"One of the men is Lieut. Josef Flink. He has a gunshot wound in the palm of the left hand. The second is Orbum Alexander von Schutz, with side-whispers. Both speak very little English." --_Southern Echo_. But VON SCHUTZ's sotto-voce rendering of the "Hymn of Hate" is immense. * * * * * AT THE PLAY. "THE INVISIBLE FOE." MR. H.B. IRVING has elected to play villain in a new mystery play by Mr. WALTER HACKETT. Essential elements of the business as follows: Obstinate old millstone of a shipbuilder, _Bransby_, who simply will not give up shipbuilding for aeroplane making (and no wonder in these days!); nephew _Stephen_, with an unwholesome hankering after power and a complete inability to see the obvious; nephew _Hugh_, lieutenant lately gazetted, with much more wholesome and intelligent hankering after _Helen Bransby_; Clerk, mouldy, faithful, one who discovers deficit in the West African ledger to the extent of ten thousand pounds. The false entries are in the hand of _Hugh_, but _Stephen's_ sinister eye and shocking suit of solemn black promptly give him away to the audience, while with a gorgeous fatuity he gives himself away to his uncle by writing out his brother's resignation of the King's Commission (in itself an odd thing to do) in the very hand he had so adroitly practised in order to manipulate the ledger. Whereupon, at _Bransby's_ dictation, _Stephen_ writes a full confession, leaving the house in an acutely disgruntled frame of mind. The old man puts the confession quite naturally (the firm is like that) between the leaves of his _David Copperfield_, and dies of heart failure. So _Stephen_ is again up on _Hugh_ at the turn. Indeed in the six months that have elapsed between Acts I. and II. many things have happened, and neglected to happen. _Stephen_ has become by common report a great man, pillar of the house of Bransby, which now makes aeroplanes like anything. He has been too busy getting power even to look into his uncle's papers (though executor), or to have the West African ledger taken back to the office, or, queerest of all, to discover and destroy that damning confession. However, having got his power, he now proceeds to consolidate it by trying to find the missing document.