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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel, by
+A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel
+
+Author: A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason
+
+Release Date: January 24, 2012 [EBook #38663]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AFFAIR AT THE SEMIRAMIS HOTEL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+   1. Page scan source:
+      http://www.archive.org/details/affairatsemirami00maso
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            THE AFFAIR AT
+
+                         THE SEMIRAMIS HOTEL
+
+
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+                            A. E. W. MASON
+
+
+
+
+                       CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+                        NEW YORK :: :: :: 1917
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Copyright, 1917, by
+
+                            A. E. W. MASON
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE AFFAIR
+
+                        AT THE SEMIRAMIS HOTEL
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE AFFAIR
+                        AT THE SEMIRAMIS HOTEL
+
+
+
+
+                                  I
+
+
+Mr. Ricardo, when the excitements of the Villa Rose were done with,
+returned to Grosvenor Square and resumed the busy, unnecessary life of
+an amateur. But the studios had lost their savour, artists their
+attractiveness, and even the Russian opera seemed a trifle flat. Life
+was altogether a disappointment; Fate, like an actress at a
+restaurant, had taken the wooden pestle in her hand and stirred all
+the sparkle out of the champagne; Mr. Ricardo languished--until one
+unforgettable morning.
+
+He was sitting disconsolately at his breakfast-table when the door was
+burst open and a square, stout man, with the blue, shaven face of a
+French comedian, flung himself into the room. Ricardo sprang towards
+the new-comer with a cry of delight.
+
+"My dear Hanaud!"
+
+He seized his visitor by the arm, feeling it to make sure that here,
+in flesh and blood, stood the man who had introduced him to the
+acutest sensations of his life. He turned towards his butler, who was
+still bleating expostulations in the doorway at the unceremonious
+irruption of the French detective.
+
+"Another place, Burton, at once," he cried, and as soon as he and
+Hanaud were alone: "What good wind blows you to London?"
+
+"Business, my friend. The disappearance of bullion somewhere on the
+line between Paris and London. But it is finished. Yes, I take a
+holiday."
+
+A light had suddenly flashed in Mr. Ricardo's eyes, and was now no
+less suddenly extinguished. Hanaud paid no attention whatever to his
+friend's disappointment. He pounced upon a piece of silver which
+adorned the tablecloth and took it over to the window.
+
+"Everything is as it should be, my friend," he exclaimed, with a grin.
+"Grosvenor Square, the _Times_ open at the money column, and a false
+antique upon the table. Thus I have dreamed of you. All Mr. Ricardo is
+in that sentence."
+
+Ricardo laughed nervously. Recollection made him wary of Hanaud's
+sarcasms. He was shy even to protest the genuineness of his silver.
+But, indeed, he had not the time. For the door opened again and once
+more the butler appeared. On this occasion, however, he was alone.
+
+"Mr. Calladine would like to speak to you, sir," he said.
+
+"Calladine!" cried Ricardo in an extreme surprise. "That is the most
+extraordinary thing." He looked at the clock upon his mantelpiece. It
+was barely half-past eight. "At this hour, too?"
+
+"Mr. Calladine is still wearing evening dress," the butler remarked.
+
+Ricardo started in his chair. He began to dream of possibilities; and
+here was Hanaud miraculously at his side.
+
+"Where is Mr. Calladine?" he asked.
+
+"I have shown him into the library."
+
+"Good," said Mr. Ricardo. "I will come to him."
+
+But he was in no hurry. He sat and let his thoughts play with this
+incident of Calladine's early visit.
+
+"It is very odd," he said. "I have not seen Calladine for months--no,
+nor has anyone. Yet, a little while ago, no one was more often seen."
+
+He fell apparently into a muse, but he was merely seeking to provoke
+Hanaud's curiosity. In this attempt, however, he failed. Hanaud
+continued placidly to eat his breakfast, so that Mr. Ricardo was
+compelled to volunteer the story which he was burning to tell.
+
+"Drink your coffee, Hanaud, and you shall hear about Calladine."
+
+Hanaud grunted with resignation, and Mr. Ricardo flowed on:
+
+"Calladine was one of England's young men. Everybody said so. He was
+going to do very wonderful things as soon as he had made up his mind
+exactly what sort of wonderful things he was going to do. Meanwhile,
+you met him in Scotland, at Newmarket, at Ascot, at Cowes, in the box
+of some great lady at the Opera--not before half-past ten in the
+evening _there_--in any fine house where the candles that night
+happened to be lit. He went everywhere, and then a day came and he
+went nowhere. There was no scandal, no trouble, not a whisper against
+his good name. He simply vanished. For a little while a few people
+asked: 'What has become of Calladine?' But there never was any answer,
+and London has no time for unanswered questions. Other promising young
+men dined in his place. Calladine had joined the huge legion of the
+Come-to-nothings. No one even seemed to pass him in the street. Now
+unexpectedly, at half-past eight in the morning, and in evening dress,
+he calls upon me. 'Why?' I ask myself."
+
+Mr. Ricardo sank once more into a reverie. Hanaud watched him with a
+broadening smile of pure enjoyment.
+
+"And in time, I suppose," he remarked casually, "you will perhaps ask
+him?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo sprang out of his pose to his feet.
+
+"Before I discuss serious things with an acquaintance," he said with a
+scathing dignity, "I make it a rule to revive my impressions of his
+personality. The cigarettes are in the crystal box."
+
+"They would be," said Hanaud, unabashed, as Ricardo stalked from the
+room. But in five minutes Mr. Ricardo came running back, all his
+composure gone.
+
+"It is the greatest good fortune that you, my friend, should have
+chosen this morning to visit me," he cried, and Hanaud nodded with a
+little grimace of resignation.
+
+"There goes my holiday. You shall command me now and always. I will
+make the acquaintance of your young friend."
+
+He rose up and followed Ricardo into his study, where a young man was
+nervously pacing the floor.
+
+"Mr. Calladine," said Ricardo. "This is Mr. Hanaud."
+
+The young man turned eagerly. He was tall, with a noticeable elegance
+and distinction, and the face which he showed to Hanaud was, in spite
+of its agitation, remarkably handsome.
+
+"I am very glad," he said. "You are not an official of this country.
+You can advise--without yourself taking action, if you'll be so good."
+
+Hanaud frowned. He bent his eyes uncompromisingly upon Calladine.
+
+"What does that mean?" he asked, with a note of sternness in his
+voice.
+
+"It means that I must tell someone," Calladine burst out in quivering
+tones. "That I don't know what to do. I am in a difficulty too big for
+me. That's the truth."
+
+Hanaud looked at the young man keenly. It seemed to Ricardo that he
+took in every excited gesture, every twitching feature, in one
+comprehensive glance. Then he said in a friendlier voice:
+
+"Sit down and tell me"--and he himself drew up a chair to the table.
+
+"I was at the Semiramis last night," said Calladine, naming one of the
+great hotels upon the Embankment. "There was a fancy-dress ball."
+
+All this happened, by the way, in those far-off days before the
+war--nearly, in fact, three years ago today--when London, flinging
+aside its reticence, its shy self-consciousness, had become a city of
+carnivals and masquerades, rivalling its neighbours on the Continent
+in the spirit of its gaiety, and exceeding them by its stupendous
+luxury. "I went by the merest chance. My rooms are in the Adelphi
+Terrace."
+
+"There!" cried Mr. Ricardo in surprise, and Hanaud lifted a hand to
+check his interruptions.
+
+"Yes," continued Calladine. "The night was warm, the music floated
+through my open windows and stirred old memories. I happened to have a
+ticket. I went."
+
+Calladine drew up a chair opposite to Hanaud and, seating himself,
+told, with many nervous starts and in troubled tones, a story which,
+to Mr. Ricardo's thinking, was as fabulous as any out of the "Arabian
+Nights."
+
+"I had a ticket," he began, "but no domino. I was consequently stopped
+by an attendant in the lounge at the top of the staircase leading down
+to the ballroom.
+
+"'You can hire a domino in the cloakroom, Mr. Calladine,' he said to
+me. I had already begun to regret the impulse which had brought me,
+and I welcomed the excuse with which the absence of a costume provided
+me. I was, indeed, turning back to the door, when a girl who had at
+that moment run down from the stairs of the hotel into the lounge,
+cried gaily: 'That's not necessary'; and at the same moment she flung
+to me a long scarlet cloak which she had been wearing over her own
+dress. She was young, fair, rather tall, slim, and very pretty; her
+hair was drawn back from her face with a ribbon, and rippled down her
+shoulders in heavy curls; and she was dressed in a satin coat and
+knee-breeches of pale green and gold, with a white waistcoat and
+silk stockings and scarlet heels to her satin shoes. She was as
+straight-limbed as a boy, and exquisite like a figure in Dresden
+china. I caught the cloak and turned to thank her. But she did not
+wait. With a laugh she ran down the stairs a supple and shining
+figure, and was lost in the throng at the doorway of the ballroom. I
+was stirred by the prospect of an adventure. I ran down after her. She
+was standing just inside the room alone, and she was gazing at the
+scene with parted lips and dancing eyes. She laughed again as she saw
+the cloak about my shoulders, a delicious gurgle of amusement, and I
+said to her:
+
+"'May I dance with you?'
+
+"'Oh, do!' she cried, with a little jump, and clasping her hands. She
+was of a high and joyous spirit and not difficult in the matter of an
+introduction. 'This gentleman will do very well to present us,' she
+said, leading me in front of a bust of the God Pan which stood in a
+niche of the wall. 'I am, as you see, straight out of an opera. My
+name is Celymène or anything with an eighteenth century sound to it.
+You are--what you will. For this evening we are friends.'
+
+"'And for to-morrow?' I asked.
+
+"'I will tell you about that later on,' she replied, and she began to
+dance with a light step and a passion in her dancing which earned me
+many an envious glance from the other men. I was in luck, for Celymène
+knew no one, and though, of course, I saw the faces of a great many
+people whom I remembered, I kept them all at a distance. We had been
+dancing for about half an hour when the first queerish thing happened.
+She stopped suddenly in the midst of a sentence with a little gasp. I
+spoke to her, but she did not hear. She was gazing past me, her eyes
+wide open, and such a rapt look upon her face as I had never seen. She
+was lost in a miraculous vision. I followed the direction of her eyes
+and, to my astonishment, I saw nothing more than a stout, short,
+middle-aged woman, egregiously over-dressed as Marie Antoinette.
+
+"'So you do know someone here?' I said, and I had to repeat the words
+sharply before my friend withdrew her eyes. But even then she was not
+aware of me. It was as if a voice had spoken to her whilst she was
+asleep and had disturbed, but not wakened her. Then she came
+to--there's really no other word I can think of which describes her at
+that moment--she came to with a deep sigh.
+
+"'No,' she answered. 'She is a Mrs. Blumenstein from Chicago, a widow
+with ambitions and a great deal of money. But I don't know her.'
+
+"'Yet you know all about her,' I remarked.
+
+"'She crossed in the same boat with me,' Celymène replied. 'Did I tell
+you that I landed at Liverpool this morning? She is staying at the
+Semiramis too. Oh, let us dance!'
+
+"She twitched my sleeve impatiently, and danced with a kind of
+violence and wildness as if she wished to banish some sinister
+thought. And she did undoubtedly banish it. We supped together and
+grew confidential, as under such conditions people will. She told me
+her real name. It was Joan Carew.
+
+"'I have come over to get an engagement if I can at Covent Garden. I
+am supposed to sing all right. But I don't know anyone. I have been
+brought up in Italy.'
+
+"'You have some letters of introduction, I suppose?' I asked.
+
+"'Oh, yes. One from my teacher in Milan. One from an American
+manager.'
+
+"In my turn I told her my name and where I lived, and I gave her my
+card. I thought, you see, that since I used to know a good many
+operatic people, I might be able to help her.
+
+"'Thank you,' she said, and at that moment Mrs. Blumenstein, followed
+by a party, chiefly those lap-dog young men who always seem to gather
+about that kind of person, came into the supper-room and took a table
+close to us. There was at once an end of all confidences--indeed, of
+all conversation. Joan Carew lost all the lightness of her spirit; she
+talked at random, and her eyes were drawn again and again to the
+grotesque slander on Marie Antoinette. Finally I became annoyed.
+
+"'Shall we go?' I suggested impatiently, and to my surprise she
+whispered passionately:
+
+"'Yes. Please! Let us go.'
+
+"Her voice was actually shaking, her small hands clenched. We went
+back to the ballroom, but Joan Carew did not recover her gaiety, and
+half-way through a dance, when we were near to the door, she stopped
+abruptly--extraordinarily abruptly.
+
+"'I shall go,' she said abruptly. 'I am tired. I have grown dull.'
+
+"I protested, but she made a little grimace.
+
+"'You'll hate me in half an hour. Let's be wise and stop now while we
+are friends,' she said, and whilst I removed the domino from my
+shoulders she stooped very quickly. It seemed to me that she picked up
+something which had lain hidden beneath the sole of her slipper. She
+certainly moved her foot, and I certainly saw something small and
+bright flash in the palm of her glove as she raised herself again. But
+I imagined merely that it was some object which she had dropped.
+
+"'Yes, we'll go,' she said, and we went up the stairs into the lobby.
+Certainly all the sparkle had gone out of our adventure. I recognized
+her wisdom.
+
+"'But I shall meet you again?' I asked.
+
+"'Yes. I have your address. I'll write and fix a time when you will be
+sure to find me in. Good-night, and a thousand thanks. I should have
+been bored to tears if you hadn't come without a domino.'
+
+"She was speaking lightly as she held out her hand, but her grip
+tightened a little and--clung. Her eyes darkened and grew troubled,
+her mouth trembled. The shadow of a great trouble had suddenly closed
+about her. She shivered.
+
+"'I am half inclined to ask you to stay, however dull I am; and dance
+with me till daylight--the safe daylight,' she said.
+
+"It was an extraordinary phrase for her to use, and it moved me.
+
+"'Let us go back then!' I urged. She gave me an impression suddenly of
+someone quite forlorn. But Joan Carew recovered her courage. 'No, no,'
+she answered quickly. She snatched her hand away and ran lightly up
+the staircase, turning at the corner to wave her hand and smile. It
+was then half-past one in the morning."
+
+So far Calladine had spoken without an interruption. Mr. Ricardo, it
+is true, was bursting to break in with the most important questions,
+but a salutary fear of Hanaud restrained him. Now, however, he had an
+opportunity, for Calladine paused.
+
+"Half-past one," he said sagely. "Ah!"
+
+"And when did you go home?" Hanaud asked of Calladine.
+
+"True," said Mr. Ricardo. "It is of the greatest consequence."
+
+Calladine was not sure. His partner had left behind her the strangest
+medley of sensations in his breast. He was puzzled, haunted, and
+charmed. He had to think about her; he was a trifle uplifted; sleep
+was impossible. He wandered for a while about the ballroom. Then he
+walked to his chambers along the echoing streets and sat at his
+window; and some time afterwards the hoot of a motor-horn broke the
+silence and a car stopped and whirred in the street below. A moment
+later his bell rang.
+
+He ran down the stairs in a queer excitement, unlocked the street door
+and opened it. Joan Carew, still in her masquerade dress with her
+scarlet cloak about her shoulders, slipped through the opening.
+
+"Shut the door," she whispered, drawing herself apart in a corner.
+
+"Your cab?" asked Calladine.
+
+"It has gone."
+
+Calladine latched the door. Above, in the well of the stairs, the
+light spread out from the open door of his flat. Down here all was
+dark. He could just see the glimmer of her white face, the glitter of
+her dress, but she drew her breath like one who has run far. They
+mounted the stairs cautiously. He did not say a word until they were
+both safely in his parlour; and even then it was in a low voice.
+
+"What has happened?"
+
+"You remember the woman I stared at? You didn't know why I stared, but
+any girl would have understood. She was wearing the loveliest pearls I
+ever saw in my life."
+
+Joan was standing by the edge of the table. She was tracing with her
+finger a pattern on the cloth as she spoke. Calladine started with a
+horrible presentiment.
+
+"Yes," she said. "I worship pearls. I always have done. For one thing,
+they improve on me. I haven't got any, of course. I have no money. But
+friends of mine who do own pearls have sometimes given theirs to me to
+wear when they were going sick, and they have always got back their
+lustre. I think that has had a little to do with my love of them. Oh,
+I have always longed for them--just a little string. Sometimes I have
+felt that I would have given my soul for them."
+
+She was speaking in a dull, monotonous voice. But Calladine recalled
+the ecstasy which had shone in her face when her eyes first had fallen
+on the pearls, the longing which had swept her quite into another
+world, the passion with which she had danced to throw the obsession
+off.
+
+"And I never noticed them at all," he said.
+
+"Yet they were wonderful. The colour! The lustre! All the evening they
+tempted me. I was furious that a fat, coarse creature like that should
+have such exquisite things. Oh, I was mad."
+
+She covered her face suddenly with her hands and swayed. Calladine
+sprang towards her. But she held out her hand.
+
+"No, I am all right." And though he asked her to sit down she would
+not. "You remember when I stopped dancing suddenly?"
+
+"Yes. You had something hidden under your foot?"
+
+The girl nodded.
+
+"Her key!" And under his breath Calladine uttered a startled cry.
+
+For the first time since she had entered the room Joan Carew raised
+her head and looked at him. Her eyes were full of terror, and with the
+terror was mixed an incredulity as though she could not possibly
+believe that that had happened which she knew had happened.
+
+"A little Yale key," the girl continued. "I saw Mrs. Blumenstein
+looking on the floor for something, and then I saw it shining on the
+very spot. Mrs. Blumenstein's suite was on the same floor as mine, and
+her maid slept above. All the maids do. I knew that. Oh, it seemed to
+me as if I had sold my soul and was being paid."
+
+Now Calladine understood what she had meant by her strange
+phrase--"the safe daylight."
+
+"I went up to my little suite," Joan Carew continued. "I sat there
+with the key burning through my glove until I had given her time
+enough to fall asleep"--and though she hesitated before she spoke the
+words, she did speak them, not looking at Calladine, and with a
+shudder of remorse making her confession complete. "Then I crept out.
+The corridor was dimly lit. Far away below the music was throbbing. Up
+here it was as silent as the grave. I opened the door--her door. I
+found myself in a lobby. The suite, though bigger, was arranged like
+mine. I slipped in and closed the door behind me. I listened in the
+darkness. I couldn't hear a sound. I crept forward to the door in
+front of me. I stood with my fingers on the handle and my heart
+beating fast enough to choke me. I had still time to turn back. But I
+couldn't. There were those pearls in front of my eyes, lustrous and
+wonderful. I opened the door gently an inch or so--and then--it all
+happened in a second."
+
+Joan Carew faltered. The night was too near to her, its memory too
+poignant with terror. She shut her eyes tightly and cowered down in a
+chair. With the movement her cloak slipped from her shoulders and
+dropped on to the ground. Calladine leaned forward with an exclamation
+of horror; Joan Carew started up.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing. Go on."
+
+"I found myself inside the room with the door shut behind me. I had
+shut it myself in a spasm of terror. And I dared not turn round to
+open it. I was helpless."
+
+"What do you mean? She was awake?"
+
+Joan Carew shook her head.
+
+"There were others in the room before me, and on the same
+errand--men!"
+
+Calladine drew back, his eyes searching the girl's face.
+
+"Yes?" he said slowly.
+
+"I didn't see them at first. I didn't hear them. The room was quite
+dark except for one jet of fierce white light which beat upon the door
+of a safe. And as I shut the door the jet moved swiftly and the light
+reached me and stopped. I was blinded. I stood in the full glare of
+it, drawn up against the panels of the door, shivering, sick with
+fear. Then I heard a quiet laugh, and someone moved softly towards me.
+Oh, it was terrible! I recovered the use of my limbs; in a panic I
+turned to the door, but I was too late. Whilst I fumbled with the
+handle I was seized; a hand covered my mouth. I was lifted to the
+centre of the room. The jet went out, the electric lights were turned
+on. There were two men dressed as apaches in velvet trousers and red
+scarves, like a hundred others in the ballroom below, and both were
+masked. I struggled furiously; but, of course, I was like a child in
+their grasp. 'Tie her legs,' the man whispered who was holding me;
+'she's making too much noise.' I kicked and fought, but the other man
+stooped and tied my ankles, and I fainted."
+
+Calladine nodded his head.
+
+"Yes?" he said.
+
+"When I came to, the lights were still burning, the door of the safe
+was open, the room empty; I had been flung on to a couch at the foot
+of the bed. I was lying there quite free."
+
+"Was the safe empty?" asked Calladine suddenly.
+
+"I didn't look," she answered. "Oh!"--and she covered her face
+spasmodically with her hands. "I looked at the bed. Someone was lying
+there--under a sheet and quite still. There was a clock ticking in the
+room; it was the only sound. I was terrified. I was going mad with
+fear. If I didn't get out of the room at once I felt that I should
+go mad, that I should scream and bring everyone to find me alone
+with--what was under the sheet in the bed. I ran to the door and
+looked out through a slit into the corridor. It was still quite empty,
+and below the music still throbbed in the ballroom. I crept down the
+stairs, meeting no one until I reached the hall. I looked into the
+ballroom as if I was searching for someone. I stayed long enough to
+show myself. Then I got a cab and came to you."
+
+A short silence followed. Joan Carew looked at her companion in
+appeal. "You are the only one I could come to," she added. "I know no
+one else."
+
+Calladine sat watching the girl in silence. Then he asked, and his
+voice was hard:
+
+"And is that all you have to tell me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are quite sure?"
+
+Joan Carew looked at him perplexed by the urgency of his question. She
+reflected for a moment or two.
+
+"Quite."
+
+Calladine rose to his feet and stood beside her.
+
+"Then how do you come to be wearing this?" he asked, and he lifted a
+chain of platinum and diamonds which she was wearing about her
+shoulders. "You weren't wearing it when you danced with me."
+
+Joan Carew stared at the chain.
+
+"No. It's not mine. I have never seen it before." Then a light came
+into her eyes. "The two men--they must have thrown it over my head
+when I was on the couch--before they went." She looked at it more
+closely. "That's it. The chain's not very valuable. They could spare
+it, and--it would accuse me--of what they did."
+
+"Yes, that's very good reasoning," said Calladine coldly.
+
+Joan Carew looked quickly up into his face.
+
+"Oh, you don't believe me," she cried. "You think--oh, it's
+impossible." And, holding him by the edge of his coat, she burst into
+a storm of passionate denials.
+
+"But you went to steal, you know," he said gently, and she answered
+him at once:
+
+"Yes, I did, but not this." And she held up the necklace. "Should I
+have stolen this, should I have come to you wearing it, if I had
+stolen the pearls, if I had"--and she stopped--"if my story were not
+true?"
+
+Calladine weighed her argument, and it affected him.
+
+"No, I think you wouldn't," he said frankly.
+
+Most crimes, no doubt, were brought home because the criminal had made
+some incomprehensibly stupid mistake; incomprehensibly stupid, that
+is, by the standards of normal life. Nevertheless, Calladine was
+inclined to believe her. He looked at her. That she should have
+murdered was absurd. Moreover, she was not making a parade of remorse,
+she was not playing the unctuous penitent; she had yielded to a
+temptation, had got herself into desperate straits, and was at her
+wits' ends how to escape from them. She was frank about herself.
+
+Calladine looked at the clock. It was nearly five o'clock in the
+morning, and though the music could still be heard from the ballroom
+in the Semiramis, the night had begun to wane upon the river.
+
+"You must go back," he said. "I'll walk with you."
+
+They crept silently down the stairs and into the street. It was only a
+step to the Semiramis. They met no one until they reached the Strand.
+There many, like Joan Carew in masquerade, were standing about, or
+walking hither and thither in search of carriages and cabs. The whole
+street was in a bustle, what with drivers shouting and people coming
+away.
+
+"You can slip in unnoticed," said Calladine as he looked into the
+thronged courtyard. "I'll telephone to you in the morning."
+
+"You will?" she cried eagerly, clinging for a moment to his arm.
+
+"Yes, for certain," he replied. "Wait in until you hear from me. I'll
+think it over. I'll do what I can."
+
+"Thank you," she said fervently.
+
+He watched her scarlet cloak flitting here and there in the crowd
+until it vanished through the doorway. Then, for the second time, he
+walked back to his chambers, while the morning crept up the river from
+the sea.
+
+
+                          *   *   *   *   *
+
+
+This was the story which Calladine told in Mr. Ricardo's library. Mr.
+Ricardo heard it out with varying emotions. He began with a thrill of
+expectation like a man on a dark threshold of great excitements. The
+setting of the story appealed to him, too, by a sort of brilliant
+bizarrerie which he found in it. But, as it went on, he grew puzzled
+and a trifle disheartened. There were flaws and chinks; he began to
+bubble with unspoken criticisms, then swift and clever thrusts which
+he dared not deliver. He looked upon the young man with disfavour, as
+upon one who had half opened a door upon a theatre of great promise
+and shown him a spectacle not up to the mark. Hanaud, on the other
+hand, listened imperturbably, without an expression upon his face,
+until the end. Then he pointed a finger at Calladine and asked him
+what to Ricardo's mind was a most irrelevant question.
+
+"You got back to your rooms, then, before five, Mr. Calladine, and it
+is now nine o'clock less a few minutes."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Yet you have not changed your clothes. Explain to me that. What did
+you do between five and half-past eight?"
+
+Calladine looked down at his rumpled shirt front.
+
+"Upon my word, I never thought of it," he cried. "I was worried out of
+my mind. I couldn't decide what to do. Finally, I determined to talk
+to Mr. Ricardo, and after I had come to that conclusion I just waited
+impatiently until I could come round with decency."
+
+Hanaud rose from his chair. His manner was grave, but conveyed no
+single hint of an opinion. He turned to Ricardo.
+
+"Let us go round to your young friend's rooms in the Adelphi," he
+said; and the three men drove thither at once.
+
+
+
+
+                                  II
+
+
+Calladine lodged in a corner house and upon the first floor. His
+rooms, large and square and lofty, with Adams mantelpieces and a
+delicate tracery upon their ceilings, breathed the grace of the
+eighteenth century. Broad high windows, embrasured in thick walls,
+overlooked the river and took in all the sunshine and the air which
+the river had to give. And they were furnished fittingly. When the
+three men entered the parlour, Mr. Ricardo was astounded. He had
+expected the untidy litter of a man run to seed, the neglect and the
+dust of the recluse. But the room was as clean as the deck of a yacht;
+an Aubusson carpet made the floor luxurious underfoot; a few coloured
+prints of real value decorated the walls; and the mahogany furniture
+was polished so that a lady could have used it as a mirror. There was
+even by the newspapers upon the round table a china bowl full of fresh
+red roses. If Calladine had turned hermit, he was a hermit of an
+unusually fastidious type. Indeed, as he stood with his two companions
+in his dishevelled dress he seemed quite out of keeping with his
+rooms.
+
+"So you live here, Mr. Calladine?" said Hanaud, taking off his hat and
+laying it down.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"With your servants, of course?"
+
+"They come in during the day," said Calladine, and Hanaud looked at
+him curiously.
+
+"Do you mean that you sleep here alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But your valet?"
+
+"I don't keep a valet," said Calladine; and again the curious look
+came into Hanaud's eyes.
+
+"Yet," he suggested gently, "there are rooms enough in your set of
+chambers to house a family."
+
+Calladine coloured and shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the
+other.
+
+"I prefer at night not to be disturbed," he said, stumbling a little
+over the words. "I mean, I have a liking for quiet."
+
+Gabriel Hanaud nodded his head with sympathy.
+
+"Yes, yes. And it is a difficult thing to get--as difficult as
+my holiday," he said ruefully, with a smile for Mr. Ricardo.
+"However"--he turned towards Calladine--"no doubt, now that you are at
+home, you would like a bath and a change of clothes. And when you are
+dressed, perhaps you will telephone to the Semiramis and ask Miss
+Carew to come round here. Meanwhile, we will read your newspapers and
+smoke your cigarettes."
+
+Hanaud shut the door upon Calladine, but he turned neither to the
+papers nor the cigarettes. He crossed the room to Mr. Ricardo, who,
+seated at the open window, was plunged deep in reflections.
+
+"You have an idea, my friend," cried Hanaud. "It demands to express
+itself. That sees itself in your face. Let me hear it, I pray."
+
+Mr. Ricardo started out of an absorption which was altogether assumed.
+
+"I was thinking," he said, with a faraway smile, "that you might
+disappear in the forests of Africa, and at once everyone would be very
+busy about your disappearance. You might leave your village in
+Leicestershire and live in the fogs of Glasgow, and within a week the
+whole village would know your postal address. But London--what a city!
+How different! How indifferent! Turn out of St. James's into the
+Adelphi Terrace and not a soul will say to you: 'Dr. Livingstone, I
+presume?'"
+
+"But why should they," asked Hanaud, "if your name isn't Dr.
+Livingstone?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo smiled indulgently.
+
+"Scoffer!" he said. "You understand me very well," and he sought to
+turn the tables on his companion. "And you--does this room suggest
+nothing to you? Have you no ideas?" But he knew very well that Hanaud
+had. Ever since Hanaud had crossed the threshold he had been like a
+man stimulated by a drug. His eyes were bright and active, his body
+alert.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I have."
+
+He was standing now by Ricardo's side with his hands in his pockets,
+looking out at the trees on the Embankment and the barges swinging
+down the river.
+
+"You are thinking of the strange scene which took place in this room
+such a very few hours ago," said Ricardo. "The girl in her masquerade
+dress making her confession with the stolen chain about her
+throat----"
+
+Hanaud looked backwards carelessly. "No, I wasn't giving it a
+thought," he said, and in a moment or two he began to walk about the
+room with that curiously light step which Ricardo was never able to
+reconcile with his cumbersome figure. With the heaviness of a bear he
+still padded. He went from corner to corner, opened a cupboard here, a
+drawer of the bureau there, and--stooped suddenly. He stood erect
+again with a small box of morocco leather in his hand. His body from
+head to foot seemed to Ricardo to be expressing the question, "Have I
+found it?" He pressed a spring and the lid of the box flew open.
+Hanaud emptied its contents into the palm of his hand. There were two
+or three sticks of sealing-wax and a seal. With a shrug of the
+shoulders he replaced them and shut the box.
+
+"You are looking for something," Ricardo announced with sagacity.
+
+"I am," replied Hanaud; and it seemed that in a second or two he found
+it. Yet--yet--he found it with his hands in his pockets, if he had
+found it. Mr. Ricardo saw him stop in that attitude in front of the
+mantelshelf, and heard him utter a long, low whistle. Upon the
+mantelshelf some photographs were arranged, a box of cigars stood at
+one end, a book or two lay between some delicate ornaments of china,
+and a small engraving in a thin gilt frame was propped at the back
+against the wall. Ricardo surveyed the shelf from his seat in the
+window, but he could not imagine which it was of these objects that so
+drew and held Hanaud's eyes.
+
+Hanaud, however, stepped forward. He looked into a vase and turned it
+upside down. Then he removed the lid of a porcelain cup, and from the
+very look of his great shoulders Ricardo knew that he had discovered
+what he sought. He was holding something in his hands, turning it
+over, examining it. When he was satisfied he moved swiftly to the door
+and opened it cautiously. Both men could hear the splashing of water
+in a bath. Hanaud closed the door again with a nod of contentment and
+crossed once more to the window.
+
+"Yes, it is all very strange and curious," he said, "and I do not
+regret that you dragged me into the affair. You were quite right, my
+friend, this morning. It is the personality of your young Mr.
+Calladine which is the interesting thing. For instance, here we are in
+London in the early summer. The trees out, freshly green, lilac and
+flowers in the gardens, and I don't know what tingle of hope and
+expectation in the sunlight and the air. I am middle-aged--yet there's
+a riot in my blood, a recapture of youth, a belief that just round the
+corner, beyond the reach of my eyes, wonders wait for me. Don't you,
+too, feel something like that? Well, then--" and he heaved his
+shoulders in astonishment.
+
+"Can you understand a young man with money, with fastidious tastes,
+good-looking, hiding himself in a corner at such a time--except for
+some overpowering reason? No. Nor can I. There is another thing--I put
+a question or two to Calladine."
+
+"Yes," said Ricardo.
+
+"He has no servants here at night. He is quite alone and--here is what
+I find interesting--he has no valet. That seems a small thing to you?"
+Hanaud asked at a movement from Ricardo. "Well, it is no doubt a
+trifle, but it's a significant trifle in the case of a young rich man.
+It is generally a sign that there is something strange, perhaps even
+something sinister, in his life. Mr. Calladine, some months ago,
+turned out of St. James's into the Adelphi. Can you tell me why?"
+
+"No," replied Mr. Ricardo. "Can you?"
+
+Hanaud stretched out a hand. In his open palm lay a small round hairy
+bulb about the size of a big button and of a colour between green and
+brown.
+
+"Look!" he said. "What is that?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo took the bulb wonderingly.
