"The Professor motioned Farrell out to the staircase. Then he came forward to me and said, pretty low and serious, 'You're a good boy, Jimmy. You're so good a boy that I want you to keep out of this. If Roddy turns up to-night, tell him that my man's for Wimbledon, safe and sound. On second thoughts, we won't bother a tired man, to-night, with any excuses or apologies. By to-morrow he will probably have had my letter, and will understand. He may or may not decide to show it to you. I hope he won't. I hope you'll let us see him alone to-morrow. Good-bye.' "--Now what do you make of that?" demanded Jimmy helplessly. "I make it out to be no jest, but pretty serious," said I. "But luckily Farrell's located at Wimbledon. Where's Jack?" I asked. "Don't know," answered Jimmy. "I'm tired enough for this night, anyhow," said I. "And here's Jephson.--'Evening, Jephson." Jephson came in with a can in one hand and in the other a tray with a telegram upon it. "Good evening, Sir Roderick! Glad to see you safe home, sir," said Jephson. "Telegram just delivered at the Lodge for Mr. Collingwood." "For me?" said Jimmy. "I've backed nothing to-day. Been too busy." He tore upon the envelope, read the message, and after a pause handed it to me, whistling softly. It had been handed in at the Docks Station, Liverpool, and it ran-- "Tell O. that F. and I sail to-night New York S.S. _Emania_. "Foe." NIGHT THE TWELFTH. THE "EMANIA". I am going to spin the next stretch of this yarn--and maybe the next after it--in my own way. You will wonder how I happened by certain scraps of information: but you will understand before we come to the end. It comes mainly from later report, but partly from documents which I have been too busy, of late, to sift. Here they are, all mixed: and I choose one only out of the heap--and that a passage which doesn't help the actual story much, though it may help the understanding of it. It occurs in a letter of Foe's written at sea and posted from New York-- "She had been reading a magazine, borrowed from the ship's library, and when she left me, she left it lying beside her deck-chair. The wind ruffled its pages and threatened to tear them: so I picked the thing up, and was about to close it, and to stow it behind her cushion, when a story-title caught my eye and agreeably whetted my curiosity. It was 'The Head Hunter.' "I don't care greatly for short stories. Fiction as a rule bores me in inverse proportion to its length--which seems a paradox and liable to be reduced to the absurd by any moderately expert logician. Yet you will find it experimentally true of five readers out of six. . . . Moreover the yarn had little or nothing to do with real head-hunting--except in its preamble. I soon glanced at the end, and had no further use for the story.