“You may jeer, Hamdi Effendi,” said I in a white passion of anger.  “But the English police you will not find so arcadian.”

“Ah, so you have been to the police?” said the suave villain.  “You have gone to Scotland—­Scotland Place Scotland—­n’importe.  They are investigating the affair?  I thank you for the friendly warning.”

“Warning!” I cried, choked with indignation.  He held up a soft, fat palm.

“Ah—­it is not a warning?  Then, Monsieur, I am afraid you have committed an indiscretion which your friends in Scotland Place will not pardon you.  You would not make a good police agent.  I am of the profession, so I know.”

I advanced a step.  He recoiled, casting a quick look backward at the lift just then standing idle with open doors.

“Hamdi Effendi,” I cried, “by the living God, if you do not restore me my wife—­”

But then I stopped short.  Hamdi had stepped quickly backward into the lift, and given a sign to the attendant.  The door slammed and all I could do was to shake my fist at Hamdi’s boots as they disappeared upwards.

I remember once in Italy seeing a cat playing with a partially stunned bat which, flying low, she had brought to the ground.  She crouched, patted it, made it move a little, patted it again and retired on her haunches preparing for a spring.  Suddenly the bat shot vertically into the air.

I stared at the ascending lift with the cat’s expression of impotent dismay and stupefaction.  It was inconceivably grotesque.  It brought into my tragedy an element of infernal farce.  I became conscious of peals of laughter, and looking round beheld the American doubled up in a saddlebag chair.  I fled from the vestibule of the hotel clothed from head to foot in derision.

I am at home, sitting at my work-table, walking restlessly about the room, stepping out into the raw air on the balcony and looking for a sign down the dark and silent road.  I curse myself for my folly in entering the Hotel Metropole.  The damned Turk held me in the palm of his hand.  He made mock of me to his heart’s content ....  And Carlotta is in his power.  I grow white with terror when I think of her terror.  She is somewhere, locked up in a room, in this great city.  My God!  Where can she be?

The police must find her.  London is not mediaeval Italy for women to be gagged and carried off to inaccessible strongholds in defiance of laws and government.  I repeat to myself that she must come back, that the sober working of English institutions will restore her to my arms, that my agony is a matter of a day or two at most, that the special license obtained this morning and now lying before me is not the document of irony it seems, and that in a week’s time we shall look back on this nightmare of a day with a smile, and look forward to the future with laughter in our hearts.