“Doroteita d’Avendaño!” I ejaculated. The features were unmistakable, though the dress was different.
“Are they—er—friends of yours?” the Minister asked, regarding me keenly from beneath his shaggy brows.
“They were—once,” I answered. “Ever since we were at San Sebastian last year I have been endeavouring to trace them.”
“What? Did she add you to her list of victims?” he asked, laughing.
“Well, the plot was scarcely successful, otherwise I should not be here now,” I replied. Then I told him briefly how, after luring me to their villa, the interesting pair had attempted to murder me.
“Extraordinary!” he ejaculated, when I had finished. “Curiously enough, however, your story supplies just the link in the chain of evidence that was missing at their trial.”
“Their trial?” I exclaimed. “Tell me about them.”
“Well, in the first place, the enchantress you knew as Doroteita d’Avendaño was none other than the notorious Liseta Gonzalez, known to the police as ‘The Golden Hand.’”
”‘The Golden Hand’?” I echoed in amazement. I had heard much of the extraordinary career of an adventuress bearing that sobriquet; how she had moved in the best society in Paris and Vienna, and how in the latter city, in a single year, in her character as queen of the demi-monde, she had spent 50,000 pounds, the money of her dupes. Indeed, her adventures had been the talk of Europe.
“Yes,” he continued, smiling at my astonishment. “No doubt you have read in your English newspapers all about the many ingenious frauds she has perpetrated. For the past five years she has been well-known in various characters in Pau, Rome, Paris, and Vienna; her schemes have invariably been successful, and her escape from the police has been accomplished just at the right moment, in a manner almost incredible. But the audacious boldness of a coup she effected a year ago caused her downfall.”