Stannard gaped at him. "What does that mean?" he demanded.

"I ask you, sweet child," answered the Saint, with that exasperatingly seraphic smile still on his lips, "has anyone ever seen a Great White Woolly Wugga-Wugga on the plains of Astrakhan? Sleep on it, my cherub-it will keep your mind from impure thoughts."

Chapter V TO ALL official intents and purposes, the proprietor and leading light of Mr. Edgar Hayn's night club in Soho was the man after whom it was named-Danny Trask. Danny was short and dumpy, a lazy little tub of a man, with a round red face, a sparse head of fair hair, and a thin sandy moustache. His pale eyes were deeply embedded in the creases of their fleshy lids; and when he smiled-which was often, and usually for no apparent reason-they vanished al­together in a corrugating mesh of wrinkles.

His intelligence was not very great. Nevertheless, he had discovered quite early in life that there was a comfortable living to be made in the profession of "dummy"-a job which calls for not startling intel­lectual gifts-and Danny had accordingly made that his vocation ever since. As a figure-head, he was all that could have been desired, for he was unobtru­sive and easily satisfied. He had a type of mind common to his class of lawbreaker. As long as his salary-which was not small-was paid regularly, he never complained, showed no ambition to join his employer on a more equal basis of division of profits, and, if anything went wrong, kept his mouth shut and deputized for his principal in one of his Majes­ty's prisons without a murmur. Danny's fees for a term of imprisonment were a flat rate of ten pounds a week, with an extra charge of two pounds a week for "hard." The astuteness of the C.I.D. and the carelessness of one or two of his previous employers had made this quite a profitable proposition for Danny.