conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a plot for a story about George, Lord, Edward entitled The Listerdale Mystery.. Start with the sentence 'The Listerdale Mystery: Mrs st Vincent is a genteel lady living in reduced circumstances with her son and daughter, Rupert and Barbara'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Listerdale Mystery: Mrs st Vincent is a genteel lady living in reduced circumstances with her son and daughter, Rupert and Barbara.\nAfter her husband\'s financial speculations went wrong, he died, and they were forced to vacate the house, which had been in their family for generations.\nThey now live in rooms in a boarding house (which has seen better times) and, due to these surroundings, are unable to entertain people of similar class and upbringing.\nRupert has just started a job in the city, with excellent prospects but, at this point in time, only a small income.\nBarbara enjoyed a trip to Egypt the previous winter with – and paid for by – her richer cousin.\nOn this trip she met a young man called Jim Masterson, who is interested in courting her, but who would be put off if he saw their reduced circumstances.\nLooking through the Morning Post, Mrs st Vincent sees an advertisement for a house to let in Westminster, furnished, and with a nominal rent.\nAlthough she thinks she has little chance of being able to afford the house, she goes to see the house agents and then the house itself, and is instantly taken with it and pleasantly surprised at its very low rent.\nThe agents offer her the house for a six-month rental.\nBarbara is delighted, but Rupert is suspicious – the house belonged to Lord Listerdale, who disappeared eighteen months previously and supposedly turned up in East Africa, supplying his cousin, Colonel Carfax, with power of attorney.\nThey take the house and are looked after in style by Quentin, the butler, whose wages are paid for by Lord Listerdale\'s estate, as are the wages of the two other servants.\nDelicious food regularly turns up on the table.\nIt is sent up regularly from his Lordship\'s country seat of King\'s Cheviot – an old custom.\nAfter three months, Mrs st Vincent is very happy in the house and Jim has proposed to Barbara.\nRupert still entertains his suspicions, and is somewhat convinced that Listerdale is not in Africa, but has perhaps been murdered, and his body hidden in the house.\nRupert also suspects Quentin of being part of whatever plot has occurred.\nRupert goes on a motorcycling holiday, which takes him near to King\'s Cheviot.\nSpotting someone who resembles Quentin, he questions the man, who tells him he is really called Quentin; was butler to Lord Listerdale; but retired on a pension to an estate cottage some time before.\nRupert brings the real butler to London and confronts the fake one.\nThe real butler tells an astonished st Vincent family that the fake is in fact Lord Listerdale himself.\nHis Lordship explains that, ashamed of his selfish life to date, he faked his relocation to Africa, and has since spent his time helping people like the st Vincents, whose lives have been reduced to something akin to begging.\nOver the past few months, he has fallen in love with Mrs st Vincent, and now proposes marriage to the delighted lady.\nAlix Martin is a woman in her mid-thirties who has worked as a shorthand typist for fifteen years.\nFor most of that time she has had an understanding with a fellow clerk by the name of Dick Windyford; but, as both are short of funds and, at various times, had family dependants, romance and marriage have been out of the question and never spoken of.\nTwo events happen suddenly: a distant cousin of Alix\'s dies, leaving her enough money to generate an income of a couple of hundred pounds a year – however, her financial independence seems to annoy Dick – and, at much the same time, Alix meets a man, Gerald Martin, at a friend\'s house, and after a whirlwind romance they are engaged within a week and married soon after.\nDick is furious, and warns Alix that she knows nothing whatsoever about her new husband.\nA month after they are married, Gerald and Alix are living in the picturesque Philomel Cottage.\nIt is isolated, but fitted with all modern conveniences.\nAlix has some anxieties: she has a recurring dream in which Gerald lies dead on the floor, Dick standing over him having committed the deed of murder, and Alix grateful for the act.\nShe is troubled that the dream is a warning.\nBy coincidence, Dick phones her.