“What fools we have been, Sey,” my brother-in-law exclaimed.  “I see it all now.  That designing woman sent round before dinner to say I wanted to meet him; and by the time you got there he was ready for bamboozling me.”

“That’s so,” the Commissary answered.  “He had your name ready painted on both his arms; and he had made other preparations of still greater importance.”

“You mean the cheque.  Well, how did he get it?”

The Commissary opened the door.  “Come in,” he said.  And a young man entered whom we recognised at once as the chief clerk in the Foreign Department of the Crédit Marseillais, the principal bank all along the Riviera.

“State what you know of this cheque,” the Commissary said, showing it to him, for we had handed it over to the police as a piece of evidence.

“About four weeks since—­” the clerk began.

“Say ten days before your séance,” the Commissary interposed.

“A gentleman with very long hair and an aquiline nose, dark, strange, and handsome, called in at my department and asked if I could tell him the name of Sir Charles Vandrift’s London banker.  He said he had a sum to pay in to your credit, and asked if we would forward it for him.  I told him it was irregular for us to receive the money, as you had no account with us, but that your London bankers were Darby, Drummond, and Rothenberg, Limited.”

“Quite right,” Sir Charles murmured.

“Two days later a lady, Madame Picardet, who was a customer of ours, brought in a good cheque for three hundred pounds, signed by a first-rate name, and asked us to pay it in on her behalf to Darby, Drummond, and Rothenberg’s, and to open a London account with them for her.  We did so, and received in reply a cheque-book.”

“From which this cheque was taken, as I learn from the number, by telegram from London,” the Commissary put in.  “Also, that on the same day on which your cheque was cashed, Madame Picardet, in London, withdrew her balance.”

“But how did the fellow get me to sign the cheque?” Sir Charles cried.  “How did he manage the card trick?”

The Commissary produced a similar card from his pocket.  “Was that the sort of thing?” he asked.

“Precisely!  A facsimile.”

“I thought so.  Well, our Colonel, I find, bought a packet of such cards, intended for admission to a religious function, at a shop in the Quai Massena.  He cut out the centre, and, see here—­” The Commissary turned it over, and showed a piece of paper pasted neatly over the back; this he tore off, and there, concealed behind it, lay a folded cheque, with only the place where the signature should be written showing through on the face which the Seer had presented to us.  “I call that a neat trick,” the Commissary remarked, with professional enjoyment of a really good deception.

“But he burnt the envelope before my eyes,” Sir Charles exclaimed.