+
+"It looks to me like the fruit of some kind of cactus."
+
+Hanaud nodded.
+
+"It is. You will see some pots of it in the hothouses of any really
+good botanical gardens. Kew has them, I have no doubt. Paris certainly
+has. They are labelled. 'Anhalonium Luinii.' But amongst the Indians
+of Yucatan the plant has a simpler name."
+
+"What name?" asked Ricardo.
+
+"Mescal."
+
+Mr. Ricardo repeated the name. It conveyed nothing to him whatever.
+
+"There are a good many bulbs just like that in the cup upon the
+mantelshelf," said Hanaud.
+
+Ricardo looked quickly up.
+
+"Why?" he asked.
+
+"Mescal is a drug."
+
+Ricardo started.
+
+"Yes, you are beginning to understand now," Hanaud continued, "why
+your young friend Calladine turned out of St. James's into the Adelphi
+Terrace."
+
+Ricardo turned the little bulb over in his fingers.
+
+"You make a decoction of it, I suppose?" he said.
+
+"Or you can use it as the Indians do in Yucatan," replied Hanaud.
+"Mescal enters into their religious ceremonies. They sit at night in a
+circle about a fire built in the forest and chew it, whilst one of
+their number beats perpetually upon a drum."
+
+Hanaud looked round the room and took notes of its luxurious carpet,
+its delicate appointments. Outside the window there was a thunder in
+the streets, a clamour of voices. Boats went swiftly down the river on
+the ebb. Beyond the mass of the Semiramis rose the great grey-white
+dome of St. Paul's. Opposite, upon the Southwark bank, the giant
+sky-signs, the big Highlander drinking whisky, and the rest of them
+waited, gaunt skeletons, for the night to limn them in fire and give
+them life. Below the trees in the gardens rustled and waved. In the
+air were the uplift and the sparkle of the young summer.
+
+"It's a long way from the forests of Yucatan to the Adelphi Terrace of
+London," said Hanaud. "Yet here, I think, in these rooms, when the
+servants are all gone and the house is very quiet, there is a little
+corner of wild Mexico."
+
+A look of pity came into Mr. Ricardo's face. He had seen more than one
+young man of great promise slacken his hold and let go, just for this
+reason. Calladine, it seemed, was another.
+
+"It's like bhang and kieff and the rest of the devilish things, I
+suppose," he said, indignantly tossing the button upon the table.
+
+Hanaud picked it up.
+
+"No," he replied. "It's not quite like any other drug. It has a
+quality of its own which just now is of particular importance to you
+and me. Yes, my friend"--and he nodded his head very seriously--"we
+must watch that we do not make the big fools of ourselves in this
+affair."
+
+"There," Mr. Ricardo agreed with an ineffable air of wisdom, "I am
+entirely with you."
+
+"Now, why?" Hanaud asked. Mr. Ricardo was at a loss for a reason, but
+Hanaud did not wait. "I will tell you. Mescal intoxicates, yes--but it
+does more--it gives to the man who eats of it colour-dreams."
+
+"Colour-dreams?" Mr. Ricardo repeated in a wondering voice.
+
+"Yes, strange heated charms, in which violent things happen vividly
+amongst bright colours. Colour is the gift of this little prosaic
+brown button." He spun the bulb in the air like a coin, and catching
+it again, took it over to the mantelpiece and dropped it into the
+porcelain cup.
+
+"Are you sure of this?" Ricardo cried excitedly, and Hanaud raised his
+hand in warning. He went to the door, opened it for an inch or so, and
+closed it again.
+
+"I am quite sure," he returned. "I have for a friend a very learned
+chemist in the Collège de France. He is one of those enthusiasts who
+must experiment upon themselves. He tried this drug."
+
+"Yes," Ricardo said in a quieter voice. "And what did he see?"
+
+"He had a vision of a wonderful garden bathed in sunlight, an old
+garden of gorgeous flowers and emerald lawns, ponds with golden lilies
+and thick yew hedges--a garden where peacocks stepped indolently and
+groups of gay people fantastically dressed quarrelled and fought with
+swords. That is what he saw. And he saw it so vividly that, when the
+vapours of the drug passed from his brain and he waked, he seemed to
+be coming out of the real world into a world of shifting illusions."
+
+Hanaud's strong quiet voice stopped, and for a while there was a
+complete silence in the room. Neither of the two men stirred so much
+as a finger. Mr. Ricardo once more was conscious of the thrill of
+strange sensations. He looked round the room. He could hardly believe
+that a room which had been--nay was--the home and shrine of mysteries
+in the dark hours could wear so bright and innocent a freshness in the
+sunlight of the morning. There should be something sinister which
+leaped to the eyes as you crossed the threshold.
+
+"Out of the real world," Mr. Ricardo quoted. "I begin to see."
+
+"Yes, you begin to see, my friend, that we must be very careful not to
+make the big fools of ourselves. My friend of the Collège de France
+saw a garden. But had he been sitting alone in the window-seat where
+you are, listening through a summer night to the music of the
+masquerade at the Semiramis, might he not have seen the ballroom, the
+dancers, the scarlet cloak, and the rest of this story?"
+
+"You mean," cried Ricardo, now fairly startled, "that Calladine came
+to us with the fumes of mescal still working in his brain, that the
+false world was the real one still for him."
+
+"I do not know," said Hanaud. "At present I only put questions. I ask
+them of you. I wish to hear how they sound. Let us reason this problem
+out. Calladine, let us say, takes a great deal more of the drug than
+my professor. It will have on him a more powerful effect while it
+lasts, and it will last longer. Fancy dress balls are familiar things
+to Calladine. The music floating from the Semiramis will revive old
+memories. He sits here, the pageant takes shape before him, he sees
+himself taking his part in it. Oh, he is happier here sitting quietly
+in his window-seat than if he was actually at the Semiramis. For he is
+there more intensely, more vividly, more really, than if he had
+actually descended this staircase. He lives his story through, the
+story of a heated brain, the scene of it changes in the way dreams
+have, it becomes tragic and sinister, it oppresses him with horror,
+and in the morning, so obsessed with it that he does not think to
+change his clothes, he is knocking at your door."
+
+Mr. Ricardo raised his eyebrows and moved.
+
+"Ah! You see a flaw in my argument," said Hanaud. But Mr. Ricardo was
+wary. Too often in other days he had been leaped upon and trounced for
+a careless remark.
+
+"Let me hear the end of your argument," he said. "There was then to
+your thinking no temptation of jewels, no theft, no murder--in a word,
+no Celymène? She was born of recollections and the music of the
+Semiramis."
+
+"No!" cried Hanaud. "Come with me, my friend. I am not so sure that
+there was no Celymène."
+
+With a smile upon his face, Hanaud led the way across the room. He had
+the dramatic instinct, and rejoiced in it. He was going to produce a
+surprise for his companion and, savouring the moment in advance, he
+managed his effects. He walked towards the mantelpiece and stopped a
+few paces away from it.
+
+"Look!"
+
+Mr. Ricardo looked and saw a broad Adams mantelpiece. He turned a
+bewildered face to his friend.
+
+"You see nothing?" Hanaud asked.
+
+"Nothing!"
+
+"Look again! I am not sure--but is it not that Celymène is posing
+before you?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo looked again. There was nothing to fix his eyes. He saw a
+book or two, a cup, a vase or two, and nothing else really expect a
+very pretty and apparently valuable piece of--and suddenly Mr. Ricardo
+understood. Straight in front of him, in the very centre of the
+mantelpiece, a figure in painted china was leaning against a china
+stile. It was the figure of a perfectly impossible courtier, feminine
+and exquisite as could be, and apparelled also even to the scarlet
+heels exactly as Calladine had described Joan Carew.
+
+Hanaud chuckled with satisfaction when he saw the expression upon Mr.
+Ricardo's face.
+
+"Ah, you understand," he said. "Do you dream, my friend? At
+times--yes, like the rest of us. Then recollect your dreams? Things,
+people, which you have seen perhaps that day, perhaps months ago, pop
+in and out of them without making themselves prayed for. You cannot
+understand why. Yet sometimes they cut their strange capers there,
+logically, too, through subtle associations which the dreamer, once
+awake, does not apprehend. Thus, our friend here sits in the window,
+intoxicated by his drug, the music plays in the Semiramis, the curtain
+goes up in the heated theatre of his brain. He sees himself step upon
+the stage, and who else meets him but the china figure from his
+mantelpiece?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo for a moment was all enthusiasm. Then his doubt returned
+to him.
+
+"What you say, my dear Hanaud, is very ingenious. The figure upon the
+mantelpiece is also extremely convincing. And I should be absolutely
+convinced but for one thing."
+
+"Yes?" said Hanaud, watching his friend closely.
+
+"I am--I may say it, I think, a man of the world. And I ask
+myself"--Mr. Ricardo never could ask himself anything without assuming
+a manner of extreme pomposity--"I ask myself, whether a young man who
+has given up his social ties, who has become a hermit, and still more
+who has become the slave of a drug, would retain that scrupulous
+carefulness of his body which is indicated by dressing for dinner when
+alone?"
+
+Hanaud struck the table with the palm of his hand and sat down in a
+chair.
+
+"Yes. That is the weak point in my theory. You have hit it. I knew it
+was there--that weak point, and I wondered whether you would seize it.
+Yes, the consumers of drugs are careless, untidy--even unclean as a
+rule. But not always. We must be careful. We must wait."
+
+"For what?" asked Ricardo, beaming with pride.
+
+"For the answer to a telephone message," replied Hanaud, with a nod
+towards the door.
+
+Both men waited impatiently until Calladine came into the room. He
+wore now a suit of blue serge, he had a clearer eye, his skin a
+healthier look; he was altogether a more reputable person. But he was
+plainly very ill at ease. He offered his visitors cigarettes, he
+proposed refreshments, he avoided entirely and awkwardly the object of
+their visit. Hanaud smiled. His theory was working out. Sobered by his
+bath, Calladine had realised the foolishness of which he had been
+guilty.
+
+"You telephone, to the Semiramis, of course?" said Hanaud cheerfully.
+
+Calladine grew red.
+
+"Yes," he stammered.
+
+"Yet I did not hear that volume of 'Hallos' which precedes telephonic
+connection in your country of leisure," Hanaud continued.
+
+"I telephoned from my bedroom. You would not hear anything in this
+room."
+
+"Yes, yes; the walls of these old houses are solid." Hanaud was
+playing with his victim. "And when may we expect Miss Carew?"
+
+"I can't say," replied Calladine. "It's very strange. She is not in
+the hotel. I am afraid that she has gone away, fled."
+
+Mr. Ricardo and Hanaud exchanged a look. They were both satisfied now.
+There was no word of truth in Calladine's story.
+
+"Then there is no reason for us to wait," said Hanaud. "I shall have
+my holiday after all." And while he was yet speaking the voice of a
+newsboy calling out the first edition of an evening paper became
+distantly audible. Hanaud broke off his farewell. For a moment he
+listened, with his head bent. Then the voice was heard again,
+confused, indistinct; Hanaud picked up his hat and cane and, without
+another word to Calladine, raced down the stairs. Mr. Ricardo followed
+him, but when he reached the pavement, Hanaud was half down the little
+street. At the corner, however, he stopped, and Ricardo joined him,
+coughing and out of breath.
+
+"What's the matter?" he gasped.
+
+"Listen," said Hanaud.
+
+At the bottom of Duke Street, by Charing Cross Station, the newsboy
+was shouting his wares. Both men listened, and now the words came to
+them mispronounced but decipherable.
+
+"Mysterious crime at the Semiramis Hotel."
+
+Ricardo stared at his companion.
+
+"You were wrong then!" he cried. "Calladine's story was true."
+
+For once in a way Hanaud was quite disconcerted.
+
+"I don't know yet," he said. "We will buy a paper."
+
+But before he could move a step a taxi-cab turned into the Adelphi
+from the Strand, and wheeling in front of their faces, stopped at
+Calladine's door. From the cab a girl descended.
+
+"Let us go back," said Hanaud.
+
+
+
+
+                                 III
+
+
+Mr. Ricardo could no longer complain. It was half-past eight when
+Calladine had first disturbed the formalities of his house in
+Grosvenor Square. It was barely ten now, and during that short time he
+had been flung from surprise to surprise, he had looked underground on
+a morning of fresh summer, and had been thrilled by the contrast
+between the queer, sinister life below and within and the open call to
+joy of the green world above. He had passed from incredulity to
+belief, from belief to incredulity, and when at last incredulity was
+firmly established, and the story to which he had listened proved the
+emanation of a drugged and heated brain, lo! the facts buffeted him in
+the face, and the story was shown to be true.
+
+"I am alive once more," Mr. Ricardo thought as he turned back with
+Hanaud, and in his excitement he cried his thought aloud.
+
+"Are you?" said Hanaud. "And what is life without a newspaper? If you
+will buy one from that remarkably raucous boy at the bottom of the
+street I will keep an eye upon Calladine's house till you come back."
+
+Mr. Ricardo sped down to Charing Cross and brought back a copy of the
+fourth edition of the _Star_. He handed it to Hanaud, who stared at it
+doubtfully, folded as it was.
+
+"Shall we see what it says?" Ricardo asked impatiently.
+
+"By no means," Hanaud answered, waking from his reverie and tucking
+briskly away the paper into the tail pocket of his coat. "We will hear
+what Miss Joan Carew has to say, with our minds undisturbed by any
+discoveries. I was wondering about something totally different."
+
+"Yes?" Mr. Ricardo encouraged him. "What was it?"
+
+"I was wondering, since it is only ten o'clock, at what hour the first
+editions of the evening papers appear."
+
+"It is a question," Mr. Ricardo replied sententiously, "which the
+greatest minds have failed to answer."
+
+And they walked along the street to the house. The front door stood
+open during the day like the front door of any other house which is
+let off in sets of rooms. Hanaud and Ricardo went up the staircase and
+rang the bell of Calladine's door. A middle-aged woman opened it.
+
+"Mr. Calladine is in?" said Hanaud.
+
+"I will ask," replied the woman. "What name shall I say?"
+
+"It does not matter. I will go straight in," said Hanaud quietly. "I
+was here with my friend but a minute ago."
+
+He went straight forward and into Calladine's parlour. Mr. Ricardo
+looked over his shoulder as he opened the door and saw a girl turn to
+them suddenly a white face of terror, and flinch as though already she
+felt the hand of a constable upon her shoulder. Calladine, on the
+other hand, uttered a cry of relief.
+
+"These are my friends," he exclaimed to the girl, "the friends of whom
+I spoke to you"; and to Hanaud he said: "This is Miss Carew."
+
+Hanaud bowed.
+
+"You shall tell me your story, mademoiselle," he said very gently, and
+a little colour returned to the girl's cheeks, a little courage
+revived in her.
+
+"But you have heard it," she answered.
+
+"Not from you," said Hanaud.
+
+So for a second time in that room she told the history of that night.
+Only this time the sunlight was warm upon the world, the comfortable
+sounds of life's routine were borne through the windows, and the girl
+herself wore the inconspicuous blue serge of a thousand other girls
+afoot that morning. These trifles of circumstance took the edge of
+sheer horror off her narrative, so that, to tell the truth, Mr.
+Ricardo was a trifle disappointed. He wanted a crescendo motive in his
+music, whereas it had begun at its fortissimo. Hanaud, however, was
+the perfect listener. He listened without stirring and with most
+compassionate eyes, so that Joan Carew spoke only to him, and to him,
+each moment that passed, with greater confidence. The life and sparkle
+of her had gone altogether. There was nothing in her manner now to
+suggest the waywardness, the gay irresponsibility, the radiance, which
+had attracted Calladine the night before. She was just a very young
+and very pretty girl, telling in a low and remorseful voice of the
+tragic dilemma to which she had brought herself. Of Celymène all that
+remained was something exquisite and fragile in her beauty, in the
+slimness of her figure, in her daintiness of hand and foot--something
+almost of the hot-house. But the story she told was, detail for
+detail, the same which Calladine had already related.
+
+"Thank you," said Hanaud when she had done. "Now I must ask you two
+questions."
+
+"I will answer them."
+
+Mr. Ricardo sat up. He began to think of a third question which he
+might put himself, something uncommonly subtle and searching, which
+Hanaud would never have thought of. But Hanaud put his questions, and
+Ricardo almost jumped out of his chair.
+
+"You will forgive me. Miss Carew. But have you ever stolen before?"
+
+Joan Carew turned upon Hanaud with spirit. Then a change swept over
+her face.
+
+"You have a right to ask," she answered. "Never." She looked into his
+eyes as she answered. Hanaud did not move. He sat with a hand upon
+each knee and led to his second question.
+
+"Early this morning, when you left this room, you told Mr. Calladine
+that you would wait at the Semiramis until he telephoned to you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Yet when he telephoned, you had gone out?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I will tell you," said Joan Carew. "I could not bear to keep the
+little diamond chain in my room."
+
+For a moment even Hanaud was surprised. He had lost sight of that
+complication. Now he leaned forward anxiously; indeed, with a greater
+anxiety than he had yet shown in all this affair.
+
+"I was terrified," continued Joan Carew. "I kept thinking: 'They must
+have found out by now. They will search everywhere.' I didn't reason.
+I lay in bed expecting to hear every moment a loud knocking on the
+door. Besides--the chain itself being there in my bedroom--her
+chain--the dead woman's chain--no, I couldn't endure it. I felt as if
+I had stolen it. Then my maid brought in my tea."
+
+"You had locked it away?" cried Hanaud.
+
+"Yes. My maid did not see it."
+
+Joan Carew explained how she had risen, dressed, wrapped the chain in
+a pad of cotton-wool and enclosed it in an envelope. The envelope had
+not the stamp of the hotel upon it. It was a rather large envelope,
+one of a packet which she had bought in a crowded shop in Oxford
+Street on her way from Euston to the Semiramis. She had bought the
+envelopes of that particular size in order that when she sent her
+letter of introduction to the Director of the Opera at Covent Garden
+she might enclose with it a photograph.
+
+"And to whom did you send it?" asked Mr. Ricardo.
+
+"To Mrs. Blumenstein at the Semiramis. I printed the address
+carefully. Then I went out and posted it."
+
+"Where?" Hanaud inquired.
+
+"In the big letter-box of the Post Office at the corner of Trafalgar
+Square."
+
+Hanaud looked at the girl sharply.
+
+"You had your wits about you, I see," he said.
+
+"What if the envelope gets lost?" said Ricardo.
+
+Hanaud laughed grimly.
+
+"If one envelope is delivered at its address in London to-day, it will
+be that one," he said. "The news of the crime is published, you see,"
+and he swung round to Joan.
+
+"Did you know that, Miss Carew?"
+
+"No," she answered in an awe-stricken voice.
+
+"Well, then, it is. Let us see what the special investigator has to
+say about it." And Hanaud, with a deliberation which Mr. Ricardo found
+quite excruciating, spread out the newspaper on the table in front of
+him.
+
+
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+
+There was only one new fact in the couple of columns devoted to the
+mystery. Mrs. Blumenstein had died from chloroform poisoning. She was
+of a stout habit, and the thieves were not skilled in the
+administration of the anæsthetic.
+
+"It's murder none the less," said Hanaud, and he gazed straight at
+Joan, asking her by the direct summons of his eyes what she was going
+to do.
+
+"I must tell my story to the police," she replied painfully and
+slowly. But she did not hesitate; she was announcing a meditated plan.
+
+Hanaud neither agreed nor differed. His face was blank, and when he
+spoke there was no cordiality in his voice. "Well," he asked, "and
+what is it that you have to say to the police, miss? That you went
+into the room to steal, and that you were attacked by two strangers,
+dressed as apaches, and masked? That is all?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And how many men at the Semiramis ball were dressed as apaches and
+wore masks? Come! Make a guess. A hundred at the least?"
+
+"I should think so."
+
+"Then what will your confession do beyond--I quote your English
+idiom--putting you in the coach?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo now smiled with relief. Hanaud was taking a definite line.
+His knowledge of idiomatic English might be incomplete, but his heart
+was in the right place. The girl traced a vague pattern on the
+tablecloth with her fingers.
+
+"Yet I think I must tell the police," she repeated, looking up and
+dropping her eyes again. Mr. Ricardo noticed that her eyelashes were
+very long. For the first time Hanaud's face relaxed.
+
+"And I think you are quite right," he cried heartily, to Mr. Ricardo's
+surprise. "Tell them the truth before they suspect it, and they will
+help you out of the affair if they can. Not a doubt of it. Come, I
+will go with you myself to Scotland Yard."
+
+"Thank you," said Joan, and the pair drove away in a cab together.
+
+Hanaud returned to Grosvenor Square alone and lunched with Ricardo.
+
+"It was all right," he said. "The police were very kind. Miss Joan
+Carew told her story to them as she had told it to us. Fortunately,
+the envelope with the aluminium chain had already been delivered, and
+was in their hands. They were much mystified about it, but Miss Joan's
+story gave them a reasonable explanation. I think they are inclined to
+believe her; and, if she is speaking the truth, they will keep her out
+of the witness-box if they can."
+
+"She is to stay here in London, then?" asked Ricardo.
+
+"Oh, yes; she is not to go. She will present her letters at the Opera
+House and secure an engagement, if she can. The criminals might be
+lulled thereby into a belief that the girl had kept the whole strange
+incident to herself, and that there was nowhere even a knowledge of
+the disguise which they had used." Hanaud spoke as carelessly as if
+the matter was not very important; and Ricardo, with an unusual flash
+of shrewdness, said:
+
+"It is clear, my friend, that you do not think those two men will ever
+be caught at all."
+
+Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"There is always a chance. But listen. There is a room with a
+hundred guns, one of which is loaded. Outside the room there are a
+hundred pigeons, one of which is white. You are taken into the room
+blind-fold. You choose the loaded gun and you shoot the one white
+pigeon. That is the value of the chance."
+
+"But," exclaimed Ricardo, "those pearls were of great value, and I
+have heard at a trial expert evidence given by pearl merchants. All
+agree that the pearls of great value are known; so, when they come
+upon the market----"
+
+"That is true," Hanaud interrupted imperturbably. "But how are they
+known?"
+
+"By their weight," said Mr. Ricardo.
+
+"Exactly," replied Hanaud. "But did you not also hear at this trial of
+yours that pearls can be peeled like an onion? No? It is true. Remove
+a skin, two skins, the weight is altered, the pearl is a trifle
+smaller. It has lost a little of its value, yes--but you can no longer
+identify it as the so-and-so pearl which belonged to this or that
+sultan, was stolen by the vizier, bought by Messrs. Lustre and
+Steinopolis, of Hatton Garden, and subsequently sold to the wealthy
+Mrs. Blumenstein. No, your pearl has vanished altogether. There is a
+new pearl which can be traded." He looked at Ricardo. "Who shall say
+that those pearls are not already in one of the queer little back
+streets of Amsterdam, undergoing their transformation?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo was not persuaded because he would not be. "I have some
+experience in these matters," he said loftily to Hanaud. "I am sure
+that we shall lay our hands upon the criminals. We have never failed."
+
+Hanaud grinned from ear to ear. The only experience which Mr. Ricardo
+had ever had was gained on the shores of Geneva and at Aix under
+Hanaud's tuition. But Hanaud did not argue, and there the matter
+rested.
+
+The days flew by. It was London's play-time. The green and gold of
+early summer deepened and darkened; wondrous warm nights under
+England's pale blue sky, when the streets rang with the joyous feet of
+youth, led in clear dawns and lovely glowing days. Hanaud made
+acquaintance with the wooded reaches of the Thames; Joan Carew sang
+"Louise" at Covent Garden with notable success; and the affair of the
+Semiramis Hotel, in the minds of the few who remembered it, was
+already added to the long list of unfathomed mysteries.
+
+But towards the end of May there occurred a startling development.
+Joan Carew wrote to Mr. Ricardo that she would call upon him in
+the afternoon, and she begged him to secure the presence of Hanaud.
+She came as the clock struck; she was pale and agitated; and in the
+room where Calladine had first told the story of her visit she told
+another story which, to Mr. Ricardo's thinking, was yet more strange
+and--yes--yet more suspicious.
+
+"It has been going on for some time," she began. "I thought of coming
+to you at once. Then I wondered whether, if I waited--oh, you'll never
+believe me!"
+
+"Let us hear!" said Hanaud patiently.
+
+"I began to dream of that room, the two men disguised and masked, the
+still figure in the bed. Night after night! I was terrified to go to
+sleep. I felt the hand upon my mouth. I used to catch myself falling
+asleep, and walk about the room with all the lights up to keep myself
+awake."
+
+"But you couldn't," said Hanaud with a smile. "Only the old can do
+that."
+
+"No, I couldn't," she admitted; "and--oh, my nights were horrible
+until"--she paused and looked at her companions doubtfully--"until one
+night the mask slipped."
+
+"What--?" cried Hanaud, and a note of sternness rang suddenly in his
+voice. "What are you saying?"
+
+With a desperate rush of words, and the colour staining her forehead
+and cheeks, Joan Carew continued:
+
+"It is true. The mask slipped on the face of one of the men--of
+the man who held me. Only a little way; it just left his forehead
+visible--no more."
+
+"Well?" asked Hanaud, and Mr. Ricardo leaned forward, swaying between
+the austerity of criticism and the desire to believe so thrilling a
+revelation.
+
+"I waked up," the girl continued, "in the darkness, and for a moment
+the whole scene remained vividly with me--for just long enough for me
+to fix clearly in my mind the figure of the apache with the white
+forehead showing above the mask."
+
+"When was that?" asked Ricardo.
+
+"A fortnight ago."
+
+"Why didn't you come with your story then?"
+
+"I waited," said Joan. "What I had to tell wasn't yet helpful. I
+thought that another night the mask might slip lower still. Besides,
+I--it is difficult to describe just what I felt. I felt it important
+just to keep that photograph in my mind, not to think about it, not to
+talk about it, not even to look at it too often lest I should begin to
+imagine the rest of the face and find something familiar in the man's
+carriage and shape when there was nothing really familiar to me at
+all. Do you understand that?" she asked, with her eyes fixed in appeal
+on Hanaud's face.
+
+"Yes," replied Hanaud. "I follow your thought."
+
+"I thought there was a chance now--the strangest chance--that the
+truth might be reached. I did not wish to spoil it," and she turned
+eagerly to Ricardo, as if, having persuaded Hanaud, she would now turn
+her batteries on his companion. "My whole point of view was changed. I
+was no longer afraid of falling asleep lest I should dream. I wished
+to dream, but----"
+
+"But you could not," suggested Hanaud.
+
+"No, that is the truth," replied Joan Carew. "Whereas before I was
+anxious to keep awake and yet must sleep from sheer fatigue, now that
+I tried consciously to put myself to sleep I remained awake all
+through the night, and only towards morning, when the light was coming
+through the blinds, dropped off into a heavy, dreamless slumber."
+
+Hanaud nodded.
+
+"It is a very perverse world, Miss Carew, and things go by
+contraries."
+
+Ricardo listened for some note of irony in Hanaud's voice, some look
+of disbelief in his face. But there was neither the one nor the other.
+Hanaud was listening patiently.
+
+"Then came my rehearsals," Joan Carew continued, "and that wonderful
+opera drove everything else out of my head. I had such a chance, if
+only I could make use of it! When I went to bed now, I went with that
+haunting music in my ears--the call of Paris--oh, you must remember
+it. But can you realise what it must mean to a girl who is going to
+sing it for the first time in Covent Garden?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo saw his opportunity. He, the connoisseur, to whom the
+psychology of the green room was as an open book, could answer that
+question.
+
+"It is true, my friend," he informed Hanaud with quiet authority. "The
+great march of events leaves the artist cold. He lives aloof. While
+the tumbrils thunder in the streets he adds a delicate tint to the
+picture he is engaged upon or recalls his triumph in his last great
+part."
+
+"Thank you," said Hanaud gravely. "And now Miss Carew may perhaps
+resume her story."
+
+"It was the very night of my début," she continued. "I had supper with
+some friends. A great artist. Carmen Valeri, honoured me with her
+presence. I went home excited, and that night I dreamed again."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"This time the chin, the lips, the eyes were visible. There was only a
+black strip across the middle of the face. And I thought--nay, I was
+sure--that if that strip vanished I should know the man."
+
+"And it did vanish?"
+
+"Three nights afterwards."
+
+"And you did know the man?"
+
+The girl's face became troubled. She frowned.
+
+"I knew the face, that was all," she answered. "I was disappointed. I
+had never spoken to the man. I am sure of that still. But somewhere I
+have seen him."
+
+"You don't even remember when?" asked Hanaud.
+
+"No." Joan Carew reflected for a moment with her eyes upon the carpet,
+and then flung up her head with a gesture of despair. "No. I try all
+the time to remember. But it is no good."
+
+Mr. Ricardo could not restrain a movement of indignation. He was being
+played with. The girl with her fantastic story had worked him up to a
+real pitch of excitement only to make a fool of him. All his earlier
+suspicions flowed back into his mind. What if, after all, she was
+implicated in the murder and the theft? What if, with a perverse
+cunning, she had told Hanaud and himself just enough of what she knew,
+just enough of the truth, to persuade them to protect her? What if her
+frank confession of her own overpowering impulse to steal the necklace
+was nothing more than a subtle appeal to the sentimental pity of men,
+an appeal based upon a wider knowledge of men's weaknesses than a girl
+of nineteen or twenty ought to have? Mr. Ricardo cleared his throat
+and sat forward in his chair. He was girding himself for a singularly
+searching interrogatory when Hanaud asked the most irrelevant of
+questions:
+
+"How did you pass the evening of that night when you first dreamed
+complete the face of your assailant?"
+
+Joan Carew reflected. Then her face cleared.
+
+"I know," she exclaimed. "I was at the opera."
+
+"And what was being given?"
+
+"_The Jewels of the Madonna_."
+
+Hanaud nodded his head. To Ricardo it seemed that he had expected
+precisely that answer.
+
+"Now," he continued, "you are sure that you have seen this man?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Very well," said Hanaud. "There is a game you play at children's
+parties--is there not?--animal, vegetable, or mineral, and always you
+get the answer. Let us play that game for a few minutes, you and I."
+
+Joan Carew drew up her chair to the table and sat with her chin
+propped upon her hands and her eyes fixed on Hanaud's face. As he put
+each question she pondered on it and answered. If she answered
+doubtfully he pressed it.
+
+"You crossed on the _Lucania_ from New York?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Picture to yourself the dining-room, the tables. You have the picture
+quite clear?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Was it at breakfast that you saw him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"At luncheon?"
+
+"No."
+
+"At dinner?"
+
+She paused for a moment, summoning before her eyes the travellers at
+the tables.
+
+"No."
+
+"Not in the dining-table at all, then?"
+
+"No."
+
+"In the library, when you were writing letters, did you not one day
+lift your head and see him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"On the promenade deck? Did he pass you when you sat in your
+deck-chair, or did you pass him when he sat in his chair?"
+
+"No."
+
+Step by step Hanaud took her back to New York to her hotel, to
+journeys in the train. Then he carried her to Milan where she had
+studied. It was extraordinary to Ricardo to realise how much Hanaud
+knew of the curriculum of a student aspiring to grand opera. From
+Milan he brought her again to New York, and at the last, with a start
+of joy, she cried: "Yes, it was there."
+
+Hanaud took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead.
+
+"Ouf!" he grunted. "To concentrate the mind on a day like this, it
+makes one hot, I can tell you. Now, Miss Carew, let us hear."
+
+It was at a concert at the house of a Mrs. Starlingshield in Fifth
+Avenue and in the afternoon. Joan Carew sang. She was a stranger to
+New York and very nervous. She saw nothing but a mist of faces whilst
+she sang, but when she had finished the mist cleared, and as she left
+the improvised stage she saw the man. He was standing against the wall
+in a line of men. There was no particular reason why her eyes should
+single him out, except that he was paying no attention to her singing,
+and, indeed, she forgot him altogether afterwards.
+
+"I just happened to see him clearly and distinctly," she said. "He was
+tall, clean-shaven, rather dark, not particularly young--thirty-five
+or so, I should say--a man with a heavy face and beginning to grow
+stout. He moved away whilst I was bowing to the audience, and I
+noticed him afterwards walking about, talking to people."
+
+"Do you remember to whom?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Did he notice you, do you think?"
+
+"I am sure he didn't," the girl replied emphatically. "He never looked
+at the stage where I was singing, and he never looked towards me
+afterwards."
+
+She gave, so far as she could remember, the names of such guests and
+singers as she knew at that party. "And that is all," she said.
+
+"Thank you," said Hanaud. "It is perhaps a good deal. But it is
+perhaps nothing at all."
+
+"You will let me hear from you?" she cried, as she rose to her feet.
+
+"Miss Carew, I am at your service," he returned. She gave him her hand
+timidly and he took it cordially. For Mr. Ricardo she had merely a
+bow, a bow which recognised that he distrusted her and that she had no
+right to be offended. Then she went, and Hanaud smiled across the
+table at Ricardo.
