She then went through to her own room, with Mrs Bannister by her side. Harry Grant noticed that she had left behind her on the table the small handbag she had been carrying, and with a lover’s instinct he picked it up, intending to take it along to her room. But as his fingers closed round it, it slipped from his grasp and dropped to the floor.

It fell open as it hit the ground, and out of it dropped a pair of dark sunglasses.

That night he went to sleep frowning. In his dream, a man, unidentified, whispered to him that Esther could see. He said, astonished: “How do you know that?” and Ryan, appearing suddenly across an enormous desk, answered acidly: “The sunglasses, you dope!”

When he awoke, the resemblance was only shadowy. But it was still there; and with the utmost unwillingness he began to work out what it could mean. His appalled speculation had to battle all the time with his love; but in this case his love – however protective, however increasing – could not win.

The third item was, for him, conclusive proof.

By this time, Harry Grant knew himself to be deeply in love with Esther; and he knew also what he was on the verge of uncovering a monstrous swindle of which she was the centre. It was no longer a battle between loving her, and uncovering this deception of hers: he was now determined that he would love, and uncover, at the same time, and so rescue her from her frightful situation.

He realized, of course, that she could not be innocent in this affair, and must indeed be completely involved in it; but he was convinced in his heart that she must be under constant pressure, from Mrs Bannister and the others, in all that she was doing.

The third item concerned a mirror.

There was in the hall of the New York hotel suite a mirror of an old-fashioned type, a long cheval glass adjustable to any angle. Once again, Harry Grant had come up from his own room, one floor below, to spend the afternoon with Esther; and as he passed the mirror he moved it, locking it at a new angle so that he could see his whole reflection. Then he went through into the sitting-room.

Presently Esther opened the door and came in. He went up to her, took her arm, and started to guide her towards her chair. Then, when she was settled, he returned to the door in order to close it. Something made him look at the cheval glass again. When he did so, he saw that his head and shoulders were no longer reflected in it: the angle of the mirror had been readjusted to suit a much smaller person.

It must have been moved within the last few moments; and the only person to go anywhere near it had been Esther.

She was, of course, a head shorter than he. In fact, she scarcely came up to his shoulder.