\nHe is staying at a local inn and wishes to call on her.\nShe puts him off, afraid of what Gerald\'s reaction might be.\nAfter the call she chats to the gardener, George, and during the course of the conversation is told two strange things: Gerald has told George that Alix is going to London the next day and he doesn\'t know when she\'ll be returning (although she knows nothing about this); and the cost of the cottage was two thousand pounds.\nGerald had told Alix that it was three thousand, and she gave him part of her inheritance to make up the difference.\nAlix finds Gerald\'s pocket diary dropped in the garden and looks through it, seeing her husband\'s meticulous entries for everything he does in his life.\nAn appointment is marked down for 9:00 pm that night, but no indication is given as to what will happen at that time.\nAlix suddenly has doubts about her husband, which only increase when he gives her a cryptic warning about prying into his past life.\nHe is also furious that George made the comment about going to London.\nHe claims the 9:00 pm entry was to remind him to develop photographs in his dark room, but he has now decided not to carry out this chore.\nThe next day, driven by questions and insecurities, Alix starts to search through her husband\'s papers in two locked drawers, and in one of them finds newspaper clippings from America dated seven years previously which report on a swindler, bigamist and suspected murderer called LeMaitre.\nAlthough found not guilty of murder, he was imprisoned on other charges and escaped four years before.\nAlix seems to recognise LeMaitre from the photographs – it is Gerald.\nHe returns to the cottage, carrying a spade, supposedly to do work in the cellar, but Alix is convinced he intends to kill her.\nDesperately keeping up a pretence of normality, she makes a supposed call to the butcher which is in fact a coded call for help to Dick at the inn.\nGerald tries to get her to join him in the cellar, but she plays for time, telling Gerald that she is in fact an unsuspected murderess who killed two previous husbands by poisoning them with hyoscine, which induces the symptoms of heart failure.\nGerald had been complaining that his coffee was bitter, and he is convinced that she has now poisoned him.\nAt that moment, Dick and a policeman arrive at the cottage as Alix runs out.\nThe policeman investigates inside and reports that there is a man in a chair who is dead, looking as though he has had a bad fright.\nGeorge Rowland is a mildly dissolute young man who is dependent on his rich uncle for both his keep and his job at the family\'s city firm.\nAnnoyed with his nephew\'s late night carousing, his uncle sacks him.\nAnnoyed in turn with his uncle, George makes plans to leave home.\nAbandoning ambitious plans to go to the colonies, George decides instead to travel by train from Waterloo to a place he spots in an ABC guide called Rowland\'s Castle where he is sure he will be welcomed with open arms by the feudal inhabitants.\nHe is happily alone in the first class carriage when a girl jumps onto the train begging to be hidden.\nGeorge chivalrously hides her under the train seat before a moustached foreign man appears at the window and "demands" his niece back.\nGeorge calls a platform guard who detains the foreign man, and the train departs.\nThe girl introduces herself as Elizabeth but tells George that she can\'t give him an explanation of her actions.\nAt the next station, she gets off the train.\nWhile speaking to George through the window, she spots a man with a small dark beard further down the platform getting into the train and tells George to keep an eye on him and to guard safely a package that she hands to him.\nGeorge follows the bearded man down to Portsmouth, storys into the same commercial hotel, and watches him carefully.\nHe is aware that there is another, ginger-haired man carefully watching both of them.\nHe follows the bearded man as he goes on a quick walk through the streets, which ends up taking them both back to their hotel with no sign of any assignation.\nGeorge wonders if the bearded man has spotted that he is being watched.\nHis suspicions grow further when the ginger-haired man returns to the hotel, also seemingly after a night\'s walk.\nHis puzzlement increases when two foreign men call at the hotel and ask George (although calling him "Lord Rowland") where the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Catonia, a small Balkan state, has gone to.