ndon where she was staying. Exactly what
happened had been related to the enterprising reporter by Lady Norah
herself.

"My dressing-case containing all my jewelry was locked and on a table
near my bed," she said. "I went out of the room soon after half-past
ten this morning, my maid, who has been with me eight years, remaining
in the room adjoining to put some of my things away--the door between
the rooms remained ajar, she says. Whether or not the jewel-case was
still there when she herself went out to lunch at about one o'clock
she cannot say, as she did not go into my bedroom again. She shut the
door behind her when she went out of the sitting-room into the
corridor, and locked it. I first missed the jewel-case when I returned
to my room at about a quarter past three in the afternoon. The
contents are worth twenty thousand pounds. It seems hardly possible
that anybody could have entered the bedroom unheard while my maid was
in the sitting-room with the door between the two rooms ajar, so my
belief is that it must have been stolen between the time she went to
lunch and the time I returned. I am offering a big reward for the
return of the jewel-case with its contents intact."

The paragraph interested me because of the hotel where the robbery--if
robbery it was--had taken place, and the fact that I had happened to
be in that hotel on the very day of the robbery!

"Ah, well," I remember saying to myself, "if women will be so careless
as to leave valuable property like that unguarded they must expect to
take the consequences."

Then my thoughts wandered from the newspaper, and I found myself
wondering what Lady Norah Kendrew might be like--if she were young or
old, plain or pretty, married or unmarried. And I suppose naturally
that train of thought brought Lola once more into my imagination. I
had, remember, to all intents, hardly seen her, and she had spoken to
me only twice. Yet her personality literally obsessed me. That I was
foolish to let it I fully realized. But how many of us can completely
master our moods, our impulses and our emotions on all occasions?

The weather at sea remained fine, yet I found that long, slow voyage
most tedious. I had nothing to do but read, for I could not disregard
Mr. Rayne's strict instructions that I must on no account let the
suit-case out of my sight, and in consequence I could not leave my
cabin.

I remember looking down at the suit-case protruding from under the
berth a