“The diamonds?” She looked bewildered.

“The diamonds in the brocade bag.  Oh, surely they are still in the bag?”

“Yes, they are—­they will be in the bag,” the girl answered, her charming mouth suddenly resolute, though her eyes were troubled.  “You shall have the diamonds, and the document, too, for that one promise.”

“How is it possible that you can give me the document?” I asked, half suspicious, for that it should come to me after all I had endured because of it seemed too good to be true; that it should come through this girl seemed incredible.

“Ivor sent me to find it, and I found it,” she said simply.  “That was why I couldn’t come to you before.  I had to get the document.  I didn’t quite know how I was to do it at first, because I had no one to help or advise me; and Ivor said it was under some flower-pots in a box on the balcony of the room where the man was murdered.  I was sure I wouldn’t be allowed to get into the room itself, so it seemed difficult.  But I thought it all out, and hired a room for the evening in a house next door, pretending I was a New York journalist.  I had to wait until after dark, and then I climbed across from one balcony to the other.  It wasn’t as easy to do as it looked from the photograph I saw, because it was so high up, and the balconies were quite far apart, after all.  But I couldn’t fail Ivor; and I got across.  The rest was nothing—­except the climbing back.  I don’t know how the document came in the box, though I suppose Ivor put it there to hide it from the police.  It was wrapped up in a towel; and it’s quite clean.”

“I think,” I said slowly, when she had finished her story, “that you have a right to set a high price on that document.  You are a brave girl.”

“It’s not much to be brave for a man you love, is it?  And now I’m going to give the thing to you, because I trust you, Mademoiselle de Renzie.  I know you’ll pay.  And I hope, oh, I feel, it won’t hurt you as you think it will.”

Then, as if it had been some ordinary paper, she whipped from a long pocket of a coat she wore, the treaty.  She put it into my hand.  I felt it, I clasped it.  I could have kissed it.  The very touch of it made me tremble.

“Do you know what this is, Miss Forrest?” I asked.

“No,” she said.  “It was yours, or Ivor’s.  Of course I didn’t look.”

And then there came the rap, rap, of the call-boy at the door.  The fifteen minutes were over.  But I had the treaty.  And I had to pay its price.

CHAPTER XIX

MAXINE PLAYS THE LAST HAND OF THE GAME

When the play was over, I let Raoul drive home with me to supper.  If Godensky knew, as he may have known—­since he seemed to know all my movements—­perhaps he thought that I was seeing Raoul for the last time, and sending him away from me for ever.  But, though the game was not in my hands yet, the treaty was; and I had made up my mind to defy Godensky.