The British public poured contributions into the air-fleet fund with a lavishness that has never been equalled in history. For, after the stupendous sums, each one a big fortune in itself, which the Jewish financiers had subscribed, every man who called himself a Britisher (and who thought that Britain really needed airships) came forward with his dole.

There was a special service held at the Great Synagogue in Aldgate, and Juda was exalted in public estimation to a dizzy pinnacle.

One morning, whilst the enthusiasm was at its height, Mr. Oppner rose from the breakfast table upon hearing the 'phone bell ring.

"Zoe," he said, "if that's a reporter, tell him I'm ill in bed."

He shuffled from the room. Since the night of the abortive raid upon The Cedars he had showed a marked aversion from the society of newspaper men. Regarding the facts of his donation to the fund he had vouchsafed no word to Zoe. Closely had the story of his doings at Richmond been hushed up; as closely as a bottomless purse can achieve such silencing, but, nevertheless, Zoe knew the truth.

Sheard was shown in.

"Excuse me," he said hastily, "but I wanted to ask Mr. Oppner if there is anything in this article"—he held out a proof slip—"that he would like altered. It's for the Magazine of Empire. They're having full-page photographs of all the Aero Millionaires, that's what they call them now!"

"Can you leave it?" asked Zoe. "He is dressing—and not in a very good temper."

"Right!" said Sheard promptly, and laid the slip on the table. "'Phone me if there is anything to come out. Good-bye."

Zoe was reading the proof when her father came in again.

"Newspaper men been here?" he drawled. "Thought so. What a poor old addle-pated martyr I am."

"Listen," began Zoe, "this is an article all about you! It quotes Dr. Herman Hertz, that is to say, it represents you as quoting him! It says:—

"'The true Jew is an integral part of the life and spiritual endeavour of every nation where Providence has allotted his home. And as for the Jews of this Empire, which is earth's nearest realisation hitherto of justice coupled with humanity, finely has a noble Anglo-Jewish soldier, Colonel Goldschmidt, expressed it: "Loyalty to the flag for which the sun once stood still can only deepen our devotion to the flag on which the sun never sets."' Is that all right?"

"H'm!" said Oppner. "Have Rohscheimer and Jesson seen this article?"

"Don't know!" answered Zoe.

"Because," explained Oppner, "they've showed their blame devotion to the flag on which the sun don't set, same as me, and if they can stand it, my hide's as tough as theirs, I reckon."

It was whilst Mr. Oppner was thus expressing himself that Sheard, who, having left the proof at the Astoria, had raced back to the club to keep an appointment, quitted the club again (his man had disappointed him), and walked down the court to Fleet Street.

Mr. Aloys. X. Alden, arrayed in his capacious tweed suit, a Stetson felt hat, and a pair of brogues with eloquent Broadway welts, liquidated the business that had detained him in the "Cheshire Cheese" and drifted idly in the same direction.

A taxi-driver questioned Sheard with his eyebrows, but the pressman, after a moment's hesitancy, shook his head, and, suddenly running out into the stream of traffic, swung himself on a westward bound bus. Pausing in the act of lighting a Havana cigarette, Alden hailed the disappointed taxi-driver and gave him rapid instructions. The broad-brimmed Stetson disappeared within the cab, and the cab darted off in the wake of the westward bound bus.

Such was the price that Mr. Thomas Sheard must pay for the reputation won by his inspired articles upon SÉverac Bablon. For what he had learnt of him during their brief association had enabled that clever journalist to invest his copy with an atmosphere of "exclusiveness" which had attracted universal attention.

As a less pleasant result, the staff of the Gleaner—and Sheard in particular—were being kept under strict surveillance.

Sheard occupied an outside seat, and as the bus travelled rapidly westward, Fleet Street and the Strand offered to his gratified gaze one long vista of placards:

That item was exclusive to the Gleaner, and had been communicated to Sheard upon a plain correspondence card, such as he had learnt to associate with SÉverac Bablon. The Gleaner, amongst all London's news-sheets, alone could inform a public, strung to a tense pitch of excitement, that M. Duquesne, of the Paris police, was staying at the Hotel Astoria, in connection with the SÉverac Bablon case.

As the bus stopped outside Charing Cross Station, Sheard took a quick and anxious look back down the Strand. A taxi standing near the gates attracted his attention, for, although he could not see the Stetson inside, he noted that the cab was engaged, and, therefore, possibly occupied. It was sufficient, in these days of constant surveillance, to arouse his suspicion; it was more than sufficient to-day to set his brain working upon a plan to elude the hypothetical pursuer. He had become, latterly, an expert in detecting detectives, and now his wits must be taxed to the utmost.

For he had a correspondence card in his pocket which differed from those he was used to, in that it bore the address, 70A Finchley Road, and invited him to lunch with SÉverac Bablon that day!

With the detectives of New York and London busy, and, now, with the famous Duquesne in town, Sheard well might survey the Strand behind, carefully, anxiously, distrustfully.

SÉverac Bablon, so far as he was aware, no longer had any actual hold upon him. There was no substantial reason why he should not hand the invitation—bearing that address which one man, alone, in London at that hour cheerfully would have given a thousand pounds to know—to the proper authorities. But SÉverac Bablon had appealed strongly, irresistibly, to something within Sheard that had responded with warmth and friendship. Despite his reckless, lawless deeds, the pressman no more would have thought of betraying him than of betraying the most sacred charge. In fact, as has appeared, he did not hesitate to aid and abet him in his most outrageous projects. But yet he wondered at the great, the incredible audacity of this super-audacious man who now had entrusted to him the secret of his residence.

Hastily descending from the bus, he walked quickly forward to the nearest tobacconist's and turned in the entrance to note if the man who might be in the taxi would betray his presence.

