"My dear Baron," sympathetically replied McAllister, who had once more resumed his ordinary attire, "why attribute to chance what is in fact due to intellect? No, I won't mention our adventure, and if our friend McGinnis--" "Oh, McGinnis'll keep his head shut, all right, you bet!" interrupted Barney. "But say, Mr. McAllister, on the level, you're too good for us. Why don't you chuck this game and come in out of the rain? You'll be up against it in the end. Help us to land this feller!" McAllister took a long pull at his cigar and half-closed his eyes. There was a quizzical look around his mouth that Conville had never seen there before. "Perhaps I will," said he softly. "Perhaps I will." "Good!" shouted the Baron; "put it there! Now, if you _get_ anything, tip us off. You can always catch me at 3100 Spring." "Well," replied the clubman, "don't forget to drop in here, if you happen to be going by. Some time, on a rainy day perhaps, you might want a nip of something warm." But to this the Baron did not respond. [Illustration: "Who in thunder are _you_?"] A plunge in the tank and a comfortable smoke almost restored McAllister's customary equanimity. Weddings were a bore, anyway. Then he called for a telegraph blank and sent the following: _Was unavoidably detained. Terribly disappointed. If necessary, use Wilkins._ _McA._ To which, about noon-time, he received the following reply: _Don't understand. Wilkins arrived, left clothes and departed. You must have mixed your dates. Wedding to-morrow._ _F. C._ The Governor-General's Trunk I McAllister was in the tank. His puffing and blowing as he dove and tumbled like a contented, rubicund porpoise, reverberated loudly among the marble pillars of the bath at the club. It was all part of a carefully adjusted and as rigorously followed regimen, for McAllister was a thorough believer in exercise (provided it was moderate), and took it regularly, averring that a fellow couldn't expect to eat and drink as much as he naturally wanted to unless he kept in some sort of condition, and if he didn't he would simply get off his peck, that was all. Hence "Chubby" arose regularly at nine-thirty, and wrapping himself in a padded Japanese silk dressing-gown, descended to the tank, where he dove six times and swam around twice, after which he weighed himself and had Tim rub him down. Tim felt a high degree of solicitude for all this procedure, since he was a personal discovery of McAllister's, and owed his present exalted position entirely to the clubman's interest, for the latter had found him at Coney Island earning his daily bread by diving, in the presence of countless multitudes, into a six-foot glass tank, where he seated himself upon the bottom and nonchalantly consumed a banana. McAllister's delight and enthusiasm at this elevating spectacle had been boundless.