.
I love the Riviera," she said. "Do you know it?"

"Yes," I replied. "I've been there once or twice."

"The Villa Jaumont is out on the road to Nice, on the left. Perhaps if
you happen to be there this winter you will call. I shall be most
delighted to see you."

When presently we were back in the hotel and I had gone to my room, I
realized that I had made rather good progress. I had ingratiated
myself with her, and she had grown very confidential, inasmuch as I
was already able to judge that she rather despised her elderly and
parsimonious husband, and that she preferred to lead her own
untrammelled life.

But what was the real object of my mission?

A few days later I received a scribbled note signed "Rudolph" to say
that a friend of his, an Italian named Giulio Ansaldi, was arriving at
the hotel and would meet me in strictest secrecy. I was to leave my
bedroom door unlocked at midnight, when he would enter unannounced.
Enclosed was half one of Duperre's visiting-cards torn across in a
jagged manner.

"Your visitor will present to you the missing half of the enclosed
card as credential," he wrote. "If the two pieces fit, then trust him
implicitly and act according to his instructions which he will convey
from me."

I turned over the portion of the torn visiting-card, wondering what
fresh instructions I was to receive in such strict secrecy.

I thought of Lola and wondered whether she had returned home from a
visit she was paying in Devonshire, and whether, by her watchfulness,
she had gained any inkling of the nature of this latest plot.

Little Lady Lydbrook had now become my constant companion. Her friend,
Elsie Wallis, had apparently become on friendly terms with a tall,
slim, dark-haired young man who often took her out in his car, while
on several occasions Lady Lydbrook had accepted my invitation for an
afternoon run and tea somewhere. The one fact that I did not like was
that a quiet, middle-aged man seemed always to be watching our
movements, for whether we chatted together in the lounge, went out
motoring, walking on the promenade, or dancing, he always appeared
somewhere in the vicinity. But on the day I received Rayne's note he
had paid his bill and left the hotel, a fact by which my mind was much
relieved.

That day I motored my pretty little friend over to Brighton, where we
lunched at the Metropole and arrived back for tea. Her husband, she
said, had that morning telegraphed to her from Ha