“Ah!” thought the detective; “the old Turk wants me to shadow his wife!”

By a very natural blunder he had fancied himself in communication with Archibald, instead of Alan, Warburton.

“Have you any suspicions? Can you give me any hint upon which to act?” he asked.

“I might say this much,” ventured Alan, after a moment’s hesitation: “The lady has made, I believe, a mercenary marriage and she is hiding something from her husband and friends.”

[83]“I see,” said Vernet. And then, laughing inwardly, he thought: “A case of jealousy!”

[83]

In a few words Alan Warburton described to Vernet the “Sunlight,” costume worn by Leslie, and then they separated, Vernet going, not in search of “Sunlight,” but of the Goddess of Liberty.

What he found was this:

In the almost deserted music room stood the Goddess of Liberty, gazing down into the face of a woman in the robes of Sunlight, and both of them engaged in earnest conversation.

He watched them until he saw the Goddess lift the hand of Sunlight with a gesture of graceful reverence, bow over it, and turn away. Then he went back to the place where he had left his patron. He found the object of his quest still seated in the alcove, alone and absorbed in thought.

“I beg your pardon for intruding upon your solitude,” began the detective hastily, at the same time seating himself close beside Alan; “but there is a lady here whose conduct is, to say the least, mysterious. As a detective, it becomes my duty to look after her a little, to see that she does not leave this house until I can follow her.”

“Well?” with marked indifference in his tone.

“If she could be detained,” went on Vernet, “by—say, by keeping some one constantly beside her, so that she cannot leave the house without being observed—”

Alan Warburton threw back his head.

“Pardon me,” he said, “but I object to thus persecuting a lady, and a guest.”

“But if I tell you that this lady is a man in silken petticoats?”

 Prev. P 50/322 next