“Come over here,” Cecil answered. “Take these glasses and look down at the Quai du Rosaire. You see everything plainly?” Eve could, in fact, see on the quay the little mounds of mud which had been extracted from the canal in the quest of the bracelet. Cecil continued: “On my arrival in Bruges on Monday, I had a fancy to climb the Belfry at once. I witnessed the whole scene between you and Miss Sartorius and Madame Lawrence, through my glasses. Immediately your backs were turned, Madame Lawrence, her hands behind her, and her back against the railing, began to make a sort of rapid, drawing up motion with her forearms. Then I saw a momentary glitter.... Considerably mystified, I visited the spot after you had left it, chatted with the gendarme on duty and got round him, and then it dawned on me that a robbery had been planned, prepared, and executed with extraordinary originality and ingenuity. A long, thin thread of black silk must have been ready tied to the railing, with perhaps a hook at the other end. As soon as Madame Lawrence held the bracelet she attached the hook to it and dropped it. The silk, especially as it was the last thing in the world you would look for, would be as good as invisible. When you went for the police, Madame retrieved the bracelet, hid it in her muff, and broke off the silk. Only, in her haste, she left a bit of silk tied to the railing. That fragment I carried to the hotel. All along she must have been a little uneasy about me.... And that’s all. Except that I wonder you thought I was jealous of the Count’s attentions to your friend.” He gazed at her admiringly. “I’m glad you are not a thief, Mr. Thorold,” said Eve. “Well,” Cecil smiled, “as for that, I left him a couple of louis for fares, and I shall pay his hotel bill.” “Why?” “There were notes for nearly ten thousand francs with the bracelet. Ill-gotten gains, I am sure. A trifle, but the only reward I shall have for my trouble. I shall put them to good use.” He laughed, serenely gay. CHAPTER IV. A SOLUTION OF THE ALGIERS MYSTERY. “And the launch?” “I am unaware of the precise technical term, sir, but the launch awaits you. Perhaps I should have said it is alongside.” The reliable Lecky hated the sea; and when his master’s excursions became marine, he always squinted more formidably and suddenly than usual, and added to his reliability a certain quality of ironic bitterness. “My overcoat, please,” said Cecil Thorold, who was in evening dress.