By Jove, it seemed to me I had been asleep about a minute when I saw the sunlight splashing through the blinds.

Jenkins stood beside me with something in his hand.

"Didn't hear me, did you, sir?" he was asking. "I said I thought the address looked like Mr. Billings' handwriting. And he's gone, sir."

"Gone?"

I sat up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. I had a befogged notion that Jenkins looked a little queer.

"Yes, sir. He's not in his room, nor in the apartment anywhere."

"Eh—how—what's that?" For Jenkins' hand extended an envelope.

"Perhaps you would like to read this now, sir."

It was from Billings—I knew his fist in an instant. It was very short and without heading. In fact, above his name appeared just a half-dozen penciled words, heavily underscored, and without punctuation:

Damn you send me my clothes

"His clothes?" I looked perplexedly at Jenkins.

He was looking a little pale and held his eyes fixedly to the picture molding across the room. He coughed gently.

"Yes, sir," he uttered faintly; "they're in his room, but he ain't."

"By Jove!" I remarked helplessly. And just then I remembered something that brought me wide awake in an instant.

I questioned eagerly:

"I say—that desk lamp in there, Jenkins—did you switch it on in the night? And the doors I found open—know anything about them?" And Jenkins' blank expression was the reply.

"By Jove, Jenkins!" I gasped.

Jenkins compressed his lips. "Exactly, sir."

"Er—what were you thinking, Jenkins?" I questioned desperately. And I think Jenkins' stolidity wavered before my anxious face.

"It ain't for me to be thinking anything, sir—besides, the messenger's waiting—but—" His hand sought his pocket.

He stepped back, leaving something on the stand by my bed.

"What's that?" I questioned in alarm. "Another note?"

"No, sir—not exactly, sir. But if I may suggest—without offense, sir—that you fill it out, I will see that it gets to him."

"Him? Who's him—he, I mean?"

"Doctor Splasher, sir, the temperance party I was speaking of. I've already filled out mine, and I'm going to put one in for Mr. Billings when I send the clothes." From the doorway he turned a woebegone countenance toward me. "It's heartrending, sir—if I may be permitted to say so—to think of a nice gentleman like Mr. Billings wandering over to the club with nothing on but red pajamas."

But when I telephoned they stated that Mr. Billings had not been at the club since last evening. Some one who answered the 'phone thought Mr. Billings was with his friend, Mr. Lightnut, in the Kahoka Apartments. And, of course, I knew jolly well he was not.

As I turned from the telephone, something in Jenkins' expression arrested my attention.

"Well?" I said impatiently, for he has so many devilishly clever inspirations, you know; and, dash it, I like to encourage him.

"Pardon, sir, but don't you think—" Here he looked straight up at the electrolier and coughed. "About Mr. Billings, sir; I was going to suggest that though he isn't over at the club, he's somewhere, sir."

Why, dash it, I thought that jolly likely, myself! I said so.

"Yes, sir," said Jenkins darkly. "And Mr. Billings usually knows where he is. I guess, sir, he's in this neighborhood—h'm!"

I just sat staring at him a minute, thinking what a devilish wonderful thing intuition is for the lower classes.

"By Jove, Jenkins!" I said; "then you think—"

"I think Mr. Billings, sir, might prefer to find himself—h'm! Yes, sir." Jenkins lifted the breakfast tray with deliberation, removed it from the room, and returned, moving about the furniture and busying himself with an air of mystery. Dash it, I knew he had up his sleeve some other devilish clever notion, and so presently I spoke up just to touch him off.

"By Jove!" I remarked.

"Yes, sir." Jenkins rested the end of the crumb brush on the table and considered me earnestly. "You know, Mr. Lightnut, last night as Mr. Billings was retiring, he says to me: 'Jenkins, Mr. Lightnut has promised to go up home with me to-morrow for the week end. There's a tenner coming your way if he doesn't forget about it. He's to go to-morrow, now, mind you, Jenkins; and it don't matter what comes up. You see that he goes up to-morrow.'"

"By Jove!" I said as he paused, and I screwed my monocle tighter and nodded. "I see."

Of course I didn't see, but I knew the poor fellow was driving at something, and I wanted to give him a run.

"Exactly, sir." And he stood waiting. "So, shall I pack, sir? You'll want to take the four-ten express, I suppose?"

By Jove, it was the most amazingly, dashed clever guess I ever knew Jenkins to get off! Fact! I knew that if there was one thing more than another in all the world that I wanted to do, it was to take that four-ten express. To think of seeing Frances again, and to-day!

Of course, it was quite clear that Billings must have anticipated the possibility of something unusual, and that was why he had impressed a sort of personal responsibility upon Jenkins—kind of tipping him off, as it were, so he would be sure to see that I got off in case he did not show up himself. It was very easy to see this, especially as Jenkins saw it that way, too, but what made it specially so awfully jolly easy to see was the fact that I wanted to go, you know.

So I let Jenkins shoot a wire up to Billings, stating my train, and I just had to chuckle as in my mind's eye I saw old brazen face Jack coming down to the station to meet me, and just ignoring his going off in the middle of the night in my pajamas. By Jove, perhaps he would bring her down to the train in his car, so I would be sure not to ask him any questions!

I left Jenkins to travel by a later train, and a little after four I was whirling above Spuyten Duyvil and looking about the chair-car to see if there was any one I knew. But, by Jove, there was hardly a soul in the car—nobody except just women, you know, and these filled the whole place. And they were talking about all sorts of dashed silly things. Most of them were devilish pretty as the word goes, but, of course, not a patch on her. Oh, well, of course, they couldn't be that! Don't know how they were behind me, you know—too much trouble to turn round and fix my glass. So I just took the range in front, looking at the tops of the hats and the chairs and wondering if women would ever become extinct like that bird—the great what's-its-name, you know.

"By Jove, she could be spared!" I thought, studying a young woman who stood in the aisle beside me. She was rather heavy set—what you might call egg-shaped. Her face and her heavy glasses seemed to proclaim a mission in life, and the dowdyish cut of her rig and the reckless way it was hurled on made it plain that she was on to the fact that nature had made a blunder in her sex, and she wanted the world to know she knew.

She was talking to the lady immediately behind me. At least, I discovered after five minutes that she was talking. By Jove, up to that time, I thought she was canvassing for a book! The other never got in a word, don't you know. And I was getting devilish tired of it and wishing she would move on, when she shifted, preparatory to doing so, and raised her voice:

"Very well, then, if you don't care to come, I think I will go forward again and finish the discussion with Doctor Jennie Newman upon the metamorphoses of the primordial protoplasms. Watch out for Tarrytown now, Frances."

Tarrytown! Frances! By Jove, my heart skipped a beat!

The other murmured something.

Her voice! Her blessed, sweet voice, of which every syllable, every shade, was indented in my memory like the record of a what's-its-name! By Jove, my Frances, and right behind me!

All I could do to sit still a minute longer, but I knew jolly well if I turned now I would be introduced to the freak and lose I couldn't tell how many precious moments with my dear one. So I sat low in the chair, polishing my monocle, you know, and noting with satisfaction that my part reflected all right in the little strip of mirror. I tried to get a glimpse of her in it, too, but all I could see was a glorious white hat—a stunning Neapolitan, flanked with a sheaf of wild ostrich plumes.

And then the freak left. I watched her spraddle down the aisle and out through the little corridor before I dared risk the accident of a backward turn of that funny green hat.

Then, when all was safe, I took a deep breath, gripped hard the arms of the chair, and whirled suddenly around.

"Frances!" I whispered. "My darling!"