AT seven o’clock precisely, Freyberger drove up to the Langham.

Mademoiselle Lefarge had given instructions that anyone who called was to be shown up.

Freyberger followed a waiter up the softly carpeted stairs; at the door of a room on the first landing the man stopped.

“Whom shall I say, sir?”

“Mr Gustave Freyberger.”

The waiter opened the door and the detective found himself in the presence of three people.

An old lady with white hair, a young woman whom he recognized by instinct as Mademoiselle Lefarge, and a man of about thirty or perhaps thirty-five, clean-shaved, English-looking, and with the stamp of a barrister.

The detective’s quick eye and even quicker brain took in the room and its occupants at a glance.

In a moment he comprehended the status of the two women before him, but the man puzzled him.

The women were French to their fingertips, but the man was English.

Needless to say the man was Hellier.

Cécile Lefarge gazed at the newcomer for a moment and then advanced, with hand out-stretched, in such a kindly and frank manner as quite to captivate even the unemotional Freyberger.

“I need not ask you,” she said, “for I am quite sure you are the gentleman mentioned by M. Hamard as having telegraphed to Paris for an interview with me. I am Cécile Lefarge.”

“Mademoiselle,” replied the detective, with a charming modesty that was half false. “The communication to M. Hamard came from the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard. I am but the humble instrument deputed by him to inquire into a certain case. A crime has been committed in England. In the investigation of the matter, I, by a strange chance, came upon the records of a crime committed in Paris—”

“Eight years ago.”

“Pardon me, mademoiselle, eight years and five months ago.”

“You are exact.”

“I am exact, but before I proceed, I must ask you to excuse me. This is an important matter. In speaking of it I wish to be sure of whom I am addressing. You are Mademoiselle Lefarge, this lady—”

“Is my aunt, Madame de Warens.”

“Thank you, and this gentleman?”

Cécile Lefarge blushed slightly. “He is our very good friend, Mr Hellier.”

Hellier produced his visiting card and handed it to Freyberger.

“That is my name and address,” said he. “I assure you that anything you say before me will not pass beyond me. Mademoiselle Lefarge has entrusted me with the painful details of the case that occurred in Paris eight years ago, and I have made investigations myself in the matter. I have spent some time in Paris studying the reports of the case, and I may be able to assist you in an humble way, if my assistance would not be out of place.”

Freyberger bowed very stiffly. He had a horror of the amateur detective, the Gyde case was his own especial problem, he wished for no help in its solution.

“Thank you,” he said. Then turning to Mademoiselle Lefarge:

“I like to be always perfectly frank, I have brought you a long journey, my message was urgent, yet I can give you no word of hope on the question that has troubled your heart for eight years.”

“Hope!”

“My meaning is this, I can give you no hope that M. Lefarge is alive.”

“Alive! Ah, no! He is dead, my dear father is dead, some instinct has long told me that; all I hope for is revenge.”

“I may give you that,” said Freyberger quite simply.

They were standing opposite to one another. Mademoiselle Lefarge sank down on a fauteuil near by and motioned the detective to take a chair.

“I must tell you first,” said he, taking a seat close to her, “that a terrible crime has been committed in England, a crime almost exactly similar to that which was committed in the Rue de Turbigo eight years ago.”

“Ah!”

“We are investigating that crime, we believe the active agent in it to be the active agent in the crime of the Rue de Turbigo. If we can prove this incontrovertibly by the capture of the active agent for whom we are seeking, your father’s name will be quite cleared of any imputation.”

Cécile Lefarge sighed deeply. She sat with her hands clasped across one knee and her eyes fixed upon the man before her.

She divined, in this plain, clean-shaved, fresh-coloured and youngish-looking man, whose face might have been that of a café waiter, whose manner was yet so calm and authoritative and assured, and whose eye was so full of steadfastness and energy, she divined in this person the man for whom she had been seeking for years—her avenger.

“Go on, please,” she said.

“I must first,” said Freyberger, taking a parcel from his pocket, “ask you to look at this.”

