"It's nutty, but not what I call top hole straight!"  
"Mr. Macandrew, I am consulting you professionally, so I must ask you to use the King's English!"
 
"It can't explain my feelings, Jerry--it can't indeed. What am I to say when you tell me that you have fallen in love in five minutes."
 
"You loved Charity when you first set eyes on her, Tod."
 
"That's different!" snapped the . "She's an angel! It's only right to love an angel like when you spot her."
 
"I quite agree with you, and so I loved Mavis."
 
"Is this girl pretty?"
 
Haskins smiled to himself, as he had not yet informed Tod of the marvelous resemblance between the dancer and the . "Yes, she is pretty!" he said calmly.
 
"Huh!" from Tod, "that doesn't sound enthusiastic."
 
"If you wish me to give details----"
 
"No! No!" Macandrew looked alarmed. "None of your beastly blank verse. I understand that you wish to consult me professionally."
 
"Well," replied Haskins , "I have been trying to that into your thick head for the last ten minutes."
 
"Clients," retorted Tod, with dignity, "do not call their legal silly cuckoo names!" He arranged his blotting-paper, out a sheet of paper, and seized a pencil. "You have my best attention."
 
Gerald grinned. Tod's professional airs were too absurd. All the same he knew that he could not come to a better man for advice. Also, Tod, being in love himself, was likely to be more sympathetic than a regular dry-as-dust lawyer.
 
"One moment, Toddy," said Haskins, taking out a silver case, "I want to light a cigarette first. Have one?"
 
"These," said the Tod significantly, "are business hours."
 
"So I should think from your ridiculously serious face. Nature intended you for a Bacchus without any clothes, Toddy; but circumstance has stuffed you into a stupid little office to mislead people on points of law."
 
"The office is capital," said Tod heatedly. "I pay a very high rent."
 
"You are being cheated then."
 
"I'll--I'll--I'll have a cigarette," ended Tod weakly. "It was too hot to argue."
 
Haskins had come up on the previous day, and having slept on his business had repaired to the grimy office in Chancery Lane to consult his solicitor. Mr. James Ian Robert Roy Macandrew--which was the lawyer's gorgeous name, usually shortened to Tod by his friends because of his ruddy hair-- two rooms, furnished. The outer room contained two lean clerks and an office boy, who to increase a gradually growing business, while the inner room was sacred to the master brain that was building up that same business. There was a green-painted safe, an important-looking escritoire with a sliding lid, three or four chairs, a bookcase containing Tod's somewhat limited library, and piles of japaned deed-boxes in iron frames. Everything looked very legal and very dry and very dusty, with the exception of Tod himself, spick and span, and far too fashionably dressed for Chancery Lane. Tod should have been strolling in the Row--and if dead-and-gone Macandrews had not their money he probably would have been--beside Charity Bird, if possible. As it was, Tod, looking fresh and well fed and well and alert, dwelt for many hours daily in a dull room, which his ancestors would have scorned. But Tod had been compelled to lay down the ancestral claymore and take up the pen, which was hard on Tod, who much preferred a kilt to a lawyer's .
 
However, it was useless to be with Jerry Haskins, as Tod , so after a glance at the door to see that it was closed, he unbent. He lighted a cigarette and produced a bottle of whisky and two glasses and a syphon. Not wishing that his clerks should see him unbend to this extent Mr. Macandrew cast a second look at the door, and advised Gerald, in scarcely legal language, to "Fire away." "You've been playing the high-kick-oh, houp-la, since I left you," said Tod with a jolly grin.
 
"I've been doing nothing of the sort," cried Haskins indignantly. "This is very serious."
 
"Is it now?" the lawyer. "Well, when a man decides to marry a girl whom he has only seen for five minutes I rather think it is infernally serious. How did she manage to hook you?"
 
"What a beastly low mind you have, Tod. H'm! Shut up, and hold yourself tight. I am going to startle you."
 
"Startle away." Tod gripped the arms of his chair.
 
"Well then, this Mavis Durham is the living image of Charity Bird."
 
Macandrew stared and glared. "You're rotting, boy. There can only be one angel in the world, and----"
 
"There are two of this especial make," insisted Gerald, leaning back. "I say, Toddy, do be serious."
 
"But are you serious?"
 
"I am, confound you. Don't I look it?"
 
Macandrew stared and glared again. "There is a change in you," he admitted--"love, I suppose. It's the same with myself."
 
"Tod, you don't know what love is."
 
"Oh, don't I? Hang your beastly ! Well then, I just do. I love my heavenly Charity, no end. So there. But aren't you pulling my leg when you say that Charity is the image of this Mavis girl?"
 
"Don't call her a Mavis girl. Miss Durham to you, Tod."
 
"Very well then--Miss Bird to you."
 
Haskins sighed resignedly. "We'll never get on at this rate. I am really and truly in trouble, Macandrew. Do listen."
 
Tod nodded, and his face grew serious. Haskins seized the fortunate moment and everything from the finding of the sealed message--which was scarcely necessary, since Tod had hooked the cylinder--to the parting with Mavis on that night. "What do you think of it, Toddy?" questioned Haskins anxiously.
 
"It's very rum," murmured Tod, making pencil marks on his blotting-paper. "Why does Rebb keep this girl shut up?"
 
"That is what I wish to learn. You must help me."
 
"I'm only too glad: but how?"
 
"Don't you remember how Mrs. Geary said that if Mavis left the Pixy's House the Major would not be able to dash about in his motor car?"
 
"Yes. What of that?"
 
"It hints at money belonging to Mavis, which the Major is using."
 
"Oh, I say," Tod fell back in his chair, "you go too far. I don't hold a brief for Rebb, but he wouldn't be such a blackguard as that. Besides, he has six thousand a year. I know that for a fact."
 
"Who told you?"
 
"Mrs. Berch."
 
"What! Mrs. Crosby's mother?"
 
"Yes. A grim old lady, ain't she? Rather like my grandmother. She is not very fond of Rebb, as he is not very polite to her. Still, she wants Mrs. Crosbie to marry him, because of the money. How she found out, I can't say; but she certainly stated that Rebb had the income I mentioned."
 
"But I thought that both Mrs. Berch and her daughter were well off?"
 
"They assume to be," answered Tod, with a and a wink--"that is, they have a slap-up flat, and go everywhere, and Mrs. Crosbie wears expensive frocks, although the old woman looks like a rag-shop at times."
 
"That may not be lack of money, but to dress."
 
"Humph! As if any woman, old or young, could be indifferent to frocks. Anyhow Mrs. Crosbie is supposed to be a wealthy widow in the market; but if she wants to marry Major Rebb, who is not a nice man, and if Mrs. Berch wants to be Rebb's mother-in-law, it strikes me that the two may not be so rich as they pretend."
 
"Well! well! well!" cried Gerald impatiently, "we are wandering from the subject. Rebb, you say, has six thousand a year?"
 
"On the authority of Mrs. Crosbie's mother--yes."
 
"Well then, Tod, I want you to know how Rebb comes to be possessed of that six thousand a year. Can you find out?"
 
"Well, no. You might ask the Income Tax peop............