“‘I cannot tell you,’ she said, ‘how much I have to thank you for.’  What do you think of that for impudence?

“I offered to put her in a carriage, but she said she must find Natalie, and that she hoped we would meet again at the hotel.  So I drove off by myself, wondering who she was, and whether Natalie was not her keeper.

“I had to wait several hours for the train to Nice; and as I wanted to stroll around the city I thought I had better put the diamonds in the safe of the hotel.  As soon as I reached my room I locked the door, placed the hand-bag on the table, and opened it.  I felt among the things at the top of it, but failed to touch the cigar-case.  I shoved my hand in deeper, and stirred the things about, but still I did not reach it.  A cold wave swept down my spine, and a sort of emptiness came to the pit of my stomach.  Then I turned red-hot, and the sweat sprung out all over me.  I wet my lips with my tongue, and said to myself, ’Don’t be an ass.  Pull yourself together, pull yourself together.  Take the things out, one at a time.  It’s there, of course, it’s there.  Don’t be an ass.’

“So I put a brake on my nerves and began very carefully to pick out the things, one by one, but, after another second, I could not stand it, and I rushed across the room and threw out everything on the bed.  But the diamonds were not among them.  I pulled the things about and tore them open and shuffled and rearranged and sorted them, but it was no use.  The cigar-case was gone.  I threw everything in the dressing-case out on the floor, although I knew it was useless to look for it there.  I knew that I had put it in the bag.  I sat down and tried to think.  I remembered I had put it in the satchel at Paris just as that woman had entered the compartment, and I had been alone with her ever since, so it was she who had robbed me.  But how?  It had never left my shoulder.  And then I remembered that it had—­that I had taken it off when I had changed my coat and for the few moments that I was searching for Natalie.  I remembered that the woman had sent me on that goose-chase, and that at every other station she had tried to get rid of me on some fool-errand.

“I gave a roar like a mad bull, and I jumped down the stairs, six steps at a time.

“I demanded at the office if a distinguished lady of title, possibly a Russian, had just entered the hotel.

“As I expected, she had not.  I sprang into a cab and inquired at two other hotels, and then I saw the folly of trying to catch her without outside help, and I ordered the fellow to gallop to the office of the Chief of Police.  I told my story, and the ass in charge asked me to calm myself, and wanted to take notes.  I told him this was no time for taking notes, but for doing something.  He got wrathy at that, and I demanded to be taken at once to his Chief.  The Chief, he said, was very busy, and could not see me.  So I showed him my silver greyhound.  In eleven years I had never used it but once before.  I stated, in pretty vigorous language, that I was a Queen’s Messenger, and that if the Chief of Police did not see me instantly he would lose his official head.  At that the fellow jumped off his high horse and ran with me to his Chief—­a smart young chap, a colonel in the army, and a very intelligent man.