"And so she had. There were just the slightest traces of concentrated amylene hydrate on her lips. Probably administered in the coffee, dropped in while Lady Montelet was locking the door, by someone else who knew of the secret opening as well as Miss Vaudrot."
An exclamation burst from the lips of all present.
"The secret opening!" cried young Montelet, as the girl sank down in a crumpled heap. "Good heavens! man, you are mad. Where is there such an opening?"
"Here," said Cleek, crossing the room and tapping the left-hand pillar. "I saw the marks when I got near, and as I thought Miss Vaudrot was taking pains to hide it, I had to wait and see whether she knew, too, of the electric guard over the jewel. Even Lady Montelet could not have known about this for her fingertips showed traces of having been subjected to a shock. Miss Vaudrot cleared herself by being the first to volunteer to search in the pedestal. But why did you seek to conceal the other entrance, mademoiselle?"
A burning flush surged over the pale face.
"I was afraid less someone else should be accused, m'sieur," she said, naïvely. "I heard a sound in the night, and I went down the corridor; but all was quiet, so I returned to my own room. But in the morning I thought all sorts of silly things, and I kept silence in case—in case——" Her voice broke, and the rest of the sentence went by default.
"In case Mr. Hubert might get involved, eh?" finished Cleek, softly, with one of his curious one-sided smiles. "Your ideas of justice, mademoiselle, are common to your sex. Ah, well! I think that is all, Mr. Narkom. And as you disconnected the current downstairs, I should advise that this room be locked up. The police can take away that wretch there. Come, Mr. Narkom; the riddle is solved, and I think I shall get an hour up the river, after all."
Without vouchsafing another look toward the sullen figure of the woman or at young Montelet, who was gazing into the face of Mademoiselle Marie Vaudrot with a new look in his eyes, Cleek walked from the Assyrian gallery in which for a brief time longer would shine the "Eye of Ashtaroth." Two minutes later the limousine was flying at a mile-a-minute clip riverward, where waited Dollops and the launch and the blue sky above—with a brief hour in which all the crime and sordidness of the world could be blotted out.