Dear lady (it said), I am the victim of the most absurd and
annoying mistake. I have been arrested for Schirmer, the betting
man who murdered his mother-in-law and escaped from Paris
yesterday. They will not let me communicate with any one till
tomorrow morning and I have had great trouble in getting this line
to you. For heaven's sake bring Schreiermeyer and anybody else you
can find, to identify me, as soon as possible. I am locked up in a
cell in the police station of the Third Arrondissement.---Yours ever, C. LOGOTHETI.
Madame Bonanni looked at the woman again.
'Did you see the gentleman?' she asked.
'What gentleman?' 'The gentleman who is in prison!' 'What prison?' asked the woman with dogged stupidity.
'You re a perfect idiot!' cried Madame Bonanni, and she slammed the
door of the box in the woman's face, and bolted it inside.
She sat down and read the note a fourth time. There was no doubt as to
its being really from Logotheti. She laughed to herself.
'More ingenious than ever!' she said, half aloud.
A timid knock at the door of the box. She rose with evident annoyance,
and opened again, to meet the respectable old box-opener, a grey-haired
woman of fifty-five.
'Please, Madame, is the woman to go away? She seems to be waiting for
something.' 'Tell her to go to all the devils!' answered Madame Bonanni, furious.
'No--don't!' she cried. 'Where is she? Come here, you!' she called,
seeing the woman at a little distance. 'Do you know what you are doing?
You are trying to help Schirmer, the murderer, to escape. If you are
not careful you will be in prison yourself before morning! That is the
answer! Now go, and take care that you are not caught!' The woman, who was certainly not over-intelligent, stared hard at
Madame Bonanni for a moment, and then turned, with a cry of terror, and
fled along the circular passage.
'You should not let in such suspicious-looking people,' said Madame
Bonanni to the box-opener in a severe tone.
The poor soul began an apology, but Madame Bonanni did not stop to
listen, and entered the box again, shutting the door behind her.
The curtain went up before Lushington came back, but the prima donna
did not look at the stage and scarcely heard the tenor's lament, the
chorus and the rest. She seemed quite lost in her thoughts. Then
Lushington appeared with a big dark cloak on his arm.
'Will this do, mother?' he asked.
She stood up and made him put it over her. It had a hood, as she had
wished, which quite covered her head and would cover her face, too, if
she wished not to be recognised.