+
+"Yes," he said, "all that you are thinking is true enough. A man who
+slips out of society to indulge a passion for a drug in greater peace,
+a girl who, on her own confession, tried to steal, and, to crown all,
+this fantastic story. It is natural to disbelieve every word of it.
+But we disbelieved before, when we left Calladine's lodging in the
+Adelphi, and we were wrong. Let us be warned."
+
+"You have an idea?" exclaimed Ricardo.
+
+"Perhaps!" said Hanaud. And he looked down the theatre column of the
+_Times_. "Let us distract ourselves by going to the theatre."
+
+"You are the most irritating man!" Mr. Ricardo broke out impulsively.
+"If I had to paint your portrait, I should paint you with your finger
+against the side of your nose, saying mysteriously: '_I_ know,' when
+you know nothing at all."
+
+Hanaud made a schoolboy's grimace. "We will go and sit in your box at
+the opera to-night," he said, "and you shall explain to me all through
+the beautiful music the theory of the tonic sol-fa."
+
+They reached Covent Garden before the curtain rose. Mr. Ricardo's box
+was on the lowest tier and next to the omnibus box.
+
+"We are near the stage," said Hanaud, as he took his seat in the
+corner and so arranged the curtain that he could see and yet was
+hidden from view. "I like that."
+
+The theatre was full; stalls and boxes shimmered with jewels and
+satin, and all that was famous that season for beauty and distinction
+had made its tryst there that night.
+
+"Yes, this is wonderful," said Hanaud. "What opera do they play?" He
+glanced at his programme and cried, with a little start of surprise:
+"We are in luck. It is _The Jewels of the Madonna_."
+
+"Do you believe in omens?" Mr. Ricardo asked coldly. He had not yet
+recovered from his rebuff of the afternoon.
+
+"No, but I believe that Carmen Valeri is at her best in this part,"
+said Hanaud.
+
+Mr. Ricardo belonged to that body of critics which must needs spoil
+your enjoyment by comparisons and recollections of other great
+artists. He was at a disadvantage certainly to-night, for the opera
+was new. But he did his best. He imagined others in the part, and when
+the great scene came at the end of the second act, and Carmen Valeri,
+on obtaining from her lover the jewels stolen from the sacred image,
+gave such a display of passion as fairly enthralled that audience, Mr.
+Ricardo sighed quietly and patiently.
+
+"How Calvé would have brought out the psychological value of that
+scene!" he murmured; and he was quite vexed with Hanaud, who sat with
+his opera glasses held to his eyes, and every sense apparently
+concentrated on the stage. The curtains rose and rose again when the
+act was concluded, and still Hanaud sat motionless as the Sphynx,
+staring through his glasses.
+
+"That is all," said Ricardo when the curtains fell for the fifth time.
+
+"They will come out," said Hanaud. "Wait!" And from between the
+curtains Carmen Valeri was led out into the full glare of the
+footlights with the panoply of jewels flashing on her breast. Then at
+last Hanaud put down his glasses and turned to Ricardo with a look of
+exultation and genuine delight upon his face which filled that
+season-worn dilettante with envy.
+
+"What a night!" said Hanaud. "What a wonderful night!" And he
+applauded until he split his gloves. At the end of the opera he cried:
+"We will go and take supper at the Semiramis. Yes, my friend, we will
+finish our evening like gallant gentlemen. Come! Let us not think of
+the morning." And boisterously he slapped Ricardo in the small of the
+back.
+
+In spite of his boast, however, Hanaud hardly touched his supper, and
+he played with, rather than drank, his brandy and soda. He had a
+little table to which he was accustomed beside a glass screen in the
+depths of the room, and he sat with his back to the wall watching the
+groups which poured in. Suddenly his face lighted up.
+
+"Here is Carmen Valeri!" he cried. "Once more we are in luck. Is it
+not that she is beautiful?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo turned languidly about in his chair and put up his
+eyeglass.
+
+"So, so," he said.
+
+"Ah!" returned Hanaud. "Then her companion will interest you still
+more. For he is the man who murdered Mrs. Blumenstein."
+
+Mr. Ricardo jumped so that his eyeglass fell down and tinkled on its
+cord against the buttons of his waistcoat.
+
+"What!" he exclaimed. "It's impossible!" He looked again. "Certainly
+the man fits Joan Carew's description. But--" He turned back to Hanaud
+utterly astounded. And as he looked at the Frenchman all his earlier
+recollections of him, of his swift deductions, of the subtle
+imagination which his heavy body so well concealed, crowded in upon
+Ricardo and convinced him.
+
+"How long have you known?" he asked in a whisper of awe.
+
+"Since ten o'clock to-night."
+
+"But you will have to find the necklace before you can prove it."
+
+"The necklace!" said Hanaud carelessly. "That is already found."
+
+Mr. Ricardo had been longing for a thrill. He had it now. He felt it
+in his very spine.
+
+"It's found?" he said in a startled whisper.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Ricardo turned again, with as much indifference as he could assume,
+towards the couple who were settling down at their table, the man with
+a surly indifference, Carmen Valeri with the radiance of a woman who
+has just achieved a triumph and is now free to enjoy the fruits of it.
+Confusedly, recollections returned to Ricardo of questions put that
+afternoon by Hanaud to Joan Carew--subtle questions into which the
+name of Carmen Valeri was continually entering. She was a woman of
+thirty, certainly beautiful, with a clear, pale face and eyes like the
+night.
+
+"Then she is implicated too!" he said. What a change for her, he
+thought, from the stage of Covent Garden to the felon's cell, from the
+gay supper-room of the Semiramis, with its bright frocks and its babel
+of laughter, to the silence and the ignominious garb of the workrooms
+in Aylesbury Prison!
+
+"She!" exclaimed Hanaud; and in his passion for the contrasts of drama
+Ricardo was almost disappointed. "She has nothing whatever to do with
+it. She knows nothing. André Favart there--yes. But Carmen Valeri!
+She's as stupid as an owl, and loves him beyond words. Do you want to
+know how stupid she is? You shall know. I asked Mr. Clements, the
+director of the opera house, to take supper with us, and here he is."
+
+Hanaud stood up and shook hands with the director. He was of the world
+of business rather than of art, and long experience of the ways of
+tenors and prima-donnas had given him a good-humoured cynicism.
+
+"They are spoilt children, all tantrums and vanity," he said, "and
+they would ruin you to keep a rival out of the theatre."
+
+He told them anecdote upon anecdote.
+
+"And Carmen Valeri," Hanaud asked in a pause; "is she troublesome this
+season?"
+
+"Has been," replied Clements dryly. "At present she is playing at
+being good. But she gave me a turn some weeks ago." He turned to
+Ricardo. "Superstition's her trouble, and André Favart knows it. She
+left him behind in America this spring."
+
+"America!" suddenly cried Ricardo; so suddenly that Clements looked at
+him in surprise.
+
+"She was singing in New York, of course, during the winter," he
+returned. "Well, she left him behind, and I was shaking hands with
+myself when he began to deal the cards over there. She came to me in a
+panic. She had just had a cable. She couldn't sing on Friday night.
+There was a black knave next to the nine of diamonds. She wouldn't
+sing for worlds. And it was the first night of _The Jewels of the
+Madonna!_ Imagine the fix I was in!"
+
+"What did you do?" asked Ricardo.
+
+"The only thing there was to do," replied Clements with a shrug of the
+shoulders. "I cabled Favart some money and he dealt the cards again.
+She came to me beaming. Oh, she had been so distressed to put me in
+the cart! But what could she do? Now there was a red queen next to the
+ace of hearts, so she could sing without a scruple so long, of course,
+as she didn't pass a funeral on the way down to the opera house.
+Luckily she didn't. But my money brought Favart over here, and now I'm
+living on a volcano. For he's the greatest scoundrel unhung. He never
+has a farthing, however much she gives him; he's a blackmailer, he's a
+swindler, he has no manners and no graces, he looks like a butcher and
+treats her as if she were dirt, he never goes near the opera except
+when she is singing in this part, and she worships the ground he walks
+on. Well, I suppose it's time to go."
+
+The lights had been turned off, the great room was emptying. Mr.
+Ricardo and his friends rose to go, but at the door Hanaud detained
+Mr. Clements, and they talked together alone for some little while,
+greatly to Mr. Ricardo's annoyance. Hanaud's good humour, however,
+when he rejoined his friend, was enough for two.
+
+"I apologise, my friend, with my hand on my heart. But it was for your
+sake that I stayed behind. You have a meretricious taste for melodrama
+which I deeply deplore, but which I mean to gratify. I ought to leave
+for Paris to-morrow, but I shall not. I shall stay until Thursday."
+And he skipped upon the pavement as they walked home to Grosvenor
+Square.
+
+Mr. Ricardo bubbled with questions, but he knew his man. He would get
+no answer to any one of them to-night. So he worked out the problem
+for himself as he lay awake in his bed, and he came down to breakfast
+next morning fatigued but triumphant. Hanaud was already chipping off
+the top of his egg at the table.
+
+"So I see you have found it all out, my friend," he said.
+
+"Not all," replied Ricardo modestly, "and you will not mind, I am
+sure, if I follow the usual custom and wish you a good morning."
+
+"Not at all," said Hanaud. "I am all for good manners myself."
+
+He dipped his spoon into his egg.
+
+"But I am longing to hear the line of your reasoning."
+
+Mr. Ricardo did not need much pressing.
+
+"Joan Carew saw André Favart at Mrs. Starlingshield's party, and saw
+him with Carmen Valeri. For Carmen Valeri was there. I remember that
+you asked Joan for the names of the artists who sang, and Carmen
+Valeri was amongst them."
+
+Hanaud nodded his head.
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"No doubt Joan Carew noticed Carmen Valeri particularly, and so took
+unconsciously into her mind an impression of the man who was with her,
+André Favart--of his build, of his walk, of his type."
+
+Again Hanaud agreed.
+
+"She forgets the man altogether, but the picture remains latent in her
+mind--an undeveloped film."
+
+Hanaud looked up in surprise, and the surprise flattered Mr. Ricardo.
+Not for nothing had he tossed about in his bed for the greater part of
+the night.
+
+"Then came the tragic night at the Semiramis. She does not consciously
+recognise her assailant, but she dreams the scene again and again, and
+by a process of unconscious cerebration the figure of the man becomes
+familiar. Finally she makes her début, is entertained at supper
+afterwards, and meets once more Carmen Valeri."
+
+"Yes, for the first time since Mrs. Starlingshield's party,"
+interjected Hanaud.
+
+"She dreams again, she remembers asleep more than she remembers when
+awake. The presence of Carmen Valeri at her supper-party has its
+effect. By a process of association, she recalls Favart, and the mask
+slips on the face of her assailant. Some days later she goes to the
+opera. She hears Carmen Valeri sing in _The Jewels of the Madonna_. No
+doubt the passion of her acting, which I am more prepared to
+acknowledge this morning than I was last night, affects Joan Carew
+powerfully, emotionally. She goes to bed with her head full of Carmen
+Valeri, and she dreams not of Carmen Valeri, but of the man who is
+unconsciously associated with Carmen Valeri in her thoughts. The mask
+vanishes altogether. She sees her assailant now, has his portrait
+limned in her mind, would know him if she met him in the street,
+though she does not know by what means she identified him."
+
+"Yes," said Hanaud. "It is curious the brain working while the body
+sleeps, the dream revealing what thought cannot recall."
+
+Mr. Ricardo was delighted. He was taken seriously.
+
+"But of course," he said, "I could not have worked the problem out but
+for you. You knew of André Favart and the kind of man he was."
+
+Hanaud laughed.
+
+"Yes. That is always my one little advantage. I know all the
+cosmopolitan blackguards of Europe." His laughter ceased suddenly, and
+he brought his clenched fist heavily down upon the table. "Here is one
+of them who will be very well out of the world, my friend," he said
+very quietly, but there was a look of force in his face and a hard
+light in his eyes which made Mr. Ricardo shiver.
+
+For a few moments there was silence. Then Ricardo asked: "But have you
+evidence enough?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Your two chief witnesses, Calladine and Joan Carew--you said it
+yourself--there are facts to discredit them. Will they be believed?"
+
+"But they won't appear in the case at all," Hanaud said. "Wait, wait!"
+and once more he smiled. "By the way, what is the number of
+Calladine's house?"
+
+Ricardo gave it, and Hanaud therefore wrote a letter. "It is all for
+your sake, my friend," he said with a chuckle.
+
+"Nonsense," said Ricardo. "You have the spirit of the theatre in your
+bones."
+
+"Well, I shall not deny it," said Hanaud, and he sent out the letter
+to the nearest pillar-box.
+
+Mr. Ricardo waited in a fever of impatience until Thursday came. At
+breakfast Hanaud would talk of nothing but the news of the day. At
+luncheon he was no better. The affair of the Semiramis Hotel seemed a
+thousand miles from any of his thoughts. But at five o'clock he said
+as he drank his tea:
+
+"You know, of course, that we go to the opera to-night?"
+
+"Yes. Do we?"
+
+"Yes. Your young friend Calladine, by the way, will join us in your
+box."
+
+"That is very kind of him, I am sure," said Mr. Ricardo.
+
+The two men arrived before the rising of the curtain, and in the
+crowded lobby a stranger spoke a few words to Hanaud, but what he said
+Ricardo could not hear. They took their seats in the box, and Hanaud
+looked at his programme.
+
+"Ah! It is _Il Ballo de Maschera_ to-night. We always seem to hit upon
+something appropriate, don't we?"
+
+Then he raised his eyebrows.
+
+"Oh-o! Do you see that our pretty young friend, Joan Carew, is singing
+in the rôle of the page? It is a showy part. There is a particular
+melody with a long-sustained trill in it, as far as I remember."
+
+Mr. Ricardo was not deceived by Hanaud's apparent ignorance of the
+opera to be given that night and of the part Joan Carew was to take.
+He was, therefore, not surprised when Hanaud added:
+
+"By the way, I should let Calladine find it all out for himself."
+
+Mr. Ricardo nodded sagely.
+
+"Yes. That is wise. I had thought of it myself." But he had
+done nothing of the kind. He was only aware that the elaborate
+stage-management in which Hanaud delighted was working out to the
+desired climax, whatever that climax might be. Calladine entered the
+box a few minutes later and shook hands with them awkwardly.
+
+"It was kind of you to invite me," he said and, very ill at ease, he
+took a seat between them and concentrated his attention on the house
+as it filled up.
+
+"There's the overture," said Hanaud. The curtains divided and were
+festooned on either side of the stage. The singers came on in their
+turn; the page appeared to a burst of delicate applause (Joan Carew
+had made a small name for herself that season), and with a stifled cry
+Calladine shot back in the box as if he had been struck. Even then Mr.
+Ricardo did not understand. He only realised that Joan Carew was
+looking extraordinarily trim and smart in her boy's dress. He had to
+look from his programme to the stage and back again several times
+before the reason of Calladine's exclamation dawned on him. When it
+did, he was horrified. Hanaud, in his craving for dramatic effects,
+must have lost his head altogether. Joan Carew was wearing, from the
+ribbon in her hair to the scarlet heels of her buckled satin shoes,
+the same dress as she had worn on the tragic night at the Semiramis
+Hotel. He leaned forward in his agitation to Hanaud.
+
+"You must be mad. Suppose Favart is in the theatre and sees her. He'll
+be over on the Continent by one in the morning."
+
+"No, he won't," replied Hanaud. "For one thing, he never comes to
+Covent Garden unless one opera, with Carmen Valeri in the chief part,
+is being played, as you heard the other night at supper. For a second
+thing, he isn't in the house. I know where he is. He is gambling in
+Dean Street, Soho. For a third thing, my friend, he couldn't leave by
+the nine o'clock train for the Continent if he wanted to. Arrangements
+have been made. For a fourth thing, he wouldn't wish to. He has really
+remarkable reasons for desiring to stay in London. But he will come to
+the theatre later. Clements will send him an urgent message, with the
+result that he will go straight to Clements' office. Meanwhile, we can
+enjoy ourselves, eh?"
+
+Never was the difference between the amateur dilettante and the
+genuine professional more clearly exhibited than by the behaviour of
+the two men during the rest of the performance. Mr. Ricardo might have
+been sitting on a coal fire from his jumps and twistings; Hanaud
+stolidly enjoyed the music, and when Joan Carew sang her famous solo
+his hands clamoured for an encore louder than anyone's in the boxes.
+Certainly, whether excitement was keeping her up or no, Joan Carew had
+never sung better in her life. Her voice was clear and fresh as a
+bird's--a bird with a soul inspiring its song. Even Calladine drew his
+chair forward again and sat with his eyes fixed upon the stage and
+quite carried out of himself. He drew a deep breath at the end.
+
+"She is wonderful," he said, like a man waking up.
+
+"She is very good," replied Mr. Ricardo, correcting Calladine's
+transports.
+
+"We will go round to the back of the stage," said Hanaud.
+
+They passed through the iron door and across the stage to a long
+corridor with a row of doors on one side. There were two or three men
+standing about in evening dress, as if waiting for friends in the
+dressing-rooms. At the third door Hanaud stopped and knocked. The door
+was opened by Joan Carew, still dressed in her green and gold. Her
+face was troubled, her eyes afraid.
+
+"Courage, little one," said Hanaud, and he slipped past her into the
+room. "It is as well that my ugly, familiar face should not be seen
+too soon."
+
+The door closed and one of the strangers loitered along the corridor
+and spoke to a call-boy. The call-boy ran off. For five minutes more
+Mr. Ricardo waited with a beating heart. He had the joy of a man in
+the centre of things. All those people driving homewards in their
+motor-cars along the Strand--how he pitied them! Then, at the end of
+the corridor, he saw Clements and André Favart. They approached,
+discussing the possibility of Carmen Valeri's appearance in London
+opera during the next season.
+
+"We have to look ahead, my dear friend," said Clements, "and though I
+should be extremely sorry----"
+
+At that moment they were exactly opposite Joan Carew's door. It
+opened, she came out; with a nervous movement she shut the door behind
+her. At the sound André Favart turned, and he saw drawn up against the
+panels of the door, with a look of terror in her face, the same gay
+figure which had interrupted him in Mrs. Blumenstein's bedroom. There
+was no need for Joan to act. In the presence of this man her fear was
+as real as it had been on the night of the Semiramis ball. She
+trembled from head to foot. Her eyes closed; she seemed about to
+swoon.
+
+Favart stared and uttered an oath. His face turned white; he staggered
+back as if he had seen a ghost. Then he made a wild dash along the
+corridor, and was seized and held by two of the men in evening dress.
+Favart recovered his wits. He ceased to struggle.
+
+"What does this outrage mean?" he asked, and one of the men drew a
+warrant and notebook from his pocket.
+
+"You are arrested for the murder of Mrs. Blumenstein in the Semiramis
+Hotel," he said, "and I have to warn you that anything you may say
+will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you."
+
+"Preposterous!" exclaimed Favart. "There's a mistake. We will go along
+to the police and put it right. Where's your evidence against me?"
+
+Hanaud stepped out of the doorway of the dressing-room.
+
+"In the property-room of the theatre," he said.
+
+At the sight of him Favart uttered a violent cry of rage. "You are
+here, too, are you?" he screamed, and he sprang at Hanaud's throat.
+Hanaud stepped lightly aside. Favart was borne down to the ground, and
+when he stood up again the handcuffs were on his wrists.
+
+Favart was led away, and Hanaud turned to Mr. Ricardo and Clements.
+
+"Let us go to the property-room," he said. They passed along the
+corridor, and Ricardo noticed that Calladine was no longer with them.
+He turned and saw him standing outside Joan Carew's dressing-room.
+
+"He would like to come, of course," said Ricardo.
+
+"Would he?" asked Hanaud. "Then why doesn't he? He's quite grown up,
+you know," and he slipped his arm through Ricardo's and led him back
+across the stage. In the property-room there was already a detective
+in plain clothes. Mr. Ricardo had still not as yet guessed the truth.
+
+"What is it you really want, sir?" the property-master asked of the
+director.
+
+"Only the jewels of the Madonna," Hanaud answered.
+
+The property-master unlocked a cupboard and took from it the sparkling
+cuirass. Hanaud pointed to it, and there, lost amongst the huge
+glittering stones of paste and false pearls, Mrs. Blumenstein's
+necklace was entwined.
+
+"Then that is why Favart came always to Covent Garden when _The Jewels
+of the Madonna_ was being performed!" exclaimed Ricardo.
+
+Hanaud nodded.
+
+"He came to watch over his treasure."
+
+Ricardo was piecing together the sections of the puzzle.
+
+"No doubt he knew of the necklace in America. No doubt he followed it
+to England."
+
+Hanaud agreed.
+
+"Mrs. Blumenstein's jewels were quite famous in New York."
+
+"But to hide them here!" cried Mr. Clements. "He must have been mad."
+
+"Why?" asked Hanaud. "Can you imagine a safer hiding-place? Who is
+going to burgle the property-room of Covent Garden? Who is going to
+look for a priceless string of pearls amongst the stage jewels of an
+opera house?"
+
+"You did," said Mr. Ricardo.
+
+"I?" replied Hanaud, shrugging his shoulders. "Joan Carew's dreams led
+me to André Favart. The first time we came here and saw the pearls of
+the Madonna, I was on the look-out, naturally. I noticed Favart at the
+back of the stalls. But it was a stroke of luck that I noticed those
+pearls through my opera glasses."
+
+"At the end of the second act?" cried Ricardo suddenly. "I remember
+now."
+
+"Yes," replied Hanaud. "But for that second act the pearls would have
+stayed comfortably here all through the season. Carmen Valeri--a fool
+as I told you--would have tossed them about in her dressing-room
+without a notion of their value, and at the end of July, when the
+murder at the Semiramis Hotel had been forgotten, Favart would have
+taken them to Amsterdam and made his bargain."
+
+"Shall we go?"
+
+They left the theatre together and walked down to the grill-room of
+the Semiramis. But as Hanaud looked through the glass door he drew
+back.
+
+"We will not go in, I think, eh?"
+
+"Why?" asked Ricardo.
+
+Hanaud pointed to a table. Calladine and Joan Carew were seated at it
+taking their supper.
+
+"Perhaps," said Hanaud with a smile, "perhaps, my friend--what? Who
+shall say that the rooms in the Adelphi will not be given up?"
+
+They turned away from the hotel. But Hanaud was right, and before the
+season was over Mr. Ricardo had to put his hand in his pocket for a
+wedding present.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel, by
+A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel, by
+A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel
+
+Author: A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason
+
+Release Date: January 24, 2012 [EBook #38663]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AFFAIR AT THE SEMIRAMIS HOTEL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="hang1">Transcriber's Notes:<br>
+
+1. Page scan source:<br>
+http://www.archive.org/details/affairatsemirami00maso</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h1>THE AFFAIR AT<br>
+
+THE SEMIRAMIS HOTEL</h1>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h5>BY</h5>
+
+<h2>A. E. W. MASON</h2>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS<br>
+NEW YORK&nbsp;::&nbsp;::&nbsp;::&nbsp;1917</h3>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h4><span class="sc2">Copyright, 1917, by</span><br>
+
+A. E. W. MASON</h4>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h1>THE AFFAIR<br>
+
+AT THE SEMIRAMIS HOTEL</h1>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>THE AFFAIR<br>
+AT THE SEMIRAMIS HOTEL</h2>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>I</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo, when the excitements of the Villa Rose were done with,
+returned to Grosvenor Square and resumed the busy, unnecessary life of
+an amateur. But the studios had lost their savour, artists their
+attractiveness, and even the Russian opera seemed a trifle flat. Life
+was altogether a disappointment; Fate, like an actress at a
+restaurant, had taken the wooden pestle in her hand and stirred all
+the sparkle out of the champagne; Mr. Ricardo languished--until one
+unforgettable morning.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He was sitting disconsolately at his breakfast-table when the door was
+burst open and a square, stout man, with the blue, shaven face of a
+French comedian, flung himself into the room. Ricardo sprang towards
+the new-comer with a cry of delight.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My dear Hanaud!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He seized his visitor by the arm, feeling it to make sure that here,
+in flesh and blood, stood the man who had introduced him to the
+acutest sensations of his life. He turned towards his butler, who was
+still bleating expostulations in the doorway at the unceremonious
+irruption of the French detective.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Another place, Burton, at once,&quot; he cried, and as soon as he and
+Hanaud were alone: &quot;What good wind blows you to London?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Business, my friend. The disappearance of bullion somewhere on the
+line between Paris and London. But it is finished. Yes, I take a
+holiday.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A light had suddenly flashed in Mr. Ricardo's eyes, and was now no
+less suddenly extinguished. Hanaud paid no attention whatever to his
+friend's disappointment. He pounced upon a piece of silver which
+adorned the tablecloth and took it over to the window.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Everything is as it should be, my friend,&quot; he exclaimed, with a grin.
+&quot;Grosvenor Square, the <i>Times</i> open at the money column, and a false
+antique upon the table. Thus I have dreamed of you. All Mr. Ricardo is
+in that sentence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Ricardo laughed nervously. Recollection made him wary of Hanaud's
+sarcasms. He was shy even to protest the genuineness of his silver.
+But, indeed, he had not the time. For the door opened again and once
+more the butler appeared. On this occasion, however, he was alone.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Mr. Calladine would like to speak to you, sir,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Calladine!&quot; cried Ricardo in an extreme surprise. &quot;That is the most
+extraordinary thing.&quot; He looked at the clock upon his mantelpiece. It
+was barely half-past eight. &quot;At this hour, too?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Mr. Calladine is still wearing evening dress,&quot; the butler remarked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Ricardo started in his chair. He began to dream of possibilities; and
+here was Hanaud miraculously at his side.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Where is Mr. Calladine?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I have shown him into the library.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Good,&quot; said Mr. Ricardo. &quot;I will come to him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But he was in no hurry. He sat and let his thoughts play with this
+incident of Calladine's early visit.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It is very odd,&quot; he said. &quot;I have not seen Calladine for months--no,
+nor has anyone. Yet, a little while ago, no one was more often seen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He fell apparently into a muse, but he was merely seeking to provoke
+Hanaud's curiosity. In this attempt, however, he failed. Hanaud
+continued placidly to eat his breakfast, so that Mr. Ricardo was
+compelled to volunteer the story which he was burning to tell.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Drink your coffee, Hanaud, and you shall hear about Calladine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud grunted with resignation, and Mr. Ricardo flowed on:</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Calladine was one of England's young men. Everybody said so. He was
+going to do very wonderful things as soon as he had made up his mind
+exactly what sort of wonderful things he was going to do. Meanwhile,
+you met him in Scotland, at Newmarket, at Ascot, at Cowes, in the box
+of some great lady at the Opera--not before half-past ten in the
+evening <i>there</i>--in any fine house where the candles that night
+happened to be lit. He went everywhere, and then a day came and he
+went nowhere. There was no scandal, no trouble, not a whisper against
+his good name. He simply vanished. For a little while a few people
+asked: 'What has become of Calladine?' But there never was any answer,
+and London has no time for unanswered questions. Other promising young
+men dined in his place. Calladine had joined the huge legion of the
+Come-to-nothings. No one even seemed to pass him in the street. Now
+unexpectedly, at half-past eight in the morning, and in evening dress,
+he calls upon me. 'Why?' I ask myself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo sank once more into a reverie. Hanaud watched him with a
+broadening smile of pure enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And in time, I suppose,&quot; he remarked casually, &quot;you will perhaps ask
+him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo sprang out of his pose to his feet.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Before I discuss serious things with an acquaintance,&quot; he said with a
+scathing dignity, &quot;I make it a rule to revive my impressions of his
+personality. The cigarettes are in the crystal box.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;They would be,&quot; said Hanaud, unabashed, as Ricardo stalked from the
+room. But in five minutes Mr. Ricardo came running back, all his
+composure gone.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It is the greatest good fortune that you, my friend, should have
+chosen this morning to visit me,&quot; he cried, and Hanaud nodded with a
+little grimace of resignation.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There goes my holiday. You shall command me now and always. I will
+make the acquaintance of your young friend.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He rose up and followed Ricardo into his study, where a young man was
+nervously pacing the floor.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Mr. Calladine,&quot; said Ricardo. &quot;This is Mr. Hanaud.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The young man turned eagerly. He was tall, with a noticeable elegance
+and distinction, and the face which he showed to Hanaud was, in spite
+of its agitation, remarkably handsome.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I am very glad,&quot; he said. &quot;You are not an official of this country.
+You can advise--without yourself taking action, if you'll be so good.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud frowned. He bent his eyes uncompromisingly upon Calladine.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What does that mean?&quot; he asked, with a note of sternness in his
+voice.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It means that I must tell someone,&quot; Calladine burst out in quivering
+tones. &quot;That I don't know what to do. I am in a difficulty too big for
+me. That's the truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud looked at the young man keenly. It seemed to Ricardo that he
+took in every excited gesture, every twitching feature, in one
+comprehensive glance. Then he said in a friendlier voice:</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Sit down and tell me&quot;--and he himself drew up a chair to the table.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I was at the Semiramis last night,&quot; said Calladine, naming one of the
+great hotels upon the Embankment. &quot;There was a fancy-dress ball.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">All this happened, by the way, in those far-off days before the
+war--nearly, in fact, three years ago today--when London, flinging
+aside its reticence, its shy self-consciousness, had become a city of
+carnivals and masquerades, rivalling its neighbours on the Continent
+in the spirit of its gaiety, and exceeding them by its stupendous
+luxury. &quot;I went by the merest chance. My rooms are in the Adelphi
+Terrace.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There!&quot; cried Mr. Ricardo in surprise, and Hanaud lifted a hand to
+check his interruptions.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes,&quot; continued Calladine. &quot;The night was warm, the music floated
+through my open windows and stirred old memories. I happened to have a
+ticket. I went.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Calladine drew up a chair opposite to Hanaud and, seating himself,
+told, with many nervous starts and in troubled tones, a story which,
+to Mr. Ricardo's thinking, was as fabulous as any out of the &quot;Arabian
+Nights.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I had a ticket,&quot; he began, &quot;but no domino. I was consequently stopped
+by an attendant in the lounge at the top of the staircase leading down
+to the ballroom.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'You can hire a domino in the cloakroom, Mr. Calladine,' he said to
+me. I had already begun to regret the impulse which had brought me,
+and I welcomed the excuse with which the absence of a costume provided
+me. I was, indeed, turning back to the door, when a girl who had at
+that moment run down from the stairs of the hotel into the lounge,
+cried gaily: 'That's not necessary'; and at the same moment she flung
+to me a long scarlet cloak which she had been wearing over her own
+dress. She was young, fair, rather tall, slim, and very pretty; her
+hair was drawn back from her face with a ribbon, and rippled down her
+shoulders in heavy curls; and she was dressed in a satin coat and
+knee-breeches of pale green and gold, with a white waistcoat and
+silk stockings and scarlet heels to her satin shoes. She was as
+straight-limbed as a boy, and exquisite like a figure in Dresden
+china. I caught the cloak and turned to thank her. But she did not
+wait. With a laugh she ran down the stairs a supple and shining
+figure, and was lost in the throng at the doorway of the ballroom. I
+was stirred by the prospect of an adventure. I ran down after her. She
+was standing just inside the room alone, and she was gazing at the
+scene with parted lips and dancing eyes. She laughed again as she saw
+the cloak about my shoulders, a delicious gurgle of amusement, and I
+said to her:</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'May I dance with you?'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'Oh, do!' she cried, with a little jump, and clasping her hands. She
+was of a high and joyous spirit and not difficult in the matter of an
+introduction. 'This gentleman will do very well to present us,' she
+said, leading me in front of a bust of the God Pan which stood in a
+niche of the wall. 'I am, as you see, straight out of an opera. My
+name is Celymène or anything with an eighteenth century sound to it.
+You are--what you will. For this evening we are friends.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'And for to-morrow?' I asked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'I will tell you about that later on,' she replied, and she began to
+dance with a light step and a passion in her dancing which earned me
+many an envious glance from the other men. I was in luck, for Celymène
+knew no one, and though, of course, I saw the faces of a great many
+people whom I remembered, I kept them all at a distance. We had been
+dancing for about half an hour when the first queerish thing happened.
