"Know her! Yes, she was the sister of one of the worst scoundrels that ever formed a unit of the Apaches." "The Apaches!" gasped young Montelet. "Good heavens! But she came with the very finest credentials, to act as companion for my stepmother. She was a dear girl, and it nearly broke my mother's heart when she, too, was found dead. Lady Montelet has a penchant for French companions, and her present one, Marie Vaudrot, who has been with her ever since, is also French. She was vouched for by a Countess Somebody or other, and she has been like a daughter to my mother.... Oh! it is too, too awful!" he burst out, fiercely. "First my dear, dear father----" "Good heavens!" burst out Mr. Narkom. "Did he too, die mysteriously? I understood that he died from pneumonia." "So he did," was the low-toned reply; "but on the night of his death he eluded the nurse while she slept, and we--my mother and I--found him lying in front of the altar. The glass was removed, leaving the stone exposed. He must have touched it--and he had died...." His voice trailed away into silence, and a wave of emotion surged over him, choking him. Suddenly he swung round with an intense desperation in his face and voice. "Help me, Mr. Headland! Let me avenge these deaths. The stone I care nothing for. Thank Heaven it is gone, that no more murders may be committed for its sake. Help me to avenge the woman who was more than a mother to me--the best, the truest that ever lived! If I could have done anything in this world to have saved her, but I couldn't, I couldn't! Nothing on earth could save her." Cleek twitched up an inquiring eyebrow. "Save her from what, Mr. Montelet? The effect of the curse?" "The curse!" he echoed in tones of unutterable contempt. "No, there's nothing supernatural about that! You know as well as I do that such a thing is all rot. People can't be killed like that in a steel-lined room, with a bolted door and barred windows, thirty feet above the ground; nor do I believe in heart disease. No; there's a human agency at the back of the mystery, and you yourself have given me a clue as to the perpetrators. It is that gang of thieves, the Apaches, who are the root of the mystery, and Miss Marie Vaudrot will turn out to be a second Celestine Merode. No wonder Laura distrusts her." "Laura! And, pray, who is that?" interposed Cleek, gazing into the young man's excited face. A flush came over it. He shifted uneasily in his chair. "Miss Laura Gwynne, Mr. Headland--Lady Montelet's stepdaughter. She, you know, was married twice, and Laura was brought up in the French convent of Notre Dame. She is a few years older than I am, though no one would believe it, and a noble girl.