We were sitting in the salon of her flat at the Place de la Concorde end of the Rue de Rivoli.  We had finished lunch, and she had offered me a cigarette.  I had had a bath, and changed my attire, and eaten a meal cooked by a Frenchman, and I felt renewed.  I had sunned myself in the society of Rosetta Rosa for an hour, and I felt soothed.  I forgot all the discomforts and misgivings of the voyage.  It was nothing to me, as I looked at this beautiful girl, that within the last twenty-four hours I had twice been in danger of losing my life.  What to me was the mysterious man with the haunting face of implacable hate?  What to me were the words of the woman who had stopped me on the pier at Dover?  Nothing!  A thousand times less than nothing!  I loved, and I was in the sympathetic presence of her whom I loved.

I had waited till lunch was over to tell Rosa of the sad climax of my adventures.

“Yes,” I repeated, “I was never more completely done in my life.  The woman conspirator took me in absolutely.”

“What did you do then?”

“Well, I wired to Calais immediately we got to Amiens, and told the police, and did all the things one usually does do when one has been robbed.  Also, since arriving in Paris, I have been to the police here.”

“Do they hold out any hope of recovery?”

“I’m afraid they are not sanguine.  You see, the pair had a good start, and I expect they belong to one of the leading gangs of jewel thieves in Europe.  The entire business must have been carefully planned.  Probably I was shadowed from the moment I left your bankers’.”

“It’s unfortunate.”

“Yes, indeed.  I felt sure that you would attach some importance to the jewel-case.  So I have instructed the police to do their utmost.”

She seemed taken aback by the lightness of my tone.

“My friend, those jewels were few, but they were valuable.  They were worth—­I don’t know what they were worth.  There was a necklace that must have cost fifteen thousand pounds.”

“Yes—­the jewels.”

“Well!  Is it not the jewels that are missing?”

“Dear lady,” I said, “I aspire to be thought a man of the world—­it is a failing of youth; but, then, I am young.  As a man of the world, I cogitated a pretty good long time before I set out for Paris with your jewels.”

“You felt there was a danger of robbery?”

“Exactly.”

“And you were not mistaken.”  There was irony in her voice.

“True!  But let me proceed.  A man of the world would see at once that a jewel-case was an object to attract the eyes of those who live by their wits.”

“I should imagine so.”

“Therefore, as a man of the world, I endeavored to devise a scheme of safeguarding my little cargo.”

“And you—­”

“I devised one.”

“What was it?”

“I took all the jewels out of the case, and put them into my various pockets; and I carried the case to divert attention from those pockets.”