But the Frenchman shook his head very decidedly. “Monsieur Grewgus, I come of thrifty forbears. I like my little flutter now and again, as I have admitted to you, but I never care to pay too dear for my weaknesses. What did I give Miss Glenthorne during this visit? Bah! it is not worth thinking of. A few flowers sent to the hotel, some boxes of chocolates, once I think half a dozen pairs of gloves. It was not that which made her dine with me whenever I asked her. It is a bit of a riddle, I confess. Do you think there is any possibility of your being mistaken, of your having received wrong information about her? I am a man of the world, and I could detect no sign of the greedy adventuress.” Grewgus replied that his evidence was too strong to admit of such a supposition. But still what Calliard had told him imparted a fresh air of mystery to the affair. “If blackmail was not her game, she must have had some other object in view,” said the detective to Lydon when he had finished the story. “I cannot think those meetings in Rome and Paris were the result of accident. I should say that by some means she or her friends had obtained information of Calliard’s movements, and she had followed him for the purpose of insinuating herself into his good graces. She, no doubt, read him at a glance, a weak, susceptible man, a bit thrifty perhaps, and garrulous to a fault.” “You did not, of course, mention anything of Stormont or Whitehouse to the Frenchman?” asked Lydon, who had been thinking very deeply as he listened to the story. “I gave him no indication that there was anybody else concerned in my investigations,” was Grewgus’ reply. “Is it possible that we have suspected Stormont wrongly, after all?” said the young man presently, who was profoundly astonished that there had been no blackmail. “Is it possible that he sent her and the man Edwards on some peculiar and special business errand, and that he, and perhaps Whitehouse, knew nothing of the double life she is leading, this combination of business woman and adventuress?” But the experienced detective shook his head. “They have both been closely watched, Mr. Lydon, except in those few particular hours when they made off. If they were engaged on legitimate business in Paris, with whom were they doing it? They would have called on people; people would have called on them. She was never with anybody but Calliard and Edwards. Edwards had not got even a second string to his bow; he was never seen with anybody but her.” “What is your reading of it, then?” “I incline to the idea they found out they were watched, and gave up the game in the middle, before the woman could formulate her plans for fleecing Calliard.” “Have you any other theory?”