+She stopped suddenly in the midst of a sentence with a little gasp. I
+spoke to her, but she did not hear. She was gazing past me, her eyes
+wide open, and such a rapt look upon her face as I had never seen. She
+was lost in a miraculous vision. I followed the direction of her eyes
+and, to my astonishment, I saw nothing more than a stout, short,
+middle-aged woman, egregiously over-dressed as Marie Antoinette.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'So you do know someone here?' I said, and I had to repeat the words
+sharply before my friend withdrew her eyes. But even then she was not
+aware of me. It was as if a voice had spoken to her whilst she was
+asleep and had disturbed, but not wakened her. Then she came
+to--there's really no other word I can think of which describes her at
+that moment--she came to with a deep sigh.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'No,' she answered. 'She is a Mrs. Blumenstein from Chicago, a widow
+with ambitions and a great deal of money. But I don't know her.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'Yet you know all about her,' I remarked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'She crossed in the same boat with me,' Celymène replied. 'Did I tell
+you that I landed at Liverpool this morning? She is staying at the
+Semiramis too. Oh, let us dance!'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;She twitched my sleeve impatiently, and danced with a kind of
+violence and wildness as if she wished to banish some sinister
+thought. And she did undoubtedly banish it. We supped together and
+grew confidential, as under such conditions people will. She told me
+her real name. It was Joan Carew.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'I have come over to get an engagement if I can at Covent Garden. I
+am supposed to sing all right. But I don't know anyone. I have been
+brought up in Italy.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'You have some letters of introduction, I suppose?' I asked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'Oh, yes. One from my teacher in Milan. One from an American
+manager.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In my turn I told her my name and where I lived, and I gave her my
+card. I thought, you see, that since I used to know a good many
+operatic people, I might be able to help her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'Thank you,' she said, and at that moment Mrs. Blumenstein, followed
+by a party, chiefly those lap-dog young men who always seem to gather
+about that kind of person, came into the supper-room and took a table
+close to us. There was at once an end of all confidences--indeed, of
+all conversation. Joan Carew lost all the lightness of her spirit; she
+talked at random, and her eyes were drawn again and again to the
+grotesque slander on Marie Antoinette. Finally I became annoyed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'Shall we go?' I suggested impatiently, and to my surprise she
+whispered passionately:</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'Yes. Please! Let us go.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Her voice was actually shaking, her small hands clenched. We went
+back to the ballroom, but Joan Carew did not recover her gaiety, and
+half-way through a dance, when we were near to the door, she stopped
+abruptly--extraordinarily abruptly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'I shall go,' she said abruptly. 'I am tired. I have grown dull.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I protested, but she made a little grimace.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'You'll hate me in half an hour. Let's be wise and stop now while we
+are friends,' she said, and whilst I removed the domino from my
+shoulders she stooped very quickly. It seemed to me that she picked up
+something which had lain hidden beneath the sole of her slipper. She
+certainly moved her foot, and I certainly saw something small and
+bright flash in the palm of her glove as she raised herself again. But
+I imagined merely that it was some object which she had dropped.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'Yes, we'll go,' she said, and we went up the stairs into the lobby.
+Certainly all the sparkle had gone out of our adventure. I recognized
+her wisdom.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'But I shall meet you again?' I asked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'Yes. I have your address. I'll write and fix a time when you will be
+sure to find me in. Good-night, and a thousand thanks. I should have
+been bored to tears if you hadn't come without a domino.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;She was speaking lightly as she held out her hand, but her grip
+tightened a little and--clung. Her eyes darkened and grew troubled,
+her mouth trembled. The shadow of a great trouble had suddenly closed
+about her. She shivered.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'I am half inclined to ask you to stay, however dull I am; and dance
+with me till daylight--the safe daylight,' she said.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It was an extraordinary phrase for her to use, and it moved me.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'Let us go back then!' I urged. She gave me an impression suddenly of
+someone quite forlorn. But Joan Carew recovered her courage. 'No, no,'
+she answered quickly. She snatched her hand away and ran lightly up
+the staircase, turning at the corner to wave her hand and smile. It
+was then half-past one in the morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">So far Calladine had spoken without an interruption. Mr. Ricardo, it
+is true, was bursting to break in with the most important questions,
+but a salutary fear of Hanaud restrained him. Now, however, he had an
+opportunity, for Calladine paused.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Half-past one,&quot; he said sagely. &quot;Ah!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And when did you go home?&quot; Hanaud asked of Calladine.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;True,&quot; said Mr. Ricardo. &quot;It is of the greatest consequence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Calladine was not sure. His partner had left behind her the strangest
+medley of sensations in his breast. He was puzzled, haunted, and
+charmed. He had to think about her; he was a trifle uplifted; sleep
+was impossible. He wandered for a while about the ballroom. Then he
+walked to his chambers along the echoing streets and sat at his
+window; and some time afterwards the hoot of a motor-horn broke the
+silence and a car stopped and whirred in the street below. A moment
+later his bell rang.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He ran down the stairs in a queer excitement, unlocked the street door
+and opened it. Joan Carew, still in her masquerade dress with her
+scarlet cloak about her shoulders, slipped through the opening.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Shut the door,&quot; she whispered, drawing herself apart in a corner.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Your cab?&quot; asked Calladine.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It has gone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Calladine latched the door. Above, in the well of the stairs, the
+light spread out from the open door of his flat. Down here all was
+dark. He could just see the glimmer of her white face, the glitter of
+her dress, but she drew her breath like one who has run far. They
+mounted the stairs cautiously. He did not say a word until they were
+both safely in his parlour; and even then it was in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What has happened?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You remember the woman I stared at? You didn't know why I stared, but
+any girl would have understood. She was wearing the loveliest pearls I
+ever saw in my life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Joan was standing by the edge of the table. She was tracing with her
+finger a pattern on the cloth as she spoke. Calladine started with a
+horrible presentiment.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes,&quot; she said. &quot;I worship pearls. I always have done. For one thing,
+they improve on me. I haven't got any, of course. I have no money. But
+friends of mine who do own pearls have sometimes given theirs to me to
+wear when they were going sick, and they have always got back their
+lustre. I think that has had a little to do with my love of them. Oh,
+I have always longed for them--just a little string. Sometimes I have
+felt that I would have given my soul for them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was speaking in a dull, monotonous voice. But Calladine recalled
+the ecstasy which had shone in her face when her eyes first had fallen
+on the pearls, the longing which had swept her quite into another
+world, the passion with which she had danced to throw the obsession
+off.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And I never noticed them at all,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yet they were wonderful. The colour! The lustre! All the evening they
+tempted me. I was furious that a fat, coarse creature like that should
+have such exquisite things. Oh, I was mad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She covered her face suddenly with her hands and swayed. Calladine
+sprang towards her. But she held out her hand.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No, I am all right.&quot; And though he asked her to sit down she would
+not. &quot;You remember when I stopped dancing suddenly?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes. You had something hidden under your foot?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The girl nodded.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Her key!&quot; And under his breath Calladine uttered a startled cry.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">For the first time since she had entered the room Joan Carew raised
+her head and looked at him. Her eyes were full of terror, and with the
+terror was mixed an incredulity as though she could not possibly
+believe that that had happened which she knew had happened.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;A little Yale key,&quot; the girl continued. &quot;I saw Mrs. Blumenstein
+looking on the floor for something, and then I saw it shining on the
+very spot. Mrs. Blumenstein's suite was on the same floor as mine, and
+her maid slept above. All the maids do. I knew that. Oh, it seemed to
+me as if I had sold my soul and was being paid.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Now Calladine understood what she had meant by her strange
+phrase--&quot;the safe daylight.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I went up to my little suite,&quot; Joan Carew continued. &quot;I sat there
+with the key burning through my glove until I had given her time
+enough to fall asleep&quot;--and though she hesitated before she spoke the
+words, she did speak them, not looking at Calladine, and with a
+shudder of remorse making her confession complete. &quot;Then I crept out.
+The corridor was dimly lit. Far away below the music was throbbing. Up
+here it was as silent as the grave. I opened the door--her door. I
+found myself in a lobby. The suite, though bigger, was arranged like
+mine. I slipped in and closed the door behind me. I listened in the
+darkness. I couldn't hear a sound. I crept forward to the door in
+front of me. I stood with my fingers on the handle and my heart
+beating fast enough to choke me. I had still time to turn back. But I
+couldn't. There were those pearls in front of my eyes, lustrous and
+wonderful. I opened the door gently an inch or so--and then--it all
+happened in a second.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Joan Carew faltered. The night was too near to her, its memory too
+poignant with terror. She shut her eyes tightly and cowered down in a
+chair. With the movement her cloak slipped from her shoulders and
+dropped on to the ground. Calladine leaned forward with an exclamation
+of horror; Joan Carew started up.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What is it?&quot; she asked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Nothing. Go on.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I found myself inside the room with the door shut behind me. I had
+shut it myself in a spasm of terror. And I dared not turn round to
+open it. I was helpless.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What do you mean? She was awake?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Joan Carew shook her head.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There were others in the room before me, and on the same
+errand--men!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Calladine drew back, his eyes searching the girl's face.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes?&quot; he said slowly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I didn't see them at first. I didn't hear them. The room was quite
+dark except for one jet of fierce white light which beat upon the door
+of a safe. And as I shut the door the jet moved swiftly and the light
+reached me and stopped. I was blinded. I stood in the full glare of
+it, drawn up against the panels of the door, shivering, sick with
+fear. Then I heard a quiet laugh, and someone moved softly towards me.
+Oh, it was terrible! I recovered the use of my limbs; in a panic I
+turned to the door, but I was too late. Whilst I fumbled with the
+handle I was seized; a hand covered my mouth. I was lifted to the
+centre of the room. The jet went out, the electric lights were turned
+on. There were two men dressed as apaches in velvet trousers and red
+scarves, like a hundred others in the ballroom below, and both were
+masked. I struggled furiously; but, of course, I was like a child in
+their grasp. 'Tie her legs,' the man whispered who was holding me;
+'she's making too much noise.' I kicked and fought, but the other man
+stooped and tied my ankles, and I fainted.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Calladine nodded his head.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes?&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;When I came to, the lights were still burning, the door of the safe
+was open, the room empty; I had been flung on to a couch at the foot
+of the bed. I was lying there quite free.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Was the safe empty?&quot; asked Calladine suddenly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I didn't look,&quot; she answered. &quot;Oh!&quot;--and she covered her face
+spasmodically with her hands. &quot;I looked at the bed. Someone was lying
+there--under a sheet and quite still. There was a clock ticking in the
+room; it was the only sound. I was terrified. I was going mad with
+fear. If I didn't get out of the room at once I felt that I should
+go mad, that I should scream and bring everyone to find me alone
+with--what was under the sheet in the bed. I ran to the door and
+looked out through a slit into the corridor. It was still quite empty,
+and below the music still throbbed in the ballroom. I crept down the
+stairs, meeting no one until I reached the hall. I looked into the
+ballroom as if I was searching for someone. I stayed long enough to
+show myself. Then I got a cab and came to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A short silence followed. Joan Carew looked at her companion in
+appeal. &quot;You are the only one I could come to,&quot; she added. &quot;I know no
+one else.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Calladine sat watching the girl in silence. Then he asked, and his
+voice was hard:</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And is that all you have to tell me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You are quite sure?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Joan Carew looked at him perplexed by the urgency of his question. She
+reflected for a moment or two.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Quite.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Calladine rose to his feet and stood beside her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Then how do you come to be wearing this?&quot; he asked, and he lifted a
+chain of platinum and diamonds which she was wearing about her
+shoulders. &quot;You weren't wearing it when you danced with me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Joan Carew stared at the chain.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No. It's not mine. I have never seen it before.&quot; Then a light came
+into her eyes. &quot;The two men--they must have thrown it over my head
+when I was on the couch--before they went.&quot; She looked at it more
+closely. &quot;That's it. The chain's not very valuable. They could spare
+it, and--it would accuse me--of what they did.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, that's very good reasoning,&quot; said Calladine coldly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Joan Carew looked quickly up into his face.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, you don't believe me,&quot; she cried. &quot;You think--oh, it's
+impossible.&quot; And, holding him by the edge of his coat, she burst into
+a storm of passionate denials.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But you went to steal, you know,&quot; he said gently, and she answered
+him at once:</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, I did, but not this.&quot; And she held up the necklace. &quot;Should I
+have stolen this, should I have come to you wearing it, if I had
+stolen the pearls, if I had&quot;--and she stopped--&quot;if my story were not
+true?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Calladine weighed her argument, and it affected him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No, I think you wouldn't,&quot; he said frankly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Most crimes, no doubt, were brought home because the criminal had made
+some incomprehensibly stupid mistake; incomprehensibly stupid, that
+is, by the standards of normal life. Nevertheless, Calladine was
+inclined to believe her. He looked at her. That she should have
+murdered was absurd. Moreover, she was not making a parade of remorse,
+she was not playing the unctuous penitent; she had yielded to a
+temptation, had got herself into desperate straits, and was at her
+wits' ends how to escape from them. She was frank about herself.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Calladine looked at the clock. It was nearly five o'clock in the
+morning, and though the music could still be heard from the ballroom
+in the Semiramis, the night had begun to wane upon the river.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You must go back,&quot; he said. &quot;I'll walk with you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They crept silently down the stairs and into the street. It was only a
+step to the Semiramis. They met no one until they reached the Strand.
+There many, like Joan Carew in masquerade, were standing about, or
+walking hither and thither in search of carriages and cabs. The whole
+street was in a bustle, what with drivers shouting and people coming
+away.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You can slip in unnoticed,&quot; said Calladine as he looked into the
+thronged courtyard. &quot;I'll telephone to you in the morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You will?&quot; she cried eagerly, clinging for a moment to his arm.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, for certain,&quot; he replied. &quot;Wait in until you hear from me. I'll
+think it over. I'll do what I can.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Thank you,&quot; she said fervently.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He watched her scarlet cloak flitting here and there in the crowd
+until it vanished through the doorway. Then, for the second time, he
+walked back to his chambers, while the morning crept up the river from
+the sea.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p style="text-align:center; letter-spacing:20pt">* * * * *</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">This was the story which Calladine told in Mr. Ricardo's library. Mr.
+Ricardo heard it out with varying emotions. He began with a thrill of
+expectation like a man on a dark threshold of great excitements. The
+setting of the story appealed to him, too, by a sort of brilliant
+bizarrerie which he found in it. But, as it went on, he grew puzzled
+and a trifle disheartened. There were flaws and chinks; he began to
+bubble with unspoken criticisms, then swift and clever thrusts which
+he dared not deliver. He looked upon the young man with disfavour, as
+upon one who had half opened a door upon a theatre of great promise
+and shown him a spectacle not up to the mark. Hanaud, on the other
+hand, listened imperturbably, without an expression upon his face,
+until the end. Then he pointed a finger at Calladine and asked him
+what to Ricardo's mind was a most irrelevant question.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You got back to your rooms, then, before five, Mr. Calladine, and it
+is now nine o'clock less a few minutes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yet you have not changed your clothes. Explain to me that. What did
+you do between five and half-past eight?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Calladine looked down at his rumpled shirt front.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Upon my word, I never thought of it,&quot; he cried. &quot;I was worried out of
+my mind. I couldn't decide what to do. Finally, I determined to talk
+to Mr. Ricardo, and after I had come to that conclusion I just waited
+impatiently until I could come round with decency.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud rose from his chair. His manner was grave, but conveyed no
+single hint of an opinion. He turned to Ricardo.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Let us go round to your young friend's rooms in the Adelphi,&quot; he
+said; and the three men drove thither at once.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>II</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Calladine lodged in a corner house and upon the first floor. His
+rooms, large and square and lofty, with Adams mantelpieces and a
+delicate tracery upon their ceilings, breathed the grace of the
+eighteenth century. Broad high windows, embrasured in thick walls,
+overlooked the river and took in all the sunshine and the air which
+the river had to give. And they were furnished fittingly. When the
+three men entered the parlour, Mr. Ricardo was astounded. He had
+expected the untidy litter of a man run to seed, the neglect and the
+dust of the recluse. But the room was as clean as the deck of a yacht;
+an Aubusson carpet made the floor luxurious underfoot; a few coloured
+prints of real value decorated the walls; and the mahogany furniture
+was polished so that a lady could have used it as a mirror. There was
+even by the newspapers upon the round table a china bowl full of fresh
+red roses. If Calladine had turned hermit, he was a hermit of an
+unusually fastidious type. Indeed, as he stood with his two companions
+in his dishevelled dress he seemed quite out of keeping with his
+rooms.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;So you live here, Mr. Calladine?&quot; said Hanaud, taking off his hat and
+laying it down.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;With your servants, of course?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;They come in during the day,&quot; said Calladine, and Hanaud looked at
+him curiously.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Do you mean that you sleep here alone?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But your valet?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I don't keep a valet,&quot; said Calladine; and again the curious look
+came into Hanaud's eyes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yet,&quot; he suggested gently, &quot;there are rooms enough in your set of
+chambers to house a family.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Calladine coloured and shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the
+other.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I prefer at night not to be disturbed,&quot; he said, stumbling a little
+over the words. &quot;I mean, I have a liking for quiet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Gabriel Hanaud nodded his head with sympathy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, yes. And it is a difficult thing to get--as difficult as
+my holiday,&quot; he said ruefully, with a smile for Mr. Ricardo.
+&quot;However&quot;--he turned towards Calladine--&quot;no doubt, now that you are at
+home, you would like a bath and a change of clothes. And when you are
+dressed, perhaps you will telephone to the Semiramis and ask Miss
+Carew to come round here. Meanwhile, we will read your newspapers and
+smoke your cigarettes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud shut the door upon Calladine, but he turned neither to the
+papers nor the cigarettes. He crossed the room to Mr. Ricardo, who,
+seated at the open window, was plunged deep in reflections.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You have an idea, my friend,&quot; cried Hanaud. &quot;It demands to express
+itself. That sees itself in your face. Let me hear it, I pray.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo started out of an absorption which was altogether assumed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I was thinking,&quot; he said, with a faraway smile, &quot;that you might
+disappear in the forests of Africa, and at once everyone would be very
+busy about your disappearance. You might leave your village in
+Leicestershire and live in the fogs of Glasgow, and within a week the
+whole village would know your postal address. But London--what a city!
+How different! How indifferent! Turn out of St. James's into the
+Adelphi Terrace and not a soul will say to you: 'Dr. Livingstone, I
+presume?'&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But why should they,&quot; asked Hanaud, &quot;if your name isn't Dr.
+Livingstone?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo smiled indulgently.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Scoffer!&quot; he said. &quot;You understand me very well,&quot; and he sought to
+turn the tables on his companion. &quot;And you--does this room suggest
+nothing to you? Have you no ideas?&quot; But he knew very well that Hanaud
+had. Ever since Hanaud had crossed the threshold he had been like a
+man stimulated by a drug. His eyes were bright and active, his body
+alert.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes,&quot; he said, &quot;I have.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He was standing now by Ricardo's side with his hands in his pockets,
+looking out at the trees on the Embankment and the barges swinging
+down the river.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You are thinking of the strange scene which took place in this room
+such a very few hours ago,&quot; said Ricardo. &quot;The girl in her masquerade
+dress making her confession with the stolen chain about her
+throat----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud looked backwards carelessly. &quot;No, I wasn't giving it a
+thought,&quot; he said, and in a moment or two he began to walk about the
+room with that curiously light step which Ricardo was never able to
+reconcile with his cumbersome figure. With the heaviness of a bear he
+still padded. He went from corner to corner, opened a cupboard here, a
+drawer of the bureau there, and--stooped suddenly. He stood erect
+again with a small box of morocco leather in his hand. His body from
+head to foot seemed to Ricardo to be expressing the question, &quot;Have I
+found it?&quot; He pressed a spring and the lid of the box flew open.
+Hanaud emptied its contents into the palm of his hand. There were two
+or three sticks of sealing-wax and a seal. With a shrug of the
+shoulders he replaced them and shut the box.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You are looking for something,&quot; Ricardo announced with sagacity.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I am,&quot; replied Hanaud; and it seemed that in a second or two he found
+it. Yet--yet--he found it with his hands in his pockets, if he had
+found it. Mr. Ricardo saw him stop in that attitude in front of the
+mantelshelf, and heard him utter a long, low whistle. Upon the
+mantelshelf some photographs were arranged, a box of cigars stood at
+one end, a book or two lay between some delicate ornaments of china,
+and a small engraving in a thin gilt frame was propped at the back
+against the wall. Ricardo surveyed the shelf from his seat in the
+window, but he could not imagine which it was of these objects that so
+drew and held Hanaud's eyes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud, however, stepped forward. He looked into a vase and turned it
+upside down. Then he removed the lid of a porcelain cup, and from the
+very look of his great shoulders Ricardo knew that he had discovered
+what he sought. He was holding something in his hands, turning it
+over, examining it. When he was satisfied he moved swiftly to the door
+and opened it cautiously. Both men could hear the splashing of water
+in a bath. Hanaud closed the door again with a nod of contentment and
+crossed once more to the window.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, it is all very strange and curious,&quot; he said, &quot;and I do not
+regret that you dragged me into the affair. You were quite right, my
+friend, this morning. It is the personality of your young Mr.
+Calladine which is the interesting thing. For instance, here we are in
+London in the early summer. The trees out, freshly green, lilac and
+flowers in the gardens, and I don't know what tingle of hope and
+expectation in the sunlight and the air. I am middle-aged--yet there's
+a riot in my blood, a recapture of youth, a belief that just round the
+corner, beyond the reach of my eyes, wonders wait for me. Don't you,
+too, feel something like that? Well, then--&quot; and he heaved his
+shoulders in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Can you understand a young man with money, with fastidious tastes,
+good-looking, hiding himself in a corner at such a time--except for
+some overpowering reason? No. Nor can I. There is another thing--I put
+a question or two to Calladine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes,&quot; said Ricardo.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;He has no servants here at night. He is quite alone and--here is what
+I find interesting--he has no valet. That seems a small thing to you?&quot;
+Hanaud asked at a movement from Ricardo. &quot;Well, it is no doubt a
+trifle, but it's a significant trifle in the case of a young rich man.
+It is generally a sign that there is something strange, perhaps even
+something sinister, in his life. Mr. Calladine, some months ago,
+turned out of St. James's into the Adelphi. Can you tell me why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No,&quot; replied Mr. Ricardo. &quot;Can you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud stretched out a hand. In his open palm lay a small round hairy
+bulb about the size of a big button and of a colour between green and
+brown.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Look!&quot; he said. &quot;What is that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo took the bulb wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It looks to me like the fruit of some kind of cactus.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud nodded.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It is. You will see some pots of it in the hothouses of any really
+good botanical gardens. Kew has them, I have no doubt. Paris certainly
+has. They are labelled. 'Anhalonium Luinii.' But amongst the Indians
+of Yucatan the plant has a simpler name.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What name?&quot; asked Ricardo.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Mescal.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo repeated the name. It conveyed nothing to him whatever.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There are a good many bulbs just like that in the cup upon the
+mantelshelf,&quot; said Hanaud.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Ricardo looked quickly up.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Mescal is a drug.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Ricardo started.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, you are beginning to understand now,&quot; Hanaud continued, &quot;why
+your young friend Calladine turned out of St. James's into the Adelphi
+Terrace.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Ricardo turned the little bulb over in his fingers.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You make a decoction of it, I suppose?&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Or you can use it as the Indians do in Yucatan,&quot; replied Hanaud.
+&quot;Mescal enters into their religious ceremonies. They sit at night in a
+circle about a fire built in the forest and chew it, whilst one of
+their number beats perpetually upon a drum.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud looked round the room and took notes of its luxurious carpet,
+its delicate appointments. Outside the window there was a thunder in
+the streets, a clamour of voices. Boats went swiftly down the river on
+the ebb. Beyond the mass of the Semiramis rose the great grey-white
+dome of St. Paul's. Opposite, upon the Southwark bank, the giant
+sky-signs, the big Highlander drinking whisky, and the rest of them
+waited, gaunt skeletons, for the night to limn them in fire and give
+them life. Below the trees in the gardens rustled and waved. In the
+air were the uplift and the sparkle of the young summer.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It's a long way from the forests of Yucatan to the Adelphi Terrace of
+London,&quot; said Hanaud. &quot;Yet here, I think, in these rooms, when the
+servants are all gone and the house is very quiet, there is a little
+corner of wild Mexico.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A look of pity came into Mr. Ricardo's face. He had seen more than one
+young man of great promise slacken his hold and let go, just for this
+reason. Calladine, it seemed, was another.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It's like bhang and kieff and the rest of the devilish things, I
+suppose,&quot; he said, indignantly tossing the button upon the table.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud picked it up.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No,&quot; he replied. &quot;It's not quite like any other drug. It has a
+quality of its own which just now is of particular importance to you
+and me. Yes, my friend&quot;--and he nodded his head very seriously--&quot;we
+must watch that we do not make the big fools of ourselves in this
+affair.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There,&quot; Mr. Ricardo agreed with an ineffable air of wisdom, &quot;I am
+entirely with you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Now, why?&quot; Hanaud asked. Mr. Ricardo was at a loss for a reason, but
+Hanaud did not wait. &quot;I will tell you. Mescal intoxicates, yes--but it
+does more--it gives to the man who eats of it colour-dreams.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Colour-dreams?&quot; Mr. Ricardo repeated in a wondering voice.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, strange heated charms, in which violent things happen vividly
+amongst bright colours. Colour is the gift of this little prosaic
+brown button.&quot; He spun the bulb in the air like a coin, and catching
+it again, took it over to the mantelpiece and dropped it into the
+porcelain cup.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Are you sure of this?&quot; Ricardo cried excitedly, and Hanaud raised his
+hand in warning. He went to the door, opened it for an inch or so, and
+closed it again.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I am quite sure,&quot; he returned. &quot;I have for a friend a very learned
+chemist in the Collège de France. He is one of those enthusiasts who
+must experiment upon themselves. He tried this drug.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes,&quot; Ricardo said in a quieter voice. &quot;And what did he see?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;He had a vision of a wonderful garden bathed in sunlight, an old
+garden of gorgeous flowers and emerald lawns, ponds with golden lilies
+and thick yew hedges--a garden where peacocks stepped indolently and
+groups of gay people fantastically dressed quarrelled and fought with
+swords. That is what he saw. And he saw it so vividly that, when the
+vapours of the drug passed from his brain and he waked, he seemed to
+be coming out of the real world into a world of shifting illusions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud's strong quiet voice stopped, and for a while there was a
+complete silence in the room. Neither of the two men stirred so much
+as a finger. Mr. Ricardo once more was conscious of the thrill of
+strange sensations. He looked round the room. He could hardly believe
+that a room which had been--nay was--the home and shrine of mysteries
+in the dark hours could wear so bright and innocent a freshness in the
+sunlight of the morning. There should be something sinister which
+leaped to the eyes as you crossed the threshold.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Out of the real world,&quot; Mr. Ricardo quoted. &quot;I begin to see.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, you begin to see, my friend, that we must be very careful not to
+make the big fools of ourselves. My friend of the Collège de France
+saw a garden. But had he been sitting alone in the window-seat where
+you are, listening through a summer night to the music of the
+masquerade at the Semiramis, might he not have seen the ballroom, the
+dancers, the scarlet cloak, and the rest of this story?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You mean,&quot; cried Ricardo, now fairly startled, &quot;that Calladine came
+to us with the fumes of mescal still working in his brain, that the
+false world was the real one still for him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I do not know,&quot; said Hanaud. &quot;At present I only put questions. I ask
+them of you. I wish to hear how they sound. Let us reason this problem
+out. Calladine, let us say, takes a great deal more of the drug than
+my professor. It will have on him a more powerful effect while it
+lasts, and it will last longer. Fancy dress balls are familiar things
+to Calladine. The music floating from the Semiramis will revive old
+memories. He sits here, the pageant takes shape before him, he sees
+himself taking his part in it. Oh, he is happier here sitting quietly
+in his window-seat than if he was actually at the Semiramis. For he is
+there more intensely, more vividly, more really, than if he had
+actually descended this staircase. He lives his story through, the
+story of a heated brain, the scene of it changes in the way dreams
+have, it becomes tragic and sinister, it oppresses him with horror,
+and in the morning, so obsessed with it that he does not think to
+change his clothes, he is knocking at your door.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo raised his eyebrows and moved.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah! You see a flaw in my argument,&quot; said Hanaud. But Mr. Ricardo was
+wary. Too often in other days he had been leaped upon and trounced for
+a careless remark.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Let me hear the end of your argument,&quot; he said. &quot;There was then to
+your thinking no temptation of jewels, no theft, no murder--in a word,
+no Celymène? She was born of recollections and the music of the
+Semiramis.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No!&quot; cried Hanaud. &quot;Come with me, my friend. I am not so sure that
+there was no Celymène.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">With a smile upon his face, Hanaud led the way across the room. He had
+the dramatic instinct, and rejoiced in it. He was going to produce a
+surprise for his companion and, savouring the moment in advance, he
+managed his effects. He walked towards the mantelpiece and stopped a
+few paces away from it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Look!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo looked and saw a broad Adams mantelpiece. He turned a
+bewildered face to his friend.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You see nothing?&quot; Hanaud asked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Nothing!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Look again! I am not sure--but is it not that Celymène is posing
+before you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo looked again. There was nothing to fix his eyes. He saw a
+book or two, a cup, a vase or two, and nothing else really expect a
+very pretty and apparently valuable piece of--and suddenly Mr. Ricardo
+understood. Straight in front of him, in the very centre of the
+mantelpiece, a figure in painted china was leaning against a china
+stile. It was the figure of a perfectly impossible courtier, feminine
+and exquisite as could be, and apparelled also even to the scarlet
+heels exactly as Calladine had described Joan Carew.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud chuckled with satisfaction when he saw the expression upon Mr.
+Ricardo's face.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah, you understand,&quot; he said. &quot;Do you dream, my friend? At
+times--yes, like the rest of us. Then recollect your dreams? Things,
+people, which you have seen perhaps that day, perhaps months ago, pop
+in and out of them without making themselves prayed for. You cannot
+understand why. Yet sometimes they cut their strange capers there,
+logically, too, through subtle associations which the dreamer, once
+awake, does not apprehend. Thus, our friend here sits in the window,
+intoxicated by his drug, the music plays in the Semiramis, the curtain
+goes up in the heated theatre of his brain. He sees himself step upon
+the stage, and who else meets him but the china figure from his
+mantelpiece?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo for a moment was all enthusiasm. Then his doubt returned
+to him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What you say, my dear Hanaud, is very ingenious. The figure upon the
+mantelpiece is also extremely convincing. And I should be absolutely
+convinced but for one thing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes?&quot; said Hanaud, watching his friend closely.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I am--I may say it, I think, a man of the world. And I ask
+myself&quot;--Mr. Ricardo never could ask himself anything without assuming
+a manner of extreme pomposity--&quot;I ask myself, whether a young man who
+has given up his social ties, who has become a hermit, and still more
+who has become the slave of a drug, would retain that scrupulous
+carefulness of his body which is indicated by dressing for dinner when
+alone?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud struck the table with the palm of his hand and sat down in a
+chair.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes. That is the weak point in my theory. You have hit it. I knew it
+was there--that weak point, and I wondered whether you would seize it.
+Yes, the consumers of drugs are careless, untidy--even unclean as a
+rule. But not always. We must be careful. We must wait.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;For what?&quot; asked Ricardo, beaming with pride.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;For the answer to a telephone message,&quot; replied Hanaud, with a nod
+towards the door.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Both men waited impatiently until Calladine came into the room. He
+wore now a suit of blue serge, he had a clearer eye, his skin a
+healthier look; he was altogether a more reputable person. But he was
+plainly very ill at ease. He offered his visitors cigarettes, he
+proposed refreshments, he avoided entirely and awkwardly the object of
+their visit. Hanaud smiled. His theory was working out. Sobered by his
+bath, Calladine had realised the foolishness of which he had been
+guilty.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You telephone, to the Semiramis, of course?&quot; said Hanaud cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Calladine grew red.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes,&quot; he stammered.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yet I did not hear that volume of 'Hallos' which precedes telephonic
+connection in your country of leisure,&quot; Hanaud continued.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I telephoned from my bedroom. You would not hear anything in this
+room.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, yes; the walls of these old houses are solid.&quot; Hanaud was
+playing with his victim. &quot;And when may we expect Miss Carew?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I can't say,&quot; replied Calladine. &quot;It's very strange. She is not in
+the hotel. I am afraid that she has gone away, fled.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo and Hanaud exchanged a look. They were both satisfied now.
