“In my own way,” he replied calmly. “When a man has deliberately betrayed his cause, there is only one explanation.” “Betrayed his cause!” She repeated the phrase wonderingly. “Madame,” he said, “do you suppose they will call it anything else? Go at once. I will wait half an hour before summoning my comrades. By that time they will have become impatient. Then you will be safe, and I will give them my explanation.” “And that will be----?” He put her right hand to his lip and then stopped. “Good-bye, Madame,” he said without replying to the question. “We are quits. I kiss your hand.” Almost reluctantly Louise Vesea went forth. And as she reached the street she felt for the first time that it was indeed a fatal danger from which she had escaped. She reflected that the Chief had imposed no secrecy upon her, made no conditions; and she could not help but admire such a method of repaying a debt. She wondered what his explanation to his comrades would be. Half an hour later, when Vesea was far away, there was the sound of a revolver shot. The other two plotters rushed into the room which the prima donna had left, and found all the explanation which the Chief had vouchsafed. THE EPISODE IN ROOM 222. The date was the fifth of November, a date easy to remember; not that I could ever fail to recall it, even without the aid of the associations which cluster round Guy Fawkes. It was a Friday--and yet there are people who affect to believe that Friday is not a day singled out from its six companions for mystery, strangeness, and disaster! The number of the room was 222, as easy to remember as the date; not that I could ever fail to recall the number also. Every circumstance in the affair is fixed in my mind immovably and for ever. The hotel I shall call by the name of the Grand Junction Terminus Hotel. If this tale were not a simple and undecorated record of fact, I might with impunity choose for its scene any one of the big London hotels in order by such a detail to give a semblance of veracity to my invention; but the story happens to be absolutely true, and I must therefore, for obvious reasons, disguise the identity of the place where it occurred. I would only say that the Grand Junction Railway is one of the largest and one of the best-managed systems in England, or in the world: and that these qualities of vastness and of good management extend also to its immense Terminus Hotel in the North of Central London. The caravanserai (I have observed that professional writers invariably refer to a hotel as a caravanserai) is full every night in the week except Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; and every commercial traveller knows that, except on these nights, if he wishes to secure a room at the Grand Junction he must write or telegraph for it in advance. And there are four hundred bedrooms.