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We looked little enough like London men, and I doubt whether anybody meeting us would for an instant have supposed that we were not what we intended that we should look like, namely well-to-do tenantry of Lord Cranmere's bound for the scene of the coming-of-age festivities. It was barely nine o'clock, and at eleven the morning's sports were to begin.

Osborne has just told me, Dulcie, that he is asked to stay at Eldon Hall for Lord Cranmere's son's coming of age, on the twenty-eighth. I have been invited too; I do wish you were going to be there. Connie has accepted."

I introduced him to you the last time we met in town." "I remember the man perfectly, but surely he isn't here." Jack's lips stretched into a grin. "'Lord Cranmere," he said. "That's Preston!" He chuckled. "Cranmere's own brother was actually deceived when we brought the two together, as a test," he went on. "Preston is a genius.

The reference to the date of the coming of age of Cranmere's son, considered in connection with the questions about Cranmere's seat, Eldon Hall, put to Osborne during his mysterious confinement in Grafton Street, made the detective almost excited. The unravelling of those cyphers was, he said, perhaps the most important discovery as yet made.

That seemed far more probable, and just then I remembered that in less than a fortnight the coming-of-age festivities of Lord Cranmere's son would begin February the 28th.

That belief, I felt, would help me to carry out the plan I had formed for discovering at first hand the actual movements of the gang, some members of which would, I felt sure, be present at Eldon Hall for the coming-of-age festivities of Lord Cranmere's eldest son. Yet what about Dulcie? I felt that I must see her, and see her as soon as possible.

"Any friend of Cranmere's is welcome here; one has, of course, to be careful whom one admits on these occasions isn't that so, Cranmere? Come upstairs and have some supper." We followed him, ascending to the first floor. In a large, high-ceilinged, well-lit room an elaborate supper was spread. There were seats for thirty or forty, but only ten or a dozen were occupied.

He doesn't merely 'make up' to look like someone else; he doesn't, when he is made up, just impersonate the character; for the time he is the man, he 'feels like him, he says, he shares his views, he becomes his other ego. He has the advantage in this case of knowing Cranmere well, and he has, in consequence, excelled himself to-night. The way he has hit off Cranmere's lisp is marvellous.

One thing, which had struck me at once, but that I had not told Dick, for fear of exciting him too much, was that Bedlington was the large town nearest to Eldon Hall, the Earl of Cranmere's seat, the place the mysterious, unseen man in the house in Grafton Street had asked Jack Osborne about while he lay bound upon the bed; also that February 28th was the date when Cranmere's eldest son would come of age, on which day a week's festivities at Eldon would begin and festivities at Eldon were events to be remembered, I had been told.

Lord Cranmere's elder son, who was about to come of age, was like the typical athletic young Briton. Tall, well-built, handsome, with plenty of self-assurance and a wholly unaffected manner, he was worthy of his father's pride. It was no exaggeration to say that everybody, rich and poor alike, who came into contact with him, at once fell under the spell of his attractive personality.