the latter's hands before six in the morning, when he was
engaged to hand it over to a certain manufacturer sailing for Europe on
an early steamer.

Five hours!

Had Mr. Van Broecklyn a suggestion to offer? No, he was as much at sea
as the rest.

Simultaneously look crossed look. Blankness was on every face.

"Let us call the ladies," suggested one.

It was done, and however great the tension had been before, it was even
greater when Miss Digby stepped upon the scene. But she was not a woman
to be shaken from her poise even by a crisis of this importance. When
the dilemma had been presented to her and the full situation grasped,
she looked first at Mr. Cornell and then at Mr. Spielhagen, and quietly
said:

"There is but one explanation possible of this matter. Mr. Spielhagen
will excuse me, but he is evidently mistaken in thinking that he saw the
lost page among the rest. The condition into which he was thrown by the
unaccustomed drug he had drank, made him liable to hallucinations. I
have not the least doubt he thought he had been studying the formula
at the time he dropped off to sleep. I have every confidence in
the gentleman's candour. But so have I in that of Mr. Cornell," she
supplemented, with a smile.

An exclamation from Mr. Van Broecklyn and a subdued murmur from all but
Mr. Spielhagen testified to the effect of this suggestion, and there
is no saying what might have been the result if Mr. Cornell had not
hurriedly put in this extraordinary and most unexpected protest:

"Miss Digby has my gratitude," said he, "for a confidence which I hope
to prove to be deserved. But I must say this for Mr. Spielhagen. He was
correct in stating that he was engaged in looking over his formula when
I stepped into his presence with the glass of cordial. If you were not
in a position to see the hurried way in which his hand instinctively
spread itself over the page he was reading, I was; and if that does not
seem conclusive to you, then I feel bound to state that in unconsciously
following this movement of his, I plainly saw the number written on the
top of the page, and that number was--13."

A loud exclamation, this time from Spielhagen himself, announced his
gratitude and corresponding change of attitude toward the speaker.

"Wherever that damned page has gone," he protested, advancing towards
Cornell with outstretched hand, "you have nothing to do with its
disappearance."

Instantly all constraint fled, and eve