precious enclosure between the picture and its brown paper backing.  A little gum from the envelopes helped me to stick the latter up again.  No one would dream the picture had ever been tampered with.  I rehung it on the wall, put the magazine back in my coat pocket, and crept back to bed.  I was pleased with my hiding-place.  They’d never think of pulling to pieces one of their own pictures.  I hoped that they’d come to the conclusion that Danvers had been carrying a dummy all along, and that, in the end, they’d let me go.

“As a matter of fact, I guess that’s what they did think at first, and, in a way, it was dangerous for me.  I learnt afterwards that they nearly did away with me then and there—­there was never much chance of their ’letting me go’—­but the first man, who was the boss, preferred to keep me alive on the chance of my having hidden them, and being able to tell where if I recovered my memory.  They watched me constantly for weeks.  Sometimes they’d ask me questions by the hour—­I guess there was nothing they didn’t know about the third degree!—­but somehow I managed to hold my own.  The strain of it was awful, though . . .

“They took me back to Ireland, and over every step of the Journey again, in case I’d hidden it somewhere en route.  Mrs. Vandemeyer and another woman never left me for a moment.  They spoke of me as a young relative of Mrs. Vandemeyer’s whose mind was affected by the shock of the Lusitania.  There was no one I could appeal to for help without giving myself away to them, and if I risked it and failed—­and Mrs. Vandemeyer looked so rich, and so beautifully dressed, that I felt convinced they’d take her word against mine, and think it was part of my mental trouble to think myself ’persecuted’—­I felt that the horrors in store for me would be too awful once they knew I’d been only shamming.”

Sir James nodded comprehendingly.

“Mrs. Vandemeyer was a woman of great personality.  With that and her social position she would have had little difficulty in imposing her point of view in preference to yours.  Your sensational accusations against her would not easily have found credence.”

“That’s what I thought.  It ended in my being sent to a sanatorium at Bournemouth.  I couldn’t make up my mind at first whether it was a sham affair or genuine.  A hospital nurse had charge of me.  I was a special patient.  She seemed so nice and normal that at last I determined to confide in her.  A merciful providence just saved me in time from falling into the trap.  My door happened to be ajar, and I heard her talking to some one in the passage.  She was one of them!  They still fancied it might be a bluff on my part, and she was put in charge of me to make sure!  After that, my nerve went completely.  I dared trust nobody.