He had expected her to be troublesome-it was a premonition he had had about her from the first-and, as was his way, he had deliberately preferred to precipitate the explosion rather than fumble along through smouldering and smoke. But he was not quite prepared for the reaction that he actually provoked, which was that she simply rose and left the table.

"I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself, thank you," was her parting speech.

He beckoned a waiter, and watched her go with a little smile of rueful resignation. It was not the first time that some thing of that sort had happened to him-cases of that type were always liable to be trying, and fulfilled their liability more often than not.

"And so she swep' out," murmured Simon wryly, as he pocketed his change; and then he remembered the men who had followed them from the Calumet. "Men"- it was unlikely to be "man." The Calumet bunch were not of that class.

There were, as a matter of fact, two of them, and their instructions had been definite. They were merely to obtain addresses. It was therefore doubly unfortunate for the one who was concerned to follow Stella Dornford that, when he grasped part of the situation, he should have elected to attempt a coup on his own.

Stella Dornford tenanted a minute apartment in a block close to the upper end of Wardour Street. The block was in the form of a hollow square, with a courtyard in the centre, communicating with the street by a short passage, and the entrances to all the main staircases opened onto this court yard. Standing in this courtyard, facing the doorway by which the girl had entered, the sleuth glanced up curiously at the windows. A moment later he saw one of the windows light up.

It was then that he decided upon his folly. The window which had lighted up was a French window, and it gave onto a narrow balcony-and, most tempting of all, it stood ajar, for the night was warm. And the building had been designed in the style that imitates large blocks of stone, with substantial interstices between the blocks. To reach that balcony would be as easy as climbing up a ladder.