Dear lady (it said), I am the victim of the most absurd and

annoying mistake. I have been arrested for Schirmer, the betting

man who murdered his mother-in-law and escaped from Paris

yesterday. They will not let me communicate with any one till

tomorrow morning and I have had great trouble in getting this line

to you. For heaven's sake bring Schreiermeyer and anybody else you

can find, to identify me, as soon as possible. I am locked up in a

cell in the police station of the Third Arrondissement.---Yours ever, C. LOGOTHETI.

Madame Bonanni looked at the woman again.

'Did you see the gentleman?' she asked.

'What gentleman?' 'The gentleman who is in prison!' 'What prison?' asked the woman with dogged stupidity.

'You re a perfect idiot!' cried Madame Bonanni, and she slammed the

door of the box in the woman's face, and bolted it inside.

She sat down and read the note a fourth time. There was no doubt as to

its being really from Logotheti. She laughed to herself.

'More ingenious than ever!' she said, half aloud.

A timid knock at the door of the box. She rose with evident annoyance,

and opened again, to meet the respectable old box-opener, a grey-haired

woman of fifty-five.

'Please, Madame, is the woman to go away? She seems to be waiting for

something.' 'Tell her to go to all the devils!' answered Madame Bonanni, furious.

'No--don't!' she cried. 'Where is she? Come here, you!' she called,

seeing the woman at a little distance. 'Do you know what you are doing?

You are trying to help Schirmer, the murderer, to escape. If you are

not careful you will be in prison yourself before morning! That is the

answer! Now go, and take care that you are not caught!' The woman, who was certainly not over-intelligent, stared hard at

Madame Bonanni for a moment, and then turned, with a cry of terror, and

fled along the circular passage.

'You should not let in such suspicious-looking people,' said Madame

Bonanni to the box-opener in a severe tone.

The poor soul began an apology, but Madame Bonanni did not stop to

listen, and entered the box again, shutting the door behind her.

The curtain went up before Lushington came back, but the prima donna

did not look at the stage and scarcely heard the tenor's lament, the

chorus and the rest. She seemed quite lost in her thoughts. Then

Lushington appeared with a big dark cloak on his arm.

'Will this do, mother?' he asked.

She stood up and made him put it over her. It had a hood, as she had

wished, which quite covered her head and would cover her face, too, if

she wished not to be recognised.




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