She was so out of breath that at first it seemed as if she could not speak. He could hear her hurried breathing, almost like the catch of a sob, and in the moonlight he could see fairly clearly her flushed face, under the hat, and her tall, rather imperious figure. But he could not make out the expression of her eyes. Nevertheless, as he peered curiously into them, the thought suddenly struck him: “She is angry with me.”

“Mr. Carpentaria, I want to have a word with you,” she said at length, stiffly.

“My dear Miss Dartmouth,” he answered in his courtly and elaborate manner, “I shall be delighted. What can I do for you? I regret very much that you should have had to run after me like this.”

“I’ve been following you up for quite a long time,” she remarked, in a more friendly tone. It appeared as if his attitude and greeting had made some impression on her, in spite of herself. “First I went to your office. Then to the strong-rooms, then to the garage, then to the strong-rooms again, and now I’m here. I saw you crossing the gardens. Nobody seemed to be inclined to give me any information about you.”

“No?” he murmured, in a cautious interrogative. “Now tell me; how can I be of service to you?”

She scanned his features. They were alone together in the midst of the immense gardens. A hundred yards away was the bandstand, the scene of the greatest triumphs of his life. And yet in that moment his triumphs seemed nothing to him as he stood under her gaze. Her personality affected him powerfully. He said to himself that no woman had ever looked at him like that. There was no admiration in her glance, no prejudice either for or against him; nothing but a candid and judicial inquiry. “I hope I shall come well out of this scrutiny,” his thoughts ran. And the masculine desire formed obscurely in his breast to make this girl think favourably of him, to make her admire him, love him, worship him. He felt that to see love in these calm, courageous, independent eyes of hers would be a recompense and a reward for all he had suffered in the forty years of his existence. In a word she piqued him. He little knew that up to that very evening she had worshipped him afar off as women do worship their heroes.

“Nobody ill, I hope,” he ventured.

She ignored the observation, and said:

“Mr. Carpentaria, what have you done with Cousin Ilam?”

“What?” he cried, amazed both by the question, and by the cold firmness with which it was put.

“I think you heard what I said,” she replied. “What have you done with Cousin Ilam? Where is he?”

“Miss Dartmouth, do you imagine for one instant that I know where Mr. Ilam is? I should only like to know where he is. I’m looking for him now. But I was not aware that the fact of his disappearance was known. Indeed, I meant it to be kept as secret as possible. I——”

“No, no,” she interrupted him. “I was hoping you would be frank. I thought you had an honest face, Mr. Carpentaria, and it is because of that that I have come—like this. I have just left your poor sister. She is in despair. She has told me all.” Carpentaria did not reply immediately. At last he repeated:

“Told you all? All what? You have soon become fast friends, you and Juliette.”

“It is possible,” said Pauline drily. “I have met your sister three times, but in seasons of distress we women are obliged to cling to each other. As for Miss D’Avray and me, we live next door to each other. What more natural than that I should call on her this evening? And finding her in a condition of—shall I say?—despair, what more natural than that I should ask her what was the matter, and what more natural, seeing that she has no women friends here, and is of a nature that demands sympathy, than that on the spur of the moment she should confide in me?”

“I assure you, Miss Dartmouth,” said Carpentaria, “that I was entirely unaware of my sister’s despair—as you call it. What precisely has she confided to you?”

“Why, about her engagement to Cousin Ilam, and your opposition.”

“Pardon me, there has been no engagement,” said Carpentaria.

“Pardon me,” said Pauline, “there has been an engagement, because my cousin and your half-sister made it. Is there anybody better qualified than them to make an engagement?”

She lifted her chin.

“Well,” said Carpentaria. “Let us assume that there was an engagement.”

“They were to be married to-morrow,” remarked Pauline calmly.

“To-morrow!” Carpentaria exclaimed, aghast. “Secretly?”

“Why do you pretend to be surprised? As for the secrecy, your opposition has forced them to secrecy, because your sister is afraid of you.”

“And now that your cousin has disappeared, of course, they can’t be married to-morrow,” mused Carpentaria. “Hence this woe.”

“Why have you taken such extreme measures, such cruel measures, such wicked measures?” asked Pauline, full of indignation. “I can understand well enough that you, as a great artist, cannot be expected to behave like other people; I can understand you doing mad things, original things. I can understand you defying the law, and taking the most serious risks on yourself. But I can’t understand you being so cruel to your sister, and so utterly beside yourself, as to carry off Mr. Ilam by force.”

Her cheeks had flushed.

“By force?” murmured Carpentaria.

Then he laughed loudly, violently, magnificently, after his manner. His laugh resounded through the deserted gardens.

“Juliette thinks I have removed her betrothed by force?” he queried.

“Naturally she does!” said Pauline. “The most extraordinary rumours are about. It is even said that you have had a quarrel and killed him.”

“Tut-tut!” said Carpentaria, and after clearing his throat he proceeded: “Miss Dartmouth, will you kindly fix your eyes on mine. I tell you I have had nothing whatever to do with your cousin’s disappearance, and that I was entirely unaware of his intention to marry Juliette to-morrow.”

She gazed at him doubtfully.

“On your honour?”

