"Two!" repeated Raikes incredulously.

"Yes--but listen: I am anxious to hear the conclusion of that remarkable story you began last night."

"But," objected Raikes, "I have already told you all I know."

"I am aware of that," answered the detective, "but your friend, the Sepoy, will doubtless oblige you with the balance. Arrange with him at breakfast-time for a continuation. I will return either to-night or to-morrow morning to hear it."

"But----" began Raikes.

"Do not refuse to do as I ask," urged Gratz impressively. "It may be useful; I'm inclined to think it will."

"Very well," answered Raikes. "I will do as you suggest."

"And," continued Gratz, "I need not assure you that if a living soul learns of my presence here last night, I can do nothing for you."

"I understand," said Raikes.

"And I," added Robert.

With this Gratz departed, and Raikes prepared to make his appearance in the dining-room.

Advised of the intention of her brother to breakfast at the table, the spinster had hastened to precede him, and by the time Raikes presented himself she had managed to bestow a couple of furtive biscuits in her pocket, and had devoured another couple, lavishly buttered, accompanied by a fairly liberal cut of beefsteak.

Consequently, when Raikes conveyed his customary intimation that she was at liberty to begin, the spinster obediently proceeded to add a moderate breakfast to the one she had already enjoyed.

Trembling lest her brother would remark the developing suggestions of well-being which had resulted from her recent regimen, she welcomed with genuine relief the advent of the Sepoy, to whom Raikes transferred his speculative glance.

"Well!" exclaimed the Sepoy, "you have had quite a siege, I hear."

"I have," replied Raikes shortly; then added with a sort of grim humor: "My physician has recommended a little diversion, and I have just thought of a simple way of following his advice."

"What is that?" asked the Sepoy.

"I would like to present myself at the usual hour and hear the conclusion of the story, for I judge, from the predicament of Prince Otondo, that the end is not far off."

"Ah, you remember?" exclaimed the Sepoy.

"Decidedly!" replied Raikes.

"Very well, then," returned the other. "Come at ten and I will gather the tangled threads together."

During the balance of that day Raikes devoted his powers of concentration to the consummation of the treatment to which he had subjected himself, and this, together with the prospect of the recovery of his property, resulted in a condition which made the visits of the astonished physician no longer necessary.

With an eagerness intensified to a childish impatience, almost, by the vague suggestions of Gratz that the story would be personally interesting, and exhausting his mind with futile speculations as to the manner of its application to the unnatural conditions which distressed him so, Raikes at last concluded his contemplation of the clock, and promptly upon the stroke of ten, hastened from his room and hurried to the apartment occupied by the Sepoy.

Seating himself in the chair indicated by his host, he shortly found that he was unable to avoid recalling his recent guilty appropriation of the diamond, and a degree of confusion, which he could not entirely disguise, manifested itself in his difficulty of adjusting his eyes to the inscrutable gaze of the Sepoy.

On this occasion the narrator, as hitherto, did not provide his auditor with a brilliant to look upon during the progress of the story--an omission that was radiantly repaired by the two lambent gems in the eyes of the former.

Upon these the shifting gaze of the restless listener finally fastened itself with a fascination which he found it impossible to resist, and the Sepoy, with all the modulated lights and shadows of ardor, animation, lethargy, somnolence, peace, with which he complemented his sedative phrases, began:

(_The conclusion of this interesting tale will be found on Bosom No. 1, Dickey Series C_.)

As Dennis looked up from his reading, a pair of eyes of unclouded blue, vivid with interest and altogether friendly, met his animated glance.

With alert intuition his sweet-faced auditor believed that she discovered a shadow of vexation in the ingenuous countenance of the reader.

"What is it?" she asked.

To Dennis, in his absorption, it seemed impossible that the question could refer to anything else than the habitual disability at the end of each chapter, and he answered promptly:

"'Tis the way the dickey ends--to be concluded in Series C--an' it's me here an' Series C in Baxter Street, so I can't read the rest; it's too bad, so it is."

"So it is," repeated the lady softly, with a dexterous parody of his concluding words, but with a subtle intimation in her manner that she did not consider the inconvenient termination such a misfortune, after all, and that it somehow suggested an alternative that was not displeasing.

"Do you want to hear the rest?" asked Dennis frankly.

"I do, indeed," replied his companion with an adroitly conveyed insinuation of disappointed expectation that seemed to place the responsibility of measuring to this agreeable emergency entirely upon Dennis.

The same degree of sensitiveness which leaves an Irishman so open to offense, enables him, with equal celerity, to comprehend a hint, and Dennis, when he realized that the lady understood that the continuation of the tale involved a subsequent reading, exclaimed, with a delicious paraphrase of Sancho Panza: "God bless the man who first invented '_Continued in our next!_'"

Presently the one certain that her telepathy had not miscarried, and the other equally convinced that his reception of the message was accredited to him, the conversation was given an abrupt direction by an apparently alien question:

"Do you know anything about flowers?" asked his companion.

"Only the difference between a rose and a cauliflower," replied Dennis with a twinkle in his eye, to which the lady responded with a shade of disappointment.

"An' why flowers?" asked Dennis.

"Listen!" answered the lady with a slight return of her original sadness.

"Eleven months ago I was left a widow.

"My husband's estate consisted of a moderate amount of life insurance, a prosperous business, and no debts.

"He was a florist.

"The establishment is located in the heart of a very fashionable district.

"There has scarcely been a function of the elite in this section which my husband has not supplied with floral decorations.

"His taste was exquisite, and his taste was his undoing, for he added refinement to refinement until he began to lose sight of the practical side of existence.

"By degrees he became as attenuated as some of the tendrils he cultivated with such absorption, and as frail as an orchid.

"The intrusion of a pronounced scent was sufficient to induce a serious nervous disturbance, and he could no more endure disproportionate and sharp distinctions of color than a lapidary could tolerate a serious unevenness of facets.

"I was compelled to paper his room with a delicate shade of lavender.