Harry Wethermill returned to the rooms. Mr. Ricardo did not follow him. He was too busy with the little problem which had been presented to him that night. What could that girl, he asked himself, have in common with the raddled woman she addressed so respectfully? Indeed, there had been a note of more than respect in her voice. There had been something of affection. Again Mr. Ricardo found himself wondering in what street in Bohemia Celia dwelt—and as he walked up to the hotel there came yet other questions to amuse him.
"Why," he asked, "could neither Celia nor madame come to the Villa des Fleurs to-morrow night? What are the plans they have made? And what was it in those plans which had brought the sudden gravity and reluctance into Celia's face?"
Ricardo had reason to remember those questions during the next few days, though he only idled with them now.
CHAPTER II
A CRY FOR HELP
It was on a Monday evening that Ricardo saw Harry Wethermill and the girl Celia together. On the Tuesday he saw Wethermill in the rooms alone and had some talk with him.
Wethermill was not playing that night, and about ten o'clock the two men left the Villa des Fleurs together.
"Which way do you go?" asked Wethermill.
"Up the hill to the Hotel Majestic," said Ricardo.