suggested that he should be. In fact, no suspicion had fallen upon him. I really could not resist something like a smile as I remarked:—
"That was really a most extraordinary oversight, and may prove very serious for you. For, assuming that you are right, and that Spieglemann is right in his statement that the lady lies under suspicion of having been concerned in other cases of a similar kind, is it not highly probable that the coachman has been in collusion with her, and she passed the stolen property to him? If this is not so, how did she get rid of the pendant? Nothing is truer than that in criminal cases it is the seemingly improbable that is most probable.
"Certainly, on the face of it nothing could seem more improbable than that a young lady, well connected and well off, afflicted with kleptomania, should make a confidant of her coachman. Yet it is the most probable thing imaginable, but both you and Spieglemann have overlooked it."
Mr. Coleman was perfectly crestfallen, and freely admitted that a very grave oversight had been committed. Thanking him and Mr. Whitney I withdrew, and it was perfectly clear to me that I left the two gentlemen in a very different frame of mind to what they had been in when I first saw them. In passing all the facts, as I now knew them, under review, I could not deny that circumstances looked dark against Miss Artois; and putting aside the possibility that somebody else might have stolen the pendant, I admitted the strong probability that she was in reality the thief. That being so, the idea struck me—and it evidently had not struck anyone else, not even the renowned Spieglemann—that she was a confederate, more likely than not a victim, of the coachman. On this supposition I determined to act, and my next step was to seek an interview with Miss Artois, in order that I might form some opinion of her from personal knowledge. I obtained this interview through the solicitors who had been engaged on her behalf by her devoted lover, Harold Kingsley. Although prepared to find her good looking, I certainly was not prepared for the type of beauty she represented.
"She rose from the table."
I don't think I ever looked upon a more perfect, a sweeter, and I will go so far as to say a more angelic face than she possessed, while her form and mould were such that an artist would have gone into raptures about her. I was informed that she had undergone a preliminary examination before the police magistrate, who had remanded her without bail, although bail had been offered to an unlimited amount by her uncle; but the magistrate had stated that he would consider the question of bail the next time she came before him.
As I entered the little cell she occupied at the police station, and introduced myself, giving her to understand at the same time that I was there by request of Mr. Kingsley, she rose from the table at which she had been sitting engaged in the perusal of a book, which I subsequently discovered to be a well-thumbed, dilapidated, and somewhat dirty copy of Moore's Lallah Rookh; and bowing with exquisite grace she said in a low, musical, and touchingly pathetic voice:—
"It is good of you to come, and more than kind of Mr. Kingsley to send you; but I am sorry that you have come, and I wish that you would leave me without another word."
Her soft, gazelle-like eyes, although apparently bent upon me, had a faraway look in them; and she spoke as a person in a trance might speak. Altogether there was something about her that at once aroused my curiosity and interest.
"That is a somewhat strange wish, Miss Artois," I answered. "I am here in your
