young
American shrewdly. "They'd their eye on you two girls from the start, it
seems. You aren't a very usual couple. Noo to me, you are. Both of you
seemed noo to them!"

"I knew they gossiped about us!" I said ruefully.

"Sure thing; but don't say 'gossip' as if it was something nobody else
did only the folks around this hotel!" protested the American,
twinkling. "Well, to-day after the great Jewel Steal you aroused
considerable suspicion by refusing to let Rats and the others do the
Custom House officer's act through your wardrobe. This wire will have
raised more suspicion this evening. And to-morrow--d'you think they're
going to let you quit without further notice taken? Think!"

I thought for a second.

I saw that he was perfectly right.

It was just what would happen. Wherever I went to-morrow in search of
that baffling mistress of mine I should have that Scotland Yard
detective on my heels!

That sort of thing made me terribly nervous and uneasy! But I could
imagine the ingenuous Million being forty times worse about it! If I did
succeed in running her to earth at last, I could just imagine Million's
unconcealed and compromising horror at seeing me turn up with a
companion who talked about "the necessary steps" and "the Law!"

Million would be so overwhelmed that she would look as if she had a
whole mine full of stolen rubies sewn into the tops of her corsets. She
has a wild and baseless horror of anything to do with the police. (I saw
her once, at home, when a strange constable called to inquire about a
lost dog. It was I who'd had to go to the door. Million had sat,
shuddering, in the kitchen, her hand on her apron-bib, and her whole
person suffering from what she calls "the palps.")

So this was going to be awkward, hideously awkward.

Yet I couldn't go out in search of her!

I said, desperately: "What am I to do about it?"

"There is only one thing for it as far as I can see," said the young
American thoughtfully; "you will have to let me go down with a suit-case
full of lady's wearing apparel. You will have to let me make all the
inquiries in Lewes."

"You? Oh, no! That is quite impossible," I exclaimed firmly. "You could
not."

"Why not? I tell you, Miss Smith, it seems to me just to meet the case,"
he said earnestly.

"Here's this little cousin of mine, that I have never yet seen, that
I've got to make friends with. I am to be allowed to make her
acquaintance by doing her a service.