e two
ladies; for Miss Ross as well as her niece had made me feel that my
duty as well as my pleasure lay in those daily reports or interviews,
held sometimes in the dainty rooms upon the avenue, and now and then
in some convenient spot within the Fair City.

At our first meeting, at the north end of the grounds, I did not
consider the encounter with the Turks in her behalf a meeting, for I
scarcely had a full look at her face, while she did not so much as
glance at mine; but at the other I had appeared before her in _propria
persona_, and my subsequent calls at the house upon the avenue had
been the same. On the other hand, whenever I went about the Exposition
grounds or beyond them in my capacity of 'sleuth,' I went in some
manner of disguise.

During the first week of my acquaintance with Miss Jenrys I had
encountered Monsieur Voisin twice; first upon the occasion of our
introduction, and afterward at Miss Jenrys' door; and during the first
week of our guard's confinement in the hospital I had narrowly escaped
him twice, going to or coming from the same place. As the days went on
I found that Monsieur Voisin's attentions were growing more marked,
and his visits on the avenue almost constant.

I did not wish to become too well known to Monsieur Voisin, who was a
keen observer, for I was posing for him as a 'New York newspaper man,'
and so at last I was forced to tell the two ladies that some, if not
all, of my calls, for a time at least, must be made at unconventional
hours, and often in disguise.

And now the days, while quite uneventful, were growing more and more
busy for Brainerd and myself.

The matter of the diamond robbery, after considerable discussion and
some reluctance, had been turned over to a clever Chicago expert, and
to help him on, and at the same time free our hands for other matters,
we gave him all the information in our possession; told him our
theories and suspicions, and gave him a description of the brunette,
together, of course, with an account of her transactions with the
emerald, which, by the way, had been restored to Monsieur Lausch, not
freely and not willingly, but because the dealer in precious stones
was not daring enough to risk a threatened exposure in the newspapers.

To make the expert's way quite clear with reference to the brunette,
we told him also of her pursuit of Miss Jenrys and her connection with
the attack upon our guard, adding that we were fully convinced she was