“Well,” he said finally, “you know the girl, of course, and I don’t.  But if you like her—­and I think myself you’re rather hard hit, old man—­I wouldn’t give a whoop about the chain in the gold purse.  It’s just one of the little coincidences that hang people now and then.  And as for last night—­if she’s the kind of a girl you say she is, and you think she had anything to do with that, you—­you’re addled, that’s all.  You can depend on it, the lady of the empty house last week is the lady of last night.  And yet your train acquaintance was in Altoona at that time.”

Just before we got off the car, I reverted to the subject again.  It was never far back in my mind.

“About the—­young lady of the train, Rich,” I said, with what I suppose was elaborate carelessness, “I don’t want you to get a wrong impression.  I am rather unlikely to see her again, but even if I do, I—­I believe she is already ‘bespoke,’ or next thing to it.”

He made no reply, but as I opened the door with my latch-key he stood looking up at me from the pavement with his quizzical smile.

“Love is like the measles,” he orated.  “The older you get it, the worse the attack.”

Johnson did not appear again that day.  A small man in a raincoat took his place.  The next morning I made my initial trip to the office, the raincoat still on hand.  I had a short conference with Miller, the district attorney, at eleven.  Bronson was under surveillance, he said, and any attempt to sell the notes to him would probably result in their recovery.  In the meantime, as I knew, the Commonwealth had continued the case, in hope of such contingency.

At noon I left the office and took a veterinarian to see Candida, the injured pony.  By one o’clock my first day’s duties were performed, and a long Sahara of hot afternoon stretched ahead.  McKnight, always glad to escape from the grind, suggested a vaudeville, and in sheer ennui I consented.  I could neither ride, drive nor golf, and my own company bored me to distraction.

“Coolest place in town these days,” he declared.  “Electric fans, breezy songs, airy costumes.  And there’s Johnson just behind—­the coldest proposition in Washington.”

He gravely bought three tickets and presented the detective with one.  Then we went in.  Having lived a normal, busy life, the theater in the afternoon is to me about on a par with ice-cream for breakfast.  Up on the stage a very stout woman in short pink skirts, with a smile that McKnight declared looked like a slash in a roll of butter, was singing nasally, with a laborious kick at the end of each verse.  Johnson, two rows ahead, went to sleep.  McKnight prodded me with his elbow.

“Look at the first box to the right,” he said, in a stage whisper.  “I want you to come over at the end of this act.”

It was the first time I had seen her since I put her in the cab at Baltimore.  Outwardly I presume I was calm, for no one turned to stare at me, but every atom of me cried out at the sight of her.  She was leaning, bent forward, lips slightly parted, gazing raptly at the Japanese conjurer who had replaced what McKnight disrespectfully called the Columns of Hercules.  Compared with the draggled lady of the farm-house, she was radiant.