I glanced at the card with an interest I took care to conceal. It had been issued six months before by the brother of the bride, a certain Agnes Wheatley, and invited "Monsieur et Madame Cauvin" to be present at her marriage to Captain James Easterbrook, of the Royal Fusiliers, at St Mary's Church, Chester. The address given for the reply was "118, Whitefriars, Chester"--an address which I took early opportunity of scribbling upon my shirt-cuff. Suddenly Doris, who had taken the card from my hand, raised it to her nostrils and sniffed at it. "Why," she said, "it is scented. I never saw an English wedding card scented before." And she sniffed again and handed the card to me. I raised it to my nostrils and decided that the odour was either that of lemon-scented verbena or the old-fashioned stag-leaved geranium. The scent was fast disappearing, and it was evident, from the age of the card, that it must have been very pungent when fresh. Small things mean much in our profession, and it struck me at once that Doris's discovery might be decidedly important. Here we had a perfectly innocent-looking invitation to a wedding in England, printed in quite the ordinary English style, and, judging from the type employed, evidently the work of an English printer. Yet the card, found by chance in the house of a foreign suspect, showed a variation from English social customs which Doris, womanlike, had instantly detected. The fact of the card being scented, had I been alone, would certainly not have struck me as being of any peculiar significance; very few men, I am certain, would have given it a second thought. Yet the trivial circumstance was to be the means of leading us finally towards our goal. "Are you sure they never perfume wedding cards in England?" I asked Doris. "Absolutely," she replied. "I have never heard of such a thing. The card is of excellent quality, and, judging from the fact that the bridegroom is a military man, the parties must be of fairly good social circles, in which any departure from the accepted custom in such things would be regarded as `bad form.'" "Well," I thought, "it may be important." At the same time I realised that the card might have lain in contact with a scented handkerchief, and thus absorbed part of the odour. As against this was the fact that the scent was not a common one. I decided in my own mind that the matter might be worth looking into, and, when the old custodian's back was turned, took the liberty of slipping the card into my pocket. Soon after, having learnt all I could about Cauvin and his abode, we left the Villa des Fleurs, and, giving the old woman a handsome tip, returned to Mentone. The same evening I left for Marseilles, Doris and her mother remaining behind for a day or two before returning to England.