“You couldn’t have fired the first shot in more dramatic fashion,” she declared.  “Even Mr. Phipps lost his nerve for a moment, and I thought that Henry was going to collapse altogether.  I wonder what they are doing now.”

“Ringing up Scotland Yard, or on their way there, I should think,” Wingate replied.

She shivered for a moment.

“You are not afraid of the police, are you?” she asked.

“I don’t think we need be,” he replied cheerfully, “unless we have bad luck.  Of course, I have had professional advice as to all the details.  The thing has been thought out step by step, almost scientifically.  Slate is a marvellous fellow, and I think he has gathered up every loose end.  Makes one realise how easy crime would be if one went into it unflurried and with a clear conscience.—­Tell me, by the by, was it by accident that you opened that cable this morning?”

“Not entirely,” she confessed.  “I was in the library this morning talking to Grant, my new butler.”

“Satisfactory, I trust?” Wingate murmured.

“A paragon,” she replied, with a little gleam in her eyes.  “Well, on Henry’s desk was the rough draft of a cable, torn into pieces, and on one of them, larger than the rest, I couldn’t help seeing your name.  It looked as though Henry had been sending a cable in which you were somehow concerned.  While I was there, the reply came, so I decided to open and decode it.  Directly I realised what it was about, I brought it straight to the office, hoping to catch you there.”

“You are a most amazing woman,” he declared.

She leaned a little towards him.

“And you are a most likable man,” she murmured.

Wingate’s luncheon party had been arranged for some days, and was being given, in fact, at the suggestion of Lady Amesbury herself.

“I am a perfectly shameless person,” she declared, as she took her seat by Wingate’s side at the round table in the middle of the restaurant.  “I invited myself to this party.  I always do.  The last three times our dear host has been over to England, as soon as I have enquired after his health and his business, and whether the right woman has turned up yet, I ask him when he’s going to take me to lunch at the Milan.  I do love lunching in a restaurant,” she confided to Kendrick, who sat at her other side, “and nearly all my friends prefer their stodgy dining rooms.”

“Have you heard the news, aunt?” Sarah asked across the table.

“About that silly little Mrs. Liddiard Green, do you mean, and Jack Fulton?  I hear they were seen in Paris together last week.”

“Pooh!  Who cares about Mrs. Liddiard Green!” Sarah scoffed.  “I mean the news about Jimmy.  The dear boy’s gone into the City.”

“God bless my soul!” Lady Amesbury exclaimed.  “How much has he got to lose?”

“He isn’t going to lose anything,” Sarah replied.  “Mr. Maurice White has taken him into his office, and he’s going to have a commission on the business he does.  This is his first morning.  He must be busy or he’d have been here before now.  Jimmy’s never late for meals.”