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 designing person to bring trouble and disgrace upon a man who is destined to be related to me. i waited for a little time to see how matters were developing, and then decided to refresh my memory from the skeleton plot of that unwritten story. when i looked in my desk i could not find the plot. why? because it had been stolen.
"i was quite certain of the fact when i looked for it. and all the time this corner house tragedy was being enacted exactly as i should have written it. there were other complications, of course, but the plot was the same."
"it sounds incredible," the countess said.
"not to me," lawrence replied meaningly. "the person who stole my plot did not know that i had it thoroughly by heart. and when my young friend bruce went to the corner house and got into all that trouble, i was in a position beforehand to tell him all that had happened. the scheme over those notes was also mine. i know perfectly well how the whole thing was worked so as to make an innocent man appear guilty. i knew before i heard bruce's story all about the old german and the picture.
"perhaps you knew also the culprit," the countess suggested.
lawrence did not appear to hear the question, so he proceeded.
"there were other notes as well mentioned in that fateful letter. but what had become of the other notes? nobody seemed to know or care about that. but the numbers were known, and strangely enough, eventually they turned up in this very house. they were paid over the gambling table that night that isidore gave a cheque to the marchioness. the question is, who paid those notes over, who was it who first brought them into the room that night?"
"a question that can never be solved," the countess gasped.
"you are mistaken," lawrence said quietly, "i have handled those notes, and i have solved the problem. they were produced in the first instance by you."
leona lalage was on her feet in a moment. her face was pale as ashes.
"you are wrong," she cried. "it could not have been so."
"it was so, because of the scent of them. every one of these notes was--and is--very slightly impregnated with the smell of tuberose."
there was a long, long silence, a silence that could be felt.
