ile in one of the closely grouped towns along the coast: Nice,
Cannes, Mentone, Monte Carlo--it mattered little which one it might be.
If she was in any of these, I should eventually find her, and I haunted
the dazzling whiteness of the Boulevard des Anglais, with a buoyant
pulse beat of expectancy. At any moment I might again catch a glimpse of
her in a shop or cafe, and if I did, I meant that it should be more than
a glimpse, and that she should not again escape until I had at least
seen her face. I spent most of my time wondering what she was like.
Would the full view bring a greater sense of fascination or the pang of
disillusionment? It might be that when I saw her I should find myself
harshly awakened from a dream, but at all events, there would be
certainty, and an end to the tantalizing sense of following a
will-o'-the-wisp which constantly eluded. She gave me one very anxious
afternoon. I had been taking a horseback ride near town when I came upon
a wrecked and empty automobile. The physical facts showed clearly what
had happened. The car had evidently skidded while speeding, in an effort
to turn out for some passing vehicle, and had tried to climb a stone
wall. There must have been a very ugly moment, as the twisted front
wheels and crumpled hood attested. What frightened me was the fact that
it was a large, blue touring car of the same sort, if not identical,
with the one described by Flannery. I was commencing my ride when I saw
it, but I turned back at once to town and began an investigation. I
finally learned that the chauffeur for a local garage had taken a party
of his own friends for a joy ride, and that the expedition had come to
summary grief. My effort to trace the history of that particular car for
a week or two past resulted in nothing. I was informed that it had been
hired many times and to many unrecorded persons, usually for the
afternoon or day.

Several nights later I was sitting at a roulette table in Monte Carlo's
_Cercle des Etrangers_. I had fallen in with a coterie of chance
acquaintances, who for some reason held faith in my luck and insisted
upon my crowding into a vacant place at the wheel. My function was to
submit to the issue of fortune not only my own stack of _louis d'or_,
but also the considerable purse that they had raised among them.

My table was near the center of the main _salle_, and at my elbows
crowded the little party of men and women whose interests hung upon my
succes