“I rather expected something of the sort,” observed Kennedy.  “By the way, the shoenails were French, as I surmised.  They show the marks of French heels.  It was Miss White herself who hid in the mummy-case.”

“Impossible,” exclaimed Dr. Lith incredulously.  As for myself, I had learned that it was of no use being incredulous with Kennedy.

A moment later the door opened, and one of O’Connor’s men came in bursting with news.  Some of the emeralds had been discovered in a Third Avenue pawn-shop.  O’Connor, mindful of the historic fate of the Mexican Madonna and the stolen statue of the Egyptian goddess Neith, had instituted a thorough search with the result that at least part of the pilfered jewels had been located.  There was only one clue to the thief, but it looked promising.  The pawnbroker described him as “a crazy Frenchman of an artist,” tall, with a pointed black beard.  In pawning the jewels he had given the name of Edouard Delaverde, and the city detectives were making a canvass of the better known studios in hope of tracing him.

Kennedy, Dr. Lith and myself walked around to the boarding-house where Miss White lived.  There was nothing about it, from the landlady to the gossip, to distinguish it from scores of other places of the better sort.  We had no trouble in finding out that Miss White had not returned home at all the night before.  The landlady seemed to look on her as a woman of mystery, and confided to us that it was an open secret that she was not an American at all, but a French girl whose name, she believed, was really Lucille Leblanc—­which, after all, was White.  Kennedy made no comment, but I wavered between the conclusions that she had been the victim of foul play and that she might be the criminal herself, or at least a member of a band of criminals.

No trace of her could be found through the usual agencies for locating missing persons.  It was the middle of the afternoon, however, when word came to us that one of the city detectives had apparently located the studio of Delaverde.  It was coupled with the interesting information that the day before a woman roughly answering the description of Miss White had been seen there.  Delaverde himself was gone.

The building to which the detective took us was down-town in a residence section which had remained as a sort of little eddy to one side of the current of business that had swept everything before it up-town.  It was an old building and large, and was entirely given over to studios of artists.

Into one of the cheapest of the suites we were directed.  It was almost bare of furniture and in a peculiarly shiftless state of disorder.  A half-finished picture stood in the centre of the room, and several completed ones were leaning against the wall.  They were of the wildest character imaginable.  Even the conceptions of the futurists looked tame in comparison.

Kennedy at once began rummaging and exploring.  In a corner of a cupboard near the door he disclosed a row of dark-colored bottles.  One was filled halfway with an emerald-green liquid.