He did.

The Stetson appeared from the window, and a pair of keen grey eyes fixed themselves upon the door wherein Sheard was lurking.

A rapid calculation showed the pressman where lay his best chance. Darting across the road, he dived, rabbit-like, into the burrow of the Tube, got his ticket smartly, and ran to the stairway. With his head on a level with the floor of the booking-offices he paused.

An instant later the canoe-shaped brogues came clattering down from above. The American took in the people in the hall with one comprehensive glance, got a ticket without a moment's delay, and jumped into a lift that was about to descend.

Two minutes afterwards Sheard was in a cab bound for the house of SÉverac Bablon. The New Journalism is an exciting vocation.

He discharged the cabman at the corner of Finchley Road, and walked along to No. 70A.

Opening the monastic looking gate, he passed around a trim lawn and stood in the porch of one of those small and picturesque houses which survive in some parts of red-brick London.

A man who wore conventional black, but who looked like an Ababdeh Arab, opened the door before he had time to ring. He confirmed Sheard's guess at his Eastern nationality by the manner of his silent salutation. Without a word of inquiry he conducted the visitor to a small room on the left of the hall and retired in the same noiseless fashion.

The journalist had anticipated a curious taste in decoration, and he was not disappointed. For this apartment could not well be termed a room; it was a mere cell.

The floor was composed of blocks—or perhaps only faced with layers of red granite; the walls showed a surface of smooth plaster. An unglazed window which opened on a garden afforded ample light, and, presumably for illumination at night, an odd-looking antique lamp stood in a niche. A littered table, black with great age and heavily carved, and a chair to match, stood upon a rough fibre mat. There was no fireplace. The only luxurious touch in the strange place was afforded by a richly Damascened curtain, draped before a recess at the farther end.

From the table arose SÉverac Bablon, wearing a novel garment strangely like a bernouse.

"My dear Sheard," he said warmly and familiarly, "I am really delighted to see you again."

Sheard shook his hand heartily. SÉverac Bablon was as irresistible as ever.

"Take the arm-chair," he continued, "and try to overlook the peculiarities of my study. Believe me, they are not intended for mere effect. Every item of my arrangements has its peculiar note of inspiration, I assure you."

Sheard turned, and found that a deep-seated, heavily-cushioned chair, also antique, and which he had overlooked, stood close behind him. An odd perfume hung in the air.

"Ah," said SÉverac Bablon, in his softly musical voice, "you have detected my vice."

He passed an ebony box to his visitor, containing cigarettes of a dark yellow colour. Sheard lighted one, and discovered it possessed a peculiar aromatic flavour, which he found very fascinating. SÉverac Bablon watched him with a quizzical smile upon his wonderfully handsome face.

"I am afraid there is opium in them," he said.

Sheard started.

"Do not fear," laughed the other. "You cannot develop the vice, for these cigarettes are unobtainable in London. Their history serves to disprove the popular theory that the use of tobacco was introduced from Mexico in the sixteenth century. These were known in the East generations earlier."

And so, with the mere melody of his voice, he re-established his sovereignty over Sheard's mind. His extraordinary knowledge of extraordinary matters occasioned the pressman's constant amazement. From the preparations made for the reception of the Queen of Sheba at Solomon's court in 980 B.C. he passed to the internal organisation of the Criminal Investigation Department.

"I should mention," said Sheard at this point, "that an attempt was made to follow me here."

SÉverac Bablon waved a long white hand carelessly.

"Never mind," he replied soothingly. "It is annoying for you, but I give you my word that you shall not be compromised by me—come, luncheon is waiting. I will show you the only three men in Europe and America who might associate the bandit, the incendiary, with him who calls himself SÉverac Bablon."

He stood up and gazed abstractedly in the direction of the garden. In silence he stood looking, not at the garden, but beyond it, into some vaster garden of his fancy. Sheard studied him with earnest curiosity.

"Will you never tell me," he began abruptly, "who you are really, what is the source of your influence, and what is your aim in all this wild business?"

SÉverac Bablon turned and regarded him fixedly.

"I will," he said, "when the day comes—if ever it does come." A shadow crept over his mobile features.

"I am a dreamer, Sheard," he continued, "and perhaps a trifle mad. I am trying to wield a weapon that my fathers were content to let rust in its scabbard. For the source of the influence you speak of—its emblem lies there."

He pointed a long, thin finger to the recess veiled with its heavy Damascus curtain.

"May I see it?"

The quizzical smile returned to the fine face.

"Oh, thou of the copy-hunting soul," exclaimed SÉverac Bablon. "A day may come. But it is not to-day."

He seized Sheard by the arm and led him out into the hall.

"Look at these three portraits," he directed. "The three great practical investigators of the world. Mr. Brinsley Monro, of Dearborn Street, Chicago; Mr. Paul Harley, of Chancery Lane; and last, but greatest, M. Victor Lemage, of Paris."

"Is Duquesne acting under his instructions?"

"M. Lemage took charge of the case this morning."

Sheard looked hard at SÉverac Bablon. Victor Lemage, inventor of the anthroposcopic system of identification, the greatest living authority upon criminology, was a man to be feared.

SÉverac Bablon smiled, clapped both hands upon his shoulders, and looked into his eyes.

"It is the lighter side of my strange warfare," he said. "I revel in it, Sheard. It refreshes me for more serious things. This evening you must arrange to meet me for a few moments. I shall have a 'scoop' to offer you for the Gleaner. Do not fail me. It will leave you ample time to get on to Downing Street afterwards. You see, I knew you were going to Downing Street to-night! Am I not a magician? I shall wire you. If, when you ring at the door of the house to which you will be directed, no one replies, go away at once. I will then communicate the news later. And now—lunch."