aint.

Chester looked anxiously at Sylvia. She was oddly pale, all the colour
drained from her face, but she seemed on quite good terms with Madame
Wachner! As for that stout, good-natured looking woman, she also was
unlike her placid smiling self, for her face looked red and puffy. But
still she nodded pleasantly to Chester.

It seemed to the lawyer inconceivable that this commonplace couple could
have seriously meant to rob their guest. But there was that letter--that
strange, sinister letter which purported to be from Sylvia! Who had
written that letter, and with what object in view?

Chester began to feel as if he was living through a very disagreeable,
bewildering nightmare. But no scintilla of the horrible truth reached
his cautious, well-balanced brain. The worst he suspected, and that only
because of the inexplicable letter, was that these people meant to
extract money from their guest and frighten her into leaving Lacville
the same night.

"Sylvia," he said rather shortly, "I suppose we ought to be going now. We
have a carriage waiting at the gate, so we shall be able to drive you
back to the Villa du Lac. But, of course, we must first pick up all your
pearls. That won't take long!"

But Sylvia made no answer. She did not even look round at him. She was
still staring straight before her, as if she saw something, which the
others could not see, written on the distempered wall.

L'Ami Fritz entered the room quietly. He looked even stranger than usual,
for while in one hand he held Mrs. Bailey's pretty black tulle hat and
her little bag, in the other was clutched the handle of a broom.

"I did not think you would want to go back into my wife's bed-room," he
said, deprecatingly; and Mrs. Bailey, at last turning her head round,
actually smiled gratefully at him.

She was reminding herself that there had been a moment when he had been
willing to let her escape. Only once--only when he had grinned at her so
strangely and deplored her refusal of the drugged coffee, had she felt
the sick, agonising fear of him that she had felt of Madame Wachner.

Laying the hat and bag on the table, L'Ami Fritz began sweeping the floor
with long skilful movements.

"This is the best way to find the pearls," he muttered; and three of the
four people present stood and looked on at what he was doing. As for the
one most concerned, Sylvia had again begun to stare dully before her, as
if what was going on did not interest her one