e
will; she had trusted him; she had invited his help! It was glorious
beyond the dreams of his passion.

'Come,' he said feverishly, 'show me how you managed to get to my dome.'

And he threw open the easternmost window, and she stepped with him out
on to the balcony.

They looked down across Hugo's little private garden, into the
blackness of the court of fountains, whose balconies were vaguely
disclosed here and there by the reflection from lit interiors. On the
other side of the deep pit of the court was the vast expanse of flat
roof containing the famous roof garden. Amid dwarf trees and festoons of
coloured lights, the figures of men and women who counted themselves the
cream of London could dimly be seen walking about or sitting at tables;
and the wild strain of the Tsigane musicians, as they swayed to and fro
in their red coats on the bandstand, floated towards the dome through
the heavy summer air. In the near distance the fantastic shapes of
chimney-cowls raised themselves against the starry but moonless sky, and
miles away the grandiose contours of a dome far greater than Hugo's--the
dome of St. Paul's--finished the prospect in solemn majesty. It was a
scene well calculated to intensify a man's emotions, especially when a
man stands to view it, as Hugo stood, on a lofty balcony, with a
beautiful and loved woman by his side.

She was indicating pathways, as well as she could, when they both saw a
man hurrying in the direction of the dome along by the roof-balustrade
of the court of fountains--the route by which Camilla herself had come.
He arrived under the dome, and would have disappeared into a doorway had
not Hugo called:

'Shawn, I'm here!'

'I was just coming to see you, sir,' replied Albert Shawn in a loud
whisper, as he climbed breathless up to the little raised garden beneath
the dome.

Camilla withdrew behind a curtain of the window.

'Well?' Hugo queried.

'She's gone, sir. But dashed if I know where, unless she's got herself
lost somewhere on the roof.'

'She is here,' said Hugo, lowering his voice. 'And it appears that you
waited very clumsily at that dinner, my boy. A bad disguise is worse
than none. I must lend you Gaboriau's "Crime of Orcival" to read; that
will teach you. Anything else to tell me?'

'I went back to the balcony entrance of the flat,' the youthful
detective replied humbly, looking up to Hugo in the window of the dome.
'I could see through the lacework of the blind;