f abode. Fortunately, my friends were by this
time in Genoa, and they succeeded in obtaining some slight mitigation of
my discomforts. At the end of that time I was released, there being no
evidence against me. The testimony of the French guard, of the
booking-clerk at Monaco, and of the staff of the Hotel de Paris,
established the existence of my Fascinating Friend, which was at first
called in question; but no trace could be found of him. With him had
disappeared his victim's dispatch-box, in which were stored the proceeds
of several days of successful gambling. Robbery, however, did not seem
to have been the primary motive of the crime, for his watch, purse, and
the heavy jewelry about his person were all untouched. From the German
Consul at Genoa I learned privately, after my release, that the murdered
man, though in fact a Prussian, had lived long in Russia, and was
suspected of having had an unofficial connection with the St. Petersburg
police. It was thought, indeed, that the capital with which he had
commenced his operation at Monte Carlo was the reward of some special
act of treachery; so that the anarchists, if it was indeed they who
struck the blow, had merely suffered Judas to put his thirty pieces out
to usance, in order to pay back to their enemies with interest the
blood-money of their friends.

IV

About two years later I happened one day to make an afternoon call in
Mayfair, at the house of a lady well known in the social and political
world, who honours me, if I may say so, with her friendship. Her
drawing-room was crowded, and the cheerful ring of afternoon tea-cups
was audible through the pleasant medley of women's voices. I joined a
group around the hostess, where an animated discussion was in progress
on the Irish Coercion Bill, then the leading political topic of the day.
The argument interested me deeply; but it is one of my mental
peculiarities that when several conversations are going on around me I
can by no means keep my attention exclusively fixed upon the one in
which I am myself engaged. Odds and ends from all the others find their
way into my ears and my consciousness, and I am sometimes accused of
absence of mind, when my fault is in reality a too great alertness of
the sense of hearing. In this instance the conversation of three or four
groups was more or less audible to me; but it was not long before my
attention was absorbed by the voice of a lady, seated at the other side
o