CHAPTER XIV

"Sir Justin," said the Countess firmly, "please
tell my daughter exactly what you have discovered."

Sir Justin Wallingford sat in the drawing-
room at Belgrave Square with one of these ladies on
either side of him. He was a tall, gaunt man with a
grizzled black beard, a long nose, and such a formidably
solemn expression that ambitious parents were in
the habit of wishing that their offspring might some
day be as wise as Sir Justin Wallingford looked. His
fund of information was prodigious, while his reasoning
powers were so remarkable that he had never been
known to commit the slightest action without furnishing
a full and adequate explanation of his conduct.
Thus the discrimination shown by the Countess in
choosing him to restore a lady's peace of mind will at
once be apparent.

"The results of my inquiries," he pronounced,
"have been on the whole of a negative nature. If this
mission on which the Baron von Blitzenberg professes
to be employed is in fact of an unusually delicate
nature, it is just conceivable that the answer I received
from Prince Gommell-Kinchen, when I sounded him at
the Khalifa's luncheon, may have been intended merely