\nThe younger of the two men grows violent but George is able to subdue him with Jujutsu.\nThe two men leave, uttering threats.\nThat night, George watches the black-bearded man as he secretes a small packet behind the skirting board in the bathroom.\nReturning to his own room, George finds the package Elizabeth gave him has gone from its hiding place under the pillow.\nAfter breakfast, the package has returned to his room but, investigating its contents at last, George finds only a box with a wedding ring inside it.\nHe hears from the chambermaid that she is unable to gain access to the black-bearded man\'s room and decides to gain access himself via a parapet outside the window.\nHe deduces that the man escaped via the fire escape just before he hears a noise from inside the wardrobe and, investigating, is attacked from within by the ginger-haired man.\nThe latter identifies himself as DI Jarrold of Scotland Yard.\nThe black-bearded man was called Mardenberg and was a foreign spy who secreted the plans of the Portsmouth harbour defences behind the skirting board.\nHis accomplice is a young girl, and George wonders if this could have been Elizabeth.\nHe is on the train back to London when he reads of a secret wedding between the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Catonia and Lord Roland Gaigh.\nAt the next station Elizabeth gets onto the train and explains events to George.\nShe was acting as a decoy for Anastasia to throw her uncle, who opposed the romance, off the scent, and the black-bearded man and the packet were simply a ruse to distract George, as he was so willing to be part of a mystery – another wedding ring could easily have been procured, and George\'s adventures with the spy were a remarkable coincidence.\nGeorge realises that Elizabeth is actually Lord Roland\'s sister.\nHe proposes to her.\nHis uncle will be delighted he is marrying into the aristocracy, and Elizabeth\'s parents, with five daughters, will be delighted that she is marrying into money.\nShe accepts.\nSir Edward Palliser, KC, receives a visit in his Westminster house from a woman called Magdalen Vaughan whom he met on a boat trip some ten years previously.\nShe begs him for help, as she is the great-niece of Lily Crabtree, an old woman who was murdered some three weeks ago.\nThe victim was found dead in her downstairs room in her Chelsea house, her head crushed in by a paperweight, which had then been wiped clean.\nMagdelen was one of five people in the house at the time of the death – as well as her and her brother, Matthew, Mrs Crabtree\'s nephew and his wife, William and Emily and the house servant, Martha.\nAll four of the family members in the house were supported financially by Miss Crabtree and all four inherit one quarter of her estate.\nThe police have been unable to establish any concrete evidence against anyone in the house and the suspicion against them is telling on them all.\nMagdalen begs Sir Edward to investigate thereby keeping to a promise he made to her ten years before to help her in any way he could, should the need arise.\nHe agrees to help.\nFrom a meeting with Miss Crabtree\'s solicitor he discovers that the old lady always collected from the latter three hundred pounds in five pound notes every quarter for the next three-month\'s household expenses.\nHe goes to Chelsea and meets Magdalen\'s relatives and discovers the tensions that exist in house.\nEmily rowed with Miss Crabtree at lunch and retired to her room following afternoon tea with a headache pill.\nWilliam also went to his room with his stamp collection.\nMagdalen was also upstairs sewing.\nMatthew Vaughan refuses to speak with Sir Edward, claiming to be tired of the whole business.\nSir Edward speaks with Martha who was devoted to Miss Crabtree as she took her into service thirty years before after she had had an illegitimate baby.\nShe confirms that she can hear the creak of the stairs when anyone comes downstairs – and no one did during the period in question – and that Matthew was in a downstairs room typing a journalistic piece and she could constantly hear the keys of the typewriter.\nShe confesses however that Miss Crabtree could have opened the door to anyone and she wouldn\'t have heard from the kitchen – especially as Miss Crabtree\'s room faced the street and she would have seen anyone approaching the house.\nIn questioning her as to whether Miss Crabtree was expecting anyone, Martha relates her final conversation with Miss Crabtree, which includes trivial complaints about the household budget and the dishonesty of tradesmen, citing a supposedly bad sixpence she was given.