short stories. And tonight, when this gentleman told me that you were
fond of detective stories, I thought it would be amusing to tell you
one of my own--one I had just mapped out this afternoon."

"But Lord Chetney _is_ a real person," interrupted the Baronet, "and
he did go to Africa two years ago, and he was supposed to have died
there, and his brother, Lord Arthur, has been the heir. And yesterday
Chetney did return. I read it in the papers." "So did I," assented the
American soothingly; "and it struck me as being a very good plot for a
story. I mean his unexpected return from the dead, and the probable
disappointment of the younger brother. So I decided that the younger
brother had better murder the older one. The Princess Zichy I invented
out of a clear sky. The fog I did not have to invent. Since last
night I know all that there is to know about a London fog. I was lost
in one for three hours."

The Baronet turned grimly upon the Queen's Messenger.

"But this gentleman," he protested, "he is not a writer of short
stories; he is a member of the Foreign Office. I have often seen him
in Whitehall, and, according to him, the Princess Zichy is not an
invention. He says she is very well known, that she tried to rob him."

The servant of the Foreign Office looked unhappily at the Cabinet
Minister, and puffed nervously on his cigar.

"It's true, Sir Andrew, that I am a Queen's Messenger," he said
appealingly, "and a Russian woman once did try to rob a Queen's
Messenger in a railway carriage--only it did not happen to me, but to
a pal of mine. The only Russian princess I ever knew called herself