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my dressing table tonight, that I might have good luck in my opening performance.

“I was just about to turn away when I saw the brooch and remembered that I must take it with me, so I stretched out my hand for it, and was about to pick it up, when it disappeared.”

“It disappeared?” I echoed.

She nodded. “Yes, disappeared. My hand was about four or five inches from it, I think, when suddenly it was not there any more. As though some one had picked it up and taken it away before my hand could reach it.”

“Some one?” I questioned. “But there was no one there but you.”

She nodded again. “There was no one but me in the room. I thought perhaps in some inexplicable way I had knocked it down, though I knew I had not; I looked round on the floor, and under the dressing table, but it was gone.”

“That’s curious,” I nodded. “And your theory is that the same hand—”

“But that isn’t all,” she added.

“What else happened?” I asked quickly.

‘Well, when I looked up from under the dressing table I looked at the place where the brooch had been. It wasn’t there, of course, but where it had been lying there was a spot of red, and when I looked at it closely I saw that it was . . . blood. . . .”