\nSir Edward searches Miss Crabtree\'s bag with her personal belongings and money but finds nothing of interest.\nHe is on his way home when Matthew Vaughan stops him in the street to apologise for his behaviour.\nSir Edward catches sight of a shop over his shoulder called "Four and Twenty Blackbirds" and runs back to the house to confront Martha.\nNo sixpence was in Miss Crabtree\'s bag but a piece of poetry from an unemployed man was – Miss Crabtree must have taken this from a man calling begging and she gave him the missing sixpence in return.\nMartha confesses that the killer was a caller to the house – it was her illegitimate son, Ben, who has now fled the country.\nEdward Robinson is a young man firmly under the thumb of his fiancée, Maud, who does not wish to rush into marriage until his prospects and income improve.\nHe is a romantic at heart who wishes he was masterful and rugged like the men he reads of in novels.\nSomewhat impetuous in nature, he enters a competition and wins the first prize of £500.\nHe doesn\'t tell Maud of this, knowing she will insist the money is wisely invested for the future, and instead uses it to buy a small two-seater car.\nOn Christmas Eve, on holiday from his work as a clerk, he goes for a drive into the country.\nStopping off in the dark evening at the Devil\'s Punch Bowl, he gets out of his car to admire the view and takes a short walk.\nHe returns to his vehicle and drives back to London but on the way, reaching into the door pocket for his muffler, he instead finds a diamond necklace.\nIn shock, he realises that although it is the same model car as his, it is not the same car.\nBy coincidence, he got into the wrong car after his walk and drove off.\nHe returns to the Punch Bowl but his car has gone.\nSearching further, he finds a note in the car he is driving which gives instructions to meet someone at a local village at ten o\'clock.\nHe keeps the assignation and meets a beautiful woman in evening dress and cloak who thinks he is someone called Gerald.\nTelling her his name is Edward, she is not thrown by the mistake and in conversation reveals that \'Gerald\'s\' brother is called Edward but she hasn\'t seen him since she was six years old.\n\' She gets in the car but realises quickly that Edward has only recently learnt to drive and takes the wheel herself.\nShe tells Edward a story about her and \'Jimmy\' having successfully stolen the necklace from a rich lady called Agnes Larella.\nShe drives him to a London townhouse where the butler arranges evening dress for him and the lady drives them onto Ritson\'s – the nightclub of the rich and famous.\nHe drinks cocktails and dances with the lady who he discovers is Lady Noreen Elliot, a famous society debutante and the theft of the necklace was in fact an elaboration of a treasure hunt, the rule being that the \'stolen\' item must be worn in public for one hour to claim the prize.\nAs Edward and Lady Noreen leave the nightclub, the real Gerald turns up in Edward\'s car and also reveals Edward not to be the one Noreen thought he was.\nEdward hurriedly retrieves his car and is about to drive off when Noreen begs him to \'be a sport\' and give her the necklace so she can return it.\nHe does so and receives a passionate kiss in return.\nEdward arrives at Maud\'s home in Clapham the next day.\nHe happily admits to the competition win and buying the car and tells her that he means to marry her next month, despite her objections.\nMaud is much taken with her newly masterful fiancé and agrees.\nIn an English village, ex-Inspector Evans, late of the CID tells his friend, Captain Haydock (ex-Royal Navy), that he has recognised a local woman, mrs Merrowdene, as being mrs Anthony, a notorious woman who was charged and tried nine years previously with the murder of her husband by arsenic poisoning.\nShe claimed that her husband was an arsenic-eater and that he took too much.\nGiving her the benefit of the doubt, the jury acquitted her; and, for the past six years, she has been the wife of a local elderly professor.\nAfter recognising her, Evans has carried out further investigations and found out that mrs Merrowdene\'s stepfather died when he fell off a cliff path when walking with her one day.\nAt that time, the stepfather had opposed the girl\'s (she was eighteen at the time of this incident) relationship with another man.