staying with Madame. She
was an adventurous little person, and met me at the lions, in Trafalgar
Square, next morning, and I took her for a walk across St. James's Park.
From what she told me of herself, I gathered that she was the daughter
of a wealthy Frenchman. Our conversation naturally turned upon her
mother, as I wanted to find out if the latter possessed any jewels worth
looking after. She told me a lot--how that her mother, an old marquise,
had a quantity of splendid jewellery. Madame Vernet, who was with her at
the Cecil, was her companion, and her father had, I understood, a fine
chateau near Troyes. Her parents, religious bigots, were, however,
sending her, very much against her will, to the seclusion of a convent
close to Fontainebleau--not as a scholastic pupil--but to be actually
trained for the Sisterhood! She seemed greatly perturbed about this, and
I could see that the poor girl did not know how to act, and had no
outside friend to assist her. To me, it at once occurred that by aiding
her I could obtain her confidence, and so get to know this mother with
the valuable sparklers. Therefore I arranged that you should, on a
certain morning, travel to Fontainebleau, and that she should manage to
escape from the good Sisters and travel down to Beaulieu. Madame Vernet
was to be in the secret, and should join her later."

"Yes," I said, "I understood all that. She misled you regarding her
mother."

"And she was still more artful, for she never told me the truth as to
who her father really was, or the reason why they were there in
London--in search of him," he remarked. "I learnt the truth for the
first time from you--the truth that she was the daughter of old Dumont,
of the Rue de la Paix, and that he and his clerk were missing with
jewels of great value."

"Then another idea struck you, I presume?"

"Of course," he answered, laughing. "I wondered for what reason
Mademoiselle was to be placed in a convent; why she had misled me
regarding her parentage; and, above all, why she was so very desirous of
coming to the Riviera. So I returned, first to Paris--where I found that
Dumont and Martin were actually both missing. I managed to get
photographs of both men, and then crossed to London, and there commenced
active inquiries. Within a week I had the whole of the mysterious affair
at my fingers' ends, and moreover I knew who had taken the sparklers,
and in fact the complete story. The skein was a very tangled o