opened. From where we were sitting we could see in a
mirror on the opposite wall that it was a girl, dark of skin, perhaps a
mulatto, but extremely beautiful, with great brown eyes and just a trace
of kinkiness in her black hair. But it was the worried, almost haunted,
look on her face that attracted one's attention most.

I happened to glance at Burke to see whether he had noticed it. I
thought his eyes would pop out of his head.

Just then Kennedy walked across the laboratory and closed our door.

"What's the matter?" I whispered.

But before Burke could reply, a draught opened the door just a bit. He
placed his finger on his lips. We could not close the door, and we sat
there in our corner unintentional but no less interested eavesdroppers.

"Mademoiselle Collette Aux Cayes is my name," she began, with a
strangely French accent which we could just understand. "I've heard of
you, Professor Kennedy, as a great detective."

"I should be glad to do what I can for you," he returned. "But you
mustn't expect too much. You seem to be in some great trouble."

"Trouble--yes," she replied excitedly. "My name isn't really Aux Cayes.
That is the name of my guardian, a friend of my father's. Both my father
and mother are dead--killed by a mob during an uprising several years
ago. I was in Paris at the time, being educated in a convent, or I
suppose I should have been killed, too."

She seemed to take it as a matter of course, from which I concluded that
she had been sent to Paris when she was very young and did not remember
her parents very well.

"At last the time came for me to go back to Hayti," she resumed. "There
is nothing that would interest you about that--except that after I got
back, in Port au Prince, I met a young lawyer--Guillaume Leon."

She hesitated and looked at Craig as though trying to read whether he
had ever heard the name before, but Kennedy betrayed nothing. There was
more than that in her tone, though. It was evident that Leon had been
more than a friend to her.

"Hayti has been so upset during the past months," she went on, "that my
guardian decided to go to New York, and of course I was taken along with
him. It happened that on the ship--the _Haytien_--Monsieur Leon went
also. It was very nice until--"

She came to a full stop. Kennedy encouraged her gently, knowing what she
was going to tell.

"One night, after we had been out some time," she resumed unexpectedly,
"I could not sleep and I