+There was no word of truth in Calladine's story.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Then there is no reason for us to wait,&quot; said Hanaud. &quot;I shall have
+my holiday after all.&quot; And while he was yet speaking the voice of a
+newsboy calling out the first edition of an evening paper became
+distantly audible. Hanaud broke off his farewell. For a moment he
+listened, with his head bent. Then the voice was heard again,
+confused, indistinct; Hanaud picked up his hat and cane and, without
+another word to Calladine, raced down the stairs. Mr. Ricardo followed
+him, but when he reached the pavement, Hanaud was half down the little
+street. At the corner, however, he stopped, and Ricardo joined him,
+coughing and out of breath.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What's the matter?&quot; he gasped.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Listen,&quot; said Hanaud.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At the bottom of Duke Street, by Charing Cross Station, the newsboy
+was shouting his wares. Both men listened, and now the words came to
+them mispronounced but decipherable.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Mysterious crime at the Semiramis Hotel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Ricardo stared at his companion.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You were wrong then!&quot; he cried. &quot;Calladine's story was true.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">For once in a way Hanaud was quite disconcerted.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I don't know yet,&quot; he said. &quot;We will buy a paper.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But before he could move a step a taxi-cab turned into the Adelphi
+from the Strand, and wheeling in front of their faces, stopped at
+Calladine's door. From the cab a girl descended.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Let us go back,&quot; said Hanaud.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>III</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo could no longer complain. It was half-past eight when
+Calladine had first disturbed the formalities of his house in
+Grosvenor Square. It was barely ten now, and during that short time he
+had been flung from surprise to surprise, he had looked underground on
+a morning of fresh summer, and had been thrilled by the contrast
+between the queer, sinister life below and within and the open call to
+joy of the green world above. He had passed from incredulity to
+belief, from belief to incredulity, and when at last incredulity was
+firmly established, and the story to which he had listened proved the
+emanation of a drugged and heated brain, lo! the facts buffeted him in
+the face, and the story was shown to be true.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I am alive once more,&quot; Mr. Ricardo thought as he turned back with
+Hanaud, and in his excitement he cried his thought aloud.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Are you?&quot; said Hanaud. &quot;And what is life without a newspaper? If you
+will buy one from that remarkably raucous boy at the bottom of the
+street I will keep an eye upon Calladine's house till you come back.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo sped down to Charing Cross and brought back a copy of the
+fourth edition of the <i>Star</i>. He handed it to Hanaud, who stared at it
+doubtfully, folded as it was.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Shall we see what it says?&quot; Ricardo asked impatiently.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;By no means,&quot; Hanaud answered, waking from his reverie and tucking
+briskly away the paper into the tail pocket of his coat. &quot;We will hear
+what Miss Joan Carew has to say, with our minds undisturbed by any
+discoveries. I was wondering about something totally different.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes?&quot; Mr. Ricardo encouraged him. &quot;What was it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I was wondering, since it is only ten o'clock, at what hour the first
+editions of the evening papers appear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It is a question,&quot; Mr. Ricardo replied sententiously, &quot;which the
+greatest minds have failed to answer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And they walked along the street to the house. The front door stood
+open during the day like the front door of any other house which is
+let off in sets of rooms. Hanaud and Ricardo went up the staircase and
+rang the bell of Calladine's door. A middle-aged woman opened it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Mr. Calladine is in?&quot; said Hanaud.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I will ask,&quot; replied the woman. &quot;What name shall I say?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It does not matter. I will go straight in,&quot; said Hanaud quietly. &quot;I
+was here with my friend but a minute ago.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He went straight forward and into Calladine's parlour. Mr. Ricardo
+looked over his shoulder as he opened the door and saw a girl turn to
+them suddenly a white face of terror, and flinch as though already she
+felt the hand of a constable upon her shoulder. Calladine, on the
+other hand, uttered a cry of relief.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;These are my friends,&quot; he exclaimed to the girl, &quot;the friends of whom
+I spoke to you&quot;; and to Hanaud he said: &quot;This is Miss Carew.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud bowed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You shall tell me your story, mademoiselle,&quot; he said very gently, and
+a little colour returned to the girl's cheeks, a little courage
+revived in her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But you have heard it,&quot; she answered.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Not from you,&quot; said Hanaud.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">So for a second time in that room she told the history of that night.
+Only this time the sunlight was warm upon the world, the comfortable
+sounds of life's routine were borne through the windows, and the girl
+herself wore the inconspicuous blue serge of a thousand other girls
+afoot that morning. These trifles of circumstance took the edge of
+sheer horror off her narrative, so that, to tell the truth, Mr.
+Ricardo was a trifle disappointed. He wanted a crescendo motive in his
+music, whereas it had begun at its fortissimo. Hanaud, however, was
+the perfect listener. He listened without stirring and with most
+compassionate eyes, so that Joan Carew spoke only to him, and to him,
+each moment that passed, with greater confidence. The life and sparkle
+of her had gone altogether. There was nothing in her manner now to
+suggest the waywardness, the gay irresponsibility, the radiance, which
+had attracted Calladine the night before. She was just a very young
+and very pretty girl, telling in a low and remorseful voice of the
+tragic dilemma to which she had brought herself. Of Celymène all that
+remained was something exquisite and fragile in her beauty, in the
+slimness of her figure, in her daintiness of hand and foot--something
+almost of the hot-house. But the story she told was, detail for
+detail, the same which Calladine had already related.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Thank you,&quot; said Hanaud when she had done. &quot;Now I must ask you two
+questions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I will answer them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo sat up. He began to think of a third question which he
+might put himself, something uncommonly subtle and searching, which
+Hanaud would never have thought of. But Hanaud put his questions, and
+Ricardo almost jumped out of his chair.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You will forgive me. Miss Carew. But have you ever stolen before?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Joan Carew turned upon Hanaud with spirit. Then a change swept over
+her face.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You have a right to ask,&quot; she answered. &quot;Never.&quot; She looked into his
+eyes as she answered. Hanaud did not move. He sat with a hand upon
+each knee and led to his second question.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Early this morning, when you left this room, you told Mr. Calladine
+that you would wait at the Semiramis until he telephoned to you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yet when he telephoned, you had gone out?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I will tell you,&quot; said Joan Carew. &quot;I could not bear to keep the
+little diamond chain in my room.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">For a moment even Hanaud was surprised. He had lost sight of that
+complication. Now he leaned forward anxiously; indeed, with a greater
+anxiety than he had yet shown in all this affair.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I was terrified,&quot; continued Joan Carew. &quot;I kept thinking: 'They must
+have found out by now. They will search everywhere.' I didn't reason.
+I lay in bed expecting to hear every moment a loud knocking on the
+door. Besides--the chain itself being there in my bedroom--her
+chain--the dead woman's chain--no, I couldn't endure it. I felt as if
+I had stolen it. Then my maid brought in my tea.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You had locked it away?&quot; cried Hanaud.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes. My maid did not see it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Joan Carew explained how she had risen, dressed, wrapped the chain in
+a pad of cotton-wool and enclosed it in an envelope. The envelope had
+not the stamp of the hotel upon it. It was a rather large envelope,
+one of a packet which she had bought in a crowded shop in Oxford
+Street on her way from Euston to the Semiramis. She had bought the
+envelopes of that particular size in order that when she sent her
+letter of introduction to the Director of the Opera at Covent Garden
+she might enclose with it a photograph.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And to whom did you send it?&quot; asked Mr. Ricardo.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;To Mrs. Blumenstein at the Semiramis. I printed the address
+carefully. Then I went out and posted it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Where?&quot; Hanaud inquired.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In the big letter-box of the Post Office at the corner of Trafalgar
+Square.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud looked at the girl sharply.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You had your wits about you, I see,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What if the envelope gets lost?&quot; said Ricardo.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud laughed grimly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;If one envelope is delivered at its address in London to-day, it will
+be that one,&quot; he said. &quot;The news of the crime is published, you see,&quot;
+and he swung round to Joan.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Did you know that, Miss Carew?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No,&quot; she answered in an awe-stricken voice.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Well, then, it is. Let us see what the special investigator has to
+say about it.&quot; And Hanaud, with a deliberation which Mr. Ricardo found
+quite excruciating, spread out the newspaper on the table in front of
+him.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>IV</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">There was only one new fact in the couple of columns devoted to the
+mystery. Mrs. Blumenstein had died from chloroform poisoning. She was
+of a stout habit, and the thieves were not skilled in the
+administration of the anæsthetic.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It's murder none the less,&quot; said Hanaud, and he gazed straight at
+Joan, asking her by the direct summons of his eyes what she was going
+to do.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I must tell my story to the police,&quot; she replied painfully and
+slowly. But she did not hesitate; she was announcing a meditated plan.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud neither agreed nor differed. His face was blank, and when he
+spoke there was no cordiality in his voice. &quot;Well,&quot; he asked, &quot;and
+what is it that you have to say to the police, miss? That you went
+into the room to steal, and that you were attacked by two strangers,
+dressed as apaches, and masked? That is all?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And how many men at the Semiramis ball were dressed as apaches and
+wore masks? Come! Make a guess. A hundred at the least?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I should think so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Then what will your confession do beyond--I quote your English
+idiom--putting you in the coach?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo now smiled with relief. Hanaud was taking a definite line.
+His knowledge of idiomatic English might be incomplete, but his heart
+was in the right place. The girl traced a vague pattern on the
+tablecloth with her fingers.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yet I think I must tell the police,&quot; she repeated, looking up and
+dropping her eyes again. Mr. Ricardo noticed that her eyelashes were
+very long. For the first time Hanaud's face relaxed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And I think you are quite right,&quot; he cried heartily, to Mr. Ricardo's
+surprise. &quot;Tell them the truth before they suspect it, and they will
+help you out of the affair if they can. Not a doubt of it. Come, I
+will go with you myself to Scotland Yard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Thank you,&quot; said Joan, and the pair drove away in a cab together.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud returned to Grosvenor Square alone and lunched with Ricardo.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It was all right,&quot; he said. &quot;The police were very kind. Miss Joan
+Carew told her story to them as she had told it to us. Fortunately,
+the envelope with the aluminium chain had already been delivered, and
+was in their hands. They were much mystified about it, but Miss Joan's
+story gave them a reasonable explanation. I think they are inclined to
+believe her; and, if she is speaking the truth, they will keep her out
+of the witness-box if they can.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;She is to stay here in London, then?&quot; asked Ricardo.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, yes; she is not to go. She will present her letters at the Opera
+House and secure an engagement, if she can. The criminals might be
+lulled thereby into a belief that the girl had kept the whole strange
+incident to herself, and that there was nowhere even a knowledge of
+the disguise which they had used.&quot; Hanaud spoke as carelessly as if
+the matter was not very important; and Ricardo, with an unusual flash
+of shrewdness, said:</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It is clear, my friend, that you do not think those two men will ever
+be caught at all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There is always a chance. But listen. There is a room with a
+hundred guns, one of which is loaded. Outside the room there are a
+hundred pigeons, one of which is white. You are taken into the room
+blind-fold. You choose the loaded gun and you shoot the one white
+pigeon. That is the value of the chance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But,&quot; exclaimed Ricardo, &quot;those pearls were of great value, and I
+have heard at a trial expert evidence given by pearl merchants. All
+agree that the pearls of great value are known; so, when they come
+upon the market----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;That is true,&quot; Hanaud interrupted imperturbably. &quot;But how are they
+known?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;By their weight,&quot; said Mr. Ricardo.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Exactly,&quot; replied Hanaud. &quot;But did you not also hear at this trial of
+yours that pearls can be peeled like an onion? No? It is true. Remove
+a skin, two skins, the weight is altered, the pearl is a trifle
+smaller. It has lost a little of its value, yes--but you can no longer
+identify it as the so-and-so pearl which belonged to this or that
+sultan, was stolen by the vizier, bought by Messrs. Lustre and
+Steinopolis, of Hatton Garden, and subsequently sold to the wealthy
+Mrs. Blumenstein. No, your pearl has vanished altogether. There is a
+new pearl which can be traded.&quot; He looked at Ricardo. &quot;Who shall say
+that those pearls are not already in one of the queer little back
+streets of Amsterdam, undergoing their transformation?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo was not persuaded because he would not be. &quot;I have some
+experience in these matters,&quot; he said loftily to Hanaud. &quot;I am sure
+that we shall lay our hands upon the criminals. We have never failed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud grinned from ear to ear. The only experience which Mr. Ricardo
+had ever had was gained on the shores of Geneva and at Aix under
+Hanaud's tuition. But Hanaud did not argue, and there the matter
+rested.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The days flew by. It was London's play-time. The green and gold of
+early summer deepened and darkened; wondrous warm nights under
+England's pale blue sky, when the streets rang with the joyous feet of
+youth, led in clear dawns and lovely glowing days. Hanaud made
+acquaintance with the wooded reaches of the Thames; Joan Carew sang
+&quot;Louise&quot; at Covent Garden with notable success; and the affair of the
+Semiramis Hotel, in the minds of the few who remembered it, was
+already added to the long list of unfathomed mysteries.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But towards the end of May there occurred a startling development.
+Joan Carew wrote to Mr. Ricardo that she would call upon him in
+the afternoon, and she begged him to secure the presence of Hanaud.
+She came as the clock struck; she was pale and agitated; and in the
+room where Calladine had first told the story of her visit she told
+another story which, to Mr. Ricardo's thinking, was yet more strange
+and--yes--yet more suspicious.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It has been going on for some time,&quot; she began. &quot;I thought of coming
+to you at once. Then I wondered whether, if I waited--oh, you'll never
+believe me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Let us hear!&quot; said Hanaud patiently.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I began to dream of that room, the two men disguised and masked, the
+still figure in the bed. Night after night! I was terrified to go to
+sleep. I felt the hand upon my mouth. I used to catch myself falling
+asleep, and walk about the room with all the lights up to keep myself
+awake.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But you couldn't,&quot; said Hanaud with a smile. &quot;Only the old can do
+that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No, I couldn't,&quot; she admitted; &quot;and--oh, my nights were horrible
+until&quot;--she paused and looked at her companions doubtfully--&quot;until one
+night the mask slipped.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What--?&quot; cried Hanaud, and a note of sternness rang suddenly in his
+voice. &quot;What are you saying?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">With a desperate rush of words, and the colour staining her forehead
+and cheeks, Joan Carew continued:</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It is true. The mask slipped on the face of one of the men--of
+the man who held me. Only a little way; it just left his forehead
+visible--no more.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Well?&quot; asked Hanaud, and Mr. Ricardo leaned forward, swaying between
+the austerity of criticism and the desire to believe so thrilling a
+revelation.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I waked up,&quot; the girl continued, &quot;in the darkness, and for a moment
+the whole scene remained vividly with me--for just long enough for me
+to fix clearly in my mind the figure of the apache with the white
+forehead showing above the mask.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;When was that?&quot; asked Ricardo.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;A fortnight ago.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why didn't you come with your story then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I waited,&quot; said Joan. &quot;What I had to tell wasn't yet helpful. I
+thought that another night the mask might slip lower still. Besides,
+I--it is difficult to describe just what I felt. I felt it important
+just to keep that photograph in my mind, not to think about it, not to
+talk about it, not even to look at it too often lest I should begin to
+imagine the rest of the face and find something familiar in the man's
+carriage and shape when there was nothing really familiar to me at
+all. Do you understand that?&quot; she asked, with her eyes fixed in appeal
+on Hanaud's face.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes,&quot; replied Hanaud. &quot;I follow your thought.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I thought there was a chance now--the strangest chance--that the
+truth might be reached. I did not wish to spoil it,&quot; and she turned
+eagerly to Ricardo, as if, having persuaded Hanaud, she would now turn
+her batteries on his companion. &quot;My whole point of view was changed. I
+was no longer afraid of falling asleep lest I should dream. I wished
+to dream, but----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But you could not,&quot; suggested Hanaud.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No, that is the truth,&quot; replied Joan Carew. &quot;Whereas before I was
+anxious to keep awake and yet must sleep from sheer fatigue, now that
+I tried consciously to put myself to sleep I remained awake all
+through the night, and only towards morning, when the light was coming
+through the blinds, dropped off into a heavy, dreamless slumber.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud nodded.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It is a very perverse world, Miss Carew, and things go by
+contraries.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Ricardo listened for some note of irony in Hanaud's voice, some look
+of disbelief in his face. But there was neither the one nor the other.
+Hanaud was listening patiently.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Then came my rehearsals,&quot; Joan Carew continued, &quot;and that wonderful
+opera drove everything else out of my head. I had such a chance, if
+only I could make use of it! When I went to bed now, I went with that
+haunting music in my ears--the call of Paris--oh, you must remember
+it. But can you realise what it must mean to a girl who is going to
+sing it for the first time in Covent Garden?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo saw his opportunity. He, the connoisseur, to whom the
+psychology of the green room was as an open book, could answer that
+question.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It is true, my friend,&quot; he informed Hanaud with quiet authority. &quot;The
+great march of events leaves the artist cold. He lives aloof. While
+the tumbrils thunder in the streets he adds a delicate tint to the
+picture he is engaged upon or recalls his triumph in his last great
+part.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Thank you,&quot; said Hanaud gravely. &quot;And now Miss Carew may perhaps
+resume her story.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It was the very night of my début,&quot; she continued. &quot;I had supper with
+some friends. A great artist. Carmen Valeri, honoured me with her
+presence. I went home excited, and that night I dreamed again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;This time the chin, the lips, the eyes were visible. There was only a
+black strip across the middle of the face. And I thought--nay, I was
+sure--that if that strip vanished I should know the man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And it did vanish?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Three nights afterwards.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And you did know the man?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The girl's face became troubled. She frowned.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I knew the face, that was all,&quot; she answered. &quot;I was disappointed. I
+had never spoken to the man. I am sure of that still. But somewhere I
+have seen him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You don't even remember when?&quot; asked Hanaud.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No.&quot; Joan Carew reflected for a moment with her eyes upon the carpet,
+and then flung up her head with a gesture of despair. &quot;No. I try all
+the time to remember. But it is no good.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo could not restrain a movement of indignation. He was being
+played with. The girl with her fantastic story had worked him up to a
+real pitch of excitement only to make a fool of him. All his earlier
+suspicions flowed back into his mind. What if, after all, she was
+implicated in the murder and the theft? What if, with a perverse
+cunning, she had told Hanaud and himself just enough of what she knew,
+just enough of the truth, to persuade them to protect her? What if her
+frank confession of her own overpowering impulse to steal the necklace
+was nothing more than a subtle appeal to the sentimental pity of men,
+an appeal based upon a wider knowledge of men's weaknesses than a girl
+of nineteen or twenty ought to have? Mr. Ricardo cleared his throat
+and sat forward in his chair. He was girding himself for a singularly
+searching interrogatory when Hanaud asked the most irrelevant of
+questions:</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;How did you pass the evening of that night when you first dreamed
+complete the face of your assailant?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Joan Carew reflected. Then her face cleared.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I know,&quot; she exclaimed. &quot;I was at the opera.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And what was being given?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;<i>The Jewels of the Madonna</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud nodded his head. To Ricardo it seemed that he had expected
+precisely that answer.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Now,&quot; he continued, &quot;you are sure that you have seen this man?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Very well,&quot; said Hanaud. &quot;There is a game you play at children's
+parties--is there not?--animal, vegetable, or mineral, and always you
+get the answer. Let us play that game for a few minutes, you and I.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Joan Carew drew up her chair to the table and sat with her chin
+propped upon her hands and her eyes fixed on Hanaud's face. As he put
+each question she pondered on it and answered. If she answered
+doubtfully he pressed it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You crossed on the <i>Lucania</i> from New York?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Picture to yourself the dining-room, the tables. You have the picture
+quite clear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Was it at breakfast that you saw him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;At luncheon?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;At dinner?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She paused for a moment, summoning before her eyes the travellers at
+the tables.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Not in the dining-table at all, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In the library, when you were writing letters, did you not one day
+lift your head and see him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;On the promenade deck? Did he pass you when you sat in your
+deck-chair, or did you pass him when he sat in his chair?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Step by step Hanaud took her back to New York to her hotel, to
+journeys in the train. Then he carried her to Milan where she had
+studied. It was extraordinary to Ricardo to realise how much Hanaud
+knew of the curriculum of a student aspiring to grand opera. From
+Milan he brought her again to New York, and at the last, with a start
+of joy, she cried: &quot;Yes, it was there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ouf!&quot; he grunted. &quot;To concentrate the mind on a day like this, it
+makes one hot, I can tell you. Now, Miss Carew, let us hear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was at a concert at the house of a Mrs. Starlingshield in Fifth
+Avenue and in the afternoon. Joan Carew sang. She was a stranger to
+New York and very nervous. She saw nothing but a mist of faces whilst
+she sang, but when she had finished the mist cleared, and as she left
+the improvised stage she saw the man. He was standing against the wall
+in a line of men. There was no particular reason why her eyes should
+single him out, except that he was paying no attention to her singing,
+and, indeed, she forgot him altogether afterwards.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I just happened to see him clearly and distinctly,&quot; she said. &quot;He was
+tall, clean-shaven, rather dark, not particularly young--thirty-five
+or so, I should say--a man with a heavy face and beginning to grow
+stout. He moved away whilst I was bowing to the audience, and I
+noticed him afterwards walking about, talking to people.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Do you remember to whom?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Did he notice you, do you think?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I am sure he didn't,&quot; the girl replied emphatically. &quot;He never looked
+at the stage where I was singing, and he never looked towards me
+afterwards.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She gave, so far as she could remember, the names of such guests and
+singers as she knew at that party. &quot;And that is all,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Thank you,&quot; said Hanaud. &quot;It is perhaps a good deal. But it is
+perhaps nothing at all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You will let me hear from you?&quot; she cried, as she rose to her feet.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Miss Carew, I am at your service,&quot; he returned. She gave him her hand
+timidly and he took it cordially. For Mr. Ricardo she had merely a
+bow, a bow which recognised that he distrusted her and that she had no
+right to be offended. Then she went, and Hanaud smiled across the
+table at Ricardo.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes,&quot; he said, &quot;all that you are thinking is true enough. A man who
+slips out of society to indulge a passion for a drug in greater peace,
+a girl who, on her own confession, tried to steal, and, to crown all,
+this fantastic story. It is natural to disbelieve every word of it.
+But we disbelieved before, when we left Calladine's lodging in the
+Adelphi, and we were wrong. Let us be warned.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You have an idea?&quot; exclaimed Ricardo.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Perhaps!&quot; said Hanaud. And he looked down the theatre column of the
+<i>Times</i>. &quot;Let us distract ourselves by going to the theatre.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You are the most irritating man!&quot; Mr. Ricardo broke out impulsively.
+&quot;If I had to paint your portrait, I should paint you with your finger
+against the side of your nose, saying mysteriously: '<i>I</i> know,' when
+you know nothing at all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud made a schoolboy's grimace. &quot;We will go and sit in your box at
+the opera to-night,&quot; he said, &quot;and you shall explain to me all through
+the beautiful music the theory of the tonic sol-fa.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They reached Covent Garden before the curtain rose. Mr. Ricardo's box
+was on the lowest tier and next to the omnibus box.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;We are near the stage,&quot; said Hanaud, as he took his seat in the
+corner and so arranged the curtain that he could see and yet was
+hidden from view. &quot;I like that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The theatre was full; stalls and boxes shimmered with jewels and
+satin, and all that was famous that season for beauty and distinction
+had made its tryst there that night.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, this is wonderful,&quot; said Hanaud. &quot;What opera do they play?&quot; He
+glanced at his programme and cried, with a little start of surprise:
+&quot;We are in luck. It is <i>The Jewels of the Madonna</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Do you believe in omens?&quot; Mr. Ricardo asked coldly. He had not yet
+recovered from his rebuff of the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No, but I believe that Carmen Valeri is at her best in this part,&quot;
+said Hanaud.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo belonged to that body of critics which must needs spoil
+your enjoyment by comparisons and recollections of other great
+artists. He was at a disadvantage certainly to-night, for the opera
+was new. But he did his best. He imagined others in the part, and when
+the great scene came at the end of the second act, and Carmen Valeri,
+on obtaining from her lover the jewels stolen from the sacred image,
+gave such a display of passion as fairly enthralled that audience, Mr.
+Ricardo sighed quietly and patiently.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;How Calvé would have brought out the psychological value of that
+scene!&quot; he murmured; and he was quite vexed with Hanaud, who sat with
+his opera glasses held to his eyes, and every sense apparently
+concentrated on the stage. The curtains rose and rose again when the
+act was concluded, and still Hanaud sat motionless as the Sphynx,
+staring through his glasses.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;That is all,&quot; said Ricardo when the curtains fell for the fifth time.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;They will come out,&quot; said Hanaud. &quot;Wait!&quot; And from between the
+curtains Carmen Valeri was led out into the full glare of the
+footlights with the panoply of jewels flashing on her breast. Then at
+last Hanaud put down his glasses and turned to Ricardo with a look of
+exultation and genuine delight upon his face which filled that
+season-worn dilettante with envy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What a night!&quot; said Hanaud. &quot;What a wonderful night!&quot; And he
+applauded until he split his gloves. At the end of the opera he cried:
+&quot;We will go and take supper at the Semiramis. Yes, my friend, we will
+finish our evening like gallant gentlemen. Come! Let us not think of
+the morning.&quot; And boisterously he slapped Ricardo in the small of the
+back.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In spite of his boast, however, Hanaud hardly touched his supper, and
+he played with, rather than drank, his brandy and soda. He had a
+little table to which he was accustomed beside a glass screen in the
+depths of the room, and he sat with his back to the wall watching the
+groups which poured in. Suddenly his face lighted up.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Here is Carmen Valeri!&quot; he cried. &quot;Once more we are in luck. Is it
+not that she is beautiful?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo turned languidly about in his chair and put up his
+eyeglass.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;So, so,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah!&quot; returned Hanaud. &quot;Then her companion will interest you still
+more. For he is the man who murdered Mrs. Blumenstein.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo jumped so that his eyeglass fell down and tinkled on its
+cord against the buttons of his waistcoat.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What!&quot; he exclaimed. &quot;It's impossible!&quot; He looked again. &quot;Certainly
+the man fits Joan Carew's description. But--&quot; He turned back to Hanaud
+utterly astounded. And as he looked at the Frenchman all his earlier
+recollections of him, of his swift deductions, of the subtle
+imagination which his heavy body so well concealed, crowded in upon
+Ricardo and convinced him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;How long have you known?&quot; he asked in a whisper of awe.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Since ten o'clock to-night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But you will have to find the necklace before you can prove it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The necklace!&quot; said Hanaud carelessly. &quot;That is already found.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo had been longing for a thrill. He had it now. He felt it
+in his very spine.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It's found?&quot; he said in a startled whisper.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Ricardo turned again, with as much indifference as he could assume,
+towards the couple who were settling down at their table, the man with
+a surly indifference, Carmen Valeri with the radiance of a woman who
+has just achieved a triumph and is now free to enjoy the fruits of it.
+Confusedly, recollections returned to Ricardo of questions put that
+afternoon by Hanaud to Joan Carew--subtle questions into which the
+name of Carmen Valeri was continually entering. She was a woman of
+thirty, certainly beautiful, with a clear, pale face and eyes like the
+night.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Then she is implicated too!&quot; he said. What a change for her, he
+thought, from the stage of Covent Garden to the felon's cell, from the
+gay supper-room of the Semiramis, with its bright frocks and its babel
+of laughter, to the silence and the ignominious garb of the workrooms
+in Aylesbury Prison!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;She!&quot; exclaimed Hanaud; and in his passion for the contrasts of drama
+Ricardo was almost disappointed. &quot;She has nothing whatever to do with
+it. She knows nothing. André Favart there--yes. But Carmen Valeri!
+She's as stupid as an owl, and loves him beyond words. Do you want to
+know how stupid she is? You shall know. I asked Mr. Clements, the
+director of the opera house, to take supper with us, and here he is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud stood up and shook hands with the director. He was of the world
+of business rather than of art, and long experience of the ways of
+tenors and prima-donnas had given him a good-humoured cynicism.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;They are spoilt children, all tantrums and vanity,&quot; he said, &quot;and
+they would ruin you to keep a rival out of the theatre.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He told them anecdote upon anecdote.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And Carmen Valeri,&quot; Hanaud asked in a pause; &quot;is she troublesome this
+season?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Has been,&quot; replied Clements dryly. &quot;At present she is playing at
+being good. But she gave me a turn some weeks ago.&quot; He turned to
+Ricardo. &quot;Superstition's her trouble, and André Favart knows it. She
+left him behind in America this spring.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;America!&quot; suddenly cried Ricardo; so suddenly that Clements looked at
+him in surprise.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;She was singing in New York, of course, during the winter,&quot; he
+returned. &quot;Well, she left him behind, and I was shaking hands with
+myself when he began to deal the cards over there. She came to me in a
+panic. She had just had a cable. She couldn't sing on Friday night.
+There was a black knave next to the nine of diamonds. She wouldn't
+sing for worlds. And it was the first night of <i>The Jewels of the
+Madonna!</i> Imagine the fix I was in!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What did you do?&quot; asked Ricardo.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The only thing there was to do,&quot; replied Clements with a shrug of the
+shoulders. &quot;I cabled Favart some money and he dealt the cards again.
+She came to me beaming. Oh, she had been so distressed to put me in
+the cart! But what could she do? Now there was a red queen next to the
+ace of hearts, so she could sing without a scruple so long, of course,
+as she didn't pass a funeral on the way down to the opera house.
+Luckily she didn't. But my money brought Favart over here, and now I'm
+living on a volcano. For he's the greatest scoundrel unhung. He never
+has a farthing, however much she gives him; he's a blackmailer, he's a
+swindler, he has no manners and no graces, he looks like a butcher and
+treats her as if she were dirt, he never goes near the opera except
+when she is singing in this part, and she worships the ground he walks
+on. Well, I suppose it's time to go.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The lights had been turned off, the great room was emptying. Mr.
+Ricardo and his friends rose to go, but at the door Hanaud detained
+Mr. Clements, and they talked together alone for some little while,
+greatly to Mr. Ricardo's annoyance. Hanaud's good humour, however,
+when he rejoined his friend, was enough for two.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I apologise, my friend, with my hand on my heart. But it was for your
+sake that I stayed behind. You have a meretricious taste for melodrama
+which I deeply deplore, but which I mean to gratify. I ought to leave
+for Paris to-morrow, but I shall not. I shall stay until Thursday.&quot;
+And he skipped upon the pavement as they walked home to Grosvenor
+Square.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo bubbled with questions, but he knew his man. He would get
+no answer to any one of them to-night. So he worked out the problem
+for himself as he lay awake in his bed, and he came down to breakfast
+next morning fatigued but triumphant. Hanaud was already chipping off
+the top of his egg at the table.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;So I see you have found it all out, my friend,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Not all,&quot; replied Ricardo modestly, &quot;and you will not mind, I am
+sure, if I follow the usual custom and wish you a good morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Not at all,&quot; said Hanaud. &quot;I am all for good manners myself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He dipped his spoon into his egg.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But I am longing to hear the line of your reasoning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo did not need much pressing.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Joan Carew saw André Favart at Mrs. Starlingshield's party, and saw
+him with Carmen Valeri. For Carmen Valeri was there. I remember that
+you asked Joan for the names of the artists who sang, and Carmen
+Valeri was amongst them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud nodded his head.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Exactly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No doubt Joan Carew noticed Carmen Valeri particularly, and so took
+unconsciously into her mind an impression of the man who was with her,
+André Favart--of his build, of his walk, of his type.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Again Hanaud agreed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;She forgets the man altogether, but the picture remains latent in her
+mind--an undeveloped film.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud looked up in surprise, and the surprise flattered Mr. Ricardo.
+Not for nothing had he tossed about in his bed for the greater part of
+the night.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Then came the tragic night at the Semiramis. She does not consciously
+recognise her assailant, but she dreams the scene again and again, and
+by a process of unconscious cerebration the figure of the man becomes
+familiar. Finally she makes her début, is entertained at supper
+afterwards, and meets once more Carmen Valeri.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, for the first time since Mrs. Starlingshield's party,&quot;
+interjected Hanaud.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;She dreams again, she remembers asleep more than she remembers when
+awake. The presence of Carmen Valeri at her supper-party has its
+effect. By a process of association, she recalls Favart, and the mask
+slips on the face of her assailant. Some days later she goes to the
+opera. She hears Carmen Valeri sing in <i>The Jewels of the Madonna</i>. No
+doubt the passion of her acting, which I am more prepared to
+acknowledge this morning than I was last night, affects Joan Carew
+powerfully, emotionally. She goes to bed with her head full of Carmen
+Valeri, and she dreams not of Carmen Valeri, but of the man who is
+unconsciously associated with Carmen Valeri in her thoughts. The mask
+vanishes altogether. She sees her assailant now, has his portrait
+limned in her mind, would know him if she met him in the street,
+though she does not know by what means she identified him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes,&quot; said Hanaud. &quot;It is curious the brain working while the body
+sleeps, the dream revealing what thought cannot recall.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo was delighted. He was taken seriously.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But of course,&quot; he said, &quot;I could not have worked the problem out but
+for you. You knew of André Favart and the kind of man he was.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud laughed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes. That is always my one little advantage. I know all the
+cosmopolitan blackguards of Europe.&quot; His laughter ceased suddenly, and
+he brought his clenched fist heavily down upon the table. &quot;Here is one
+of them who will be very well out of the world, my friend,&quot; he said
+very quietly, but there was a look of force in his face and a hard
+light in his eyes which made Mr. Ricardo shiver.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">For a few moments there was silence. Then Ricardo asked: &quot;But have you
+evidence enough?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Your two chief witnesses, Calladine and Joan Carew--you said it
+yourself--there are facts to discredit them. Will they be believed?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But they won't appear in the case at all,&quot; Hanaud said. &quot;Wait, wait!&quot;
+and once more he smiled. &quot;By the way, what is the number of
+Calladine's house?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Ricardo gave it, and Hanaud therefore wrote a letter. &quot;It is all for
+your sake, my friend,&quot; he said with a chuckle.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Nonsense,&quot; said Ricardo. &quot;You have the spirit of the theatre in your
+bones.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Well, I shall not deny it,&quot; said Hanaud, and he sent out the letter
+to the nearest pillar-box.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo waited in a fever of impatience until Thursday came. At
+breakfast Hanaud would talk of nothing but the news of the day. At
+luncheon he was no better. The affair of the Semiramis Hotel seemed a
+thousand miles from any of his thoughts. But at five o'clock he said
+as he drank his tea:</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You know, of course, that we go to the opera to-night?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes. Do we?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes. Your young friend Calladine, by the way, will join us in your
+box.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;That is very kind of him, I am sure,&quot; said Mr. Ricardo.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The two men arrived before the rising of the curtain, and in the
+crowded lobby a stranger spoke a few words to Hanaud, but what he said
+Ricardo could not hear. They took their seats in the box, and Hanaud
+looked at his programme.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah! It is <i>Il Ballo de Maschera</i> to-night. We always seem to hit upon
+something appropriate, don't we?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Then he raised his eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh-o! Do you see that our pretty young friend, Joan Carew, is singing
+in the rôle of the page? It is a showy part. There is a particular
+melody with a long-sustained trill in it, as far as I remember.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo was not deceived by Hanaud's apparent ignorance of the
+opera to be given that night and of the part Joan Carew was to take.
