CHAPTER I

“And you mean to tell me,” said the younger of two men who were sitting over their coffee in a quiet corner of the club smoking-room, “you really mean to tell me—seriously—that you don’t know who she is? Come—come!” “I mean to tell you,” answered the elder man, carelessly defiant of the implied unbelief, “and as seriously as you like, that I know no more of who she is, in reality, than I know of the exact identity of the man who made this cigar in some Cuban factory! And that’s that!” “Yet you’ve published three of…