me mysterious reason for not replying
to my inquiry.

"I--I don't think I need satisfy you on that point, m'sieur," she
replied at last, with a slight hauteur, as though her dignity were
offended.

"Pardon me," I said quickly, "I meant to offer you no offence,
mademoiselle. You naturally are in distress regarding the unaccountable
disappearance of your father, and when one mentions jewels thoughts of
foul play always arise in one's mind. The avariciousness of man, and his
unscrupulousness where either money or jewels are concerned, are well
known even to you, at your age. I thought, however, you were confiding
in me, and I wondered how you, in active search of your father as you
are, could have met my employer, Mr. Bellingham."

"I met him in London, I have already told you."

"How long ago?"

"Three weeks."

"Ah! Then you have been in London since the supposed robbery?" I
exclaimed. "I had not gathered that fact."

Her face fell. She saw, to her annoyance, that she had been forced into
making an admission which she hoped to evade.

I now saw distinctly that there was some deep plot in progress, and
recognised that in all probability my pretty little friend was in peril.

She, the daughter of the missing jeweller of the Rue de la Paix, had
been entrapped, and I was carrying her into the hands of her enemies!

Since my association with Bindo and his friends I had, I admit, become
as unscrupulous as they were. Before my engagement as the Count's
chauffeur I think I was just as honest as the average man ever is; but
there is an old adage which says that you can't touch pitch without
being besmirched, and in my case it was, I suppose, only too true. I
had come to regard their ingenious plots and adventures with interest
and attention, and marvelled at the extraordinary resource and cunning
with which they misled and deceived their victims, and obtained by
various ways and means those bright little stones which, in regular
consignments, made their way to the dark little den of the crafty old
Goomans in the Kerk Straat at Amsterdam, and were exchanged for bundles
of negotiable bank-notes.

The police of Europe knew that for the past two years there had been
actively at work a gang of the cleverest jewel-thieves ever known, yet
the combined astuteness of Scotland Yard with that of the Paris Surete
and the Pubblica Sicurezza of Italy had never suspected the smart,
well-dressed, good-looking Charlie Bellingham, who