The Commissary sat down and gloated over his discovery. It was clear a well-planned crime amused him vastly. "In the first place, monsieur," he said, "disabuse your mind of the idea that when monsieur your secretary went out to fetch Seńor Herrera that night, Seńor Herrera didn't know to whose rooms he was coming. Quite otherwise, in point of fact. I do not doubt myself that Seńor Herrera, or Colonel Clay (call him which you like), came to Nice this winter for no other purpose than just to rob you." "But I sent for him," my brother-in-law interposed. "Yes; he _meant_ you to send for him. He forced a card, so to speak. If he couldn't do that I guess he would be a pretty poor conjurer. He had a lady of his own--his wife, let us say, or his sister--stopping here at this hotel; a certain Madame Picardet. Through her he induced several ladies of your circle to attend his séances. She and they spoke to you about him, and aroused your curiosity. You may bet your bottom dollar that when he came to this room he came ready primed and prepared with endless facts about both of you." "What fools we have been, Sey," my brother-in-law exclaimed. "I see it all now. That designing woman sent round before dinner to say I wanted to meet him; and by the time you got there he was ready for bamboozling me." "That's so," the Commissary answered. "He had your name ready painted on both his arms; and he had made other preparations of still greater importance." "You mean the cheque. Well, how did he get it?" The Commissary opened the door. "Come in," he said. And a young man entered whom we recognised at once as the chief clerk in the Foreign Department of the Crédit Marseillais, the principal bank all along the Riviera. "State what you know of this cheque," the Commissary said, showing it to him, for we had handed it over to the police as a piece of evidence. "About four weeks since--" the clerk began. "Say ten days before your séance," the Commissary interposed. "A gentleman with very long hair and an aquiline nose, dark, strange, and handsome, called in at my department and asked if I could tell him the name of Sir Charles Vandrift's London banker. He said he had a sum to pay in to your credit, and asked if we would forward it for him. I told him it was irregular for us to receive the money, as you had no account with us, but that your