admirable Minnie sniffed.

"I suppose you have never seen such a thing," smiled Oliva, "and you
hardly knew what it was."

The lady's maid turned very red. She had unfortunately seen many such
certificates of penury, but all that was part of her private life, and
she had been shocked beyond measure to be confronted with this
too-familiar evidence of impecuniosity in the home of a lady who
represented to her an assured income and comfortable pickings.

Oliva went back to her sitting-room and debated the matter. It was a
sense of diffidence, the fear of making herself ridiculous, which
arrested her. Otherwise she might have flown into the room, declaimed
her preposterous theories and leave these clever men to work out the
details. She opened the door and with the ticket clenched in her hand
stepped into the room.

If they had missed her after she had left nobody saw her return. They
were sitting in a group about the table, firing questions at the big
unshaven man who had made such a dramatic entrance to the conference and
who, with a long cigar in the corner of his mouth, was answering readily
and fluently.

But faced with the tangible workings of criminal investigation her
resolution and her theories shrank to vanishing-point. She clasped the
ticket in her hand and felt for a pocket, but the dressmaker had not
provided her with that useful appendage.

So she turned and went softly back to her room, praying that she would
not be noticed. She closed the door gently behind her and turned to meet
a well-valeted man in evening-dress who was standing in the middle of
the room, a light overcoat thrown over his arm, his silk hat tilted back
from his forehead, a picture of calm assurance.

"Don't move," said van Heerden, "and don't scream. And be good enough to
hand over the pawn ticket you are holding in your hand."

Silently she obeyed, and as she handed the little pasteboard across the
table which separated them she looked past him to the bookshelf behind
his head, and particularly to a new volume which bore the name of
Stanford Beale.

CHAPTER XXX

THE WATCH

"Thanks," said van Heerden, pocketing the ticket, "it is of no use to me
now, for I cannot wait. I gather that you have not disclosed the fact
that this ticket is in your possession."

"I don't know how you gather that," she said.

"Lower your voice!" he hissed menacingly. "I gather as much because
Beale knew the ticket would not be in my poss