\nEvans is convinced this earlier death was not accidental and that mrs Merrowdene is guilty of multiple murders.\nSoon afterward, walking in the village, Evans meets and talks with Professor Merrowdene and finds out that he has just taken out a large insurance policy which will pay out to his wife should he die.\nEvans is more convinced than ever that mrs Merrowdene is planning a third killing.\nHe goes to the village fête where a fortuneteller foresees him being involved in a matter of \'life and death.\n\' He meets mrs Merrowdene at the fête and deliberately calls her mrs Anthony, trying to provoke a reaction, but the lady remains composed.\nShe invites Evans home for tea with her and her husband.\nOnce there, she tells him they drink Chinese tea in bowls and then admonishes her husband for using the bowls for his chemical laboratory work, as it leaves a residue.\nEvans sees that she is about to poison her husband in front of him, using him as a witness.\nWhen Merrowdene leaves the room, Evans insists that the lady drinks from the bowl she prepared for her husband.\nShe hesitates and then pours the contents into a plant pot.\nEvans is satisfied that he has prevented the murder and warns mrs Merrowdene that she must not continue her \'activities.\n\' He then drinks his bowl, chokes and dies on the spot.\nHaving declared his suspicions of the woman, Evans was mrs Merrowdene\'s victim, not her husband.\nIt is mentioned toward the end of the story that mr Evans was the third man who had threatened to cross mrs Merrowdene and separate her from the man she loved; this means that mr Merrowdene is the man she loved when she was 18 and that the three men were: her stepfather, mr Anthony (whom she presumably did not want to marry), and mr Evans.\nJane Cleveland, a young woman of twenty-six, is in need of a job.\nHer financial position is precarious and she lives in a shabby boarding house.\nBrowsing the Daily Leader jobs column, she finds nothing of note, but in the personal column she sees an advert for a young woman of her age, build and height who is a good mimic and can speak French.\nShe goes to the address given and is one of many girls queuing up in answer to the advert.\nGetting through to the final six, she is interviewed by a foreign gentleman and told to go to Harridge\'s hotel and ask for Count Streptitch.\nPresenting herself there as instructed, Jane is again interviewed by the Count and then introduced to an ugly middle-aged lady by the title of Princess Poporensky who both declare her to be suitable.\nThey ask Jane if she doesn\'t mind the prospect of danger, to which she answers that she doesn\'t.\nFinally, Jane is introduced to the Grand Duchess Pauline of Ostrava, exiled from her country after a Communist revolution.\nJane is similar in looks and colouring to the Grand Duchess although she is slightly smaller in height.\nIt is explained to Jane that the Grand Duchess is the target of assassination attempts by the people who overthrew and slaughtered her family and that they want Jane to act as a decoy for her during the next two weeks when she is in Britain and has to attend several charitable events.\nJane agrees and is given money to stay at the nearby Blitz hotel (under the assumed name of Miss Montresor of New York) and to buy a dress to wear when she is following the Grand Duchess to the events, during which they will swap dresses when they suspect that a kidnap or murder attempt is imminent.\nJane suggests a bright red dress in contrast to the Grand Duchess\' dress of choice for a charity bazaar at Orion House ten miles outside London and that she will wear high-heeled boots to cover up the difference in height.\nThree days later, the bazaar is taking place.\nThe main feature of it is that one-hundred society women will each donate one pearl, which will be auctioned the next day.\nThe real Grand Duchess declares the bazaar open and meets the people there.\nWhen it is time to depart, she and Jane swap dresses in a side room, and Jane leaves in the Duchess\' place – news having reached them that the assassins will make an attempt on the journey back to Harridge\'s.\nJane is travelling back with the Princess Poporensky when the chauffeur takes them down a side road and down an unknown and secluded route, stops the car and holds up the two women with a pistol.\nThey are at an empty house, which they are locked in.\nA short time later, bowls of soup are given to the two women, which Jane eats but the Princess refuses.