well out of sight from the hallway until the door had closed
behind her and her companion and he was again alone with the
superintendent.

"Now for it! as they used to say in the old melodramas," he
laughed, stepping sharply to a wardrobe and producing, first, a
broad-brimmed cavalry hat, which he immediately put on, and then a
pair of bright steel handcuffs. "We may have use for this very
effective type of wristlets, Mr. Narkom; so it's well to go
prepared for emergencies. Now then, off with you while I lock the
door. That's the way to the staircase. Nip down it to the American
bar. There's a passage from that leading out to the Embankment
Gardens. A taxi from there will whisk us along Savoy Street,
across the Strand and up Wellington Street to Tavistock in less
than no time; so we may look to be with Lennard inside of another
ten minutes."

"Righto!" gave back the superintendent. "And I can get rid of this
dashed rig as soon as we're in the limousine. But, I say; any ideas,
old chap--eh?"

"Yes, two or three. One of them is that this is going to be one
of the simplest cases I ever tackled. Lay you a sovereign to a
sixpence, Mr. Narkom, that I solve the riddle of that glass-room
before they ring up the curtain of any theatre in London to-night.
What's that? Lying? No, certainly not. There's been no lying in the
matter at all; it isn't a case of that sort. The pawnbroker did
not lie; the porter who says he showed the boy into the room did
not lie; and the two women who looked into it and saw nothing but
an empty room did not lie either. The only thing that _did_ lie was a
vase of pink roses--a bunch of natural Ananiases that tried to
make people believe that they had been blooming and keeping fresh
ever since last August!"

"Good Lord! you don't surely think that that Loti chap----"

"Gently, gently, my friend; don't let yourself get excited. Besides,
I _may_ be all at sea, for all my cocksureness. I don't think I am,
but--one never knows. I'll tell you one thing, however: The man
with whom Madame Loti eloped had, for the purpose of carrying on the
intrigue, enlisted as a student under her husband, and gulled the
poor fool by pretending that he wished to learn waxwork making, when
his one desire was to make love to the man's worthless wife. When
they eloped, and Loti knew for the first time what a dupe he had
been, he publicly swore, in the open room of the Cafe Royal, that he
would never rest until he had run t