“I simply wrote: ‘Shall it be the police, then?’ I think that should pass us in.”

It did⁠—with amazing celerity. A minute later we were in an Arabian Nights drawing-room, vast and wonderful, in a half gloom, picked out with an occasional pink electric light. The lady had come, I felt, to that time of life when even the proudest beauty finds the half light more welcome. She rose from a settee as we entered: tall, queenly, a perfect figure, a lovely mask-like face, with two wonderful Spanish eyes which looked murder at us both.

“What is this intrusion⁠—and this insulting message?” she asked, holding up the slip of paper.

“I need not explain, madame. I have too much respect for your intelligence to do so⁠—though I confess that intelligence has been surprisingly at fault of late.”

“How so, sir?”