husband's
wineglass. You leave no note, no message. The poison of which the man
died is exactly the same as you procured from Sachs. Lucille, after all,
do you wonder that the police are looking for a woman in black with an
ermine toque? What a mercy you wore a thick veil!"

She sat down suddenly.

"This is hideous," she said.

"Think it over," he said, "step by step. It is wonderful how all the
incidents dovetail into one another."

"Too wonderful," she cried. "It sounds like some vile plot to
incriminate me. How much had you to do with this, Prince?"

"Don't be a fool!" he answered roughly. "Can't you see for yourself that
your arrest would be the most terrible thing that could happen for us?
Even Sachs might break down in cross-examination, and you--well, you
are a woman, and you want to live. We should all be in the most deadly
peril. Lucille, I would have spared you this anxiety if I could, but
your defiance made it necessary. There was no other way of getting you
away from England to-night except by telling you the truth."

"Away from England to-night," she repeated vaguely. "But I will not go.
It is impossible."

"It is imperative," the Prince declared, with a sharp ring of authority
in his tone. "It is your own folly, for which you have to pay. You went
secretly to Emil Sachs. You paid surreptitious visits to your husband,
which were simply madness. You have involved us all in danger. For our
own sakes we must see that you are removed."

"It is the very thing to excite suspicion--flight abroad," she objected.

"Your flight," he said coolly, "will be looked upon from a different
point of view, for Reginald Brott must follow you. It will be an
elopement, not a flight from justice."

"And in case I should decline?" Lucille asked quietly.

The Prince shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, we have done the best we can for ourselves," he said. "Come, I
will be frank with you. There are great interests involved here, and,
before all things, I have had to consider the welfare of our friends.
That is my duty! Emil Sachs by this time is beyond risk of detection.
He has left behind a letter, in which he confesses that he has for
some time supplemented the profits of his wine-shop by selling secretly
certain deadly poisons of his own concoctions. Alarmed at reading of the
death of Duson immediately after he had sold a poison which the symptoms
denoted he had fled the country. That letter is in the hands of the
woman