For it was impossible to believe that, worried and worn out as she was when he left her, she would not have been infinitely more distressed if she had known that a police prosecution was hanging over her. Who was the man who had beckoned her out of the tea-shop, who had accompanied her to the police-station, and put her into the cab afterwards? That was the one question, Gerard felt, upon which the whole mystery hinged. And he was conscious, absurd as he felt the sensation to be, that he was not only curious concerning that important personage, but actually jealous of him. Was she in the power of some man who exercised over her an overwhelming and sinister influence? Was she under the power of hypnotic suggestion? He could not but feel sure that the man he had so dimly seen would prove to have an important bearing upon the matter, and made up his mind that, at all hazards, he would find out who he was. If it should prove to be the case that she herself was only a more or less helpless instrument in the hands of a designing and unscrupulous man, then he felt that her position instead of being a guilty and infamous one, was pitiful in the extreme. But the weak point in this argument was the fact that Miss Davison seemed to be, of all persons in the world, the least likely to be made a victim in the way suggested. While essentially feminine, she was high-spirited, active-minded, full of resolution and initiative, and wholly unlike the gentle, meek, lymphatic people who are the most readily subjected to such experiments. But then he had heard that highly strung nervous temperaments are also among the subjects of experiments of one mind upon another; and whether Miss Davison could be made submissive to the will of another depended upon the strength of will in the person who obtained an influence over her. This, then, was now Gerard’s chief object: to find out and learn all he could about the mysterious man. If the girl had been, by artful plans, entrapped into acting as one of a gang of expert thieves--and, horrible as this suggestion was, Gerard felt that it was one that had to be entertained--then it was the leader of the gang for whom he must look. And it was scarcely likely that this leader should have trusted himself inside the police-station. He thought, therefore, that he might dismiss the notion that the well-dressed, young-looking man whom he had but half seen, could be the inspirer and fountain-head of the organization, if organization there were. Rather, Gerard thought, would he be a man set to act as a scout and spy, and to divert suspicion from his companions by posing as a friend who could answer for their character. Gerard, true to his resolution not to let the matter drop, set about devising an excuse for calling upon Lady Jennings the very next day; but he was saved that trouble, for on the following morning he found on his breakfast-table a note from the old lady asking him to luncheon that day.