“No. Lady Trent’s maid ran off with the bag, thinking that your mistress had put the jewels in it. But she had not. Lady Trent came to the top of the stairs to call her back, as soon as she found the bag gone, but you and Berry were out of the house. So the emeralds stayed here for one night. They are on Lady Trent’s dressing-table at the present moment. Go and get a stiff whisky, Saunders. You need it. And then may I suggest that you should return for the sleeping Berry? By the way, the least you can do is to marry her, Saunders.” “Never, my lord!” I said with decision. “I have meddled sufficiently with women.” THE ADVENTURE OF THE PRIMA DONNA. Many years ago the fear of dynamite stalked through the land. An immense organisation of anarchists whose headquarters were in the United States had arranged for a number of simultaneous displays in London, Glasgow, and Quebec. As is well known now, the Parliament House at Quebec and the gasworks at Glasgow were to be blown up, while the programme for London included Scotland Yard, most of Whitehall, the House of Commons, the Tower, and four great railway stations thrown in. This plot was laid bare, stopped, and made public, and--except a number of people who happened quite innocently to carry black bags--no one was put to the slightest inconvenience. The dynamite scare was deemed to be at an end. But the dread organisation was in fact still active, as the sixty policemen who were injured in what is called the “Haymarket Massacre” explosion at Chicago, on May 4, 1886, have dire occasion to know. Everyone who reads the papers is familiar with the details of the Haymarket Massacre. Few people, however, are aware that a far more dastardly outrage had been planned to intimidate London a few days later. Through the agency of a courageous woman this affair too was unmasked in its turn, but for commercial and other reasons it was kept from the general public. The scheme was to blow up the Opera House at Covent Garden on the first night of the season. Had the facts got abroad, the audience would probably have been somewhat sparse on that occasion; but the facts did not get abroad, and the house was crowded in every part; for the famous prima donna Louise Vesea (since retired) was singing “Marguerite,” in “Faust,” and enthusiasm about her was such that though the popular tenor had unaccountably thrown up his engagement, the price of stalls rose to thirty-three shillings. The police were sure of themselves, and the evening passed off with nothing more explosive than applause. Nevertheless, that night, after the curtain had fallen and Louise Vesea had gathered up all the wreaths and other tributes of admiration which had been showered upon her, there happened the singular incident which it is our purpose to record.