"What is it, Annette?" she asked. "Surely it is not mid-day yet?
Why do you disturb me?"

"It is barely nine o'clock, Mademoiselle, but Monsieur
Bellamy--Mademoiselle told me that she wished to receive him whenever
he came. He is in the boudoir now, and very impatient."

"Did he send any message?"

"Only that his business was of the most urgent," the maid replied.

Louise sighed,--she was really very sleepy. Then, as the thoughts
began to crowd into her brain, she began also to remember. Some
part of the excitement of a few hours ago returned.

"My bath, Annette, and a dressing-gown," she ordered. "Tell Monsieur
Bellamy that I hurry. I will be with him in twenty minutes."

To Bellamy, the twenty minutes were minutes of purgatory. She came
at last, however, fresh and eager; her hair tied up with ribbon, she
herself clad in a pink dressing-gown and pink slippers.

"David!" she cried,--"my dear David--!"

Then she broke off.

"What is it?" she asked, in a different tone.

He showed her the headlines of the newspaper he was carrying.

"Tragedy!" he answered hoarsely. "Von Behrling was true, after
all,--at least, it seems so."

"What has happened?" she demanded.

Bellamy pointed once more to the newspaper.

"He was murdered last night, within fifty yards of the place of our
rendezvous."

A little exclamation broke from Louise's lips. She sat down
suddenly. The color called into her cheeks by the exercise of her
bath was rapidly fading away.

"David," she murmured, "is this true?"

"It is indeed," Bellamy assured her. "Not only that, but there is
no mention of his pocket-book in the account of his murder. It must
have been engineered by Streuss and the others, and they have got
away with the pocket-book and the money."

"What can we do?" she asked.

"There is nothing to be done," Bellamy declared calmly. "We are
defeated. The thing is quite apparent. Von Behrling never
succeeded, after all, in shaking off the espionage of the men who
were watching him. They tracked him to our rendezvous, they waited
about while I met him. Afterwards, he had to pass along a narrow
passage. It was there that he was found murdered."

"But, David, I don't understand! Why did they wait until after he
had seen you? How did they know that he had not parted with the
paper in the restaurant? To all intents and purposes he ought to
have done so."

"I cannot understand that myself," Bellamy admitted. "I