"You mean that fellow Lutchester turning up?"
"Yes, I mean that," Pamela admitted.
"Say, didn't that Jap fellow get the pocketbook from your rooms at all, then?" Van Teyl asked. "I couldn't follow it all last night."
"He searched my rooms," Pamela replied, "and failed to find it. Afterwards, when he and I were alone in your sitting-room, heaven knows what would have happened, but for the miraculous arrival of Mr. Lutchester, whom I had left behind in London, come to pay an evening call in the Hotel Plaza, New York!"
Van Teyl shook his head slowly, got up from his seat, lit a cigarette, and came back again.
"Pam," he confessed, "my brain won't stand it. You're not going to tell me that Lutchester's in the game? Why, a simpler sort of fellow I never spoke to."
"I can't make up my own mind about Mr. Lutchester," Pamela sighed. "He helped me in London on the night I sailed—in fact, he was very useful indeed—but why he invented that story about Nikasti, brought a dummy pocketbook into the room and helped us out of all our troubles, unless it was by sheer and brilliant instinct, I cannot imagine."
"Let me get on to this," Van Teyl said. "Even the pocketbook was a fake, then?"
She nodded.
"I shouldn't be likely to leave things I risk my life for about my bedroom," she told him.