“Everything is quite en regle,” M. Malfait said smoothly when the purport of their presence was explained to him in a few curt words by the Commissioner of Police.

“You see, Monsieur le Commissaire, it is quite simple.  The lady left us a letter explaining why she was obliged to go away.  I do not know why Madame”—­he turned to Sylvia—­“thought it necessary to go to you?  We have been perfectly open about the whole matter.  We are respectable people, and have absolutely nothing to hide.  Madame Wolsky’s boxes are there, in her bed-room; I might have let the room twice over since she left, but no, I prefer to wait, hoping that the lady—­the very charming lady—­will come back.”

“By the way, where is the letter which she left?” said the Commissioner in a business-like voice.  “I should like to see that letter.”

“Where is the letter?” repeated Monsieur Malfait vaguely.  Then in a loud voice, he said, “I will ask my wife for the letter.  She looks after the correspondence.”

Madame Malfait came forward.  She looked even more annoyed than her husband had looked when he had seen by whom Sylvia was accompanied.

“The letter?” she repeated shortly.  “Mon Dieu!  I do not know where I have put it.  But by this time I almost know it by heart.  It was a pleasing letter, for it spoke very warmly of our establishment.  But where is the letter?” she looked round her, as if she expected to find it suddenly appear.

“Ah!  I remember to whom I showed it last!  It was to that agreeable friend of Madame Wolsky”—­she put an emphasis on the word “agreeable,” and stared hard at Sylvia as she did so.  “It was to that Madame Wachner I last showed it.  Perhaps she put it in her pocket, and forgot to give it me back.  I know she said she would like her husband to see it.  Monsieur and Madame Wachner often take their meals here.  I will ask them if they have the letter.”

“Well, at any rate, we had better open Madame Wolsky’s trunks; that may give us some clue,” said the Commissioner in a weary voice.

And, to Sylvia’s confusion and distress, they all then proceeded to the bed-room where she had last seen her friend, and there Monsieur Malfait broke the locks of Anna Wolsky’s two large trunks.

But the contents of Anna’s trunks taught them nothing.  They were only the kind of objects and clothes that a woman who travelled about the world a great deal would naturally take with her.  Everything, however, was taken out, turned over, and looked at.

“If your friend possessed a passport,” said the police official in a dissatisfied tone, “she has evidently taken it with her.  There is nothing of any consequence at all in those boxes.  We had better shut them up again, and leave them.”

But when they came down again into the hall, he suddenly asked Monsieur Malfait, “Well, where is the letter?” He had evidently forgotten Madame Malfait’s involved explanation.