"Now, then, Jack, I've got you where I want you. Who is she?" "On my word, I don't know," answered Hillard, stirring restlessly. "Then there is a woman!" cried Merrihew, astonished at his perspicacity. "I knew it. Nothing else would so demoralize your nerve. Shall we drink a health to her?" Hillard raised his glass and touched that of his comrade. For the good of his soul and the peace of his mind, he then and there determined to tell Merrihew the whole adventure, without a single reservation. "To the Lady in the Fog!" he said. "Fog?" blankly. "Well, the Lady in the Mask." "Fog, mask? Two of them?" "No, only one. Once I met her in the fog, and then I met her in the mask." "I'll drink to her; but I'm hanged if I don't believe you're codding me," said Merrihew disappointedly. "This is New York." "I know it; and yet sometimes I doubt it. Here's to the lady." They drank. Hillard set down his glass; Merrihew refilled his. "The whole story, Jack, details and all; no half-portions." Hillard told the yarn simply, omitting nothing essential. He even added that for three weeks he had been the author of the personal inquiry as to the whereabouts of one Madame Angot. More than that, he was the guilty man who had set the club by the ears. "I don't know, Dan, but this has taken so strong a hold on me that I shan't forget it soon. Imagine it yourself. Oh, but she could sing! I am a man not to be held in the leash of an adventure like this; but she held me. How? By the hope that one day I might see her face, with no veil of mystery to hold her off at arm's length." Merrihew was greatly excited. He was for ordering a second bottle, but Hillard stayed him. "By George! And you are sure that it was at the Sandfords'?" "I am positive. But there is a puzzle that I have failed to solve: Sandford's cable and the caretaker's declaration. I know that I was in that house. I ran across a stein which I had given Sandford. I have inquired of the police; they had been requested to watch the house in the absence of the owner. The patrolman says that he has seen no light in the house since the family sailed for Africa. I sleep soundly; never have nightmares. And yet, but for her letters and the fact that Giovanni heard her sing under my window, I might almost believe I've been dreaming. It is no dream; but it begins to look as if I were the victim of some fine hoax." "And Sandford mixed up in it," supplemented Merrihew. "Sandford and I are good friends, but we are not so intimate that he'd take the pains to work out a hoax of this magnitude. It did not originate with him, and his wife is altogether out of the picture. If I had only seen her face, I might have forgotten all about her in a few days. But the mask, the charm, the mystery! I can't get her out of my thoughts; I am irrational in all I do; an absolute failure in the office." "It is more than a hoax, in my opinion. Wait till Sandford returns and finds his silver gone!" Hillard started.