The next day, which was the first day of the Eton and Harrow Match, I read a short paragraph in the _Echo_, headed "Painful Scene at Lord's," to the effect that a lady lunching on Lord Richborough's drag had fainted upon the receipt of a telegram, and would have fallen had she not been caught by the messenger--"a strongly built youth," it said, "who thus saved what might have been a serious accident." That was all, but it gave me food for thought, and a suspicion which Saturday confirmed in a sufficiently startling way. On that Saturday I was at luncheon in the First Avenue Hotel in Holborn, when a man came in--Tendring by name--whom I knew quite well. We exchanged greetings and sat at our luncheon, talking desultorily. A clerk from his office brought in a telegram for Tendring. He opened it and seemed thunder-struck. "Good Lord!" I heard him say. "Good Lord, here's trouble." I murmured sympathetically, and then he turned to me, quite beyond the range where reticence avails. "Look here," he said, "this is a shocking business. A man I know wires to me--from Bow Street. He's been taken for forgery--that's the charge--and wants me to bail him out." He got up as we finished and went to write his reply: I turned immediately to the clerk. "Is the boy waiting?" I asked. He was. I said "Excuse me, Tendring," and ran out of the restaurant to the street door. There in the street, as I had suspected, stood my inscrutable, steady-eyed, smiling Oracle of the night. I stood, meeting his look as best I might. He showed no recognition of me whatsoever. Then, as I stood there, Tendring came out. "Call me a cab," he told the hall-porter; and to Quidnunc he said, "There's no answer. I'm going at once." Quidnunc went away. Now Tendring's friend, I learned by the evening paper, was one Captain Maxfield of the Royal Engineers. He was committed for trial, bail refused. I may add that he got seven years.