"I'd have given that butler a dressing down," muttered Lonnegan. "He ought to have known that there was some mistake when the note arrived," Lonnegan like Mac was born without the slightest sense of humor, Boggs always maintained. "Keep on guessing, gentlemen," exclaimed Murphy; "London guessed for a week, and gave it up." "Well, but is that all?" asked Stirling. "Every word and line. Nobody knows to this day who they were or where they came from. The flunkey on the curb said they arrived in a four-wheeler; that he had whistled to the rank at the end of the square for a hansom, and that they both stepped in and drove off." "And old Arbuckle still bags the money?" inquired Boggs. "Did, the last I heard." "Did he try to find out who the fellow was?" "No, Lady Arbuckle wouldn't let him; it would have given the whole thing away. Besides, it was Arbuckle's statement about Eliza that made the stranger give the money; rather a delicate situation; looked as if he and his wife had put up a job." "Poor devil!" muttered Mac. "Lied to his guest, insulted his wife, and robbed some poor woman of a charity that might have restored her to health, and all because of just the same kind of idiotic foolishness that is going on downstairs at Woods's this very minute. Damnable, the whole thing." "I know of a case," said Lonnegan without noticing Mac's outburst, as he reached for his pipe which he had laid on the mantel, "in which not a mysterious couple but a mysterious woman figured, and I know the man who was mixed up in the affair. He's a civil engineer now and lives in London; got quite a position. When I first met him he was a draughtsman in one of the downtown offices--this was some fifteen years ago. He was a good-looking fellow then, about twenty-seven or eight, I should say, with a smooth-shaven face and features like a girl's, they were so regular; a handsome chap, really, if he was about up to your shoulders, Mac." "What sort of a yarn is this, Lonny?" interrupted Boggs. "Got any point to it, or is it one of your long-winded things like the one you told us when you weren't murdered?" "It's one that will make your hair stand on end," retorted the architect. "Wonder I never told you before!" "Go on, Lonny," broke in Jack Stirling. "Dry up, Boggs. He was a good-looking chap, you said, Lonny, and about up to Mac's shoulders." "Yes, and half the size of Boggs around his waist," continued Lonnegan, with a look at MacWhirter.