"Even monsters are human, dear Viscountess, and who can wonder that the beauty that has wrought such havoc in my—in our—-in all beholders, should have smitten this fellow, who is reported to have shadowed your footsteps all Monday night, disguised in a red domino and mask. That mask and domino were mine, and he robbed me of them in the same house by the river-side where you were taken last night. A den of thieves, Viscountess, from which your escape unharmed was hardly less than a miracle."
"My escape? Nobody attempted to detain me. In fact I saw no one, and the only danger I escaped was of being taken prisoner by the soldiers who came to search for—rebels, I understood them to say."
"Rebels! Ha! ha! 'tis true, this jailbird has the audacity to mix himself up with Jacobite plots and claim that he only steals purses on the chance of their containing papers of value to the Pretender's cause! Speaking of papers brings me back to my own affairs. When this villain stole my domino, he also robbed me of a packet of papers. He returned the domino—after putting it to the use you wot of—but the papers, of great value, he refused to give up. Is it possible, dear Lady Prudence, that while you were in this robber's den, you saw such a packet?"
Prue shook her head. "The soldiers took everything they could find in the place," she said reflectively. "If I were you, I would make inquiries of them."
"I have done so," he said; "but they brought away no such packet."
"Perhaps it was opened and they have the contents."
"I have reason to think that unlikely," replied Beachcombe, biting his lips and scowling.
"Or destroyed?" she suggested.
"No, indeed; if I could hope for that—!"
"What, hope for the destruction of valuable private papers? It is not to you, then, that they are valuable?" she cried shrewdly.