extreme danger had occurred, and it
became necessary for us all to keep apart and disperse.

I got into the car and drove out of the garage again, not knowing how
to act. In Oxford Street, at that hour silent and deserted, I drew up,
and, taking a piece of paper from my notebook, I wrote down the
figures "99," and, placing it in a small envelope which I fortunately
found in my wallet, I addressed it to Madame Duperre, and left it with
the night porter at the Carlton, urging him to give it to her
immediately on her return.

Then I drove to the Strand telegraph office, and thence dispatched a
well-guarded message to Lola at Scarborough, telling her to meet me
without fail at the Station Hotel at Hull that afternoon and bring her
passport with her.

This she did, and when we met I told her of her father's unwelcome
visitor, the man Gori, and that he feared the police. Both of us
decided to pose as runaway lovers and leave the country, which we
did, I having succeeded in obtaining two berths upon a Wilson steamer
crossing to Bergen.

It was not until a week later that we read in the English newspapers
the sensation caused by the arrest of Mr. Rudolph Rayne of Overstow
Hall, Yorkshire, upon an extradition warrant applied for by the Danish
Government. The prisoner had been brought up at Bow Street, and, after
certain mysterious evidence had been given, he had been remanded.

In due course Rayne was conveyed to Copenhagen, where he was tried for
complicity in a great bank fraud on the Danish National Bank, and sent
to twenty years' penal servitude. Hence to the British public Rayne's
actual activities were never revealed.

I can only suppose that my warning to Madame had its effect, and that
she, her husband and all her friends took flight.

Whether they obtained the money they sought as ransom for old Sir
Joseph Bethmeyer I know not. Probably they did, for nothing appeared
in the papers concerning his disappearance.

Eventually I succeeded in getting Lola safely to her aunt in Paris,
where, though her father's downfall is still a great blow to her, she
is living in peace under another name, while I have found honest
employment in the office of a French shipping company in Bordeaux.

Lola is my fiancee, and we are to be married next June. One subject,
however, we have mutually agreed never to mention, namely, the evil
machinations and ingenious activities of her father, the man who had,
for some mysterious reason of