"I can't think why you hurried so," Sarah grumbled. "How dared you only stay away a quarter of an hour, Jimmy! You know I love to have a gossip with Josephine." "Couldn't stick being parted from you any longer, my dear," the young man replied complacently. Sarah made a grimace. "To be perfectly candid," Lord Dredlinton intervened, throwing away his cigar and lighting a cigarette, "I am afraid it was my fault that we came in so soon. Poor sort of host, eh, Jimmy? Fact is, I'm nervous to-night. Every damned newspaper I've picked up seems to be launching thunderbolts at the B. & I. And now this is the third day and there's no news of Stanley." "Every one seems to know about his disappearance," Jimmy remarked. "They were all talking about it at the club to-day." "What do they say?" Lord Dredlinton asked eagerly. "They all leave off talking about it when I am round." "Blooming mystery," the young man pronounced. "That's the conclusion every one seems to arrive at. A chap I know, whose chauffeur pals up with Rees' valet, told me that he's been having heaps of threatening letters from fellows who'd got the knock over the B. & I. He seemed to think they'd done him in." Dredlinton shivered nervously. "It's perfectly abominable," he declared. "Here we are supposed to have the finest police system in the world, and yet a man can disappear from his rooms in the very centre of London, and no one has even a clue as to what has become of him." "Looks bad," Jimmy acknowledged. "I don't understand much about business affairs," Sarah remarked, "but the B. & I. case does seem to be a remarkably unpopular undertaking." Dredlinton kicked a footstool out of his way, frowning angrily. "The B. & I. is only an ordinary business concern," he insisted. "We have a right to make money if we are clever enough to do it. We speculate in lots of other things besides wheat, and we have our losses to face as well as our profits. I believe that fellow Wingate is at the bottom of all this agitation. Just like those confounded Americans. Why can't they mind their own business!" "It isn't very long," Josephine remarked drily, "since we were rather glad that America didn't mind her own business." "Bosh!" her husband scoffed. "If English people are to be bullied and their liberty interfered with in this manner, we might as well have lost the war and become a German Colony." "Don't agree with you, sir," Jimmy declared, with most unusual seriousness. "I don't like the way you are talking, and I'm dead off the B. & I. myself. I'd cut my connection with it, if I were you. Been looking for trouble for a long time--and, great Scot, I believe they're going to get it!" "Damned rubbish!" Lord Dredlinton muttered angrily.