\nJane falls asleep suddenly.\nThe next day Jane wakes up.\nShe is alone in the house and inexplicably back in her red dress.\nShe finds a newspaper in the house, which states that the charity bazaar was held up by a girl in a red dress and three other men.\nThey stole the pearls and got away.\nThe girl in the red dress has been traced as staying at the Blitz hotel under the name of Miss Montresor of New York – Jane realises that she has been set up by a gang of jewel thieves.\nShe hears someone in garden and finds a young man coming round from having been knocked out.\nHe and Jane swap stories and the young man reveals that he was at the bazaar and was puzzled when he saw the Grand Duchess enter a room in low-heeled shoes and exit in high-heeled ones.\nHe followed her to the empty house and saw a second car arrive with three men and a woman in a red dress.\nPresently, this woman came out in the Duchess\' dress and all except Jane seemed to have departed but when the young man went to investigate he was knocked out.\nThey suddenly become aware that another man is nearby and listening to them.\nHe introduces himself as Detective-Inspector Farrell and, having overheard the stories that the two told, all has become clear to him; and he realises what really happened at the bazaar hold-up and that Jane is innocent.\nThe young man reveals that having seen Jane at the bazaar, he has fallen in love with her… Dorothy Pratt, a housemaid, is enjoying a Sunday drive in a cheap old car with her young man, Edward Palgrove.\nThey stop at a roadside fruit stall and buy a basket of fruit from the seller who tells them with a leer on his face that they are getting more than their money\'s worth.\nStopping off near a stream, they sit by the road to eat the fruit and read in a discarded Sunday paper of the theft of a ruby necklace worth fifty thousand pounds.\nA moment later, they find such a necklace in the bottom of the basket.\nEdward is shocked and scared of the sight, seeing the possibility of arrest and imprisonment but Dorothy sees the possibility of a new and better life from selling the jewels to a \'fence\'.\nEdward is shocked by the suggestion and demands that she hand them over which she reluctantly does.\nThe next day, Dorothy contacts Edward.\nShe has come to her senses after a sleepless night and realises that they must hand the necklace back.\nOn the way back from his office-clerk job that night, Edward reads the latest developments on the jewel robbery in the newspaper but it is another adjacent story, which catches his attention.\nHe meets Dorothy that night and shows her the second story – it is about a successful advertising stunt in which one out of fifty baskets of fruit sold will contain an imitation necklace.\nTo their mutual relief, they realise that they are not the possessors of the stolen necklace.\nAnthony Eastwood is suffering from writer\'s block with a commission from an editor.\nHe has typed a title – "The Mystery of the Second Cucumber", hoping that it will give him some inspiration but to no avail.\nHe suddenly receives a mysterious telephone call from a girl identifying herself as Carmen.\nShe begs for his help to avoid being killed, gives him an address to go to and tells him the codeword is "cucumber".\nInterested in this coincidence, he goes to the address given, which is a second-hand glass shop.\nTrying desperately to avoid buying anything expensive, he finally lets slip the word "cucumber".\nThe old lady who runs the shop tells him to go upstairs.\nOnce there he meets a beautiful young woman of foreign extraction.\nShe praises the saints that Anthony has come to save her, but is worried that he has been followed to the shop and tells him not to underestimate "Boris", who is a fiend.\nSuddenly the police arrive and arrest Anthony, calling him "Conrad Fleckman", for the murder of Anna Rosenborg.\nAnthony, not too worried about this turn of events because he knows he can prove his identity, begs for a moment alone with the girl and tells her the truth and also to ring him at him later.\nOnce outside the shop, Anthony again tries to persuade the police of his innocence.\nThe more senior of the two men – Detective-Inspector Verrall – seems interested in Anthony\'s story while his subordinate – Detective-Sergeant Carter – is more sceptical.\nAnthony persuades the two men to take him back to his flat where the porter confirms his identity and then they go up to his rooms.