ack in chagrin and disappointment. I knew that the
broken gold was safely at the bottom of the Seine, but where were the
gems?

It was all very well for Duperre to bluff, but they would, I felt
convinced, eventually be found. The police, not content with searching
the personal belongings of my friend, took up the floor-boards, and
even stripped some paper from the wall and carefully examined every
article of furniture. Afterwards they went to my room at the end of
the corridor and thoroughly searched it.

At last the inspector, still mystified, ordered two taxis to be
called, as it was his intention to take us at once before the
examining magistrate.

"Madame had better put on her hat at once," he added, bristling with
authority.

Thus ordered, she reluctantly obeyed and put on her big feathered hat
before the glass. Then a few moments later we were conducted
downstairs and away to the Prefecture of Police.

After all being thoroughly searched, Madame being examined by a prison
wardress, we were ushered into the dull official room of Monsieur
Rodin, the well-known examining magistrate, who for a full hour plied
us with questions. Duperre and his wife preserved an outward dignity
that amazed me. They complained bitterly of being accused without
foundation, while on my part I answered the police official that I had
quite accidentally come across my old superior officer.

Time after time Monsieur Rodin referred to the papers before him,
evidently much puzzled. It seemed that Madame had been recognized in
the Bois by the impressionable Frenchman who I had believed, had been
attracted by her handsome face.

That information had been sent by Scotland Yard to Paris regarding the
stolen jewels was apparent. Yet the fact that the locked suit-case
only contained books and that nothing had been found in our
possession--thanks to the forethought of Duperre--the police now found
themselves in a quandary. The man in the white spats whom we had seen
in the Bois identified Madame as Marie Richaud, a Frenchwoman who had
lived in Philadelphia for several years, and who had been implicated
two years before in the great frauds on the Bordeaux branch of the
Societe Generale.

Madame airily denied any knowledge of it. She had only arrived in
Paris with her husband from Rome a few days before, she declared. And
surely enough the visas upon their passports showed that was so, even
though I had seen her at Overstow!

How I withstoo