+He was, therefore, not surprised when Hanaud added:</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;By the way, I should let Calladine find it all out for himself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Ricardo nodded sagely.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes. That is wise. I had thought of it myself.&quot; But he had
+done nothing of the kind. He was only aware that the elaborate
+stage-management in which Hanaud delighted was working out to the
+desired climax, whatever that climax might be. Calladine entered the
+box a few minutes later and shook hands with them awkwardly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It was kind of you to invite me,&quot; he said and, very ill at ease, he
+took a seat between them and concentrated his attention on the house
+as it filled up.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There's the overture,&quot; said Hanaud. The curtains divided and were
+festooned on either side of the stage. The singers came on in their
+turn; the page appeared to a burst of delicate applause (Joan Carew
+had made a small name for herself that season), and with a stifled cry
+Calladine shot back in the box as if he had been struck. Even then Mr.
+Ricardo did not understand. He only realised that Joan Carew was
+looking extraordinarily trim and smart in her boy's dress. He had to
+look from his programme to the stage and back again several times
+before the reason of Calladine's exclamation dawned on him. When it
+did, he was horrified. Hanaud, in his craving for dramatic effects,
+must have lost his head altogether. Joan Carew was wearing, from the
+ribbon in her hair to the scarlet heels of her buckled satin shoes,
+the same dress as she had worn on the tragic night at the Semiramis
+Hotel. He leaned forward in his agitation to Hanaud.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You must be mad. Suppose Favart is in the theatre and sees her. He'll
+be over on the Continent by one in the morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No, he won't,&quot; replied Hanaud. &quot;For one thing, he never comes to
+Covent Garden unless one opera, with Carmen Valeri in the chief part,
+is being played, as you heard the other night at supper. For a second
+thing, he isn't in the house. I know where he is. He is gambling in
+Dean Street, Soho. For a third thing, my friend, he couldn't leave by
+the nine o'clock train for the Continent if he wanted to. Arrangements
+have been made. For a fourth thing, he wouldn't wish to. He has really
+remarkable reasons for desiring to stay in London. But he will come to
+the theatre later. Clements will send him an urgent message, with the
+result that he will go straight to Clements' office. Meanwhile, we can
+enjoy ourselves, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Never was the difference between the amateur dilettante and the
+genuine professional more clearly exhibited than by the behaviour of
+the two men during the rest of the performance. Mr. Ricardo might have
+been sitting on a coal fire from his jumps and twistings; Hanaud
+stolidly enjoyed the music, and when Joan Carew sang her famous solo
+his hands clamoured for an encore louder than anyone's in the boxes.
+Certainly, whether excitement was keeping her up or no, Joan Carew had
+never sung better in her life. Her voice was clear and fresh as a
+bird's--a bird with a soul inspiring its song. Even Calladine drew his
+chair forward again and sat with his eyes fixed upon the stage and
+quite carried out of himself. He drew a deep breath at the end.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;She is wonderful,&quot; he said, like a man waking up.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;She is very good,&quot; replied Mr. Ricardo, correcting Calladine's
+transports.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;We will go round to the back of the stage,&quot; said Hanaud.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They passed through the iron door and across the stage to a long
+corridor with a row of doors on one side. There were two or three men
+standing about in evening dress, as if waiting for friends in the
+dressing-rooms. At the third door Hanaud stopped and knocked. The door
+was opened by Joan Carew, still dressed in her green and gold. Her
+face was troubled, her eyes afraid.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Courage, little one,&quot; said Hanaud, and he slipped past her into the
+room. &quot;It is as well that my ugly, familiar face should not be seen
+too soon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The door closed and one of the strangers loitered along the corridor
+and spoke to a call-boy. The call-boy ran off. For five minutes more
+Mr. Ricardo waited with a beating heart. He had the joy of a man in
+the centre of things. All those people driving homewards in their
+motor-cars along the Strand--how he pitied them! Then, at the end of
+the corridor, he saw Clements and André Favart. They approached,
+discussing the possibility of Carmen Valeri's appearance in London
+opera during the next season.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;We have to look ahead, my dear friend,&quot; said Clements, &quot;and though I
+should be extremely sorry----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At that moment they were exactly opposite Joan Carew's door. It
+opened, she came out; with a nervous movement she shut the door behind
+her. At the sound André Favart turned, and he saw drawn up against the
+panels of the door, with a look of terror in her face, the same gay
+figure which had interrupted him in Mrs. Blumenstein's bedroom. There
+was no need for Joan to act. In the presence of this man her fear was
+as real as it had been on the night of the Semiramis ball. She
+trembled from head to foot. Her eyes closed; she seemed about to
+swoon.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Favart stared and uttered an oath. His face turned white; he staggered
+back as if he had seen a ghost. Then he made a wild dash along the
+corridor, and was seized and held by two of the men in evening dress.
+Favart recovered his wits. He ceased to struggle.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What does this outrage mean?&quot; he asked, and one of the men drew a
+warrant and notebook from his pocket.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You are arrested for the murder of Mrs. Blumenstein in the Semiramis
+Hotel,&quot; he said, &quot;and I have to warn you that anything you may say
+will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Preposterous!&quot; exclaimed Favart. &quot;There's a mistake. We will go along
+to the police and put it right. Where's your evidence against me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud stepped out of the doorway of the dressing-room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In the property-room of the theatre,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At the sight of him Favart uttered a violent cry of rage. &quot;You are
+here, too, are you?&quot; he screamed, and he sprang at Hanaud's throat.
+Hanaud stepped lightly aside. Favart was borne down to the ground, and
+when he stood up again the handcuffs were on his wrists.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Favart was led away, and Hanaud turned to Mr. Ricardo and Clements.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Let us go to the property-room,&quot; he said. They passed along the
+corridor, and Ricardo noticed that Calladine was no longer with them.
+He turned and saw him standing outside Joan Carew's dressing-room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;He would like to come, of course,&quot; said Ricardo.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Would he?&quot; asked Hanaud. &quot;Then why doesn't he? He's quite grown up,
+you know,&quot; and he slipped his arm through Ricardo's and led him back
+across the stage. In the property-room there was already a detective
+in plain clothes. Mr. Ricardo had still not as yet guessed the truth.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What is it you really want, sir?&quot; the property-master asked of the
+director.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Only the jewels of the Madonna,&quot; Hanaud answered.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The property-master unlocked a cupboard and took from it the sparkling
+cuirass. Hanaud pointed to it, and there, lost amongst the huge
+glittering stones of paste and false pearls, Mrs. Blumenstein's
+necklace was entwined.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Then that is why Favart came always to Covent Garden when <i>The Jewels
+of the Madonna</i> was being performed!&quot; exclaimed Ricardo.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud nodded.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;He came to watch over his treasure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Ricardo was piecing together the sections of the puzzle.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No doubt he knew of the necklace in America. No doubt he followed it
+to England.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud agreed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Mrs. Blumenstein's jewels were quite famous in New York.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But to hide them here!&quot; cried Mr. Clements. &quot;He must have been mad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why?&quot; asked Hanaud. &quot;Can you imagine a safer hiding-place? Who is
+going to burgle the property-room of Covent Garden? Who is going to
+look for a priceless string of pearls amongst the stage jewels of an
+opera house?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You did,&quot; said Mr. Ricardo.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I?&quot; replied Hanaud, shrugging his shoulders. &quot;Joan Carew's dreams led
+me to André Favart. The first time we came here and saw the pearls of
+the Madonna, I was on the look-out, naturally. I noticed Favart at the
+back of the stalls. But it was a stroke of luck that I noticed those
+pearls through my opera glasses.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;At the end of the second act?&quot; cried Ricardo suddenly. &quot;I remember
+now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes,&quot; replied Hanaud. &quot;But for that second act the pearls would have
+stayed comfortably here all through the season. Carmen Valeri--a fool
+as I told you--would have tossed them about in her dressing-room
+without a notion of their value, and at the end of July, when the
+murder at the Semiramis Hotel had been forgotten, Favart would have
+taken them to Amsterdam and made his bargain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Shall we go?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They left the theatre together and walked down to the grill-room of
+the Semiramis. But as Hanaud looked through the glass door he drew
+back.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;We will not go in, I think, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why?&quot; asked Ricardo.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hanaud pointed to a table. Calladine and Joan Carew were seated at it
+taking their supper.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Perhaps,&quot; said Hanaud with a smile, &quot;perhaps, my friend--what? Who
+shall say that the rooms in the Adelphi will not be given up?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They turned away from the hotel. But Hanaud was right, and before the
+season was over Mr. Ricardo had to put his hand in his pocket for a
+wedding present.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel, by
+A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason
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+</body>
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+
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+++ b/38663.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel, by
+A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel
+
+Author: A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason
+
+Release Date: January 24, 2012 [EBook #38663]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AFFAIR AT THE SEMIRAMIS HOTEL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+   1. Page scan source:
+      http://www.archive.org/details/affairatsemirami00maso
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            THE AFFAIR AT
+
+                         THE SEMIRAMIS HOTEL
+
+
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+                            A. E. W. MASON
+
+
+
+
+                       CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+                        NEW YORK :: :: :: 1917
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Copyright, 1917, by
+
+                            A. E. W. MASON
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE AFFAIR
+
+                        AT THE SEMIRAMIS HOTEL
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE AFFAIR
+                        AT THE SEMIRAMIS HOTEL
+
+
+
+
+                                  I
+
+
+Mr. Ricardo, when the excitements of the Villa Rose were done with,
+returned to Grosvenor Square and resumed the busy, unnecessary life of
+an amateur. But the studios had lost their savour, artists their
+attractiveness, and even the Russian opera seemed a trifle flat. Life
+was altogether a disappointment; Fate, like an actress at a
+restaurant, had taken the wooden pestle in her hand and stirred all
+the sparkle out of the champagne; Mr. Ricardo languished--until one
+unforgettable morning.
+
+He was sitting disconsolately at his breakfast-table when the door was
+burst open and a square, stout man, with the blue, shaven face of a
+French comedian, flung himself into the room. Ricardo sprang towards
+the new-comer with a cry of delight.
+
+"My dear Hanaud!"
+
+He seized his visitor by the arm, feeling it to make sure that here,
+in flesh and blood, stood the man who had introduced him to the
+acutest sensations of his life. He turned towards his butler, who was
+still bleating expostulations in the doorway at the unceremonious
+irruption of the French detective.
+
+"Another place, Burton, at once," he cried, and as soon as he and
+Hanaud were alone: "What good wind blows you to London?"
+
+"Business, my friend. The disappearance of bullion somewhere on the
+line between Paris and London. But it is finished. Yes, I take a
+holiday."
+
+A light had suddenly flashed in Mr. Ricardo's eyes, and was now no
+less suddenly extinguished. Hanaud paid no attention whatever to his
+friend's disappointment. He pounced upon a piece of silver which
+adorned the tablecloth and took it over to the window.
+
+"Everything is as it should be, my friend," he exclaimed, with a grin.
+"Grosvenor Square, the _Times_ open at the money column, and a false
+antique upon the table. Thus I have dreamed of you. All Mr. Ricardo is
+in that sentence."
+
+Ricardo laughed nervously. Recollection made him wary of Hanaud's
+sarcasms. He was shy even to protest the genuineness of his silver.
+But, indeed, he had not the time. For the door opened again and once
+more the butler appeared. On this occasion, however, he was alone.
+
+"Mr. Calladine would like to speak to you, sir," he said.
+
+"Calladine!" cried Ricardo in an extreme surprise. "That is the most
+extraordinary thing." He looked at the clock upon his mantelpiece. It
+was barely half-past eight. "At this hour, too?"
+
+"Mr. Calladine is still wearing evening dress," the butler remarked.
+
+Ricardo started in his chair. He began to dream of possibilities; and
+here was Hanaud miraculously at his side.
+
+"Where is Mr. Calladine?" he asked.
+
+"I have shown him into the library."
+
+"Good," said Mr. Ricardo. "I will come to him."
+
+But he was in no hurry. He sat and let his thoughts play with this
+incident of Calladine's early visit.
+
+"It is very odd," he said. "I have not seen Calladine for months--no,
+nor has anyone. Yet, a little while ago, no one was more often seen."
+
+He fell apparently into a muse, but he was merely seeking to provoke
+Hanaud's curiosity. In this attempt, however, he failed. Hanaud
+continued placidly to eat his breakfast, so that Mr. Ricardo was
+compelled to volunteer the story which he was burning to tell.
+
+"Drink your coffee, Hanaud, and you shall hear about Calladine."
+
+Hanaud grunted with resignation, and Mr. Ricardo flowed on:
+
+"Calladine was one of England's young men. Everybody said so. He was
+going to do very wonderful things as soon as he had made up his mind
+exactly what sort of wonderful things he was going to do. Meanwhile,
+you met him in Scotland, at Newmarket, at Ascot, at Cowes, in the box
+of some great lady at the Opera--not before half-past ten in the
+evening _there_--in any fine house where the candles that night
+happened to be lit. He went everywhere, and then a day came and he
+went nowhere. There was no scandal, no trouble, not a whisper against
+his good name. He simply vanished. For a little while a few people
+asked: 'What has become of Calladine?' But there never was any answer,
+and London has no time for unanswered questions. Other promising young
+men dined in his place. Calladine had joined the huge legion of the
+Come-to-nothings. No one even seemed to pass him in the street. Now
+unexpectedly, at half-past eight in the morning, and in evening dress,
+he calls upon me. 'Why?' I ask myself."
+
+Mr. Ricardo sank once more into a reverie. Hanaud watched him with a
+broadening smile of pure enjoyment.
+
+"And in time, I suppose," he remarked casually, "you will perhaps ask
+him?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo sprang out of his pose to his feet.
+
+"Before I discuss serious things with an acquaintance," he said with a
+scathing dignity, "I make it a rule to revive my impressions of his
+personality. The cigarettes are in the crystal box."
+
+"They would be," said Hanaud, unabashed, as Ricardo stalked from the
+room. But in five minutes Mr. Ricardo came running back, all his
+composure gone.
+
+"It is the greatest good fortune that you, my friend, should have
+chosen this morning to visit me," he cried, and Hanaud nodded with a
+little grimace of resignation.
+
+"There goes my holiday. You shall command me now and always. I will
+make the acquaintance of your young friend."
+
+He rose up and followed Ricardo into his study, where a young man was
+nervously pacing the floor.
+
+"Mr. Calladine," said Ricardo. "This is Mr. Hanaud."
+
+The young man turned eagerly. He was tall, with a noticeable elegance
+and distinction, and the face which he showed to Hanaud was, in spite
+of its agitation, remarkably handsome.
+
+"I am very glad," he said. "You are not an official of this country.
+You can advise--without yourself taking action, if you'll be so good."
+
+Hanaud frowned. He bent his eyes uncompromisingly upon Calladine.
+
+"What does that mean?" he asked, with a note of sternness in his
+voice.
+
+"It means that I must tell someone," Calladine burst out in quivering
+tones. "That I don't know what to do. I am in a difficulty too big for
+me. That's the truth."
+
+Hanaud looked at the young man keenly. It seemed to Ricardo that he
+took in every excited gesture, every twitching feature, in one
+comprehensive glance. Then he said in a friendlier voice:
+
+"Sit down and tell me"--and he himself drew up a chair to the table.
+
+"I was at the Semiramis last night," said Calladine, naming one of the
+great hotels upon the Embankment. "There was a fancy-dress ball."
+
+All this happened, by the way, in those far-off days before the
+war--nearly, in fact, three years ago today--when London, flinging
+aside its reticence, its shy self-consciousness, had become a city of
+carnivals and masquerades, rivalling its neighbours on the Continent
+in the spirit of its gaiety, and exceeding them by its stupendous
+luxury. "I went by the merest chance. My rooms are in the Adelphi
+Terrace."
+
+"There!" cried Mr. Ricardo in surprise, and Hanaud lifted a hand to
+check his interruptions.
+
+"Yes," continued Calladine. "The night was warm, the music floated
+through my open windows and stirred old memories. I happened to have a
+ticket. I went."
+
+Calladine drew up a chair opposite to Hanaud and, seating himself,
+told, with many nervous starts and in troubled tones, a story which,
+to Mr. Ricardo's thinking, was as fabulous as any out of the "Arabian
+Nights."
+
+"I had a ticket," he began, "but no domino. I was consequently stopped
+by an attendant in the lounge at the top of the staircase leading down
+to the ballroom.
+
+"'You can hire a domino in the cloakroom, Mr. Calladine,' he said to
+me. I had already begun to regret the impulse which had brought me,
+and I welcomed the excuse with which the absence of a costume provided
+me. I was, indeed, turning back to the door, when a girl who had at
+that moment run down from the stairs of the hotel into the lounge,
+cried gaily: 'That's not necessary'; and at the same moment she flung
+to me a long scarlet cloak which she had been wearing over her own
+dress. She was young, fair, rather tall, slim, and very pretty; her
+hair was drawn back from her face with a ribbon, and rippled down her
+shoulders in heavy curls; and she was dressed in a satin coat and
+knee-breeches of pale green and gold, with a white waistcoat and
+silk stockings and scarlet heels to her satin shoes. She was as
+straight-limbed as a boy, and exquisite like a figure in Dresden
+china. I caught the cloak and turned to thank her. But she did not
+wait. With a laugh she ran down the stairs a supple and shining
+figure, and was lost in the throng at the doorway of the ballroom. I
+was stirred by the prospect of an adventure. I ran down after her. She
+was standing just inside the room alone, and she was gazing at the
+scene with parted lips and dancing eyes. She laughed again as she saw
+the cloak about my shoulders, a delicious gurgle of amusement, and I
+said to her:
+
+"'May I dance with you?'
+
+"'Oh, do!' she cried, with a little jump, and clasping her hands. She
+was of a high and joyous spirit and not difficult in the matter of an
+introduction. 'This gentleman will do very well to present us,' she
+said, leading me in front of a bust of the God Pan which stood in a
+niche of the wall. 'I am, as you see, straight out of an opera. My
+name is Celymene or anything with an eighteenth century sound to it.
+You are--what you will. For this evening we are friends.'
+
+"'And for to-morrow?' I asked.
+
+"'I will tell you about that later on,' she replied, and she began to
+dance with a light step and a passion in her dancing which earned me
+many an envious glance from the other men. I was in luck, for Celymene
+knew no one, and though, of course, I saw the faces of a great many
+people whom I remembered, I kept them all at a distance. We had been
+dancing for about half an hour when the first queerish thing happened.
+She stopped suddenly in the midst of a sentence with a little gasp. I
+spoke to her, but she did not hear. She was gazing past me, her eyes
+wide open, and such a rapt look upon her face as I had never seen. She
+was lost in a miraculous vision. I followed the direction of her eyes
+and, to my astonishment, I saw nothing more than a stout, short,
+middle-aged woman, egregiously over-dressed as Marie Antoinette.
+
+"'So you do know someone here?' I said, and I had to repeat the words
+sharply before my friend withdrew her eyes. But even then she was not
+aware of me. It was as if a voice had spoken to her whilst she was
+asleep and had disturbed, but not wakened her. Then she came
+to--there's really no other word I can think of which describes her at
+that moment--she came to with a deep sigh.
+
+"'No,' she answered. 'She is a Mrs. Blumenstein from Chicago, a widow
+with ambitions and a great deal of money. But I don't know her.'
+
+"'Yet you know all about her,' I remarked.
+
+"'She crossed in the same boat with me,' Celymene replied. 'Did I tell
+you that I landed at Liverpool this morning? She is staying at the
+Semiramis too. Oh, let us dance!'
+
+"She twitched my sleeve impatiently, and danced with a kind of
+violence and wildness as if she wished to banish some sinister
+thought. And she did undoubtedly banish it. We supped together and
+grew confidential, as under such conditions people will. She told me
+her real name. It was Joan Carew.
+
+"'I have come over to get an engagement if I can at Covent Garden. I
+am supposed to sing all right. But I don't know anyone. I have been
+brought up in Italy.'
+
+"'You have some letters of introduction, I suppose?' I asked.
+
+"'Oh, yes. One from my teacher in Milan. One from an American
+manager.'
+
+"In my turn I told her my name and where I lived, and I gave her my
+card. I thought, you see, that since I used to know a good many
+operatic people, I might be able to help her.
+
+"'Thank you,' she said, and at that moment Mrs. Blumenstein, followed
+by a party, chiefly those lap-dog young men who always seem to gather
+about that kind of person, came into the supper-room and took a table
+close to us. There was at once an end of all confidences--indeed, of
+all conversation. Joan Carew lost all the lightness of her spirit; she
+talked at random, and her eyes were drawn again and again to the
+grotesque slander on Marie Antoinette. Finally I became annoyed.
+
+"'Shall we go?' I suggested impatiently, and to my surprise she
+whispered passionately:
+
+"'Yes. Please! Let us go.'
+
+"Her voice was actually shaking, her small hands clenched. We went
+back to the ballroom, but Joan Carew did not recover her gaiety, and
+half-way through a dance, when we were near to the door, she stopped
+abruptly--extraordinarily abruptly.
+
+"'I shall go,' she said abruptly. 'I am tired. I have grown dull.'
+
+"I protested, but she made a little grimace.
+
+"'You'll hate me in half an hour. Let's be wise and stop now while we
+are friends,' she said, and whilst I removed the domino from my
+shoulders she stooped very quickly. It seemed to me that she picked up
+something which had lain hidden beneath the sole of her slipper. She
+certainly moved her foot, and I certainly saw something small and
+bright flash in the palm of her glove as she raised herself again. But
+I imagined merely that it was some object which she had dropped.
+
+"'Yes, we'll go,' she said, and we went up the stairs into the lobby.
+Certainly all the sparkle had gone out of our adventure. I recognized
+her wisdom.
+
+"'But I shall meet you again?' I asked.
+
+"'Yes. I have your address. I'll write and fix a time when you will be
+sure to find me in. Good-night, and a thousand thanks. I should have
+been bored to tears if you hadn't come without a domino.'
+
+"She was speaking lightly as she held out her hand, but her grip
+tightened a little and--clung. Her eyes darkened and grew troubled,
+her mouth trembled. The shadow of a great trouble had suddenly closed
+about her. She shivered.
+
+"'I am half inclined to ask you to stay, however dull I am; and dance
+with me till daylight--the safe daylight,' she said.
+
+"It was an extraordinary phrase for her to use, and it moved me.
+
+"'Let us go back then!' I urged. She gave me an impression suddenly of
+someone quite forlorn. But Joan Carew recovered her courage. 'No, no,'
+she answered quickly. She snatched her hand away and ran lightly up
+the staircase, turning at the corner to wave her hand and smile. It
+was then half-past one in the morning."
+
+So far Calladine had spoken without an interruption. Mr. Ricardo, it
+is true, was bursting to break in with the most important questions,
+but a salutary fear of Hanaud restrained him. Now, however, he had an
+opportunity, for Calladine paused.
+
+"Half-past one," he said sagely. "Ah!"
+
+"And when did you go home?" Hanaud asked of Calladine.
+
+"True," said Mr. Ricardo. "It is of the greatest consequence."
+
+Calladine was not sure. His partner had left behind her the strangest
+medley of sensations in his breast. He was puzzled, haunted, and
+charmed. He had to think about her; he was a trifle uplifted; sleep
+was impossible. He wandered for a while about the ballroom. Then he
+walked to his chambers along the echoing streets and sat at his
+window; and some time afterwards the hoot of a motor-horn broke the
+silence and a car stopped and whirred in the street below. A moment
+later his bell rang.
+
+He ran down the stairs in a queer excitement, unlocked the street door
+and opened it. Joan Carew, still in her masquerade dress with her
+scarlet cloak about her shoulders, slipped through the opening.
+
+"Shut the door," she whispered, drawing herself apart in a corner.
+
+"Your cab?" asked Calladine.
+
+"It has gone."
+
+Calladine latched the door. Above, in the well of the stairs, the
+light spread out from the open door of his flat. Down here all was
+dark. He could just see the glimmer of her white face, the glitter of
+her dress, but she drew her breath like one who has run far. They
+mounted the stairs cautiously. He did not say a word until they were
+both safely in his parlour; and even then it was in a low voice.
+
+"What has happened?"
+
+"You remember the woman I stared at? You didn't know why I stared, but
+any girl would have understood. She was wearing the loveliest pearls I
+ever saw in my life."
+
+Joan was standing by the edge of the table. She was tracing with her
+finger a pattern on the cloth as she spoke. Calladine started with a
+horrible presentiment.
+
+"Yes," she said. "I worship pearls. I always have done. For one thing,
+they improve on me. I haven't got any, of course. I have no money. But
+friends of mine who do own pearls have sometimes given theirs to me to
+wear when they were going sick, and they have always got back their
+lustre. I think that has had a little to do with my love of them. Oh,
+I have always longed for them--just a little string. Sometimes I have
+felt that I would have given my soul for them."
+
+She was speaking in a dull, monotonous voice. But Calladine recalled
+the ecstasy which had shone in her face when her eyes first had fallen
+on the pearls, the longing which had swept her quite into another
+world, the passion with which she had danced to throw the obsession
+off.
+
+"And I never noticed them at all," he said.
+
+"Yet they were wonderful. The colour! The lustre! All the evening they
+tempted me. I was furious that a fat, coarse creature like that should
+have such exquisite things. Oh, I was mad."
+
+She covered her face suddenly with her hands and swayed. Calladine
+sprang towards her. But she held out her hand.
+
+"No, I am all right." And though he asked her to sit down she would
+not. "You remember when I stopped dancing suddenly?"
+
+"Yes. You had something hidden under your foot?"
+
+The girl nodded.
+
+"Her key!" And under his breath Calladine uttered a startled cry.
+
+For the first time since she had entered the room Joan Carew raised
+her head and looked at him. Her eyes were full of terror, and with the
+terror was mixed an incredulity as though she could not possibly
+believe that that had happened which she knew had happened.
+
+"A little Yale key," the girl continued. "I saw Mrs. Blumenstein
+looking on the floor for something, and then I saw it shining on the
+very spot. Mrs. Blumenstein's suite was on the same floor as mine, and
+her maid slept above. All the maids do. I knew that. Oh, it seemed to
+me as if I had sold my soul and was being paid."
+
+Now Calladine understood what she had meant by her strange
+phrase--"the safe daylight."
+
+"I went up to my little suite," Joan Carew continued. "I sat there
+with the key burning through my glove until I had given her time
+enough to fall asleep"--and though she hesitated before she spoke the
+words, she did speak them, not looking at Calladine, and with a
+shudder of remorse making her confession complete. "Then I crept out.
+The corridor was dimly lit. Far away below the music was throbbing. Up
+here it was as silent as the grave. I opened the door--her door. I
+found myself in a lobby. The suite, though bigger, was arranged like
+mine. I slipped in and closed the door behind me. I listened in the
+darkness. I couldn't hear a sound. I crept forward to the door in
+front of me. I stood with my fingers on the handle and my heart
+beating fast enough to choke me. I had still time to turn back. But I
+couldn't. There were those pearls in front of my eyes, lustrous and
+wonderful. I opened the door gently an inch or so--and then--it all
+happened in a second."
+
+Joan Carew faltered. The night was too near to her, its memory too
+poignant with terror. She shut her eyes tightly and cowered down in a
+chair. With the movement her cloak slipped from her shoulders and
+dropped on to the ground. Calladine leaned forward with an exclamation
+of horror; Joan Carew started up.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing. Go on."
+
+"I found myself inside the room with the door shut behind me. I had
+shut it myself in a spasm of terror. And I dared not turn round to
+open it. I was helpless."
+
+"What do you mean? She was awake?"
+
+Joan Carew shook her head.
+
+"There were others in the room before me, and on the same
+errand--men!"
+
+Calladine drew back, his eyes searching the girl's face.
+
+"Yes?" he said slowly.
+
+"I didn't see them at first. I didn't hear them. The room was quite
+dark except for one jet of fierce white light which beat upon the door
+of a safe. And as I shut the door the jet moved swiftly and the light
+reached me and stopped. I was blinded. I stood in the full glare of
+it, drawn up against the panels of the door, shivering, sick with
+fear. Then I heard a quiet laugh, and someone moved softly towards me.
+Oh, it was terrible! I recovered the use of my limbs; in a panic I
+turned to the door, but I was too late. Whilst I fumbled with the
+handle I was seized; a hand covered my mouth. I was lifted to the
+centre of the room. The jet went out, the electric lights were turned
+on. There were two men dressed as apaches in velvet trousers and red
+scarves, like a hundred others in the ballroom below, and both were
+masked. I struggled furiously; but, of course, I was like a child in
+their grasp. 'Tie her legs,' the man whispered who was holding me;
+'she's making too much noise.' I kicked and fought, but the other man
+stooped and tied my ankles, and I fainted."
+
+Calladine nodded his head.
+
+"Yes?" he said.
+
+"When I came to, the lights were still burning, the door of the safe
+was open, the room empty; I had been flung on to a couch at the foot
+of the bed. I was lying there quite free."
+
+"Was the safe empty?" asked Calladine suddenly.
+
+"I didn't look," she answered. "Oh!"--and she covered her face
+spasmodically with her hands. "I looked at the bed. Someone was lying
+there--under a sheet and quite still. There was a clock ticking in the
+room; it was the only sound. I was terrified. I was going mad with
+fear. If I didn't get out of the room at once I felt that I should
+go mad, that I should scream and bring everyone to find me alone
+with--what was under the sheet in the bed. I ran to the door and
+looked out through a slit into the corridor. It was still quite empty,
+and below the music still throbbed in the ballroom. I crept down the
+stairs, meeting no one until I reached the hall. I looked into the
+ballroom as if I was searching for someone. I stayed long enough to
+show myself. Then I got a cab and came to you."
+
+A short silence followed. Joan Carew looked at her companion in
+appeal. "You are the only one I could come to," she added. "I know no
+one else."
+
+Calladine sat watching the girl in silence. Then he asked, and his
+voice was hard:
+
+"And is that all you have to tell me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are quite sure?"
+
+Joan Carew looked at him perplexed by the urgency of his question. She
+reflected for a moment or two.
+
+"Quite."
+
+Calladine rose to his feet and stood beside her.
+
+"Then how do you come to be wearing this?" he asked, and he lifted a
+chain of platinum and diamonds which she was wearing about her
+shoulders. "You weren't wearing it when you danced with me."
+
+Joan Carew stared at the chain.
+
+"No. It's not mine. I have never seen it before." Then a light came
+into her eyes. "The two men--they must have thrown it over my head
+when I was on the couch--before they went." She looked at it more
+closely. "That's it. The chain's not very valuable. They could spare
+it, and--it would accuse me--of what they did."
+
+"Yes, that's very good reasoning," said Calladine coldly.
+
+Joan Carew looked quickly up into his face.
+
+"Oh, you don't believe me," she cried. "You think--oh, it's
+impossible." And, holding him by the edge of his coat, she burst into
+a storm of passionate denials.
+
+"But you went to steal, you know," he said gently, and she answered
+him at once:
+
+"Yes, I did, but not this." And she held up the necklace. "Should I
+have stolen this, should I have come to you wearing it, if I had
+stolen the pearls, if I had"--and she stopped--"if my story were not
+true?"
