whole affair is a tangled mystery. But the first point we must establish
before we commence to investigate is--who is Mademoiselle of Monte
Carlo?"

SECOND CHAPTER

CONCERNS A GUILTY SECRET

Just after seven o'clock that same evening young Henfrey and his friend
Brock met in the small lounge of the Hotel des Palmiers, a rather
obscure little establishment in the Avenue de la Costa, behind the
Gardens, much frequented by the habitues of the Rooms who know Monte
Carlo and prefer the little place to life at the Paris, the Hermitage,
and the Riviera Palace, or the Gallia, up at Beausoleil.

The Palmiers was a place where one met a merry cosmopolitan crowd, but
where the cocotte in her bright plumage was absent--an advantage which
only the male habitue of Monte Carlo can fully realize. The eternal
feminine is always so very much in evidence around the Casino, and the
most smartly dressed woman whom one might easily take for the wife of an
eminent politician or financier will deplore her bad luck and beg for "a
little loan."

"Well," said Hugh as his friend came down from his room to the lounge,
"I suppose we ought to be going--eh? Dorise said half-past seven, and
we'll just get across to the Metropole in time. Lady Ranscomb is always
awfully punctual at home, and I expect she carries out her time-table
here."

The two men put on light overcoats over their dinner-jackets and
strolled in the warm dusk across the Gardens and up the Galerie, with
its expensive little shops, past the original Ciro's to the Metropole.

In the big hall they were greeted by a well-preserved, grey-haired
Englishwoman, Lady Ranscomb, the widow of old Sir Richard Ranscomb, who
had been one of the greatest engineers and contractors of modern times.
He had begun life as a small jerry-builder at Golder's Green, and had
ended it a millionaire and a knight. Lady Ranscomb was seated at a
little wicker table with her daughter Dorise, a dainty, fair-haired girl
with intense blue eyes, who was wearing a rather daring jazzing gown of
pale-blue, the scantiness of which a year or two before would have been
voted quite beyond the pale for a lady, and yet in our broad-minded
to-day, the day of undressing on the stage and in the home, it was
nothing more than "smart."

Mother and daughter greeted the two men enthusiastically, and at Lady
Ranscomb's orders the waiter brought them small glasses of an aperitif.

"We've been all day motoring up to the C