogram from was, of course, Egypt. He lived there long enough to be fairly well acquainted with the picture letters that abound in that country, and we were fools not to jump at the solution at first. I don’t mean you,” he added hastily. “I mean Angel and I and Connor, and all the people who were associated with him.” The girl was looking at the sheet, and smiled quietly at the _faux pas_. “How he came into touch with the ‘professor----’” “What has happened to that poor old man?” she asked.