\nLeaving Carter to conduct a search of his rooms to finally establish the truth of his identity, Anthony pours a whisky for himself and Verrall and hears the story of Conrad Fleckman.\nIt goes back over ten years and involves the sale of a Spanish shawl from the impoverished family of a man called Don Fernando to Anna Rosenborg.\nAfter buying the shawl she seemed to have large sums of money at hand.\nFernando was stabbed to death shortly afterwards and eight attempts have been made to burgle Anna Rosenborg\'s house in the intervening years.\nA week ago, Fernando\'s daughter, Carmen Ferrarez, arrived in Britain and threatened Rosenberg over the "shawl of a thousand flowers" and she has now disappeared after the murder.\nConrad Fleckman is a man whose name appears on a note found in Ferrarez\'s rooms.\nNow Rosenborg has been found dead in Fleckman\'s rooms.\nVerrall is called away by a call at the front door and Anthony ponders the story he has been told.\nAfter a while, he realises that all has gone quiet.\nHe goes out of his rooms and the porter tells him that he helped the two men with the packing of his goods.\nPuzzled, Anthony investigates and finds that his valuable collection of enamels has been taken.\nHe calls the police, who tell him that the culprits sound like the Patterson gang and that he has been the subject of an elaborate hoax to get into people\'s houses and distract them with wild stories while they are robbed.\nAnthony is annoyed until he realises that his writer\'s block is cured and he has a new title for his story – "The Mystery of the Spanish Shawl".\nGeorge Dundas is sacked by his uncle from his job for taking too much time off work.\nHe is accused of not grasping the "golden ball of opportunity".\nWalking through the city, he is stopped by a society girl, Mary Montresor, in her expensive touring car who driving past Hyde Park Corner questions George as to whether or not he would like to marry her.\nSomewhat distracted by Mary\'s reckless driving, he has answered yes when he sees newspaper bills, which tell that Mary is to marry the Duke of Edgehill.\nMary doesn\'t seem interested in her commitment and suggests they drive into the country and find a place to live.\nGoing along with her, George agrees.\nHeading southwest they spot a house on the brow of a hill that Mary likes and go to investigate.\nMary states that they will suggest to anyone that is there that they thought it belonged to a "Mrs Pardonstenger" to cover up their investigations.\nPeeping through the windows they are approached by a butler who does not seem surprised by the pseudonym Mary uses and asks them into the house.\nOnce inside they are quickly accosted by a man and a woman.\nThe man produces a revolver and tells George and Mary to go upstairs at gunpoint.\nAt the top of the stairs, George suddenly fights back and knocks the man out badly.\nGeorge is all for tying the man up but Mary begs him to leave the house, which they do, George taking the revolver with him.\nOnce in the car, he checks the gun and is astonished to find that it isn\'t loaded.\nMary confesses that the house is hers and the situation they found themselves in was staged by her as a test of any prospective husband and how he would react instinctively to protect her from danger.\nAll so far have failed the test.\nThe couple in the house were engaged by her for the purpose, the man being Rube Wallace, a film actor.\nAs George has been proposed to and passed the test, he suggests getting a special licence for the wedding.\nMary however wants him to go down on bended knee, which George refuses to do, telling her that it is degrading.\nWhen they arrive in London he contrives to slip on a banana skin when he gets out of the car, thereby getting down on one knee.\nGeorge enjoys going back to his uncle and telling him that he is going to marry a rich young society girl – he has grasped the golden ball.\nJames Bond, a young man, is on holiday at a fashionable coastal resort with his young lady, Grace.\nThey observe the proprieties of the age by staying in separate accommodation.\nHe is in a cheap boarding house while she has put herself up in the high-class Esplanade Hotel on the front where she has discovered friends are staying – Claud Sopworth and his three sisters.\nAt almost every opportunity James is being treated in a fairly cavalier manner by Grace and one more arises when Claud suggests they all go bathing in the sea.\nThe Esplanade has its own changing huts on the beach, which James, as a non-resident, is not allowed to use.