Belcher snatched up a heavy chair as though it had had no greater weight than a matchbox. A lightning, rapier lunge with the poker—an unpleasant _sizzling_ sound—and the chair crashed harmlessly to the floor. The now painfully singed “trooper” fell back on to the Chesterfield, groaning. Again my bell rang. “Hand the key to Mr. Raymond, my man,” ordered O’Hagan; “and replace your filthy rags upon your indecently nude person.” Belcher threw the key across the carpet. My mind had assimilated a profound truth of the Higher Jiu-Jitsu: brute courage falters in the presence of hot pokers. I went to the door, and upon the landing stood a dazzling vision in leopard skins. “My ’usband!” (The vision had a French accent.) “Is he here? Yes? Quick!” She slipped past me, as an animal growl sounded from within. My rooms no longer were my own, but were become a rendezvous for insane meetings—for nightmare encounters. I re-entered the bear-garden which I had been wont to call my study. The leopard lady was kneeling beside the wounded Mr. Belcher and explaining in voluble syncopated English that his suspicions were groundless, that it was a “boom,” no more; that he must _not_ kill Captain O’Hagan. “My impression, Raymond,” said the latter, focussing me across the room, “is that our friend Belcher has recently left jail.” “What if I ’ave!” roared that maltreated ruffian, starting to his feet. “This,” replied O’Hagan with suppressed ferocity, “that if you are present in another minute I shall send you back again! _Madame!_”—he bowed to La Belle—“kindly remove your property from my friend’s apartment—I would suggest that you deposit it in cold storage—and permit me to say that I had credited you with nicer taste!” He placed a cigarette between his lips, igniting it with the now white-hot poker. ————— V. BELCHER THE THOROUGH. “It is singularly illustrative of the obscure psychology of the lower orders,” said Bernard O’Hagan, “this marrying habit of Continental music-hall artistes. The female of the species may drive, take supper, and accept diamonds from men of pedigree; but she always marries a prize-fighter or a bookmaker. It is a process of natural selection, Raymond. When out of the proceeds of a successful professional career she invests in a husband, she ‘backs her fancy.’ I have known Spanish dancers who were adored by reigning monarchs to have unsavoury husbands concealed in all sorts of filthy alleys; and one lady circus rider to whom I was presented in Budapest proved to be lawfully wedded to a retired Paris sewerman. Zoologically, the habit has interest.” Our inquiries at the hospital discovered Mr. Brandon to be on the danger list.