t all your other letters so carefully and
destroyed that one. Perhaps it was in his pocket-book that was stolen."

"I do not know. What does it matter? It has gone." She shrugged her
shoulders lightly and indifferently.

"Do you know who stole the pocket-book?"

"No, monsieur. I thought it was stolen in the train."

"That is the police theory," replied Crewe. "But let that go. Have you,
since the night of the murder, seen anything of Pierre?"

"Monsieur, I have not. It is as though the earth has him swallowed. He
keeps silent with the silence of the grave."

"He is wise to do so," responded Crewe. "Now, mademoiselle, I have no
more questions to ask you. Your confidence is safe; you need be under no
apprehensions on that score."

"I care not for myself, Monsieur Crewe, so long as Madame Holymead is
freed from the persecutions of the police agents," replied Gabrielle,
rising from her seat as she spoke. "If, after hearing my story, you could
but give me the assurance--"

"I think I can safely promise you that Mrs. Holymead will not be troubled
with any further police attentions," said Crewe, after a moment's pause.

Gabrielle broke into profuse expressions of gratitude as she
turned to go.

"For the rest then, I care not what happens. I am--how do you say it--I
am overjoyed. _Je vous remercie_, monsieur, I beg you not, I can find my
way out unattended."

But Crewe showed her to the stairs, where again he had to listen to her
profuse thanks before she finally departed. He watched her graceful
figure till it was lost to sight in the winding staircase, and then he
turned back to his office. In the outer office he stopped to speak to
Joe, who, perched on an office-footstool, was tapping quickly on the
office-table with his pen-knife, swaying backwards and forwards
dangerously on his perch in the intensity of his emotions as he played
the hero's part in the drama of saving the runaway engine from dashing
into the 4.40 express by calling up the Red Gulch station on the wire.

"Joe," said Crewe, "I'll see nobody for an hour at least--nobody. You
understand?"

Joe came out of the cinema world long enough to nod his head in emphatic
understanding of the instructions. In his own room Crewe pulled out his
notebook and once more gave himself up to the study of the baffling
Riversbrook mystery, in the new light of Gabrielle's confession.

Part of her story, he reflected, must be true. She had produced Sir
Horace's revo