The last guest had departed, the strains of music had died away. The lights were out, and the flowers were wilting on the walls. Leona Lalage had discarded her dress for a fascinating wrap, and was seated in her boudoir making a cigarette and trying to read something from the expression of Lawrence\'s face.

"And now what does it all mean?" she asked gaily. "In the first place, tell me how you got your influence over Maitrank."

"Knowledge is power," said Lawrence, "so long as you keep it to yourself. Why did you tell me that you had never heard of the tuberose perfume?"

"That is easy. I had no desire to speak of my humble past. I was brought up near that flower farm where Mme. Lalage made that marvellous perfume. I am passionately fond of it, the more so that you cannot get it now. I use it sometimes in the evening after the others have gone to bed. But how did you know----"

"Never mind that. Years ago I got a whiff of it in Vienna, and it appealed to my imagination. I saw a way of bringing it into fiction, much as it was done in the case of the play called \'Dora.\' I am going to do so."

"But how did you know that I had it?"

"I noticed it one night, very faintly I admit, but there it was. You denied the fact to me, and I had to force your hand. It sounds very clever, but commonplace enough when you once see how the trick is done."

The Countess stirred uneasily in her chair. She felt there was more to follow.

"I have to my hand," Lawrence went on, "the materials for a magnificent romance. Let us go back a little while. Some week or two ago here we discussed the Corner House. I said it would make the scene of a capital romance. I went further and said I had already sketched the story out. You recollect that?"

The Countess nodded. Her lips were narrow and drawn in tightly.

"Strange to say," Lawrence proceeded, "almost immediately there was a tragedy at the Corner House, just on the lines of my story--the story that I said I should probably never write. Now that was very strange."

"Very strange indeed," the Countess said hoarsely.

"The more I thought it over the more certain I became that my brain had been picked, and that my plot was being used by some designi............