“What about the partner?  What role does he play in your suspicions?”

“That’s another curious feature.  Lang doesn’t seem to bother much with the business.  He is a sort of silent partner, although nominally the head of the firm.  Still, they both seem always to be plentifully supplied with money and to have a good trade.  Lang lives most of the time up on the west shore of the Hudson, and seems to be more interested in his position as commodore of the Riverledge Yacht Club than in his business down here.  He is quite a sport, a great motor-boat enthusiast, and has lately taken to hydroplanes.”

“I meant,” repeated Kennedy, “what about Lang and Mademoiselle Violette.  Were they—­ah—­friendly?”

“Oh,” replied Herndon, seeming to catch the idea.  “I see.  Of course—­Pierre abroad and Lang here.  I see what you mean.  Why, the girl told my man that Mademoiselle Violette used to go motor-boating with Lang, but only when her fiance, Pierre, was along.  No, I don’t think she ever had anything to do with Lang, if that’s what you are driving at.  He may have paid attentions to her, but Pierre was her lover, and I haven’t a doubt but that if Lang made any advances she repelled them.  She seems to have thought everything of Pierre.”

We had reached Herndon’s office by this time.  Leaving word with his stenographer to get the very latest reports from La Montaigne, he continued talking to us about his work.

“Dressmakers, milliners, and jewellers are our worst offenders now,” he remarked as we stood gazing out of the window at the panorama of the bay off the sea-wall of the Battery.  “Why, time and again we unearth what looks for all the world like a ‘dressmakers’ syndicate,’ though this case is the first I’ve had that involved a death.  Really, I’ve come to look on smuggling as one of the fine arts among crimes.  Once the smuggler, like the pirate and the highwayman, was a sort of gentleman-rogue.  But now it has become a very ladylike art.  The extent of it is almost beyond belief, too.  It begins with the steerage and runs right up to the absolute unblushing cynicism of the first cabin.  I suppose you know that women, particularly a certain brand of society women, are the worst and most persistent offenders.  Why, they even boast of it.  Smuggling isn’t merely popular—­it’s aristocratic.  But we’re going to take some of the flavour out of it before we finish.”

He tore open a cable message which a boy had brought in.  “Now, take this, for instance,” he continued.  “You remember the sign across the street from Mademoiselle Violette’s, announcing that a Mademoiselle Gabrielle was going to open a salon or whatever they call it?  Well, here’s another cable from our Paris Secret Service with a belated tip.  They tell us to look out for a Mademoiselle Gabrielle—­on La Montaigne, too.  That’s another interesting thing.  You know the various lines are all ranked, at least in our estimation, according to the likelihood of such offences being perpetrated by their passengers.  We watch ships from London, Liverpool, and Paris most carefully.  Scandinavian ships are the least likely to need watching.  Well, Miss Roberts?”