“No,” he said proudly, “not on my honour. When I talk to a person as I am talking to you, if I say a thing is so, it is so. I decline to back my assertions with my honour.”

“I believe you,” she whispered softly, and her eyes fell.

“Thanks!” he said. “Will you shake hands?”

And she gave him her hand loyally. And he thought it was a very slim and thrilling hand to shake.

“Do you know,” he said, “it was exceedingly naughty of you to go and credit me with being such a monster.”

“Well,” she replied, “perhaps I never did really believe it.” She smiled at him courageously. “But I was angry with you for objecting to the match. I suppose you won’t deny that you have objected to the match.”

“No,” he said, “I shan’t deny that.”

“And your reasons?”

“I could not disclose them to Mr. Ilam’s cousin,” he answered. “And perhaps they are not as strong as they were. I am beginning to think that just as you accused me wrongly, so I have accused your cousin wrongly. But I can assure you I had better reason than you. Ah, Miss Dartmouth,” he added, “it may well occur that you will infinitely regret ever having come into the City.”

“Never!” she said positively.

“That’s very polite,” he commented.

“We are getting away from the point,” she remarked in a new tone. “I have left your sister in a pitiable state. If you have not had anything to do with the disappearance of Cousin Ilam, who has?”

“He may have disappeared voluntarily,” said Carpentaria.

“Impossible!” she replied.

“I think so too.” Carpentaria agreed. “At first I was capable of believing that he had played an enormous comedy in order to disappear in the most effective manner. But really the comedy grows too enormous to be any longer a comedy. It may be a tragedy by this time.”

“And whom do you suspect?” queried Pauline impatiently.

“If I were you,” was Carpentaria’s strange response, “I should ask your sister, Miss Rosie.”

“Rosie!”

“Rosie.”

“Mr. Carpentaria, what on earth do you mean?”

“I mean that your sister probably knows something of the affair. Where is she at the present moment?”

“She is watching Mrs. Ilam, in place of the nurse.”

“I gravely doubt it,” said Carpentaria with firmness.

“But I have seen her there.”

“It is conceivable,” said Carpentaria. “But I gravely doubt if she is still there.”

“I shall be compelled to think that after all you are a little mad,” Pauline observed coldly.

“We are all more or less mad,” said Carpentaria. “Otherwise your sister, for instance, would not hold long conversations with a highly suspicious character every night from the window of her room.”

Pauline, in the light of her knowledge of what had taken place in and about the Ilam bungalow on the first night of her residence there, could scarcely affect not to understand, at any rate partially, Carpentaria’s allusion.

“I don’t quite——” she began, lamely.

“Do you mean to say,” he interrupted her at once, “do you mean to say, dear lady, that you are entirely unaware of the surreptitious visits of a certain mysterious person to Mr. Ilam’s house?”

“I am not entirely unaware of them,” she said frankly! “I saw the man myself one night. I spoke to him. My sister also—also spoke to him. But I have not seen nor heard of him since. Nor has Rosie.”

“Of that you are sure?”

“Yes, I think I may say I am sure.”

“Then I must undeceive you,” Carpentaria spoke firmly. “I also have acquired a certain curiosity as to that strange individual. And to satisfy my curiosity I have kept a considerable number of vigils. And I am in a position to state that, not only on the first night of your arrival, but every night your sister has had speech with that person from the window of her room.”

“Who is he? What can he want?” demanded Pauline, nervously.

“That is a question that I meant to put to you,” said Carpentaria in reply.

“As for me, I know nothing.”

“When you spoke to him, as you admit you did, did he not ask you to do something?”

“Yes, and I refused his request.”

“But your sister? What did she do?”

“Oh! Mr. Carpentaria,” murmured Pauline, “can I trust you?”

“You know that you can.”

She related to him all the details of the episode of the black box.

“And after that,” Carpentaria commented, “your sister continues to have stolen interviews with this man.”

“I can’t help thinking you are mistaken. Rosie would never keep such a secret from me.”

“It will be very easy to throw some light on the matter,” said Carpentaria. “Let us go to your house and see whether Miss Rosie is in Mrs. Ilam’s room as you imagine her to be, and as I imagine her not to be. I may tell you quite openly my opinion that Miss Rosie has had something to do with the disappearance of Mr. Ilam. I am convinced, indeed I know, that he has been spirited away, together with a trifling amount of money, by our mysterious visitor, and since our mysterious visitor talks to Miss Rosie each night, she on her balcony and he beneath it—well, I leave the inference to yourself.”

Pauline started back.

“Yes,” she said, in a low voice, “let us go and see.”

And they went, walking side by side in silence across the gardens.

“I will wait here,” said Carpentaria, when they arrived at the side-door of the Ilam bungalow. “You can ascertain whether anything unusual has occurred in the house, and particularly if your sister is still at her post, and then you will be kind enough to come back and report to me. I will watch here.” Without replying Pauline passed into the house. In a few minutes she returned. Tears stood in her eyes.

“Well?” queried Carpentaria.

“Rosie is not in the house,” she answered. “Mrs. Ilam is alone. Happily she is asleep. Everything is quiet. But Rosie——!”

A sob escaped her.