‘You flatter me,’ answered Bude.

‘Lastly, did the trustees ask you if you were a married man?’

‘No, by Jove, they didn’t.’

’Well, nothing about the competitors being unmarried men occurs in the clause of McCabe’s last will and testament.  He took it for granted, the prize being what it is, that only bachelors were eligible.  But he forgot to say so, in so many words, and the trustees did not go beyond the deed.  Now, Dodge is married; Fry of Trinity is a married don; Rustler (I happen to know) is an engaged man, who can’t afford to marry a charming girl in Detroit, Michigan; and Professor Potter has buried one wife, and wedded another.  If Rustler is loyal to his plighted word, you have nobody against you but Wilkinson and old Jenkins of All Souls—­a tough customer, I admit, though what a Stinks man like him has to do at All Souls I don’t know.’

’I say, this is hard on the other sportsmen!  What ought I to do?  Should I tell them?’

’You can’t:  you have no official knowledge of their existence.  You only know through Miss McCabe.  You have just to sit tight.’

‘It seems beastly unsportsmanlike,’ said Bude.

‘Wills are often most carelessly drafted,’ answered Merton, ’and the usual consequences follow.’

‘It is not cricket,’ said Bude, and really he seemed much more depressed than elated by the reduction of the odds against him from 6 to 1 to 2 to 1.

This is the magnificent type of character produced by our British system of athletic sports, though it is not to be doubted that the spirit of Science, in the American gentlemen, would have been equally productive of the sense of fair play.

* * * * * *

A year, by the terms of McCabe’s will, was allotted to the quest.  Candidates were to keep the trustees informed as to their whereabouts.  Six weeks before the end of the period the competitors would be instructed as to the port of rendezvous, where an ocean liner, chartered by the trustees, was to await them.  Bude, as Jones Harvey, had obtained leave to sail his own steam yacht of 800 tons.

The earl’s preparations were simple.  He carried his usual stock of scientific implements, his usual armament, including two Maxim guns, and a package of considerable size and weight, which was stored in the hold.  As to the preparations of the others he knew nothing, but Miss McCabe became aware that Rustler had not left the American continent.  Concerning Jenkins, and the probable aim of his enterprise, the object of his quest, she gleaned information from a junior Fellow of All Souls, who was her slave, was indiscreet, and did not know how deeply concerned she was in the expeditions.  But she never whispered a word of what she knew to her lover, not even in the hour of parting.

It was in an unnamed creek of the New Zealand coast, six weeks before the end of the appointed year, that Bude received a telegram in cipher from the trustees.  Bearded, and in blue spectacles, clad rudely as a mariner, Bude was to all, except Logan, who had accompanied him, plain Jones Harvey.  None could have recognised in his rugged aspect the elegant aristocrat of Mayfair.