CHAPTER VII

THE FRANTIC IMPRESARIO

Fullaway slowly read this announcement aloud. When he had made an end of
it he laughed.

"So your mysterious lady of the midnight motor, your Miss Celia Lennard
of the Hull hotel, is the great and only Zelie de Longarde, eh?" he said.
"Well, I guess that makes matters a lot easier and clearer. But you're
sure it isn't a case of striking resemblance?"

"I only saw that woman for a minute or two, by moonlight, when she stuck
her face out of her car to ask the way," replied Allerdyke, "but I'll
lay all I'm worth to a penny-piece that the woman I then saw is the
woman whose picture we're staring at. Great Scott! So she's a famous
singer, is she? You know of her, of course? That sort of thing's not in
my line--never was--I don't go to a concert or a musical party once in
five years."

"Oh, she's great--sure!" responded Fullaway. "Beautiful voice--divine!
And, as I say, things are going to be easy. I've met this lady more than
once, though I didn't know that she'd any other name than that, which is
presumably her professional one, and I've also had one or two business
deals with her. So all we've got to do is to find out which hotel she's
stopping at in this city, and then we'll go round there, and I'll send in
my card. But I say--do you see, this affair's to-night, this very
evening, and at eight o'clock, and it's past seven now. She'll be
arraying herself for the platform. We'd better wait until--"

Allerdyke's practical mind asserted itself. He twisted the American
round in another direction, and called to a porter who had picked up
their bags.

"All that's easy," he said. "We'll stick these things in the left-luggage
spot, dine here in the station, and go straight to the concert. There,
perhaps, during an interval, we might get in a word with this lady who
sports two names. Come on, now."

He hurried his companion from the cloak-room to the dining-room, gave a
quick order on his own behalf to the waiter, left Fullaway to give his
own, and began to eat and drink with the vigour of a man who means to
waste no time.

"There's one thing jolly certain, my lad!" he said presently, leaning
confidentially across the table after he had munched in silence for a
while. "This Miss Lennard, or Mamselle, or Signora de Longarde, or
whatever her real label is, hasn't got those jewels--confound 'em! Folks
who steal things like that don't behave as she's doing."

"I never thought she had