d to me countless bits of
information about the staff and the people who are staying or who have
stayed in the hotel.

"The things I've seen since I've been working here would fill a book,"
she told me blithely, when I drifted in to find companionship in her
little room.

"Really, I think that if I'd only got time to sit down and write
everything I'd come across in the way of the strange stories, and the
experiences, and the different types of queer customers that one has
come in one's way, well! I'd make my fortune. Hall Caine couldn't be in
it. Excuse me a minute." (This was a telephone interlude.)

"The people you'd never think had anything odd about them," pursued the
telephone girl, "and that turn out to be the Absolute Limit!" (I
wondered, uneasily, if she thought that my absent mistress, Miss
Million, belonged to this particular type.)

So I went back to the subject next time I passed the telephone office.
(This was after the manager had looked into my room with his kind
inquiries after Miss Million.)

"And, really," I said. I can't think what made me, Beatrice Lovelace,
feel as guilty as if I were a pickpocket myself. Perhaps it was because
I had something to hide. Namely, the fact that I was a maid whose
mistress had left the hotel without a hint as to her destination or the
date of her return!

"That's a Scotland Yard man that's passing in the hall now," she added,
dropping her voice. "No; not the one you're looking at," as I turned to
glance at a very broad, light-grey back. "That's another of our American
cousins. Just come. A friend of Mr. Isaac Rattenheimer; have you seen
Mrs. Rattenheimer when she's going out in the evening? My dear! The
woman blazes with jewels like a Strand shooting-gallery with lights. You
really ought to have a look at her.

"Come down into the lounge to-night; pretend you've got some note or
something for your Miss Million. She'll be coming back to-night, I
suppose?" she said.

"Oh, she may not. It all depends," I said vaguely, but with a desperate
cheerfulness.

I left the telephone girl to decide for herself what this mysterious
thing might be that I had said "depended," and I drifted out again into
the vestibule.

Here I passed the young man my friend had called an American cousin. He
looked very American. His shoulders, which were broad enough in all
conscience, seemed padded at least two inches broader. And the cut of
his light-grey tweeds, and the shape of his sho