"Look here, Teal," said Ganning, becoming more coherent. "You can say what you like about me, but I've got my rights, the same as anybody else. You've got to get after that man. Maybe you know things about him already. He's already on a lay, or he's just starting on one, you mark my words. See this!"

Mr. Teal examined the envelope sleepily. "What is it?" he asked. "A letter of introduction to me?"

"He gave it to Ted when he got out. 'That's my receipt,' he said. Didn't he, Ted? You look inside, Teal!"

The envelope was not sealed. Teal turned it over, and remarked on the flap the crest of the hotel which had provided it. Then, in his lethargic way, he drew out the contents-a single sheet of paper.

"Portrait by Epstein," he drawled. "Quite a nice drawing, but it don't mean anything to me outside of that. You boys have been reading too many detec­tive stories lately, that's the trouble with you."

Chapter II THE SAINT, being a man of decidedly luxurious tastes, was the tenant of a flat in Brook Street, Mayfair, which was so far beyond his means that he had long since given up worrying about the immi­nence of bankruptcy. One might as well be hung for a sheep, the Saint reflected, in his cheerfully reck­less way, as for a foot-and-mouth-diseased lamb. He considered that the world owed him a good time, in return for services rendered and general presenta­bility and good-fellowship, and, since the world hitherto had been close-fistedly reluctant to recog­nize the obligation and meet it, the Saint had de­cided that the time had come for him to assert him­self. His invasion of Brook Street had been one of the first moves in the campaign.

But the locality had one distinct advantage that had nothing to do with the prestige of its address; and this advantage was the fact that it possessed a mews, a very small and exclusive mews, situated at a distance of less than the throw of a small stone from the Saint's front door.