Brown believed it to be some newfangled paixhan or other, and as four or five more of them came slap through his sails, he gave orders to fill away, and actually backed out of the fight, receiving a parting broadside of Dutch cheese. Where’s the Commandant? By C. C. WADDELL. (This interesting story was commenced in No. 140 of NICK CARTER STORIES. Back numbers can always be obtained from your news dealer or the publishers.) CHAPTER XXVII. STRANGE PRECAUTIONS. While Grail was shaving, at that two-minute gait which, once acquired at West Point, is never forgotten, a sudden suggestion came to him, and he laid down his razor to draft out on a telegraph blank a composition, which seemed, from the way he frowned and bit his pen over it, to require careful consideration. Finishing it at last, he slipped it into a sealed envelope, and when he had completed his dressing, carried it and the note from Appleby over to the post-telegraph office. The Appleby note he laid on the table under a paper weight. “Sergeant,” he said to the man in charge, “I want you to keep your eye on that paper, and if it disappears, instantly transmit this to the address within.” He handed over the sealed envelope. The man stared at him as though he thought he had suddenly gone crazy. “If the paper disappears?” he gasped. “Exactly.” Grail looked at him sternly. “And let there be no mistake in carrying out instructions, please. As you may surmise, there are strange things going on, and much may depend on you to-night. I repeat, if the paper on the desk disappears, you are to send without delay the dispatch in that sealed envelope.” Then he started for the waiting taxi; but the operator halted him at the door. “Oh, by the way, captain,” he called, “Miss Vedant was trying to get you several times this afternoon.” A bit confused by Grail’s impressive manner and the peculiar instructions given him, he did not think to add that the call had come by wireless. “Miss Vedant?” The adjutant swung around, his hand on the knob. “Did she leave any message for me?” “No, sir. Merely said she would call again.” “Very well. It makes no difference now. I shall probably see her in person in ten or fifteen minutes.” Whirling uptown with Cato in the cab, he kept pondering over the matter, wondering why Meredith had been so anxious to communicate with him, and trying to piece out an answer from the facts at his disposal. Then he suddenly slapped his knee, as what seemed to be a solution broke upon him. “Cato,” he exclaimed, “do you remember what Simmons was saying when he was interrupted by that pistol shot, and the arrival of the Japs?” “Something about a family reunion between the colonel and his daughter, wasn’t it, sir?”