 to frighten you.
If I had bobbed up from behind the bottles and said "Booh!" you would have had a serious shock. I wanted to think of a way of breaking my presence gently to you. But you saved me the trouble, Dad. Was I really breathing so loudly that you could hear me?'
The girl ended her strange recital, and there was a moment's silence in the cellar. Racksole merely nodded an affirmative to her concluding question.
'Well, Nell, my girl,' said the millionaire at length, 'we are much obliged for your gymnastic efforts—very much obliged. But now, I think you had better go off to bed. There is going to be some serious trouble here, I'll lay my last dollar on that?'
'But if there is to be a burglary I should so like to see it, Dad,' Nella pleaded. 'I've never seen a burglar caught red-handed.'
'This isn't a burglary, my dear. I calculate it's something far worse than a burglary.'
'What?' she cried. 'Murder? Arson? Dynamite plot? How perfectly splendid!'
'Mr Babylon informs me that Jules is in London,' said Racksole quietly.
'Jules!' she exclaimed under her breath, and her tone changed instantly to the utmost seriousness. 'Switch off the light, quick!' Springing to the switch, she put the cellar in darkness.
'What's that for?' said her father.
'If he comes back he would see the light, and be frightened away,' said Nella. 'That wouldn't do at all.'
'It wouldn't, Miss Racksole,' said Babylon, and there was in his voice a note of admiration for the girl's sagacity which Racksole heard with high paternal pride.
'Listen, Nella,' said the latter, drawing his daughter to him in the profound gloom of the cellar. 'We fancy that Jules may be trying to tamper with a certain bottle of wine—a bottle which might possibly be drunk by Prince Eugen. Now do you think that the man you saw might have been Jules?'
'I hadn't previously thought of him as being Jules, but immediately you mentioned the name I somehow knew that he was. Yes, I am sure it was Jules.'
'Well, just hear what I have to say. There is no time to lose. If he is coming at all he will be here very