+
+Calladine weighed her argument, and it affected him.
+
+"No, I think you wouldn't," he said frankly.
+
+Most crimes, no doubt, were brought home because the criminal had made
+some incomprehensibly stupid mistake; incomprehensibly stupid, that
+is, by the standards of normal life. Nevertheless, Calladine was
+inclined to believe her. He looked at her. That she should have
+murdered was absurd. Moreover, she was not making a parade of remorse,
+she was not playing the unctuous penitent; she had yielded to a
+temptation, had got herself into desperate straits, and was at her
+wits' ends how to escape from them. She was frank about herself.
+
+Calladine looked at the clock. It was nearly five o'clock in the
+morning, and though the music could still be heard from the ballroom
+in the Semiramis, the night had begun to wane upon the river.
+
+"You must go back," he said. "I'll walk with you."
+
+They crept silently down the stairs and into the street. It was only a
+step to the Semiramis. They met no one until they reached the Strand.
+There many, like Joan Carew in masquerade, were standing about, or
+walking hither and thither in search of carriages and cabs. The whole
+street was in a bustle, what with drivers shouting and people coming
+away.
+
+"You can slip in unnoticed," said Calladine as he looked into the
+thronged courtyard. "I'll telephone to you in the morning."
+
+"You will?" she cried eagerly, clinging for a moment to his arm.
+
+"Yes, for certain," he replied. "Wait in until you hear from me. I'll
+think it over. I'll do what I can."
+
+"Thank you," she said fervently.
+
+He watched her scarlet cloak flitting here and there in the crowd
+until it vanished through the doorway. Then, for the second time, he
+walked back to his chambers, while the morning crept up the river from
+the sea.
+
+
+                          *   *   *   *   *
+
+
+This was the story which Calladine told in Mr. Ricardo's library. Mr.
+Ricardo heard it out with varying emotions. He began with a thrill of
+expectation like a man on a dark threshold of great excitements. The
+setting of the story appealed to him, too, by a sort of brilliant
+bizarrerie which he found in it. But, as it went on, he grew puzzled
+and a trifle disheartened. There were flaws and chinks; he began to
+bubble with unspoken criticisms, then swift and clever thrusts which
+he dared not deliver. He looked upon the young man with disfavour, as
+upon one who had half opened a door upon a theatre of great promise
+and shown him a spectacle not up to the mark. Hanaud, on the other
+hand, listened imperturbably, without an expression upon his face,
+until the end. Then he pointed a finger at Calladine and asked him
+what to Ricardo's mind was a most irrelevant question.
+
+"You got back to your rooms, then, before five, Mr. Calladine, and it
+is now nine o'clock less a few minutes."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Yet you have not changed your clothes. Explain to me that. What did
+you do between five and half-past eight?"
+
+Calladine looked down at his rumpled shirt front.
+
+"Upon my word, I never thought of it," he cried. "I was worried out of
+my mind. I couldn't decide what to do. Finally, I determined to talk
+to Mr. Ricardo, and after I had come to that conclusion I just waited
+impatiently until I could come round with decency."
+
+Hanaud rose from his chair. His manner was grave, but conveyed no
+single hint of an opinion. He turned to Ricardo.
+
+"Let us go round to your young friend's rooms in the Adelphi," he
+said; and the three men drove thither at once.
+
+
+
+
+                                  II
+
+
+Calladine lodged in a corner house and upon the first floor. His
+rooms, large and square and lofty, with Adams mantelpieces and a
+delicate tracery upon their ceilings, breathed the grace of the
+eighteenth century. Broad high windows, embrasured in thick walls,
+overlooked the river and took in all the sunshine and the air which
+the river had to give. And they were furnished fittingly. When the
+three men entered the parlour, Mr. Ricardo was astounded. He had
+expected the untidy litter of a man run to seed, the neglect and the
+dust of the recluse. But the room was as clean as the deck of a yacht;
+an Aubusson carpet made the floor luxurious underfoot; a few coloured
+prints of real value decorated the walls; and the mahogany furniture
+was polished so that a lady could have used it as a mirror. There was
+even by the newspapers upon the round table a china bowl full of fresh
+red roses. If Calladine had turned hermit, he was a hermit of an
+unusually fastidious type. Indeed, as he stood with his two companions
+in his dishevelled dress he seemed quite out of keeping with his
+rooms.
+
+"So you live here, Mr. Calladine?" said Hanaud, taking off his hat and
+laying it down.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"With your servants, of course?"
+
+"They come in during the day," said Calladine, and Hanaud looked at
+him curiously.
+
+"Do you mean that you sleep here alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But your valet?"
+
+"I don't keep a valet," said Calladine; and again the curious look
+came into Hanaud's eyes.
+
+"Yet," he suggested gently, "there are rooms enough in your set of
+chambers to house a family."
+
+Calladine coloured and shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the
+other.
+
+"I prefer at night not to be disturbed," he said, stumbling a little
+over the words. "I mean, I have a liking for quiet."
+
+Gabriel Hanaud nodded his head with sympathy.
+
+"Yes, yes. And it is a difficult thing to get--as difficult as
+my holiday," he said ruefully, with a smile for Mr. Ricardo.
+"However"--he turned towards Calladine--"no doubt, now that you are at
+home, you would like a bath and a change of clothes. And when you are
+dressed, perhaps you will telephone to the Semiramis and ask Miss
+Carew to come round here. Meanwhile, we will read your newspapers and
+smoke your cigarettes."
+
+Hanaud shut the door upon Calladine, but he turned neither to the
+papers nor the cigarettes. He crossed the room to Mr. Ricardo, who,
+seated at the open window, was plunged deep in reflections.
+
+"You have an idea, my friend," cried Hanaud. "It demands to express
+itself. That sees itself in your face. Let me hear it, I pray."
+
+Mr. Ricardo started out of an absorption which was altogether assumed.
+
+"I was thinking," he said, with a faraway smile, "that you might
+disappear in the forests of Africa, and at once everyone would be very
+busy about your disappearance. You might leave your village in
+Leicestershire and live in the fogs of Glasgow, and within a week the
+whole village would know your postal address. But London--what a city!
+How different! How indifferent! Turn out of St. James's into the
+Adelphi Terrace and not a soul will say to you: 'Dr. Livingstone, I
+presume?'"
+
+"But why should they," asked Hanaud, "if your name isn't Dr.
+Livingstone?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo smiled indulgently.
+
+"Scoffer!" he said. "You understand me very well," and he sought to
+turn the tables on his companion. "And you--does this room suggest
+nothing to you? Have you no ideas?" But he knew very well that Hanaud
+had. Ever since Hanaud had crossed the threshold he had been like a
+man stimulated by a drug. His eyes were bright and active, his body
+alert.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I have."
+
+He was standing now by Ricardo's side with his hands in his pockets,
+looking out at the trees on the Embankment and the barges swinging
+down the river.
+
+"You are thinking of the strange scene which took place in this room
+such a very few hours ago," said Ricardo. "The girl in her masquerade
+dress making her confession with the stolen chain about her
+throat----"
+
+Hanaud looked backwards carelessly. "No, I wasn't giving it a
+thought," he said, and in a moment or two he began to walk about the
+room with that curiously light step which Ricardo was never able to
+reconcile with his cumbersome figure. With the heaviness of a bear he
+still padded. He went from corner to corner, opened a cupboard here, a
+drawer of the bureau there, and--stooped suddenly. He stood erect
+again with a small box of morocco leather in his hand. His body from
+head to foot seemed to Ricardo to be expressing the question, "Have I
+found it?" He pressed a spring and the lid of the box flew open.
+Hanaud emptied its contents into the palm of his hand. There were two
+or three sticks of sealing-wax and a seal. With a shrug of the
+shoulders he replaced them and shut the box.
+
+"You are looking for something," Ricardo announced with sagacity.
+
+"I am," replied Hanaud; and it seemed that in a second or two he found
+it. Yet--yet--he found it with his hands in his pockets, if he had
+found it. Mr. Ricardo saw him stop in that attitude in front of the
+mantelshelf, and heard him utter a long, low whistle. Upon the
+mantelshelf some photographs were arranged, a box of cigars stood at
+one end, a book or two lay between some delicate ornaments of china,
+and a small engraving in a thin gilt frame was propped at the back
+against the wall. Ricardo surveyed the shelf from his seat in the
+window, but he could not imagine which it was of these objects that so
+drew and held Hanaud's eyes.
+
+Hanaud, however, stepped forward. He looked into a vase and turned it
+upside down. Then he removed the lid of a porcelain cup, and from the
+very look of his great shoulders Ricardo knew that he had discovered
+what he sought. He was holding something in his hands, turning it
+over, examining it. When he was satisfied he moved swiftly to the door
+and opened it cautiously. Both men could hear the splashing of water
+in a bath. Hanaud closed the door again with a nod of contentment and
+crossed once more to the window.
+
+"Yes, it is all very strange and curious," he said, "and I do not
+regret that you dragged me into the affair. You were quite right, my
+friend, this morning. It is the personality of your young Mr.
+Calladine which is the interesting thing. For instance, here we are in
+London in the early summer. The trees out, freshly green, lilac and
+flowers in the gardens, and I don't know what tingle of hope and
+expectation in the sunlight and the air. I am middle-aged--yet there's
+a riot in my blood, a recapture of youth, a belief that just round the
+corner, beyond the reach of my eyes, wonders wait for me. Don't you,
+too, feel something like that? Well, then--" and he heaved his
+shoulders in astonishment.
+
+"Can you understand a young man with money, with fastidious tastes,
+good-looking, hiding himself in a corner at such a time--except for
+some overpowering reason? No. Nor can I. There is another thing--I put
+a question or two to Calladine."
+
+"Yes," said Ricardo.
+
+"He has no servants here at night. He is quite alone and--here is what
+I find interesting--he has no valet. That seems a small thing to you?"
+Hanaud asked at a movement from Ricardo. "Well, it is no doubt a
+trifle, but it's a significant trifle in the case of a young rich man.
+It is generally a sign that there is something strange, perhaps even
+something sinister, in his life. Mr. Calladine, some months ago,
+turned out of St. James's into the Adelphi. Can you tell me why?"
+
+"No," replied Mr. Ricardo. "Can you?"
+
+Hanaud stretched out a hand. In his open palm lay a small round hairy
+bulb about the size of a big button and of a colour between green and
+brown.
+
+"Look!" he said. "What is that?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo took the bulb wonderingly.
+
+"It looks to me like the fruit of some kind of cactus."
+
+Hanaud nodded.
+
+"It is. You will see some pots of it in the hothouses of any really
+good botanical gardens. Kew has them, I have no doubt. Paris certainly
+has. They are labelled. 'Anhalonium Luinii.' But amongst the Indians
+of Yucatan the plant has a simpler name."
+
+"What name?" asked Ricardo.
+
+"Mescal."
+
+Mr. Ricardo repeated the name. It conveyed nothing to him whatever.
+
+"There are a good many bulbs just like that in the cup upon the
+mantelshelf," said Hanaud.
+
+Ricardo looked quickly up.
+
+"Why?" he asked.
+
+"Mescal is a drug."
+
+Ricardo started.
+
+"Yes, you are beginning to understand now," Hanaud continued, "why
+your young friend Calladine turned out of St. James's into the Adelphi
+Terrace."
+
+Ricardo turned the little bulb over in his fingers.
+
+"You make a decoction of it, I suppose?" he said.
+
+"Or you can use it as the Indians do in Yucatan," replied Hanaud.
+"Mescal enters into their religious ceremonies. They sit at night in a
+circle about a fire built in the forest and chew it, whilst one of
+their number beats perpetually upon a drum."
+
+Hanaud looked round the room and took notes of its luxurious carpet,
+its delicate appointments. Outside the window there was a thunder in
+the streets, a clamour of voices. Boats went swiftly down the river on
+the ebb. Beyond the mass of the Semiramis rose the great grey-white
+dome of St. Paul's. Opposite, upon the Southwark bank, the giant
+sky-signs, the big Highlander drinking whisky, and the rest of them
+waited, gaunt skeletons, for the night to limn them in fire and give
+them life. Below the trees in the gardens rustled and waved. In the
+air were the uplift and the sparkle of the young summer.
+
+"It's a long way from the forests of Yucatan to the Adelphi Terrace of
+London," said Hanaud. "Yet here, I think, in these rooms, when the
+servants are all gone and the house is very quiet, there is a little
+corner of wild Mexico."
+
+A look of pity came into Mr. Ricardo's face. He had seen more than one
+young man of great promise slacken his hold and let go, just for this
+reason. Calladine, it seemed, was another.
+
+"It's like bhang and kieff and the rest of the devilish things, I
+suppose," he said, indignantly tossing the button upon the table.
+
+Hanaud picked it up.
+
+"No," he replied. "It's not quite like any other drug. It has a
+quality of its own which just now is of particular importance to you
+and me. Yes, my friend"--and he nodded his head very seriously--"we
+must watch that we do not make the big fools of ourselves in this
+affair."
+
+"There," Mr. Ricardo agreed with an ineffable air of wisdom, "I am
+entirely with you."
+
+"Now, why?" Hanaud asked. Mr. Ricardo was at a loss for a reason, but
+Hanaud did not wait. "I will tell you. Mescal intoxicates, yes--but it
+does more--it gives to the man who eats of it colour-dreams."
+
+"Colour-dreams?" Mr. Ricardo repeated in a wondering voice.
+
+"Yes, strange heated charms, in which violent things happen vividly
+amongst bright colours. Colour is the gift of this little prosaic
+brown button." He spun the bulb in the air like a coin, and catching
+it again, took it over to the mantelpiece and dropped it into the
+porcelain cup.
+
+"Are you sure of this?" Ricardo cried excitedly, and Hanaud raised his
+hand in warning. He went to the door, opened it for an inch or so, and
+closed it again.
+
+"I am quite sure," he returned. "I have for a friend a very learned
+chemist in the College de France. He is one of those enthusiasts who
+must experiment upon themselves. He tried this drug."
+
+"Yes," Ricardo said in a quieter voice. "And what did he see?"
+
+"He had a vision of a wonderful garden bathed in sunlight, an old
+garden of gorgeous flowers and emerald lawns, ponds with golden lilies
+and thick yew hedges--a garden where peacocks stepped indolently and
+groups of gay people fantastically dressed quarrelled and fought with
+swords. That is what he saw. And he saw it so vividly that, when the
+vapours of the drug passed from his brain and he waked, he seemed to
+be coming out of the real world into a world of shifting illusions."
+
+Hanaud's strong quiet voice stopped, and for a while there was a
+complete silence in the room. Neither of the two men stirred so much
+as a finger. Mr. Ricardo once more was conscious of the thrill of
+strange sensations. He looked round the room. He could hardly believe
+that a room which had been--nay was--the home and shrine of mysteries
+in the dark hours could wear so bright and innocent a freshness in the
+sunlight of the morning. There should be something sinister which
+leaped to the eyes as you crossed the threshold.
+
+"Out of the real world," Mr. Ricardo quoted. "I begin to see."
+
+"Yes, you begin to see, my friend, that we must be very careful not to
+make the big fools of ourselves. My friend of the College de France
+saw a garden. But had he been sitting alone in the window-seat where
+you are, listening through a summer night to the music of the
+masquerade at the Semiramis, might he not have seen the ballroom, the
+dancers, the scarlet cloak, and the rest of this story?"
+
+"You mean," cried Ricardo, now fairly startled, "that Calladine came
+to us with the fumes of mescal still working in his brain, that the
+false world was the real one still for him."
+
+"I do not know," said Hanaud. "At present I only put questions. I ask
+them of you. I wish to hear how they sound. Let us reason this problem
+out. Calladine, let us say, takes a great deal more of the drug than
+my professor. It will have on him a more powerful effect while it
+lasts, and it will last longer. Fancy dress balls are familiar things
+to Calladine. The music floating from the Semiramis will revive old
+memories. He sits here, the pageant takes shape before him, he sees
+himself taking his part in it. Oh, he is happier here sitting quietly
+in his window-seat than if he was actually at the Semiramis. For he is
+there more intensely, more vividly, more really, than if he had
+actually descended this staircase. He lives his story through, the
+story of a heated brain, the scene of it changes in the way dreams
+have, it becomes tragic and sinister, it oppresses him with horror,
+and in the morning, so obsessed with it that he does not think to
+change his clothes, he is knocking at your door."
+
+Mr. Ricardo raised his eyebrows and moved.
+
+"Ah! You see a flaw in my argument," said Hanaud. But Mr. Ricardo was
+wary. Too often in other days he had been leaped upon and trounced for
+a careless remark.
+
+"Let me hear the end of your argument," he said. "There was then to
+your thinking no temptation of jewels, no theft, no murder--in a word,
+no Celymene? She was born of recollections and the music of the
+Semiramis."
+
+"No!" cried Hanaud. "Come with me, my friend. I am not so sure that
+there was no Celymene."
+
+With a smile upon his face, Hanaud led the way across the room. He had
+the dramatic instinct, and rejoiced in it. He was going to produce a
+surprise for his companion and, savouring the moment in advance, he
+managed his effects. He walked towards the mantelpiece and stopped a
+few paces away from it.
+
+"Look!"
+
+Mr. Ricardo looked and saw a broad Adams mantelpiece. He turned a
+bewildered face to his friend.
+
+"You see nothing?" Hanaud asked.
+
+"Nothing!"
+
+"Look again! I am not sure--but is it not that Celymene is posing
+before you?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo looked again. There was nothing to fix his eyes. He saw a
+book or two, a cup, a vase or two, and nothing else really expect a
+very pretty and apparently valuable piece of--and suddenly Mr. Ricardo
+understood. Straight in front of him, in the very centre of the
+mantelpiece, a figure in painted china was leaning against a china
+stile. It was the figure of a perfectly impossible courtier, feminine
+and exquisite as could be, and apparelled also even to the scarlet
+heels exactly as Calladine had described Joan Carew.
+
+Hanaud chuckled with satisfaction when he saw the expression upon Mr.
+Ricardo's face.
+
+"Ah, you understand," he said. "Do you dream, my friend? At
+times--yes, like the rest of us. Then recollect your dreams? Things,
+people, which you have seen perhaps that day, perhaps months ago, pop
+in and out of them without making themselves prayed for. You cannot
+understand why. Yet sometimes they cut their strange capers there,
+logically, too, through subtle associations which the dreamer, once
+awake, does not apprehend. Thus, our friend here sits in the window,
+intoxicated by his drug, the music plays in the Semiramis, the curtain
+goes up in the heated theatre of his brain. He sees himself step upon
+the stage, and who else meets him but the china figure from his
+mantelpiece?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo for a moment was all enthusiasm. Then his doubt returned
+to him.
+
+"What you say, my dear Hanaud, is very ingenious. The figure upon the
+mantelpiece is also extremely convincing. And I should be absolutely
+convinced but for one thing."
+
+"Yes?" said Hanaud, watching his friend closely.
+
+"I am--I may say it, I think, a man of the world. And I ask
+myself"--Mr. Ricardo never could ask himself anything without assuming
+a manner of extreme pomposity--"I ask myself, whether a young man who
+has given up his social ties, who has become a hermit, and still more
+who has become the slave of a drug, would retain that scrupulous
+carefulness of his body which is indicated by dressing for dinner when
+alone?"
+
+Hanaud struck the table with the palm of his hand and sat down in a
+chair.
+
+"Yes. That is the weak point in my theory. You have hit it. I knew it
+was there--that weak point, and I wondered whether you would seize it.
+Yes, the consumers of drugs are careless, untidy--even unclean as a
+rule. But not always. We must be careful. We must wait."
+
+"For what?" asked Ricardo, beaming with pride.
+
+"For the answer to a telephone message," replied Hanaud, with a nod
+towards the door.
+
+Both men waited impatiently until Calladine came into the room. He
+wore now a suit of blue serge, he had a clearer eye, his skin a
+healthier look; he was altogether a more reputable person. But he was
+plainly very ill at ease. He offered his visitors cigarettes, he
+proposed refreshments, he avoided entirely and awkwardly the object of
+their visit. Hanaud smiled. His theory was working out. Sobered by his
+bath, Calladine had realised the foolishness of which he had been
+guilty.
+
+"You telephone, to the Semiramis, of course?" said Hanaud cheerfully.
+
+Calladine grew red.
+
+"Yes," he stammered.
+
+"Yet I did not hear that volume of 'Hallos' which precedes telephonic
+connection in your country of leisure," Hanaud continued.
+
+"I telephoned from my bedroom. You would not hear anything in this
+room."
+
+"Yes, yes; the walls of these old houses are solid." Hanaud was
+playing with his victim. "And when may we expect Miss Carew?"
+
+"I can't say," replied Calladine. "It's very strange. She is not in
+the hotel. I am afraid that she has gone away, fled."
+
+Mr. Ricardo and Hanaud exchanged a look. They were both satisfied now.
+There was no word of truth in Calladine's story.
+
+"Then there is no reason for us to wait," said Hanaud. "I shall have
+my holiday after all." And while he was yet speaking the voice of a
+newsboy calling out the first edition of an evening paper became
+distantly audible. Hanaud broke off his farewell. For a moment he
+listened, with his head bent. Then the voice was heard again,
+confused, indistinct; Hanaud picked up his hat and cane and, without
+another word to Calladine, raced down the stairs. Mr. Ricardo followed
+him, but when he reached the pavement, Hanaud was half down the little
+street. At the corner, however, he stopped, and Ricardo joined him,
+coughing and out of breath.
+
+"What's the matter?" he gasped.
+
+"Listen," said Hanaud.
+
+At the bottom of Duke Street, by Charing Cross Station, the newsboy
+was shouting his wares. Both men listened, and now the words came to
+them mispronounced but decipherable.
+
+"Mysterious crime at the Semiramis Hotel."
+
+Ricardo stared at his companion.
+
+"You were wrong then!" he cried. "Calladine's story was true."
+
+For once in a way Hanaud was quite disconcerted.
+
+"I don't know yet," he said. "We will buy a paper."
+
+But before he could move a step a taxi-cab turned into the Adelphi
+from the Strand, and wheeling in front of their faces, stopped at
+Calladine's door. From the cab a girl descended.
+
+"Let us go back," said Hanaud.
+
+
+
+
+                                 III
+
+
+Mr. Ricardo could no longer complain. It was half-past eight when
+Calladine had first disturbed the formalities of his house in
+Grosvenor Square. It was barely ten now, and during that short time he
+had been flung from surprise to surprise, he had looked underground on
+a morning of fresh summer, and had been thrilled by the contrast
+between the queer, sinister life below and within and the open call to
+joy of the green world above. He had passed from incredulity to
+belief, from belief to incredulity, and when at last incredulity was
+firmly established, and the story to which he had listened proved the
+emanation of a drugged and heated brain, lo! the facts buffeted him in
+the face, and the story was shown to be true.
+
+"I am alive once more," Mr. Ricardo thought as he turned back with
+Hanaud, and in his excitement he cried his thought aloud.
+
+"Are you?" said Hanaud. "And what is life without a newspaper? If you
+will buy one from that remarkably raucous boy at the bottom of the
+street I will keep an eye upon Calladine's house till you come back."
+
+Mr. Ricardo sped down to Charing Cross and brought back a copy of the
+fourth edition of the _Star_. He handed it to Hanaud, who stared at it
+doubtfully, folded as it was.
+
+"Shall we see what it says?" Ricardo asked impatiently.
+
+"By no means," Hanaud answered, waking from his reverie and tucking
+briskly away the paper into the tail pocket of his coat. "We will hear
+what Miss Joan Carew has to say, with our minds undisturbed by any
+discoveries. I was wondering about something totally different."
+
+"Yes?" Mr. Ricardo encouraged him. "What was it?"
+
+"I was wondering, since it is only ten o'clock, at what hour the first
+editions of the evening papers appear."
+
+"It is a question," Mr. Ricardo replied sententiously, "which the
+greatest minds have failed to answer."
+
+And they walked along the street to the house. The front door stood
+open during the day like the front door of any other house which is
+let off in sets of rooms. Hanaud and Ricardo went up the staircase and
+rang the bell of Calladine's door. A middle-aged woman opened it.
+
+"Mr. Calladine is in?" said Hanaud.
+
+"I will ask," replied the woman. "What name shall I say?"
+
+"It does not matter. I will go straight in," said Hanaud quietly. "I
+was here with my friend but a minute ago."
+
+He went straight forward and into Calladine's parlour. Mr. Ricardo
+looked over his shoulder as he opened the door and saw a girl turn to
+them suddenly a white face of terror, and flinch as though already she
+felt the hand of a constable upon her shoulder. Calladine, on the
+other hand, uttered a cry of relief.
+
+"These are my friends," he exclaimed to the girl, "the friends of whom
+I spoke to you"; and to Hanaud he said: "This is Miss Carew."
+
+Hanaud bowed.
+
+"You shall tell me your story, mademoiselle," he said very gently, and
+a little colour returned to the girl's cheeks, a little courage
+revived in her.
+
+"But you have heard it," she answered.
+
+"Not from you," said Hanaud.
+
+So for a second time in that room she told the history of that night.
+Only this time the sunlight was warm upon the world, the comfortable
+sounds of life's routine were borne through the windows, and the girl
+herself wore the inconspicuous blue serge of a thousand other girls
+afoot that morning. These trifles of circumstance took the edge of
+sheer horror off her narrative, so that, to tell the truth, Mr.
+Ricardo was a trifle disappointed. He wanted a crescendo motive in his
+music, whereas it had begun at its fortissimo. Hanaud, however, was
+the perfect listener. He listened without stirring and with most
+compassionate eyes, so that Joan Carew spoke only to him, and to him,
+each moment that passed, with greater confidence. The life and sparkle
+of her had gone altogether. There was nothing in her manner now to
+suggest the waywardness, the gay irresponsibility, the radiance, which
+had attracted Calladine the night before. She was just a very young
+and very pretty girl, telling in a low and remorseful voice of the
+tragic dilemma to which she had brought herself. Of Celymene all that
+remained was something exquisite and fragile in her beauty, in the
+slimness of her figure, in her daintiness of hand and foot--something
+almost of the hot-house. But the story she told was, detail for
+detail, the same which Calladine had already related.
+
+"Thank you," said Hanaud when she had done. "Now I must ask you two
+questions."
+
+"I will answer them."
+
+Mr. Ricardo sat up. He began to think of a third question which he
+might put himself, something uncommonly subtle and searching, which
+Hanaud would never have thought of. But Hanaud put his questions, and
+Ricardo almost jumped out of his chair.
+
+"You will forgive me. Miss Carew. But have you ever stolen before?"
+
+Joan Carew turned upon Hanaud with spirit. Then a change swept over
+her face.
+
+"You have a right to ask," she answered. "Never." She looked into his
+eyes as she answered. Hanaud did not move. He sat with a hand upon
+each knee and led to his second question.
+
+"Early this morning, when you left this room, you told Mr. Calladine
+that you would wait at the Semiramis until he telephoned to you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Yet when he telephoned, you had gone out?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I will tell you," said Joan Carew. "I could not bear to keep the
+little diamond chain in my room."
+
+For a moment even Hanaud was surprised. He had lost sight of that
+complication. Now he leaned forward anxiously; indeed, with a greater
+anxiety than he had yet shown in all this affair.
+
+"I was terrified," continued Joan Carew. "I kept thinking: 'They must
+have found out by now. They will search everywhere.' I didn't reason.
+I lay in bed expecting to hear every moment a loud knocking on the
+door. Besides--the chain itself being there in my bedroom--her
+chain--the dead woman's chain--no, I couldn't endure it. I felt as if
+I had stolen it. Then my maid brought in my tea."
+
+"You had locked it away?" cried Hanaud.
+
+"Yes. My maid did not see it."
+
+Joan Carew explained how she had risen, dressed, wrapped the chain in
+a pad of cotton-wool and enclosed it in an envelope. The envelope had
+not the stamp of the hotel upon it. It was a rather large envelope,
+one of a packet which she had bought in a crowded shop in Oxford
+Street on her way from Euston to the Semiramis. She had bought the
+envelopes of that particular size in order that when she sent her
+letter of introduction to the Director of the Opera at Covent Garden
+she might enclose with it a photograph.
+
+"And to whom did you send it?" asked Mr. Ricardo.
+
+"To Mrs. Blumenstein at the Semiramis. I printed the address
+carefully. Then I went out and posted it."
+
+"Where?" Hanaud inquired.
+
+"In the big letter-box of the Post Office at the corner of Trafalgar
+Square."
+
+Hanaud looked at the girl sharply.
+
+"You had your wits about you, I see," he said.
+
+"What if the envelope gets lost?" said Ricardo.
+
+Hanaud laughed grimly.
+
+"If one envelope is delivered at its address in London to-day, it will
+be that one," he said. "The news of the crime is published, you see,"
+and he swung round to Joan.
+
+"Did you know that, Miss Carew?"
+
+"No," she answered in an awe-stricken voice.
+
+"Well, then, it is. Let us see what the special investigator has to
+say about it." And Hanaud, with a deliberation which Mr. Ricardo found
+quite excruciating, spread out the newspaper on the table in front of
+him.
+
+
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+
+There was only one new fact in the couple of columns devoted to the
+mystery. Mrs. Blumenstein had died from chloroform poisoning. She was
+of a stout habit, and the thieves were not skilled in the
+administration of the anaesthetic.
+
+"It's murder none the less," said Hanaud, and he gazed straight at
+Joan, asking her by the direct summons of his eyes what she was going
+to do.
+
+"I must tell my story to the police," she replied painfully and
+slowly. But she did not hesitate; she was announcing a meditated plan.
+
+Hanaud neither agreed nor differed. His face was blank, and when he
+spoke there was no cordiality in his voice. "Well," he asked, "and
+what is it that you have to say to the police, miss? That you went
+into the room to steal, and that you were attacked by two strangers,
+dressed as apaches, and masked? That is all?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And how many men at the Semiramis ball were dressed as apaches and
+wore masks? Come! Make a guess. A hundred at the least?"
+
+"I should think so."
+
+"Then what will your confession do beyond--I quote your English
+idiom--putting you in the coach?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo now smiled with relief. Hanaud was taking a definite line.
+His knowledge of idiomatic English might be incomplete, but his heart
+was in the right place. The girl traced a vague pattern on the
+tablecloth with her fingers.
+
+"Yet I think I must tell the police," she repeated, looking up and
+dropping her eyes again. Mr. Ricardo noticed that her eyelashes were
+very long. For the first time Hanaud's face relaxed.
+
+"And I think you are quite right," he cried heartily, to Mr. Ricardo's
+surprise. "Tell them the truth before they suspect it, and they will
+help you out of the affair if they can. Not a doubt of it. Come, I
+will go with you myself to Scotland Yard."
+
+"Thank you," said Joan, and the pair drove away in a cab together.
+
+Hanaud returned to Grosvenor Square alone and lunched with Ricardo.
+
+"It was all right," he said. "The police were very kind. Miss Joan
+Carew told her story to them as she had told it to us. Fortunately,
+the envelope with the aluminium chain had already been delivered, and
+was in their hands. They were much mystified about it, but Miss Joan's
+story gave them a reasonable explanation. I think they are inclined to
+believe her; and, if she is speaking the truth, they will keep her out
+of the witness-box if they can."
+
+"She is to stay here in London, then?" asked Ricardo.
+
+"Oh, yes; she is not to go. She will present her letters at the Opera
+House and secure an engagement, if she can. The criminals might be
+lulled thereby into a belief that the girl had kept the whole strange
+incident to herself, and that there was nowhere even a knowledge of
+the disguise which they had used." Hanaud spoke as carelessly as if
+the matter was not very important; and Ricardo, with an unusual flash
+of shrewdness, said:
+
+"It is clear, my friend, that you do not think those two men will ever
+be caught at all."
+
+Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"There is always a chance. But listen. There is a room with a
+hundred guns, one of which is loaded. Outside the room there are a
+hundred pigeons, one of which is white. You are taken into the room
+blind-fold. You choose the loaded gun and you shoot the one white
+pigeon. That is the value of the chance."
+
+"But," exclaimed Ricardo, "those pearls were of great value, and I
+have heard at a trial expert evidence given by pearl merchants. All
+agree that the pearls of great value are known; so, when they come
+upon the market----"
+
+"That is true," Hanaud interrupted imperturbably. "But how are they
+known?"
+
+"By their weight," said Mr. Ricardo.
+
+"Exactly," replied Hanaud. "But did you not also hear at this trial of
+yours that pearls can be peeled like an onion? No? It is true. Remove
+a skin, two skins, the weight is altered, the pearl is a trifle
+smaller. It has lost a little of its value, yes--but you can no longer
+identify it as the so-and-so pearl which belonged to this or that
+sultan, was stolen by the vizier, bought by Messrs. Lustre and
+Steinopolis, of Hatton Garden, and subsequently sold to the wealthy
+Mrs. Blumenstein. No, your pearl has vanished altogether. There is a
+new pearl which can be traded." He looked at Ricardo. "Who shall say
+that those pearls are not already in one of the queer little back
+streets of Amsterdam, undergoing their transformation?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo was not persuaded because he would not be. "I have some
+experience in these matters," he said loftily to Hanaud. "I am sure
+that we shall lay our hands upon the criminals. We have never failed."
