haps it was the curious fact that some person had taken it
from its frame on board the _Lola_ and destroyed it that first aroused
my interest; or it might have been the discovery of it in Muriel's room
at Rannoch. Anyhow, it had for me an absorbing interest, for I often
wondered whether the unknown girl who had secretly gone ashore from the
yacht when I had left it was not Elma Heath herself.

Who was this Baron Oberg? The name was German undoubtedly, yet he lived
in the Russian capital. From London to Petersburg is a far cry, yet I
resolved that if it were necessary I would travel there and investigate.

At the German Embassy, in Carlton House Terrace, I found my friend
Captain Nieberding, the second secretary, of whom I inquired whether the
name of Baron Oberg was known, but having referred to a number of German
books in his Excellency's library, he returned and told me that the name
did not appear in the lists of the German nobility.

"He may be Russian--Polish most probably," added the captain, a tall,
fair fellow in gold spectacles, whom I had known when he was third
secretary of Embassy at Rome. His opinion was that it was not a German
name, for there was a little place called Oberg, he said, on the railway
between Lodz and Lowicz.

Then, after luncheon, I went to Albany Road, one of those dreary,
old-fashioned streets that were pleasant back in the early Victorian
days when Camberwell was a suburb and Walworth Common was still an open
waste. I found the house where Olinto lived--a small, smoke-blackened,
semi-detached place standing back in a tiny strip of weedy garden, with
a wooden veranda before the first floor windows. The house, according to
the woman who kept a general shop at the corner, was occupied by two
families. The "Eye-talians," as she termed them, lived above, while the
Gibbonses rented the ground floor.

"Oh, yes, sir. The foreigners are respectable enough. Always pays me
ready money for everythink, except the milk. That they pays for weekly."

"I understand that the wife has disappeared. What have you heard about
that?"

"They do say, sir, that they 'ad some words together the other day, and
that the woman's took herself off in a tantrum. Only you can't believe
all you 'ear, you know."

"Did they often quarrel?"

"Not to my knowledge, sir. They were really very quiet, respectable
persons for foreigners."

I repassed the house of the dead woman, and then regaining the busy
Camberwell R