ivate
apartments. "All the staff I have is the young lady you just saw--Mrs.
Marlow. Invaluable!"

"Married woman?" inquired Allerdyke laconically.

"Young widow," answered Fullaway just as tersely. "Excellent business
woman--been with me ever since I came here--three years. Speaks and
writes several languages--well educated, good knowledge of my particular
line of business. American--I knew her people very well. Of course, I
don't require much assistance--merely clerical help, but it's got to be
of a highly intelligent and specialized sort."

"Leave your business in her hands if need be, I reckon?" suggested
Allerdyke, with a sidelong nod at the closed door.

"In ordinary matters, yes--comfortably," answered Fullaway. "She's a bit
a specialist in two things that I'm mainly concerned in--pictures and
diamonds. She can tell a genuine Old Master at a glance, and she knows a
lot about diamonds--her father was in that trade at one time, out in
South Africa."

"Clever woman to have," observed Allerdyke; "knows all your business,
of course?"

"All the surface business," said Fullaway, "naturally! Anything but a
confidential secretary would be useless to me, you know."

"Just so," agreed Allerdyke. "Told her about this affair yet?"

"I've had no chance so far," replied Fullaway. "I shall take her advice
about it--she's a cute woman."

"Smart-looking, sure enough," said Allerdyke. He let his mind dwell for a
moment on the picture which Mrs. Marlow had made as Fullaway led him
through the office--a very well-gowned, pretty, alert, piquant little
woman, still on the sunny side of thirty, who had given him a sharp
glance out of unusually wide-awake eyes. "Aye, women are clever nowadays,
no doubt--they'd show their grandmothers how to suck eggs in a good many
new fashions. Well, now," he went on, stretching his long legs over
Fullaway's beautiful Persian rug, "what do you make of this affair,
Fullaway, in its present situation? There's no doubt that everything's
considerably altered by what we've heard of this morning. Do you really
think that this French maid affair is all of a piece, as one may term it,
with the affair of my cousin James?"

"Yes--without doubt," replied Fullaway. "I believe the two affairs all
spring from the same plot. That plot, in my opinion, has originated from
a clever gang who, somehow or other, got to know that Mr. James Allerdyke
was bringing over the Princess Nastirsevitch's jewels, and who a