‘Why, I delayed too long before opening those double doors in my eagerness to secure all the evidence I could—a mistake which might be excusable in a youngster, but not in one of my standing. The very secret of our business is to know the moment for action to a tick. I let them both get too worked up. And, worked up as they were, he being Italian, I ought to have foreseen the likelihood of that knife. No, sir, look at it what way I will, I am bound to blame myself. It is a discredit, in my opinion, and a grave one, for a man in my position to have a murder—and in broad daylight too—committed within three yards of his nose. The less said the better, I’m afraid, for some time to come, sir, about Lavender’s luck.’ I consoled the mortified and over-conscientious hunter of criminals and crime to the best of my ability; and then, thankfully bidding farewell to that blood-stained and tragic little house, pushed my way, with Lavender’s help, through the gaping and curious crowd in the street, and, bestowing myself in the coach one of his men had called for me, rumbled and jolted back to Grosvenor Square through the hot, thundery dusk. (_To be continued._) _WAR AND DIPLOMACY IN SHAKESPEARE._ An address given to the Ancoats Brotherhood, April 2, 1916. BY SIR FREDERICK POLLOCK, BART. Being bidden to set down a subject for your entertainment, advised that it should have some relation to Shakespeare, and unable to distract my thoughts from war and the state of Europe for long together, I combined war, diplomacy, and Shakespeare at a venture; I had never considered Shakespeare’s work, as bearing on either of those topics, with any particular attention, and had no settled expectation of what might be the outcome. In the result I confess that I am surprised, and, as that result is largely negative and therefore incapable of demonstrative proof, I do not feel much confidence that I shall be believed. When Shakespeare was growing up and beginning to know the world, both war and diplomacy were full of fresh matter for curiosity. Diplomacy, as we now understand it, was an invention of the Renaissance, and especially the Italian Renaissance, flourishing in an exuberant youth and wearing the ornaments of humanist learning not always free from pedantry, and humanist accomplishment often straying into over-ingenious conceits. The letters of Elizabethan statesmen and scholars, even on ordinary business, often conceal their real point from a modern’s first reading by their refined excess of caution. Here, it would seem, the comic Muse might find profitable matter, if only it came within her range of observation.