* * * * * "Now tell me," said Cleek, after the landlady had gone and they were again in sole possession of the room, "what is it this Lady Essington wants of me? And what sort of a chap is this grandson in whose interest she is acting? Is he with her in this appeal to the Yard?" "Certainly not, my dear fellow. Why, he's little more than a baby--not over three at the most. Ever hear anybody speak of the 'Golden Boy,' old chap?" "What! The baby Earl of Strathmere? The little chap who inherited a title and a million through the drowning of his parents in the wreck of the yacht _Mystery_?" "That's the little gentleman: the Right Honourable Cedric Eustace George Carruthers, twenty-seventh Earl Strathmere, variously known as the 'Millionaire Baby' and the 'Golden Boy.' His mother was Lady Essington's only daughter. She was only eighteen when she married Strathmere: only twenty-two when she and her husband were drowned, a little over a year ago." "Early enough to go out of the world, that--poor girl!" said Cleek, sympathetically. "And to leave that little shaver all alone--robbed at one blow of both father and mother. Hard lines, my friend, hard lines! It is fair to suppose, is it not, that, with the death of his parents, the care and guidance of his little lordship fell to the lot of his grandmother, Lady Essington?" "No, it did not," replied Narkom. "One might have supposed that it would, seeing that there was no paternal grandmother, but--well, the fact of the matter is, Cleek, that the late Lord Strathmere did not altogether approve of his mother-in-law's method of living (he was essentially a quiet, home-loving man and had little patience with frivolity of any sort), and it occasioned no surprise among those who knew him when it was discovered that he had made a will leaving everything he possessed to his little son and expressly stipulating that the care and upbringing of the boy were to be entrusted to his younger brother, the Honourable Felix Camour Paul Carruthers, who was to enjoy the revenue from the estate until the child attained his majority." "I see! I see!" said Cleek, appreciatively. "Then that did her extravagant ladyship out of a pretty large and steady income for a matter of seventeen or eighteen years. Humm-m! Wise man--always, of course, provided that he didn't save the boy from the frying-pan only to drop him into the fire. What kind of a man is this brother--this Honourable Felix Carruthers--into whose hands he entrusted the future of his little son? I seem to have a hazy recollection of hearing that name, somewhere or somehow, in connection with some other affair. Wise choice, was it, Mr. Narkom?"