The numbers were unintelligible, but when I chanced to turn the piece of thin pasteboard over its reverse gave me an instant clue. It was a piece of one of those red-and-black ruled cards used by gamblers at Monte Carlo to register the numbers at roulette. This woman, whoever she was, had evidently been to Monte Carlo, and the numbers scribbled there were those which she believed would bring her fortune. Every woman gambler has her strong-rooted fancies, just as she has her amusing superstitions, and her belief in unlucky days and unlucky croupiers. Two facts were plain. First, that she bore marks upon her which were the exact counterpart of those found on poor Reggie; secondly, that she herself had been to Monte Carlo. Her handkerchief was of fine lawn, but bore no mark, while the crumpled piece of paper--without which no woman’s pocket is complete--proved on examination to contain only an address of some person in Brussels. I therefore carefully replaced them all, having failed to ascertain her name, and then dozed again. She was already up and dressed when I awoke. “Ah!” she laughed, “I see you’ve been sleeping well. I’ve had a famous night; I always sleep well when I travel. But I have a secret. A doctor friend of mine gave me some little tabloids of some narcotic,--I don’t know its name,--and if I take one I sleep quite well for six or seven hours at a stretch.” “I awoke once, and you were quite sound asleep.” “Oh, yes,” she laughed. “But I wonder where we are?” I looked forth and recognized the name of some small station through which we dashed. “We’re nearing Turin,” I responded. Then suddenly recollecting that in an hour or so I should be compelled to face old Keppel in the corridor, I resolved on a plan upon which I immediately proceeded to act. “I don’t feel at all well this morning,” I added. “I think I shall go to sleep again.” “I’ve some smelling-salts here,” she said, looking at me with an expression of sympathy. And she took out a small silver-mounted bottle from her little reticule. I took it and sniffed it gladly with a word of thanks. If I did not wish to meet Keppel, I should be obliged to remain in that stuffy little den for another twenty hours or so--that is, if they intended to go on to Paris. The prospect was certainly not inviting, for a single night in a Continental sleeping-car over a badly laid line gets on one’s nerves terribly. Compelled, however, to feign illness, I turned in again at Turin, and while my companion went forth and rejoined the man who had been my host the conductor brought me the usual glass of hot coffee and a roll. “I am not well,” I explained to the man when he handed it to me. “Are you going through to Paris?” “Sisignorina.” “Then will you see that I’m not disturbed, either at the frontier or anywhere else?” “Certainly--if the Signorina has the keys of her baggage.”