Then like the big, dominant, decisive nature that she was she came to a conclusion.

“All right,” she said, “bring in the money in the morning and get the sapphires.  I’ll take them up in a day or two.  Good-by, major; come along, Mr. Hargrave.”  And she went out of the room.

The American stopped at the door to bow to the old Rumanian officer who was standing up beside the table before the heap of sapphires.  They got into the carriage at the curb before Blackwell’s Hotel.  Mrs. Farmingham put Hargrave down at the Empire Club, and the carriage passed on, across Piccadilly Circus toward the Ritz.

The following morning Hargrave got the sapphires from Major Mikos, and paid him eighteen thousand dollars in English sovereigns for them.  He wanted gold to carry back with him for the jewels that he had brought out of the kingdom of Rumania.  He seemed a simple, anxious person.  He wished to carry his treasures with him like a peasant.  The sapphires looked better in the daylight.  There ought to have been seven thousand dollars’ profit in them, perhaps more; seven thousand dollars, at any rate, that very day in the London market.  Hargrave took them to the Empire Club and put them in a sealed envelope in the steward’s safe.

The thin drift of yellow remained in the city; that sulphurous haze that the blanket of sea fog, moving over London, presses down into her streets.  It was not heavy yet; it was only a mist of saffron; but it threatened to gather volume as the day advanced.

At luncheon Hargrave got a note from Mrs. Farmingham, a line scrawled on her card to say that she would call for him at three o’clock.  Her carriage was before the door on the stroke of the hour, and she explained that the money to redeem the jewels had arrived.  The Credit Lyonnais had sent it over from Paris.  She seemed a bit puzzled about it.  She had telegraphed the Credit Lyonnais yesterday to send her eighteen thousand dollars.  And she had expected that the French banking house would have arranged for the payment of the money through its English correspondent.  But its telegram directed her to go to the United Atlantic Express Company and receive the money.

A few minutes cleared the puzzle.  The office of the company is on the Strand above the Savoy.  Mrs. Farmingham went to the manager and showed him a lot of papers she had in an official-looking envelope.  After a good bit of official pother the porters carried out a big portmanteau, a sort of heavy leather traveling case, and put it into the carriage.  Mrs. Farmingham came to Hargrave where he stood by the door.

“Now, what do you think!” she said.  “Of all the stupid idiots, give me a French idiot to be the stupidest; they have actually sent me eighteen thousand dollars in gold!”

“Well,” said Hargrave, “perhaps you asked them to send you eighteen thousand dollars in gold.”

She closed her mouth firmly for a moment and looked him vacantly in the face.