"Yes.... I proposed going there at once, but it was late and we were dining at the Pless with an acquaintance, a Mr. Mulready, whom I now recall as a former intimate of George Calendar. To our surprise we saw Calendar and his daughter at a table not far from ours. Mr. Mulready betrayed some agitation at the sight of Calendar, and told me that Scotland Yard had a man out with a warrant for Calendar's arrest, on old charges. For old sake's sake, Mr. Mulready begged me to give Calendar a word of warning. I did so--foolishly, it seems: Calendar was at that moment planning to rob us, Mulready aiding and abetting him."
The woman paused before Kirkwood, looking down upon him. "And so," she concluded, "we have been tricked and swindled. I can scarcely believe it of Dorothy Calendar."
"I, for one, don't believe it." Kirkwood spoke quietly, rising. "Whatever the culpability of Calendar and Mulready, Dorothy was only their hoodwinked tool."
"But, Mr. Kirkwood, she must have known the jewels were not hers."
"Yes," he assented passively, but wholly unconvinced.
"And what," she demanded with a gesture of exasperation, "what would you advise?"
"But it's a family secret! It must not appear in the papers. Don't you understand--George Calendar is my husband's cousin!"
"I can think of nothing else, unless you pursue them in person."
"That remains to be discovered; I can tell you nothing more than I have.... May I thank you for your hospitality, express my regrets that I should unwittingly have been made the agent of this disaster, and wish you good night--or, rather, good morning, Mrs. Hallam?"
For a moment she held him under a calculating glance which he withstood with graceless fortitude. Then, realizing that he was determined not by any means to be won to her cause, she gave him her hand, with a commonplace wish that he might find his affairs in better order than seemed probable; and rang for Eccles.
He took away with him two strong impressions; the one visual, of a strikingly handsome woman in a wonderful gown, standing under the red glow of a reading-lamp, in an attitude of intense mental concentration, her expression plainly indicative of a train of thought not guiltless of vindictiveness; the other, more mental but as real, he presently voiced to the huge bronze lions brooding over desolate Trafalgar Square.