“Then they are yours,” I said. “For I confess having intended to sell them to the first collector tomorrow. And probably rue it ever afterwards, like old Mrs. Mace and her Romney.”
He rose, frowning darkly.
“So! You have heard of that nefarious transaction? Well,” he added, cryptically, “you may have cause to thank old Mrs. Mace’s Romney. Justice has a strange, inexplicable way of working out her problems in spite of us.”
It was here that the clock struck eleven-thirty.
“I feel like Cinderella,” I said, my hand in a strong clasp which was folding a check in it. “I do not want you to go, Cary!” For something told me that I should see this brave, elusive personality no more.
“And I astonish myself by not wanting to go,” he said. “This room, this hour, will linger like the perfume of a dream. Adieu, Cinderella!”
His lips touched my hand. A motor horn sounded sharply. He caught up the antiques and his overcoat; there came a rush of cold air, a door slammed and the motor rolled off. Then a blinding wave swept over consciousness, and for a second I saw two lamp flames instead of one. I caught at the table, and stood helpless with fact hammering the thing upon unwilling reason, for, on the cuff, lifted to thrust into his coat sleeve, I had seen two swastikas, in red Roman gold.
Then, I knew.
The smooth, dark head, the slender hand, the swastikas, belonged to the man in the adjoining booth who had overheard my conversation with Prince, even to the Brookchase address. Thought, like the wireless, was humming electrically, putting together the sinister puzzle, insisting upon me that I had been robbed. My fortune was gone; and at the same time perverse subconsciousness was whispering: “No! No! No!”
Like the heroine of a movie melodrama, Martha advanced from the door, with face set to tragedy. She held out a newspaper, uttering hoarsely: