Chester came to the door of the dining-room.  M. Wachner had detained him for a moment in the hall, talking volubly, explaining how pleasant had been their little supper party till Mrs. Bailey had suddenly felt faint.

Chester looked anxiously at Sylvia.  She was oddly pale, all the colour drained from her face, but she seemed on quite good terms with Madame Wachner!  As for that stout, good-natured looking woman, she also was unlike her placid smiling self, for her face looked red and puffy.  But still she nodded pleasantly to Chester.

It seemed to the lawyer inconceivable that this commonplace couple could have seriously meant to rob their guest.  But there was that letter—­that strange, sinister letter which purported to be from Sylvia!  Who had written that letter, and with what object in view?

Chester began to feel as if he was living through a very disagreeable, bewildering nightmare.  But no scintilla of the horrible truth reached his cautious, well-balanced brain.  The worst he suspected, and that only because of the inexplicable letter, was that these people meant to extract money from their guest and frighten her into leaving Lacville the same night.

“Sylvia,” he said rather shortly, “I suppose we ought to be going now.  We have a carriage waiting at the gate, so we shall be able to drive you back to the Villa du Lac.  But, of course, we must first pick up all your pearls.  That won’t take long!”

But Sylvia made no answer.  She did not even look round at him.  She was still staring straight before her, as if she saw something, which the others could not see, written on the distempered wall.

L’Ami Fritz entered the room quietly.  He looked even stranger than usual, for while in one hand he held Mrs. Bailey’s pretty black tulle hat and her little bag, in the other was clutched the handle of a broom.

“I did not think you would want to go back into my wife’s bed-room,” he said, deprecatingly; and Mrs. Bailey, at last turning her head round, actually smiled gratefully at him.

She was reminding herself that there had been a moment when he had been willing to let her escape.  Only once—­only when he had grinned at her so strangely and deplored her refusal of the drugged coffee, had she felt the sick, agonising fear of him that she had felt of Madame Wachner.

Laying the hat and bag on the table, L’Ami Fritz began sweeping the floor with long skilful movements.

“This is the best way to find the pearls,” he muttered; and three of the four people present stood and looked on at what he was doing.  As for the one most concerned, Sylvia had again begun to stare dully before her, as if what was going on did not interest her one whit.

At last Monsieur Wachner took a long spoon off the table; with its help he put all that he had swept up—­pearls, dust, and fluff—­into the little fancy bag.

“There,” he said, with a sigh of relief, “I think they are all there.”