"Did you receive your invitation through the proper channels?" asked
Hamilton.
"I came here to-night,"--coldly, "on the invitation of Mrs.
Hyphen-Bonds, who sailed for Europe Wednesday."
Here was an alibi that was an alibi! I was all at sea. Hamilton
bowed; the chief coughed worriedly behind his hand. The girl had told
me she was an impostor like myself, that her ten of hearts was as
dark-stained as my own. I could not make head or tail to it. Mrs.
Hyphen-Bonds! She was a law in the land, especially in Blankshire, the
larger part of which she owned. What did it all mean? And what was
her idea in posing as an impostor?
The door opened again.
"The patrol has come," said the officer who entered.
"Let it wait," growled the chief. "Haggerty has evidently got us all
balled up. I don't believe his fashionable thief has materialized at
all; just a common crook. Well, he's got him, at any rate, and the
gems."
"You have, of course, the general invitation?" said Hamilton.
"Here it is,"--and she passed the engraved card to him.
"I beg a thousand pardons!" said Hamilton humbly. "Everything seems to
have gone wrong."
"Will you guarantee this man?" asked the chief of Hamilton, nodding
toward me.
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