\nHe therefore has to leave his "friends" and use the public huts, all of which have long queues.\nHe takes a chance and uses an unlocked private hut belonging to one of the large private villas in the resort.\nAfter their sea-bathe, James changes back into his clothes which he left in the hut but doesn\'t join Grace or the others for lunch as he has taken offence at her jibes at the cheap trousers he is wearing.\nEating in a dingy café, James is astounded to find a large emerald in his pocket.\nFrom reading stories in the resort\'s weekly paper, he has no doubt it belongs to the Rajah of Maraputna, who is staying at Lord Edward Campion\'s private villa, and realizes that when he changed out of his bathing clothes, he put on the wrong trousers (the beach hut belonging to Lord Campion).\nLeaving the café he sees newspaper bills stating that the Rajah\'s emerald has been stolen.\nWondering why a priceless emerald was left in a beach hut in the first place, he goes back to the hut to change back into his own trousers when he is suddenly stopped by a man who shows him his badge and identifies himself as Detective-Inspector Merrilees of Scotland Yard who is on the track of the emerald.\nJames is arrested and claims that the emerald is at his lodging.\nThe policeman is taking him back there but on the way they pass a police station and James suddenly grabs the man and shouts for the police himself, claiming that Merrilees has picked his pocket.\nThe police search Merrilees and find the emerald, which James secreted there.\nJames is in turn accused by Merrilees but Lord Campion arrives and identifies Merrilees as Jones, his suspected valet.\nJames relates the whole story to Lord Campion, but what James doesn\'t tell is that the badge that "Merrilees" showed him was a badge for a cycling club that, by coincidence, James also belongs to.\nAs the Rajah want to thank James personally, Lord Campion invites him to his villa for lunch, an invitation he is delighted to accept, also enjoying the opportunity to turn down a half-hearted invitation from Grace and the Sopwith siblings, also pointing to Grace that Lord Campion\'s dressing style is similar to his own in the process.\nMadame Paula Nazorkoff, the famous but temperamental operatic soprano, is in London for a short series of appearances.\nHer manager, Mr Cowan, has arranged five appearances at Covent Garden as well as a single appearance at the Albert Hall and also a performance of Madame Butterfly at the private theatre in the castle home of Lord and Lady Rustonbury where royalty will be present.\nThe name seems familiar to Madame Nazorkoff and she realises that she read of it in an illustrated magazine, which is still with her in her Ritz Hotel room.\nScanning through it, she immediately becomes less scornful of the idea but insists that the performance be changed to Tosca.\nMr Cowan hears her mutter, "At last, at last – after all these years".\nPreparations on the day at the home of Lord Rustonbury are going well until Signor Roscari, due to sing the part of Scarpia, suddenly falls strangely ill.\nLady Rustonbury remembers that a nearby neighbour is Edouard Bréon, the retired French baritone and she drives off to ask him to step in at the last moment.\nHe agrees and returns.\nIn the hall of the castle he reminisces over past performances of Tosca that he has heard, stating that the best one was over twenty years before by a young girl called Bianca Capelli.\nShe was foolish though as she was in love with a man involved with the Camorra and begged Breon to use his influence to save his life when he was condemned to death.\nBréon states he did nothing for the man as he was not worth it and, after his execution, Capelli entered a convent.\nBlanche, the Rustonbury\'s daughter, watches Mr Cowan as Nazorkoff claims that as a Russian she is not so fickle.\nThe performance goes well and the invited audience are appreciative.\nThe second act reaches its climax as the character of Tosca stabs Scarpia.\nAfter the curtain has fallen, one of stagehands rushes out and a doctor is called for.\nNazorkoff was apparently so involved with her performance that she really did stab Bréon.\nBlanche knows differently though and she tells how she has realised that Nazorkoff was in fact Capelli, who has waited years for her revenge on the man who let her lover die – the story of Tosca has come to life.\nAs the police take Nazorkoff away, she quotes another line from opera – "La commedia è finita" ("The show is over").