He handed a photograph to the girl.

She looked at it and gave a short, sharp cry, as though some one had struck her.

“Müller!” she said, holding the thing away from her with a gesture of terror.

Freyberger took it and replaced it in his pocket after Hellier had glanced at it.

“You recognize it as the portrait—”

“Of the man who executed the bust of my father. Oh, yes, indeed, I recognize it. His face is burnt upon my brain. Were I to live a thousand years, it would be there still.”

“Now,” said Freyberger, “I do not wish to pain you, yet I must say some unpleasant things. You know that in the eyes of the world at the time of this affair, M. Lefarge appeared guilty.”

“Alas!” said she, “in the eyes of the world my dear father must appear as guilty as he did then.”

“You know the terrible mass of evidence that was produced against him?”

“Yes.”

“You have weighed it logically yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever believed your father to have been guilty of the crime imputed to him?”

“Never.”

“Have you any special reason for this disbelief?”

“No.”

“Yet—”

“Yet I know him to have been innocent. Ah, M. Freyberger! logic is not everything in this world, instinct with some people counts for much more. I know my dear father to have been innocent, and you ask me how I know it. I can only answer, ‘how do I know that the sun shines,’ the thing is plain before me, and we will not speak of it again.”

“We will speak, then, of this man, Müller. He impressed you.”

She looked around as if seeking for a metaphor.

“He impressed me with horror, he filled me with the terror of a nightmare.”

“You saw him several times?”

“Yes, my dear father brought him to our house. My father was so good, so pleasant, so genial, he saw no harm in anyone. If a man were only clever, that was enough for him. Many an artist who is now well-to-do in the world owes everything to the help received from him.”

Freyberger had been studying Mademoiselle Lefarge from the first moment of his entering the room. This was no woman of the ordinary type.

This was an individual of spirit and sense and intellect, who had been studying the Lefarge case for eight years. He determined to put the whole matter of the Gyde case before her and its connexion with the case of Lefarge.

This he did in the space of ten minutes, clearly and concisely and with that precision that never misses a necessary or includes an unnecessary word.

“If what you have told me is correct,” said Mademoiselle Lefarge, when he had finished, “it only confirms my belief that Müller by some horrible alchemy, known only to himself, destroyed my father both in body and reputation, just as he has destroyed Sir Anthony Gyde.”

“That, too, is my belief,” said Hellier, who had been listening, amazed at the tale of Freyberger, and full of admiration at his process of reasoning.

“Now,” said the detective, “have you the bust this man executed of M. Lefarge?”

“Yes,” replied Cécile, “I have it in the next room, I brought it with me to-day, hoping it might be of use.”

Freyberger looked at her with admiration.

“It will be of great use, and I must thank you for bringing it. I would like to see it and to show it to a friend whom I expect here shortly. He is a Greek who has reconstructed the Gyde bust, and his opinion is necessary to me in the case.”

Mademoiselle Lefarge passed into an adjoining room, from which she presently emerged, carrying something in her arms; something wrapped in a white cloth.

She placed this object on a table and, removing the cloth, exposed the bust of M. Lefarge, which we have already seen.

Freyberger examined the thing attentively, murmuring to himself as he did so. Mademoiselle Lefarge, watching him narrowly, imagined that he seemed pleased.

“Well,” she said at last, “do you think it will be of service to you in your investigations? What do you think of it?”

“Ah, mademoiselle,” he replied, “my opinion on a work of art is, perhaps, of no great value and for that reason I have sent for a friend who is a magician where these matters are concerned, but,” looking at his watch, “he is late, this magician.”

Scarcely had he spoken than a knock came to the door and a waiter appeared bearing a salver, on which reposed a filthy-looking visiting card.

Cécile took the thing, on which was scrawled:

“I. Antonides, art dealer, 1006 Old Compton Street.”

“Gentleman is outside, miss,” said the waiter, whose cast-iron face was struggling with a grin and conquering it.

“Show him in,” said Cé............