our wife handed her
patient over to me as cured we have covered some territory. I don't
know if you or Chief Inspector Kerry has been responsible, but the press
accounts of the Kazmah affair have been scanty to baldness. One stray
bit of news reached us--in Colorado, I think."

"What was that, Mr. Irvin?" asked Margaret, leaning towards the speaker.

"It was about Mollie Gretna. Someone wrote and told me that she had
eloped with a billiard marker--a married man with five children!"

Seton laughed heartily, and so did Margaret and Rita.

"Right!" cried Seton. "She did. When last heard of she was acting as
barmaid in a Portsmouth tavern!"

But Monte Irvin did not laugh.

"Poor, foolish girl!" he said gravely. "Her life might have been so
different--so useful and happy."

"I agree," replied Seton, "if she had had a husband like Kerry."

"Oh, please don't!" said Margaret. "I almost fell in love with Chief
Inspector Kerry myself."

"A grand fellow!" declared her husband warmly. "The Kazmah inquiry was
the triumph of his career."

Monte Irvin turned to him.

"You did your bit, Seton," he said quietly. "The last words Inspector
Kerry spoke to me before I left England were in the nature of a splendid
tribute to yourself, but I will spare your blushes."

"Kerry is as white as they're made," replied Seton, "but we should never
have known for certain who killed Sir Lucien if he had not risked his
life in that filthy cellar as he did."

Rita Irvin shuddered slightly and drew her furs more closely about her
shoulders.

"Shall we change the conversation, dear?" whispered Margaret.

"No, please," said Rita. "You cannot imagine how curious I am to learn
the true details--for, as Monte says, we have been out of touch with
things, and although we were so intimately concerned, neither of us
really knows the inner history of the affair to this day. Of course, we
know that Kazmah was a dummy figure, posed in the big ebony chair. He
never moved, except to raise his hand, and this was done by someone
seated in the inner room behind the figure. But who was seated there?"

Seton glanced inquiringly at his wife, and she nodded, smiling.

"Right-o!" he said. "If you will excuse me for a moment I will get my
notes. Hello, here's Gray!"

A little two-seater came bowling along the road from Cairo, and drew up
beneath the balcony. It was the car which had belonged to Margaret when
in practice in Dover Street. Quentin Gray jumped