He usually took his second meal at an earlier hour, but to-day he had gone on working, deeply interested in his subject.  He put aside his brush and palette, and seated himself at the table, on which Alphonse had placed a couple of chops, a bottle of Bass, and half a loaf of French bread.  When he had finished, he lighted a cigarette and opened the Telegraph lazily.  He had not looked at it before, and he uttered a cry of surprise as his eyes fell on the headlines announcing the theft of the Rembrandt.  He perused the brief paragraph, and turned to his servant.

“Go out and buy me an afternoon paper,” he said.

Alphonse departed, and, having the luck to encounter a newsboy in the street, he speedily returned with the latest edition of the Globe.  It contained nothing more in substance than the earlier issues, but the full account of the mysterious robbery was there, a column long, and with keen interest Jack read every word of it over twice.

“It’s a queer case,” he said to himself, “and the sort of thing that doesn’t often happen.  The last sensation of the kind was the Gainsborough, years ago.  What will the thieves do with their prize?  They can’t well dispose of it.  It will be a waiting game.  I daresay the watchman knows more than he cares to tell.  And so the picture was insured—­over-insured, too, for I don’t believe it would have brought ten thousand pounds.  That’s rather an interesting fact.  Now, if Lamb and Drummond were like some unscrupulous dealers that I know, instead of being beyond reproach, there would be reason to think—­”

He did not finish the mental sentence, but tossed the paper aside, and rose suddenly to his feet.

“By Jove, I’ll hang up the duplicate!” he muttered.  “I was going to send it to Von Whele’s executors, but it is worth keeping now, as a curiosity.  It will be an attraction to the chaps who come to see me.  I hope it won’t get me into trouble.  It is so deucedly like the original that I might be accused of stealing it from the premises of Lamb and Drummond.”

He crossed the studio, knelt down by the couch and pulled the drapery aside, and drew out the half-dozen of bulging portfolios; they had not been disturbed since the visit of his French customer, M. Felix Marchand.  He opened the one in which he knew he had seen the Rembrandt on that occasion, but he failed to find it, though he turned over the sketches singly.  He examined them again, with increasing wonder, and then went carefully through the other portfolios.  The search was fruitless.  The copy of Martin Von Whele’s Rembrandt was gone!

“What can it mean?” thought Jack.  “I distinctly remember putting the canvas back in the biggest portfolio—­I could swear to that.  I have not touched them since.  Yet the picture is gone—­missing—­stolen.  Yes, stolen!  What else?  By Jove, it’s a queer coincidence that both the original and the copy should disappear simultaneously!”