"Oh, no."

He sighed and went off on another tack.

"Can't you tell me the way she looks, so as to prepare me some for when
I see her?" he suggested. "Does she resemble you, Miss Smith?"

"I don't think so," I said, suppressing a foolish giggle. It was the
first time I'd wanted to laugh at anything for the last twenty-four
hours. "No; Miss Million is--well, she's about my height. But she's
dark."

"I've always admired the small brunette woman myself," admitted Mr.
Hiram P. Jessop, adding quickly and courteously: "Not that I don't think
it's perfectly lovely to see a blonde with the bright chestnut hair and
the brown eyes that you have."

"Thank you," I said.

"And how soon can I see this little dark-haired cousin of mine?" went on
the American when we turned out of the Gardens. Unobtrusively the
Scotland Yard man had risen also. "What time can I call around this
evening?"

"I--I don't know when she'll be in," I hesitated.

"Where's she gone to?" persisted the cousin of this missing heiress.
"How long did she go for?"

I fenced with this question until we arrived at the very doors of the
Cecil again.

Then an impulse seized me.

All day long I had wrestled alone with this trouble of mine. I hadn't
consulted Mr. Brace. I had kept it from the Honorable Jim. I had put up
all sorts of pretences about it to the people at the hotel. But I felt
now that it would have to come out. I couldn't stand it any longer.

I turned to Miss Million's cousin.

"Mr. Jessop, I must tell you," I said in a serious and measured voice.
"The truth is I don't know!"

"What?" he took up, startled. "Are you telling me that you don't know
where my cousin is at this moment?"

I nodded.

"I wish I did know," I said fervently. And as we stood, a little aside
from the glass doors in the vestibule, I went on, in soft, rapid tones,
to tell him the story of Miss Million's disappearance from my horizon
since half-past eleven last night.

I looked up, despairingly, into his startled, concerned face.

"What has happened to her?" I said urgently. "What do you think? Where
do you think she is?"

Before he could say a word a messenger came up to me with a telegram.

"For Miss Smith."

I felt that this would be news at last. It must be. I seized the wire; I
tore it open.

I read----

"Oh!" I cried quite loudly.

One of the commissionaires glanced curiously over his shoulder at me.

I dropped my voice as I said feverishly: