“That’s that!” he said. “I’ve had no instructions about your establishment, my friend, and as I’ve seen nothing improper going on I’m making no charge, at the moment. I don’t want to know what sort of show takes place on your platform, and I don’t want to know anything about you that I don’t know already. You’re a Swiss subject and a dark horse.” He gathered up the cards from the table, glancing at them carelessly. He did not expect to gain much from his possession of these names and addresses. It was among the women that he counted upon finding patrons of Kazmah and Company. But as he was about to drop the cards into his overcoat pocket, one of them, which bore a written note, attracted his attention. At this card he stared like a man amazed; his face grew more and more red, and: “Hell!” he said—“Hell! which of ’em was it?” The card contained the following:— [Illustration] CHAPTER XXVI. THE MOODS OF MOLLIE Early the following morning Margaret Halley called upon Mollie Gretna. Mollie’s personality did not attract Margaret. The two had nothing in common, but Margaret was well aware of the nature of the tie which had bound Rita Irvin to this empty and decadent representative of English aristocracy. Mollie Gretna was entitled to append the words “The Honorable” to her name, but not only did she refrain from doing so but she even preferred to be known as “Gretna”—the style of one of the family estates. This pseudonym she had adopted shortly after her divorce, when she had attempted to take up a stage career. But although the experience had proved disastrous, she had retained the _nom de guerre_, and during the past four years had several times appeared at war charity garden-parties as a classical dancer—to the great delight of the guests and greater disgust of her family. Her maternal uncle, head of her house, said to be the most blasé member of the British peerage and known as “the noble tortoise,” was generally considered to have pronounced the final verdict upon his golden-haired niece when he declared “she is almost amusing.” Mollie received her visitor with extravagant expressions of welcome. “My dear Miss Halley,” she cried, “how perfectly sweet of you to come to see me! of course, I can guess what you have called about. Look! I have every paper published this morning in London! Every one! Oh! poor, darling little Rita! What _can_ have become of her!” Tears glistened upon her carefully made-up lashes, and so deep did her grief seem to be that one would never have suspected that she had spent the greater part of the night playing bridge at a “mixed” club in Dover Street, and from thence had proceeded to a military “breakfast-dance.” “It is indeed a ghastly tragedy,” said Margaret. “It seems incredible that she cannot be traced.” “Absolutely incredible!” declared Mollie, opening a large box of cigarettes. “Will you have one, dear?” “No, thanks. By the way, they are not from Buenos Ayres, I suppose?”