+
+Hanaud grinned from ear to ear. The only experience which Mr. Ricardo
+had ever had was gained on the shores of Geneva and at Aix under
+Hanaud's tuition. But Hanaud did not argue, and there the matter
+rested.
+
+The days flew by. It was London's play-time. The green and gold of
+early summer deepened and darkened; wondrous warm nights under
+England's pale blue sky, when the streets rang with the joyous feet of
+youth, led in clear dawns and lovely glowing days. Hanaud made
+acquaintance with the wooded reaches of the Thames; Joan Carew sang
+"Louise" at Covent Garden with notable success; and the affair of the
+Semiramis Hotel, in the minds of the few who remembered it, was
+already added to the long list of unfathomed mysteries.
+
+But towards the end of May there occurred a startling development.
+Joan Carew wrote to Mr. Ricardo that she would call upon him in
+the afternoon, and she begged him to secure the presence of Hanaud.
+She came as the clock struck; she was pale and agitated; and in the
+room where Calladine had first told the story of her visit she told
+another story which, to Mr. Ricardo's thinking, was yet more strange
+and--yes--yet more suspicious.
+
+"It has been going on for some time," she began. "I thought of coming
+to you at once. Then I wondered whether, if I waited--oh, you'll never
+believe me!"
+
+"Let us hear!" said Hanaud patiently.
+
+"I began to dream of that room, the two men disguised and masked, the
+still figure in the bed. Night after night! I was terrified to go to
+sleep. I felt the hand upon my mouth. I used to catch myself falling
+asleep, and walk about the room with all the lights up to keep myself
+awake."
+
+"But you couldn't," said Hanaud with a smile. "Only the old can do
+that."
+
+"No, I couldn't," she admitted; "and--oh, my nights were horrible
+until"--she paused and looked at her companions doubtfully--"until one
+night the mask slipped."
+
+"What--?" cried Hanaud, and a note of sternness rang suddenly in his
+voice. "What are you saying?"
+
+With a desperate rush of words, and the colour staining her forehead
+and cheeks, Joan Carew continued:
+
+"It is true. The mask slipped on the face of one of the men--of
+the man who held me. Only a little way; it just left his forehead
+visible--no more."
+
+"Well?" asked Hanaud, and Mr. Ricardo leaned forward, swaying between
+the austerity of criticism and the desire to believe so thrilling a
+revelation.
+
+"I waked up," the girl continued, "in the darkness, and for a moment
+the whole scene remained vividly with me--for just long enough for me
+to fix clearly in my mind the figure of the apache with the white
+forehead showing above the mask."
+
+"When was that?" asked Ricardo.
+
+"A fortnight ago."
+
+"Why didn't you come with your story then?"
+
+"I waited," said Joan. "What I had to tell wasn't yet helpful. I
+thought that another night the mask might slip lower still. Besides,
+I--it is difficult to describe just what I felt. I felt it important
+just to keep that photograph in my mind, not to think about it, not to
+talk about it, not even to look at it too often lest I should begin to
+imagine the rest of the face and find something familiar in the man's
+carriage and shape when there was nothing really familiar to me at
+all. Do you understand that?" she asked, with her eyes fixed in appeal
+on Hanaud's face.
+
+"Yes," replied Hanaud. "I follow your thought."
+
+"I thought there was a chance now--the strangest chance--that the
+truth might be reached. I did not wish to spoil it," and she turned
+eagerly to Ricardo, as if, having persuaded Hanaud, she would now turn
+her batteries on his companion. "My whole point of view was changed. I
+was no longer afraid of falling asleep lest I should dream. I wished
+to dream, but----"
+
+"But you could not," suggested Hanaud.
+
+"No, that is the truth," replied Joan Carew. "Whereas before I was
+anxious to keep awake and yet must sleep from sheer fatigue, now that
+I tried consciously to put myself to sleep I remained awake all
+through the night, and only towards morning, when the light was coming
+through the blinds, dropped off into a heavy, dreamless slumber."
+
+Hanaud nodded.
+
+"It is a very perverse world, Miss Carew, and things go by
+contraries."
+
+Ricardo listened for some note of irony in Hanaud's voice, some look
+of disbelief in his face. But there was neither the one nor the other.
+Hanaud was listening patiently.
+
+"Then came my rehearsals," Joan Carew continued, "and that wonderful
+opera drove everything else out of my head. I had such a chance, if
+only I could make use of it! When I went to bed now, I went with that
+haunting music in my ears--the call of Paris--oh, you must remember
+it. But can you realise what it must mean to a girl who is going to
+sing it for the first time in Covent Garden?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo saw his opportunity. He, the connoisseur, to whom the
+psychology of the green room was as an open book, could answer that
+question.
+
+"It is true, my friend," he informed Hanaud with quiet authority. "The
+great march of events leaves the artist cold. He lives aloof. While
+the tumbrils thunder in the streets he adds a delicate tint to the
+picture he is engaged upon or recalls his triumph in his last great
+part."
+
+"Thank you," said Hanaud gravely. "And now Miss Carew may perhaps
+resume her story."
+
+"It was the very night of my debut," she continued. "I had supper with
+some friends. A great artist. Carmen Valeri, honoured me with her
+presence. I went home excited, and that night I dreamed again."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"This time the chin, the lips, the eyes were visible. There was only a
+black strip across the middle of the face. And I thought--nay, I was
+sure--that if that strip vanished I should know the man."
+
+"And it did vanish?"
+
+"Three nights afterwards."
+
+"And you did know the man?"
+
+The girl's face became troubled. She frowned.
+
+"I knew the face, that was all," she answered. "I was disappointed. I
+had never spoken to the man. I am sure of that still. But somewhere I
+have seen him."
+
+"You don't even remember when?" asked Hanaud.
+
+"No." Joan Carew reflected for a moment with her eyes upon the carpet,
+and then flung up her head with a gesture of despair. "No. I try all
+the time to remember. But it is no good."
+
+Mr. Ricardo could not restrain a movement of indignation. He was being
+played with. The girl with her fantastic story had worked him up to a
+real pitch of excitement only to make a fool of him. All his earlier
+suspicions flowed back into his mind. What if, after all, she was
+implicated in the murder and the theft? What if, with a perverse
+cunning, she had told Hanaud and himself just enough of what she knew,
+just enough of the truth, to persuade them to protect her? What if her
+frank confession of her own overpowering impulse to steal the necklace
+was nothing more than a subtle appeal to the sentimental pity of men,
+an appeal based upon a wider knowledge of men's weaknesses than a girl
+of nineteen or twenty ought to have? Mr. Ricardo cleared his throat
+and sat forward in his chair. He was girding himself for a singularly
+searching interrogatory when Hanaud asked the most irrelevant of
+questions:
+
+"How did you pass the evening of that night when you first dreamed
+complete the face of your assailant?"
+
+Joan Carew reflected. Then her face cleared.
+
+"I know," she exclaimed. "I was at the opera."
+
+"And what was being given?"
+
+"_The Jewels of the Madonna_."
+
+Hanaud nodded his head. To Ricardo it seemed that he had expected
+precisely that answer.
+
+"Now," he continued, "you are sure that you have seen this man?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Very well," said Hanaud. "There is a game you play at children's
+parties--is there not?--animal, vegetable, or mineral, and always you
+get the answer. Let us play that game for a few minutes, you and I."
+
+Joan Carew drew up her chair to the table and sat with her chin
+propped upon her hands and her eyes fixed on Hanaud's face. As he put
+each question she pondered on it and answered. If she answered
+doubtfully he pressed it.
+
+"You crossed on the _Lucania_ from New York?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Picture to yourself the dining-room, the tables. You have the picture
+quite clear?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Was it at breakfast that you saw him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"At luncheon?"
+
+"No."
+
+"At dinner?"
+
+She paused for a moment, summoning before her eyes the travellers at
+the tables.
+
+"No."
+
+"Not in the dining-table at all, then?"
+
+"No."
+
+"In the library, when you were writing letters, did you not one day
+lift your head and see him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"On the promenade deck? Did he pass you when you sat in your
+deck-chair, or did you pass him when he sat in his chair?"
+
+"No."
+
+Step by step Hanaud took her back to New York to her hotel, to
+journeys in the train. Then he carried her to Milan where she had
+studied. It was extraordinary to Ricardo to realise how much Hanaud
+knew of the curriculum of a student aspiring to grand opera. From
+Milan he brought her again to New York, and at the last, with a start
+of joy, she cried: "Yes, it was there."
+
+Hanaud took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead.
+
+"Ouf!" he grunted. "To concentrate the mind on a day like this, it
+makes one hot, I can tell you. Now, Miss Carew, let us hear."
+
+It was at a concert at the house of a Mrs. Starlingshield in Fifth
+Avenue and in the afternoon. Joan Carew sang. She was a stranger to
+New York and very nervous. She saw nothing but a mist of faces whilst
+she sang, but when she had finished the mist cleared, and as she left
+the improvised stage she saw the man. He was standing against the wall
+in a line of men. There was no particular reason why her eyes should
+single him out, except that he was paying no attention to her singing,
+and, indeed, she forgot him altogether afterwards.
+
+"I just happened to see him clearly and distinctly," she said. "He was
+tall, clean-shaven, rather dark, not particularly young--thirty-five
+or so, I should say--a man with a heavy face and beginning to grow
+stout. He moved away whilst I was bowing to the audience, and I
+noticed him afterwards walking about, talking to people."
+
+"Do you remember to whom?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Did he notice you, do you think?"
+
+"I am sure he didn't," the girl replied emphatically. "He never looked
+at the stage where I was singing, and he never looked towards me
+afterwards."
+
+She gave, so far as she could remember, the names of such guests and
+singers as she knew at that party. "And that is all," she said.
+
+"Thank you," said Hanaud. "It is perhaps a good deal. But it is
+perhaps nothing at all."
+
+"You will let me hear from you?" she cried, as she rose to her feet.
+
+"Miss Carew, I am at your service," he returned. She gave him her hand
+timidly and he took it cordially. For Mr. Ricardo she had merely a
+bow, a bow which recognised that he distrusted her and that she had no
+right to be offended. Then she went, and Hanaud smiled across the
+table at Ricardo.
+
+"Yes," he said, "all that you are thinking is true enough. A man who
+slips out of society to indulge a passion for a drug in greater peace,
+a girl who, on her own confession, tried to steal, and, to crown all,
+this fantastic story. It is natural to disbelieve every word of it.
+But we disbelieved before, when we left Calladine's lodging in the
+Adelphi, and we were wrong. Let us be warned."
+
+"You have an idea?" exclaimed Ricardo.
+
+"Perhaps!" said Hanaud. And he looked down the theatre column of the
+_Times_. "Let us distract ourselves by going to the theatre."
+
+"You are the most irritating man!" Mr. Ricardo broke out impulsively.
+"If I had to paint your portrait, I should paint you with your finger
+against the side of your nose, saying mysteriously: '_I_ know,' when
+you know nothing at all."
+
+Hanaud made a schoolboy's grimace. "We will go and sit in your box at
+the opera to-night," he said, "and you shall explain to me all through
+the beautiful music the theory of the tonic sol-fa."
+
+They reached Covent Garden before the curtain rose. Mr. Ricardo's box
+was on the lowest tier and next to the omnibus box.
+
+"We are near the stage," said Hanaud, as he took his seat in the
+corner and so arranged the curtain that he could see and yet was
+hidden from view. "I like that."
+
+The theatre was full; stalls and boxes shimmered with jewels and
+satin, and all that was famous that season for beauty and distinction
+had made its tryst there that night.
+
+"Yes, this is wonderful," said Hanaud. "What opera do they play?" He
+glanced at his programme and cried, with a little start of surprise:
+"We are in luck. It is _The Jewels of the Madonna_."
+
+"Do you believe in omens?" Mr. Ricardo asked coldly. He had not yet
+recovered from his rebuff of the afternoon.
+
+"No, but I believe that Carmen Valeri is at her best in this part,"
+said Hanaud.
+
+Mr. Ricardo belonged to that body of critics which must needs spoil
+your enjoyment by comparisons and recollections of other great
+artists. He was at a disadvantage certainly to-night, for the opera
+was new. But he did his best. He imagined others in the part, and when
+the great scene came at the end of the second act, and Carmen Valeri,
+on obtaining from her lover the jewels stolen from the sacred image,
+gave such a display of passion as fairly enthralled that audience, Mr.
+Ricardo sighed quietly and patiently.
+
+"How Calve would have brought out the psychological value of that
+scene!" he murmured; and he was quite vexed with Hanaud, who sat with
+his opera glasses held to his eyes, and every sense apparently
+concentrated on the stage. The curtains rose and rose again when the
+act was concluded, and still Hanaud sat motionless as the Sphynx,
+staring through his glasses.
+
+"That is all," said Ricardo when the curtains fell for the fifth time.
+
+"They will come out," said Hanaud. "Wait!" And from between the
+curtains Carmen Valeri was led out into the full glare of the
+footlights with the panoply of jewels flashing on her breast. Then at
+last Hanaud put down his glasses and turned to Ricardo with a look of
+exultation and genuine delight upon his face which filled that
+season-worn dilettante with envy.
+
+"What a night!" said Hanaud. "What a wonderful night!" And he
+applauded until he split his gloves. At the end of the opera he cried:
+"We will go and take supper at the Semiramis. Yes, my friend, we will
+finish our evening like gallant gentlemen. Come! Let us not think of
+the morning." And boisterously he slapped Ricardo in the small of the
+back.
+
+In spite of his boast, however, Hanaud hardly touched his supper, and
+he played with, rather than drank, his brandy and soda. He had a
+little table to which he was accustomed beside a glass screen in the
+depths of the room, and he sat with his back to the wall watching the
+groups which poured in. Suddenly his face lighted up.
+
+"Here is Carmen Valeri!" he cried. "Once more we are in luck. Is it
+not that she is beautiful?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo turned languidly about in his chair and put up his
+eyeglass.
+
+"So, so," he said.
+
+"Ah!" returned Hanaud. "Then her companion will interest you still
+more. For he is the man who murdered Mrs. Blumenstein."
+
+Mr. Ricardo jumped so that his eyeglass fell down and tinkled on its
+cord against the buttons of his waistcoat.
+
+"What!" he exclaimed. "It's impossible!" He looked again. "Certainly
+the man fits Joan Carew's description. But--" He turned back to Hanaud
+utterly astounded. And as he looked at the Frenchman all his earlier
+recollections of him, of his swift deductions, of the subtle
+imagination which his heavy body so well concealed, crowded in upon
+Ricardo and convinced him.
+
+"How long have you known?" he asked in a whisper of awe.
+
+"Since ten o'clock to-night."
+
+"But you will have to find the necklace before you can prove it."
+
+"The necklace!" said Hanaud carelessly. "That is already found."
+
+Mr. Ricardo had been longing for a thrill. He had it now. He felt it
+in his very spine.
+
+"It's found?" he said in a startled whisper.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Ricardo turned again, with as much indifference as he could assume,
+towards the couple who were settling down at their table, the man with
+a surly indifference, Carmen Valeri with the radiance of a woman who
+has just achieved a triumph and is now free to enjoy the fruits of it.
+Confusedly, recollections returned to Ricardo of questions put that
+afternoon by Hanaud to Joan Carew--subtle questions into which the
+name of Carmen Valeri was continually entering. She was a woman of
+thirty, certainly beautiful, with a clear, pale face and eyes like the
+night.
+
+"Then she is implicated too!" he said. What a change for her, he
+thought, from the stage of Covent Garden to the felon's cell, from the
+gay supper-room of the Semiramis, with its bright frocks and its babel
+of laughter, to the silence and the ignominious garb of the workrooms
+in Aylesbury Prison!
+
+"She!" exclaimed Hanaud; and in his passion for the contrasts of drama
+Ricardo was almost disappointed. "She has nothing whatever to do with
+it. She knows nothing. Andre Favart there--yes. But Carmen Valeri!
+She's as stupid as an owl, and loves him beyond words. Do you want to
+know how stupid she is? You shall know. I asked Mr. Clements, the
+director of the opera house, to take supper with us, and here he is."
+
+Hanaud stood up and shook hands with the director. He was of the world
+of business rather than of art, and long experience of the ways of
+tenors and prima-donnas had given him a good-humoured cynicism.
+
+"They are spoilt children, all tantrums and vanity," he said, "and
+they would ruin you to keep a rival out of the theatre."
+
+He told them anecdote upon anecdote.
+
+"And Carmen Valeri," Hanaud asked in a pause; "is she troublesome this
+season?"
+
+"Has been," replied Clements dryly. "At present she is playing at
+being good. But she gave me a turn some weeks ago." He turned to
+Ricardo. "Superstition's her trouble, and Andre Favart knows it. She
+left him behind in America this spring."
+
+"America!" suddenly cried Ricardo; so suddenly that Clements looked at
+him in surprise.
+
+"She was singing in New York, of course, during the winter," he
+returned. "Well, she left him behind, and I was shaking hands with
+myself when he began to deal the cards over there. She came to me in a
+panic. She had just had a cable. She couldn't sing on Friday night.
+There was a black knave next to the nine of diamonds. She wouldn't
+sing for worlds. And it was the first night of _The Jewels of the
+Madonna!_ Imagine the fix I was in!"
+
+"What did you do?" asked Ricardo.
+
+"The only thing there was to do," replied Clements with a shrug of the
+shoulders. "I cabled Favart some money and he dealt the cards again.
+She came to me beaming. Oh, she had been so distressed to put me in
+the cart! But what could she do? Now there was a red queen next to the
+ace of hearts, so she could sing without a scruple so long, of course,
+as she didn't pass a funeral on the way down to the opera house.
+Luckily she didn't. But my money brought Favart over here, and now I'm
+living on a volcano. For he's the greatest scoundrel unhung. He never
+has a farthing, however much she gives him; he's a blackmailer, he's a
+swindler, he has no manners and no graces, he looks like a butcher and
+treats her as if she were dirt, he never goes near the opera except
+when she is singing in this part, and she worships the ground he walks
+on. Well, I suppose it's time to go."
+
+The lights had been turned off, the great room was emptying. Mr.
+Ricardo and his friends rose to go, but at the door Hanaud detained
+Mr. Clements, and they talked together alone for some little while,
+greatly to Mr. Ricardo's annoyance. Hanaud's good humour, however,
+when he rejoined his friend, was enough for two.
+
+"I apologise, my friend, with my hand on my heart. But it was for your
+sake that I stayed behind. You have a meretricious taste for melodrama
+which I deeply deplore, but which I mean to gratify. I ought to leave
+for Paris to-morrow, but I shall not. I shall stay until Thursday."
+And he skipped upon the pavement as they walked home to Grosvenor
+Square.
+
+Mr. Ricardo bubbled with questions, but he knew his man. He would get
+no answer to any one of them to-night. So he worked out the problem
+for himself as he lay awake in his bed, and he came down to breakfast
+next morning fatigued but triumphant. Hanaud was already chipping off
+the top of his egg at the table.
+
+"So I see you have found it all out, my friend," he said.
+
+"Not all," replied Ricardo modestly, "and you will not mind, I am
+sure, if I follow the usual custom and wish you a good morning."
+
+"Not at all," said Hanaud. "I am all for good manners myself."
+
+He dipped his spoon into his egg.
+
+"But I am longing to hear the line of your reasoning."
+
+Mr. Ricardo did not need much pressing.
+
+"Joan Carew saw Andre Favart at Mrs. Starlingshield's party, and saw
+him with Carmen Valeri. For Carmen Valeri was there. I remember that
+you asked Joan for the names of the artists who sang, and Carmen
+Valeri was amongst them."
+
+Hanaud nodded his head.
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"No doubt Joan Carew noticed Carmen Valeri particularly, and so took
+unconsciously into her mind an impression of the man who was with her,
+Andre Favart--of his build, of his walk, of his type."
+
+Again Hanaud agreed.
+
+"She forgets the man altogether, but the picture remains latent in her
+mind--an undeveloped film."
+
+Hanaud looked up in surprise, and the surprise flattered Mr. Ricardo.
+Not for nothing had he tossed about in his bed for the greater part of
+the night.
+
+"Then came the tragic night at the Semiramis. She does not consciously
+recognise her assailant, but she dreams the scene again and again, and
+by a process of unconscious cerebration the figure of the man becomes
+familiar. Finally she makes her debut, is entertained at supper
+afterwards, and meets once more Carmen Valeri."
+
+"Yes, for the first time since Mrs. Starlingshield's party,"
+interjected Hanaud.
+
+"She dreams again, she remembers asleep more than she remembers when
+awake. The presence of Carmen Valeri at her supper-party has its
+effect. By a process of association, she recalls Favart, and the mask
+slips on the face of her assailant. Some days later she goes to the
+opera. She hears Carmen Valeri sing in _The Jewels of the Madonna_. No
+doubt the passion of her acting, which I am more prepared to
+acknowledge this morning than I was last night, affects Joan Carew
+powerfully, emotionally. She goes to bed with her head full of Carmen
+Valeri, and she dreams not of Carmen Valeri, but of the man who is
+unconsciously associated with Carmen Valeri in her thoughts. The mask
+vanishes altogether. She sees her assailant now, has his portrait
+limned in her mind, would know him if she met him in the street,
+though she does not know by what means she identified him."
+
+"Yes," said Hanaud. "It is curious the brain working while the body
+sleeps, the dream revealing what thought cannot recall."
+
+Mr. Ricardo was delighted. He was taken seriously.
+
+"But of course," he said, "I could not have worked the problem out but
+for you. You knew of Andre Favart and the kind of man he was."
+
+Hanaud laughed.
+
+"Yes. That is always my one little advantage. I know all the
+cosmopolitan blackguards of Europe." His laughter ceased suddenly, and
+he brought his clenched fist heavily down upon the table. "Here is one
+of them who will be very well out of the world, my friend," he said
+very quietly, but there was a look of force in his face and a hard
+light in his eyes which made Mr. Ricardo shiver.
+
+For a few moments there was silence. Then Ricardo asked: "But have you
+evidence enough?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Your two chief witnesses, Calladine and Joan Carew--you said it
+yourself--there are facts to discredit them. Will they be believed?"
+
+"But they won't appear in the case at all," Hanaud said. "Wait, wait!"
+and once more he smiled. "By the way, what is the number of
+Calladine's house?"
+
+Ricardo gave it, and Hanaud therefore wrote a letter. "It is all for
+your sake, my friend," he said with a chuckle.
+
+"Nonsense," said Ricardo. "You have the spirit of the theatre in your
+bones."
+
+"Well, I shall not deny it," said Hanaud, and he sent out the letter
+to the nearest pillar-box.
+
+Mr. Ricardo waited in a fever of impatience until Thursday came. At
+breakfast Hanaud would talk of nothing but the news of the day. At
+luncheon he was no better. The affair of the Semiramis Hotel seemed a
+thousand miles from any of his thoughts. But at five o'clock he said
+as he drank his tea:
+
+"You know, of course, that we go to the opera to-night?"
+
+"Yes. Do we?"
+
+"Yes. Your young friend Calladine, by the way, will join us in your
+box."
+
+"That is very kind of him, I am sure," said Mr. Ricardo.
+
+The two men arrived before the rising of the curtain, and in the
+crowded lobby a stranger spoke a few words to Hanaud, but what he said
+Ricardo could not hear. They took their seats in the box, and Hanaud
+looked at his programme.
+
+"Ah! It is _Il Ballo de Maschera_ to-night. We always seem to hit upon
+something appropriate, don't we?"
+
+Then he raised his eyebrows.
+
+"Oh-o! Do you see that our pretty young friend, Joan Carew, is singing
+in the role of the page? It is a showy part. There is a particular
+melody with a long-sustained trill in it, as far as I remember."
+
+Mr. Ricardo was not deceived by Hanaud's apparent ignorance of the
+opera to be given that night and of the part Joan Carew was to take.
+He was, therefore, not surprised when Hanaud added:
+
+"By the way, I should let Calladine find it all out for himself."
+
+Mr. Ricardo nodded sagely.
+
+"Yes. That is wise. I had thought of it myself." But he had
+done nothing of the kind. He was only aware that the elaborate
+stage-management in which Hanaud delighted was working out to the
+desired climax, whatever that climax might be. Calladine entered the
+box a few minutes later and shook hands with them awkwardly.
+
+"It was kind of you to invite me," he said and, very ill at ease, he
+took a seat between them and concentrated his attention on the house
+as it filled up.
+
+"There's the overture," said Hanaud. The curtains divided and were
+festooned on either side of the stage. The singers came on in their
+turn; the page appeared to a burst of delicate applause (Joan Carew
+had made a small name for herself that season), and with a stifled cry
+Calladine shot back in the box as if he had been struck. Even then Mr.
+Ricardo did not understand. He only realised that Joan Carew was
+looking extraordinarily trim and smart in her boy's dress. He had to
+look from his programme to the stage and back again several times
+before the reason of Calladine's exclamation dawned on him. When it
+did, he was horrified. Hanaud, in his craving for dramatic effects,
+must have lost his head altogether. Joan Carew was wearing, from the
+ribbon in her hair to the scarlet heels of her buckled satin shoes,
+the same dress as she had worn on the tragic night at the Semiramis
+Hotel. He leaned forward in his agitation to Hanaud.
+
+"You must be mad. Suppose Favart is in the theatre and sees her. He'll
+be over on the Continent by one in the morning."
+
+"No, he won't," replied Hanaud. "For one thing, he never comes to
+Covent Garden unless one opera, with Carmen Valeri in the chief part,
+is being played, as you heard the other night at supper. For a second
+thing, he isn't in the house. I know where he is. He is gambling in
+Dean Street, Soho. For a third thing, my friend, he couldn't leave by
+the nine o'clock train for the Continent if he wanted to. Arrangements
+have been made. For a fourth thing, he wouldn't wish to. He has really
+remarkable reasons for desiring to stay in London. But he will come to
+the theatre later. Clements will send him an urgent message, with the
+result that he will go straight to Clements' office. Meanwhile, we can
+enjoy ourselves, eh?"
+
+Never was the difference between the amateur dilettante and the
+genuine professional more clearly exhibited than by the behaviour of
+the two men during the rest of the performance. Mr. Ricardo might have
+been sitting on a coal fire from his jumps and twistings; Hanaud
+stolidly enjoyed the music, and when Joan Carew sang her famous solo
+his hands clamoured for an encore louder than anyone's in the boxes.
+Certainly, whether excitement was keeping her up or no, Joan Carew had
+never sung better in her life. Her voice was clear and fresh as a
+bird's--a bird with a soul inspiring its song. Even Calladine drew his
+chair forward again and sat with his eyes fixed upon the stage and
+quite carried out of himself. He drew a deep breath at the end.
+
+"She is wonderful," he said, like a man waking up.
+
+"She is very good," replied Mr. Ricardo, correcting Calladine's
+transports.
+
+"We will go round to the back of the stage," said Hanaud.
+
+They passed through the iron door and across the stage to a long
+corridor with a row of doors on one side. There were two or three men
+standing about in evening dress, as if waiting for friends in the
+dressing-rooms. At the third door Hanaud stopped and knocked. The door
+was opened by Joan Carew, still dressed in her green and gold. Her
+face was troubled, her eyes afraid.
+
+"Courage, little one," said Hanaud, and he slipped past her into the
+room. "It is as well that my ugly, familiar face should not be seen
+too soon."
+
+The door closed and one of the strangers loitered along the corridor
+and spoke to a call-boy. The call-boy ran off. For five minutes more
+Mr. Ricardo waited with a beating heart. He had the joy of a man in
+the centre of things. All those people driving homewards in their
+motor-cars along the Strand--how he pitied them! Then, at the end of
+the corridor, he saw Clements and Andre Favart. They approached,
+discussing the possibility of Carmen Valeri's appearance in London
+opera during the next season.
+
+"We have to look ahead, my dear friend," said Clements, "and though I
+should be extremely sorry----"
+
+At that moment they were exactly opposite Joan Carew's door. It
+opened, she came out; with a nervous movement she shut the door behind
+her. At the sound Andre Favart turned, and he saw drawn up against the
+panels of the door, with a look of terror in her face, the same gay
+figure which had interrupted him in Mrs. Blumenstein's bedroom. There
+was no need for Joan to act. In the presence of this man her fear was
+as real as it had been on the night of the Semiramis ball. She
+trembled from head to foot. Her eyes closed; she seemed about to
+swoon.
+
+Favart stared and uttered an oath. His face turned white; he staggered
+back as if he had seen a ghost. Then he made a wild dash along the
+corridor, and was seized and held by two of the men in evening dress.
+Favart recovered his wits. He ceased to struggle.
+
+"What does this outrage mean?" he asked, and one of the men drew a
+warrant and notebook from his pocket.
+
+"You are arrested for the murder of Mrs. Blumenstein in the Semiramis
+Hotel," he said, "and I have to warn you that anything you may say
+will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you."
+
+"Preposterous!" exclaimed Favart. "There's a mistake. We will go along
+to the police and put it right. Where's your evidence against me?"
+
+Hanaud stepped out of the doorway of the dressing-room.
+
+"In the property-room of the theatre," he said.
+
+At the sight of him Favart uttered a violent cry of rage. "You are
+here, too, are you?" he screamed, and he sprang at Hanaud's throat.
+Hanaud stepped lightly aside. Favart was borne down to the ground, and
+when he stood up again the handcuffs were on his wrists.
+
+Favart was led away, and Hanaud turned to Mr. Ricardo and Clements.
+
+"Let us go to the property-room," he said. They passed along the
+corridor, and Ricardo noticed that Calladine was no longer with them.
+He turned and saw him standing outside Joan Carew's dressing-room.
+
+"He would like to come, of course," said Ricardo.
+
+"Would he?" asked Hanaud. "Then why doesn't he? He's quite grown up,
+you know," and he slipped his arm through Ricardo's and led him back
+across the stage. In the property-room there was already a detective
+in plain clothes. Mr. Ricardo had still not as yet guessed the truth.
+
+"What is it you really want, sir?" the property-master asked of the
+director.
+
+"Only the jewels of the Madonna," Hanaud answered.
+
+The property-master unlocked a cupboard and took from it the sparkling
+cuirass. Hanaud pointed to it, and there, lost amongst the huge
+glittering stones of paste and false pearls, Mrs. Blumenstein's
+necklace was entwined.
+
+"Then that is why Favart came always to Covent Garden when _The Jewels
+of the Madonna_ was being performed!" exclaimed Ricardo.
+
+Hanaud nodded.
+
+"He came to watch over his treasure."
+
+Ricardo was piecing together the sections of the puzzle.
+
+"No doubt he knew of the necklace in America. No doubt he followed it
+to England."
+
+Hanaud agreed.
+
+"Mrs. Blumenstein's jewels were quite famous in New York."
+
+"But to hide them here!" cried Mr. Clements. "He must have been mad."
+
+"Why?" asked Hanaud. "Can you imagine a safer hiding-place? Who is
+going to burgle the property-room of Covent Garden? Who is going to
+look for a priceless string of pearls amongst the stage jewels of an
+opera house?"
+
+"You did," said Mr. Ricardo.
+
+"I?" replied Hanaud, shrugging his shoulders. "Joan Carew's dreams led
+me to Andre Favart. The first time we came here and saw the pearls of
+the Madonna, I was on the look-out, naturally. I noticed Favart at the
+back of the stalls. But it was a stroke of luck that I noticed those
+pearls through my opera glasses."
+
+"At the end of the second act?" cried Ricardo suddenly. "I remember
+now."
+
+"Yes," replied Hanaud. "But for that second act the pearls would have
+stayed comfortably here all through the season. Carmen Valeri--a fool
+as I told you--would have tossed them about in her dressing-room
+without a notion of their value, and at the end of July, when the
+murder at the Semiramis Hotel had been forgotten, Favart would have
+taken them to Amsterdam and made his bargain."
+
+"Shall we go?"
+
+They left the theatre together and walked down to the grill-room of
+the Semiramis. But as Hanaud looked through the glass door he drew
+back.
+
+"We will not go in, I think, eh?"
+
+"Why?" asked Ricardo.
+
+Hanaud pointed to a table. Calladine and Joan Carew were seated at it
+taking their supper.
+
+"Perhaps," said Hanaud with a smile, "perhaps, my friend--what? Who
+shall say that the rooms in the Adelphi will not be given up?"
+
+They turned away from the hotel. But Hanaud was right, and before the
+season was over Mr. Ricardo had to put his hand in his pocket for a
+wedding present.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel, by
+A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason
+
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