The maker of a plot that turns upon murder and drugging in the neighbourhood of a Continental gambling haunt must be aware that his work is not going to be brought to the test of common experience, and he is therefore less likely to be hampered by the laws of probability.  But there are limits even to the British public’s gift of credulity.  How far Mrs. BELLOC LOWNDES may have enjoyed special privileges in the search for her material I cannot say; but for myself I confess that a modest acquaintance with the atmosphere of European casinos has left me in absolute ignorance of any such society as that of the hosts of The House of Peril.  Perhaps Mrs. LOWNDES’S book (which I have not read) may throw light on this dark mystery; but in the play—­and the play’s the only thing that concerns us here—­I could trace nothing to indicate to my poor intelligence how it was that two decently-bred ladies and their escort, a perfectly honest French officer, ever came to find themselves on terms of easy intercourse with the frowsy old German couple who lived at the Chalet des Muguets, Lacville, on the proceeds of robbery.

Any obstacle which these repellent Teutons may have had to overcome in the ultimate execution of their nefarious designs must have been the merest child’s-play compared with the initial difficulty of inducing the right kind of victim to penetrate so fifth-rate an interior.  One never even began to get over the inherent improbability of such an attraction.

And I was the less disposed to take things for granted because of the rather irritating obscurity that veiled the opening of the Second Act, in which we are introduced to The House of Peril and are left for a long time in doubt as to the nature of the place and its relation to anything that has gone before.  I think this must have been the fault of the adapter, Mr. VACHELL.  He seems to have assumed in his audience a general knowledge of the original story—­dangerous confidence, even in the case of so clever and popular a writer as Mrs. BELLOC LOWNDES.

It certainly was his fault that the end of the play was like nothing ever seen off the stage.  Let me briefly put the scene before you.  A young Englishwoman, paying a farewell call upon the criminals of The House of Peril, has been drugged by them.  She wakes up prematurely to find them collecting her pearl necklace—­four thousand pounds’ worth of it.  Murder is in the air, when suddenly, to the surprise of the villains (but not to ours, for we had had fair warning of the denouement), enter to the rescue two admirers of the lady.  In the excitement attendant upon her recovery from a swoon the druggists are suffered to pass out through the door into the arms of a posse of constabulary.

At this juncture, the lady having been restored to her senses, you might suppose that the rescue-party would take at least some fleeting interest in the disposal of their prisoners.  There you would be in error.  The final curtain is due and there are peremptory affairs of the heart to be wound up before we can get away.  So, to clear the ground, one of the admirers makes a gallant statement which redeems the other’s character from a false suspicion, and, rightly regarding himself as de trop, goes off by another exit and shows no further concern in either of the two developments—­on or off the stage.