at that moment moored to the end of the pier. Truly fate, which had played us many sorry tricks in the past, was on our side that night.
Despite the earliness of the hour, the Admiral, Sir Slocombe Colqumondeley, received me at once in his state-room, a magnificent apartment upholstered in green and gold. As his eyes rested on the superscription of the packet I handed him he could not repress a slight start, but before he had finished the reading of the message his face had grown strangely tense. For a few minutes he paced the salon in deep thought, then turning to an instrument he transmitted a series of commands in quick succession. I have since learned, though I little suspected it at the time, that the tenor of these orders was for every ship of the fleet to clear for action.
Shaking off his preoccupation Sir Slocombe turned to me with an engaging smile.
"So you are my daughter Sybil's young man, Dr. Humdrum?" he exclaimed, with bluff sailor-like heartiness. "Well, well; we must see what we can arrange after this business is over. How would Surgeon-Major of the Fleet suit you; eh, what?"
A few minutes later I was leaving the pier, more bewildered by the turn events had taken than I would care to admit, when a tall, dignified officer, with grey mutton-chop side-whiskers, approached me.
"Pardon me, but did you enter Plyhampton in a taxi-cab numbered XYZ 999?" he inquired courteously.
"I did," I replied, referring to the details which I had taken the precaution to jot down on my cuff.
"Then it is my duty, as Warden of the Port, to put you in irons," and he beckoned to a master of marines.
"On what charge?" I demanded with some hauteur.
"The driver of the taxi has been found stabbed to death with his own speed lever," he explained gravely.
