‘Excuse me a moment,’ said Logan.  ‘A word with you, Bude.’

He took Bude aside, uttered a few rapid sentences, and then helped Lady Bude into the tandem.  Bude followed, and drove away.

‘Is your secret to be kept from me?’ asked Merton.

’Well, old boy, you never told me the mystery of the Emu’s feathers!  Secret for secret, out with it; how did the feathers help you, if they did help you, to find out my uncle, the Marquis? Gifgaff, as we say in Berwickshire.  Out with your feathers! and I’ll produce my dragon volant, tail and all.’

Merton was horrified.  The secret of the Emu’s feathers involved the father of Lady Fastcastle, of his old friend’s wife, in a very distasteful way.  Logan, since his marriage, had never shown any curiosity in the matter.  His was a joyous nature; no one was less of a self-tormentor.

‘Well, old fellow,’ said Merton, ’keep your dragon, and I’ll keep my Emu.’

‘I won’t keep him long, I assure you,’ said Logan.  ’Only for a day or two, I dare say; then you’ll know; sooner perhaps.  But, for excellent reasons, I asked Bude and Lady Bude to say nothing about the hallucination of these second-sighted Highland fishers.  I have a plan.  I think we shall run in the kidnappers; keep your pecker up.  You shall be in it!’

With this promise, and with Logan’s jovial confidence (he kept breaking into laughter as he went) Merton had to be satisfied, though in no humour for laughing.

‘I’m working up to my denouement.’  Logan said.  ’Tremendously dramatic!  You shall be on all through; I am keeping the fat for you, Merton.  It is no bad thing for a young man to render the highest possible services to a generous millionaire, especially in the circumstances.’

‘You’re rather patronising,’ said Merton, a little hurt.

‘No, no,’ said Logan.  ’I have played second fiddle to you often, do let me take command this time—­or, at all events, wait till you see my plot unfolded.  Then you can take your part, or leave it alone, or modify to taste.  Nothing can be fairer.’

Merton admitted that these proposals were loyal, and worthy of their old and tried friendship.

‘Un dragon volant, flying over the empty sea!’ said Logan.  ’The Highlanders beat the world for fantastic visions, and the Islanders beat the Highlanders.  But, look here, am I too inquisitive?  The night when we first thought of the Disentanglers you said there was—­somebody.  But I understood that she and you were of one mind, and that only parents and poverty were in the way.  And now, from what you told me this morning at Inchnadampf, it seems that there is no understanding between you and this lady, Miss Macrae.’

‘There is none,’ said Merton.  ’I tried to keep my feelings to myself—­I’m ashamed to say that I doubt if I succeeded.’

‘Any chance?’ asked Logan, putting his arm in Merton’s in the old schoolboy way.