"Capital!" he murmured. "I give you my word I never guessed what you
were driving at. You fooled _me,_ I'll be hanged if you didn't--you
certainly fooled me."

The man with the pearl stud leaned forward with a nervous gesture.
"Hush! be careful!" he whispered. But at that instant, for the third
time, a servant, hastening through the room, handed him a piece of
paper which he scanned eagerly. The message on the paper read, "The
light over the Commons is out. The House has risen."

The man with the black pearl gave a mighty shout, and tossed the paper
from him upon the table.

"Hurrah!" he cried. "The House is up! We've won!" He caught up his
glass, and slapped the Naval Attache violently upon the shoulder. He
nodded joyously at him, at the Solicitor, and at the Queen's
Messenger. "Gentlemen, to you!" he cried; "my thanks and my
congratulations!" He drank deep from the glass, and breathed forth a
long sigh of satisfaction and relief.

"But I say," protested the Queen's Messenger, shaking his finger
violently at the Solicitor, "that story won't do. You didn't play
fair--and--and you talked so fast I couldn't make out what it was all
about. I'll bet you that evidence wouldn't hold in a court of law--you
couldn't hang a cat on such evidence. Your story is condemned
tommy-rot. Now my story might have happened, my story bore the
mark--"

In the joy of creation the story-tellers had forgotten their audience,