, as if trying to read one
another's thoughts. Then Etienne Rambert seemed to see the inner meaning
of the words his son had just said.

"I see!" he answered slowly. "I understand.... The Royal Palace Hotel,
where Mlle. Jeanne held a trusted post, has just been the scene of a
daring robbery. Obviously, if anyone could prove that Charles Rambert
and the new cashier were one and the same person----"

But the young fellow understood the insinuation and burst out:

"I did not commit that robbery!"

"You did!" Etienne Rambert insisted: "you did. I read the newspaper
accounts of the robbery, read them with all the agony that only a father
like me with a son like you could feel. The detectives and the
magistrates were at a loss to find the key to the mystery, but I saw
clearly and at once what the solution of the mystery was. And I knew and
understood because I knew it was--you!"

"I did not commit the robbery," Charles Rambert shouted. "Do you mean to
begin all your horrible insinuations again, as you did at Beaulieu?" he
demanded in almost threatening tones. "What evil spirit obsesses you?
Why will you insist that your unhappy son is a criminal? I had nothing
to do with those robberies at the hotel; I swear I had not, father!"

M. Rambert shrugged his shoulders and clasped his hands.

"What have I done," he muttered, "to have so heavy a cross laid on me?"
He turned again to his son. "Your defence is childish. What is the use
of mere denials? Words don't mean anything without proofs to support
them." The lad was silent, seeming to think it useless to attempt to
convince a father who appeared so certain of his guilt, and also crushed
by the thought of all that had happened at the hotel. His father
betrayed some uneasiness at a new thought that had come into his mind.
"I told you not to come to me again except as a last resource, when
punishment was actually overtaking you, or when you had proved your
innocence: why are you here now? Has something happened that I do not
know about? What has happened? What else have you done? Speak!"

Charles Rambert answered in a toneless voice, as if hypnotised:

"There has been a detective in the hotel for the last few days. He
called himself Henri Verbier, and was disguised, but I knew him, for I
had seen him too lately, and in circumstances too deeply impressed upon
my mind for me to be able to forget him, although I only saw him then
for a few minutes."

"What do you mean?" said