Violet, I
have never been more puzzled. Ask yourself, now. What enterprise is
there worthy of a man like Guillot, in which he could engage himself
here in London between now and midnight? Any ordinary theft is beneath
him. The purloining of the Crown jewels, perhaps, he might consider, but
I don't think that anything less in the way of robbery would bring him
here. He has his code and he is as vain as a peacock. Yet money is at
the root of everything he does."

"How does he spend his time here?" Violet asked.

"He has a handsome flat in Shaftesbury Avenue," Peter answered, "where
he lives, to all appearance, the life of an idle man of fashion. The
whole of his spare time is spent with Mademoiselle Louise, the danseuse
at the Empire. You see, it is half-past eight now. I have eleven men
altogether at work, and according to my last report he was dining with
her in the grillroom at the Milan. They ordered their coffee just ten
minutes ago, and the car is waiting outside to take Mademoiselle to the
Empire. Guillot's box is engaged there, as usual. If he proposes to
occupy it, he is leaving himself a very narrow margin of time to carry
out any enterprise worth speaking of."

Violet was thoughtful for several moments. Then she crossed the room,
took up a copy of an illustrated paper, and brought it across to Peter.
He smiled as he glanced at the picture to which she pointed, and the few
lines underneath.

"It has struck you, too, then!" he exclaimed. "Good! You have answered
me exactly as I hoped. Somehow, I scarcely trusted myself. I have both
cars waiting outside. We may need them. You won't mind coming to the
Empire with me?"

"Mind?" she laughed. "I only hope I may be in at the finish."

"If the finish," Peter remarked, "is of the nature which I anticipate, I
shall take particularly good care that you are not."

The curtain was rising upon the first act of the ballet as they entered
the music-hall and were shown to the box which Peter had engaged. The
house was full--crowded, in fact, almost to excess. They had scarcely
taken their seats when a roar of applause announced the coming of
Mademoiselle Louise. She stood for a moment to receive her nightly
ovation, a slim, beautiful creature, looking out upon the great house
with that faint, bewitching smile at the corners of her lips which every
photographer in Europe had striven to reproduce. Then she moved away to
the music, an exquisite figure, the personification