Safely in his room, Cecil locked and wedged the door, and opened the window and looked out from the balcony at the starry night. He could hear cats playing on the roof. He smiled when he thought of the things Mrs. Macalister had said, and of the ardour of her glances. Then he felt sorry for her. Perhaps it was the whisky-and-soda which he had just drunk that momentarily warmed his heart towards the lonely creature. Only one item of her artless gossip had interested him--a statement that the new Italian manager had been ill in bed all day. He emptied his pockets, and, standing on a chair, he put his pocket-book on the top of the wardrobe, where no Algerian marauder would think of looking for it; his revolver he tucked under his pillow. In three minutes he was asleep. III. He was awakened by a vigorous pulling and shaking of his arm; and he, who usually woke wide at the least noise, came to his senses with difficulty. He looked up. The electric light had been turned on. “There’s a ghost in my room, Mr. Thorold! You’ll forgive me--but I’m so----” It was Mrs. Macalister, dishevelled and in white, who stood over him. “This is really a bit too thick,” he thought vaguely and sleepily, regretting his impulsive flirtation of the previous evening. Then he collected himself and said sternly, severely, that if Mrs. Macalister would retire to the corridor, he would follow in a moment; he added that she might leave the door open if she felt afraid. Mrs. Macalister retired, sobbing, and Cecil arose. He went first to consult his watch; it was gone--a chronometer worth a couple of hundred pounds. He whistled, climbed on to a chair, and discovered that his pocket-book was no longer in a place of safety on the top of the wardrobe; it had contained something over five hundred pounds in a highly negotiable form. Picking up his overcoat, which lay on the floor, he found that the fur lining--a millionaire’s fancy, which had cost him nearly a hundred and fifty pounds--had been cut away, and was no more to be seen. Even the revolver had departed from under his pillow! “Well!” he murmured, “this is decidedly the grand manner.” Quite suddenly it occurred to him, as he noticed a peculiar taste in his mouth, that the whisky-and-soda had contained more than whisky-and-soda--he had been drugged! He tried to recall the face of the waiter who had served him. Eyeing the window and the door, he argued that the thief had entered by the former and departed by the latter. “But the pocket-book!” he mused. “I must have been watched!” Mrs. Macalister, stripped now of all dash and all daring, could be heard in the corridor. “Can she----?” He speculated for a moment, and then decided positively in the negative. Mrs. Macalister could have no design on anything but a bachelor’s freedom. He assumed his dressing-gown and slippers and went to her. The corridor was in darkness, but she stood in the light of his doorway. “Now,” he said, “this ghost of yours, dear lady!”