“I haven’t heard your business yet, sir.  All you’ve told me is that you want to be set down in this place, Dunkhot, and be taken off again after you’ve stayed there four-and-twenty hours.”

“Well, you see I didn’t want it talked over beforehand.  If the newspapers got hold of the yarn, and made a lot of fuss about it, they might upset a certain marriage that I’ve very much set my heart upon.”

Captain Kettle looked puzzled.  “I don’t seem to quite follow you, sir.”

“You shall hear the tale from the beginning.  We have plenty of time ahead of us just now.  You remember the wreck of the Rangoon?”

“She was coming home from East Indian ports, wasn’t she, and got on fire somewhere off Cape Guardafui?  But that’ll have been twenty years back, in the old overland days, before the Ditch was opened.  Only about ten of her people saved, if I remember.”

“That’s about right,” said Wenlock, “though it’s twenty years ago now.  She was full of Anglo-Indians, and their loss made a great sensation at the time.  Amongst others was a Colonel Anderson, and his wife, and their child Teresa, aged nine; and what made their deaths all the more sad was the fact that Anderson’s elder brother died just a week before, and he would have come home to find a peerage and large estates waiting for him.”

“I can feel for that man,” said Kettle.

“I can feel most for the daughter,” said Wenlock.

“How do you mean, sir?”

“Well, Colonel Anderson’s dead, and his wife’s dead, but the daughter isn’t, or at any rate she was very much alive twelve months ago, that’s all.  The whole lot of them, with others, got into one of the Rangoon’s boats, and after frizzling about at sea till they were nearly starved, got chucked on that South Arabian coast (which you say is so rocky and dangerous), and were drowned in the process.  All barring Teresa, that is.  She was pulled out of the water by the local niggers, and was brought up by them, and I’ve absolutely certain information that not a year ago she was living in Dunkhot as quite a big personage in her way.”

“And she’s ‘My Lady’ now, if she only knew?”

“Well, not that.  The title doesn’t descend in the female line, but Colonel Anderson made a will in her favor after she was born, and the present earl, who’s got the estates, would have to shell out if she turned up again.”

“My owners, in their letter, mentioned that you were a solicitor.  Then you are employed by his lordship, sir?”

Mr. Wenlock laughed.  “Not much,” he said.  “I’m on my own hook.  Why, hang it all, Captain, you must see that no man of his own free will would be idiot enough to resurrect a long-forgotten niece just to make himself into a beggar.”

“I don’t see why not, sir, if he got to know she was alive.  Some men have consciences, and even a lord, I suppose, is a man.”

“The present earl has far too good a time of it to worry about running a conscience.  No, I bet he fights like a thief for the plunder, however clear a case we have to show him.  And as he’s the man in possession and has plenty of ready cash for law expenses, the odds are he’ll turn out too big to worry at through all the courts, and we shall compromise.  I’d like that best myself.  Cash down has a desirable feel about it.”