The voice rang like a bugle through the arches, and echoed in the lofty roof. And now the words of the text: "Oh, consider this, ye that forget God; lest I pluck you away, and there be none to deliver you." The second terrible warning to London had begun. CHAPTER XIII THE CONSPIRATORS OF ST. JOHN'S WOOD At precisely the same hour on the Sunday evening when Joseph ascended the pulpit of St. Elwyn's Church a large red Napier motor-car stopped before the gate of a smart little villa in St. John's Wood. The villa stood in its own grounds, and was surrounded by a high wall. It had a general air of seclusion and retirement, though it was obviously the property or in the tenancy of people of wealth. The wall was clean and newly pointed, the gate was painted a dark green, the short drive which led to the front door was made of the finest white marl. The motor-car stopped, and two men descended from it, clearly defined in the radiance from two electric globes that were mounted on each pillar of the villa gate. Both wore opera hats, white scarves round their throats and black overcoats. One was tall, slim, and clean-shaven. His age was about twenty-six, his hair was a pale golden color, and his face, too young as yet to be permanently spoilt and damaged, nevertheless bore the unmistakable imprint of a fast life. The young man, evil though his countenance was, conveyed a certain impression of birth and breeding. His companion, on the other hand, was just as unmistakably destitute of both. He was short and fat in figure. His face boasted a modicum of impudent good looks, and was of a strongly Hebraic cast. The fine dark eyes, the hooked nose, the large lips--red like a ripe plum--all shouted the prosperous Jew. The younger man gave an order to the chauffeur. The automobile swung away towards Hampstead, and the companions walked up the approach to the villa, the door of which was opened to them by a servant. They entered a small hall, luxuriously furnished in the Eastern style, and lit with shaded electric lamps. As they did so, a manservant hurried up to them from behind some heavy Moorish curtains. "Where is your mistress?" said the younger of the two men. "My mistress is in the drawing-room, my lord," the servant answered. "Oh, all right! Take our coats. We will go and find her at once." The servant took the coats and hats, and the two men walked down a wide-carpeted passage, brilliantly lit by globes in the roof, which made their stiff white shirt-fronts glitter like talc, and opened a heavy door of oak. The villa was the home of Miss Mimi Addington, the leading musical comedy actress of London--the star of the Frivolity. The young man with the light hair and the dissipated expression was Lord Bellina, an Irish viscount. He had succeeded to the title some three years before, and to a very large fortune, which had come into the impoverished Irish family owing to a marriage with the daughter of a wealthy Liverpool manufacturer.