“I like anything when I’m with you,” she said, and they held hands foolishly, till the house lights dimmed and the curtain rose upon a lawyer’s office. The lawyer was of the underworld: a man everlastingly on the verge of being struck off the rolls. He had betrayed a client with whom he had had dealings, and the man had gone to prison for a long term, but had escaped. Now the news had come that he had left Australia and was in London, waiting his opportunity to destroy the man whose treachery was responsible for his capture. Here was a note to which the heart of the girl responded. Even Monty found himself leaning forward, as the old familiar cant terms of his trade came across the footlights. “It is quite all right,” he said at the second interval, “only”—he hesitated—“isn’t it a bit too near the real thing? After all, one doesn’t come to the theatre to see . . .” He stopped, realizing that conditions and situations familiar to him were novel enough to a fashionable audience which was learning for the first time that a “busy” was a detective, and that a police informer went by the title of “nose.” The lights up, he glanced round the house, and suddenly he started and caught her arm. “Don’t look for a moment,” he said, averting his eyes, “then take a glance at the front row. Do you see anybody you know?” Presently she looked. “Yes, that is the fellow you hate so much, isn’t it—Gonsalez?” “They’re all there—the three of them,” said Monty. “I wonder,”—he was troubled at the thought—“I wonder if they’re looking for you?” “For me? They’ve nothing on me, Monty.” He was silent. “I’m glad you’re not going back to that place to-night. They’ll trail you sure—sure!” He thought later that it was probably a coincidence that they were there at all. They seemed to show no interest in the box, but were chattering and talking and laughing to one another. Not once did their eyes come up to his level, and after a while he gained in confidence, though he was glad enough when the play was resumed. There were two scenes in the act: the first was a police station, the second the lawyer’s room. The man was drunk, and the detective had come to warn him that The Ringer was after him. And then suddenly the lights on the stage were extinguished and the whole house was in the dark. It was part of the plot. In this darkness, and in the very presence of the police, the threatened man was to be murdered. They listened in tense silence, the girl craning her head forward, trying to pierce the dark, listening to the lines of intense dialogue that were coming from the blackness of the stage. Somebody was in the room—a woman, and they had found her. She slipped from the stage detective’s grasp and vanished, and when the lights went up she was gone. “What has happened, Monty?” she whispered. He did not answer. “Do you think——”