It was scarcely half an hour later that a car drove up furiously to our door and Mrs. Rogers burst in, terribly agitated.

“You remember,” she cried, breathlessly, “you said that a jequirity bean was sent to Captain Shirley?”

“Yes,” encouraged Kennedy.

“Well, after you left, I was thinking about it.  That Kalia Dass used to wear a necklace of them, but she didn’t have it on to-day.  I began thinking about it.  While she was talking to the swami I went over.  I’ve noticed how careful she always is of her hand-bag.  So I managed to catch my hand in the loop about her wrist.  It dropped on the floor.  We both made a dive for it, but I got it.  I managed, also, to open the catch and, when I picked it up to hand to her, with an apology, what should roll out but a score of prayer-beans!  Some papers dropped out, too.  She almost tore them from my hands; in fact, one of them did tear.  After it was over I had this scrap, a corner torn off one of them.”

Kennedy took the scrap which she handed to him and studied it carefully, while we looked over his shoulder.  On it was a queer alphabetical table.  Across the first line were the letters singly, each followed by a dash.  Then, in squares underneath, were pairs of letters—­aa, ba, ca, da, and so on, while, vertically, the column on the left read:  AA, ab, ac, ad, and so on.

“Thank you, Mrs. Rogers,” Craig said, rising.  “This is very important.”

She seemed reluctant to go, but, as there was no excuse for staying longer, she finally left.  Kennedy immediately set to work studying the scrap of paper and the cipher message he had copied, while I stifled my impatience as best I could.

I could do nothing but reflect on the possibility of what a jealous woman might do.  Mrs. Rogers had given us one example.  Did the same explanation shed any light on the mystery of the nautch-girl and the jequirity bean sent to Shirley?  There was no doubt now that Shirley had known her in Calcutta—­intimately, also.  Perhaps the necklace had some significance.  At least, he must have remembered it, as his agitation over the single bean and the word “Gadhr” seemed to indicate.  If she had sent it to him, was it as a threat?  To all appearance, he had not known that she was in New York, much less that she was at the same hotel and on the same floor.  Why had she followed him?  Had she misinterpreted his attentions to Mrs. Rogers?

Longing to ask Kennedy the myriad questions that flashed through my mind, I turned to him as he scowled at the scrap of paper and the cipher before him.

Presently he glanced up at me, still scowling.

“It’s no use, Walter,” he said; “I can’t make it out without the key—­at least, it will take so long to discover the key that it may be useless.”

Just then the telephone-bell rang and he sprang to it eagerly.  As I listened I gathered that it was another hurried call from Grady.