“What was in it?” asked Kennedy.  “Could you see?”

“I got one glimpse.  It seemed to be nothing but a little scarlet bead with a black spot on it.  In his surprise, he dropped a piece of paper from the envelope in which the bead had been wrapped up.  I thought it was strange, and, as he hurried over to the elevator, I picked it up.  Here it is.”

The clerk handed over a crumpled piece of notepaper.  On it was scrawled the word “Gadhr,” and underneath, “Beware!” I spelled out the first strange word.  It had an ominous sound—­“Gadhr.”  Suddenly there flashed through my mind the letters Shirley had tried to print but had not finished, “G A D.”

Kennedy looked at the paper a moment.

“Gadhr!” he exclaimed, in a low, tense tone.  “Revolt—­the native word for unrest in India, the revolution!”

We stared at each other blankly.  All of us had been reading lately in the despatches about the troubles there, hidden under the ban of the censorship.  I knew that the Hindu propaganda in America was as yet in its infancy, although several plots and conspiracies had been hatched here.

“Is there any one in the hotel whom you might suspect?” asked Kennedy.

Grady cleared his throat and looked at the night clerk significantly.

“Well,” he answered, thoughtfully, “across the hall there is a new guest who came to-day—­or, rather, yesterday—­a Mrs. Anthony.  We don’t know anything about her, except that she looks like a foreigner.  She did not come directly from abroad, but must have been living in New York for some time.  They tell me she asked for a room on this floor, at this end of the hall.”

“H’m!” considered Kennedy.  “I’d like to see her—­without being seen.”

“I think I can arrange that,” acquiesced Grady.  “You and Jameson stay in the bedroom.  I’ll ask her to come over here, and then you can get a good look at her.”

The plan satisfied Kennedy, and together we entered the bedroom, putting out the light and leaving the door just a trifle ajar.

A moment later Mrs. Anthony entered.  I heard a suppressed gasp from Kennedy.

“The woman in the photograph!” he whispered to me.

I studied her face minutely from our coign of vantage.  There was, indeed, a resemblance, too striking to be mere coincidence.

In the presence of Grady, she seemed to be nervous and on guard, as though she knew, intuitively, that she was suspected.

“Did you know Captain Shirley?” shot out Grady.

Kennedy looked over at me and frowned.  I knew that something more subtle than New York police methods would be necessary in order to get anything from a woman like this.

“No,” she replied, quietly.  “You see, I just came here to-day.”  Her voice had an English accent.

“Did you hear a shot?”

“No,” she replied.  “The voices in the hall wakened me, though I did not know what was the matter until just now.”