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 the man until the following morning, though Sir Nicolas, who had gone down into the garden that night, the first time for many weeks, was as full of the pair of them as he could be.

"Hildebrand," says he, "there's an American couple below which is worth the knowing. She's an artist from Boston, and she's come to the schools. It's the Greys, the railway people, they are; and rolling in the money. Did ye hear a fair-haired girl laughing at the top of her voice in the garden? Well, that's the one I mean. Faith, 'tis speaking manners these Americans have, for sure. She'd told me her history before we'd done the soup."

"Is she staying long, sir?" I asked.

"Three months certain, and likely longer. She's come here to be near the painting. It was her brother that sat opposite Jack Ames to-night. A white-faced man; with a liver, I'll wager. I'll know him better this time to-morrow."

It was extraordinary, I must say, to see how a little thing like this drew him out of himself. While he'd gone down to dinner telling me that I should find his body in the Morgue before the month was out, he came to bed all cheerful like a boy, and next morning he took an hour to dress himself. I saw him sitting down with the Americans to déjeúner; and after dinner he was three hours with the brother over at the billiard-room at the Cafe Rouge. Then I knew that the business had begun, and that luck had lifted us out of the groove again.

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"They're a queer couple altogether, Hildebrand," says Sir Nicolas, when I took him his coffee next morning. "Bedad! the man puzzles me. He's as mean of the money as a Scotchman out of Montrose. There was three hours we were playing last night, and not a sovereign changed hands."

"You won't pay many bills out of that, sir," says I.

"And don't I know it? Isn't it the girl I'm thinking of? They're the railway people, I'd be tellin' you—the Greys of Boston. That was a lucky day which sent them to the Hôtel de Lille; and for three months, too! You can do much with a woman in three months, Hildebrand."

"That you can, sir, if she's willing."

"Oh, she'll be willing enough by and by. There's no sugar for an American tongue like a title to roll over it. I was the man of the party before I'd known her an hour. She's just the sweetest bit of a brogue you ever heard, and her father's worth five million dollars. Get me my light frock-coat, will you now? I'm to drive her to St. Cloud this very morning."

Well, he went off with her sure enough, the pair of them dressed up until you might have picked them out of a thousand. When he was gone, and the place was put a bit straight, I strolled over to the Café Rouge to get my lunch and read the English papers. Paris was beginning to be full again then, for we were almost through the autumn, and the gardens were cold at nights. But you could find the folks you wanted any time from midday until four,

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 and no sooner was I in the place than I saw Michel Grey, the brother of the little American woman Sir Nicolas had just driven to St. Cloud. He was sit- ting at a table, and there was a bottle of hock before him.

"Halloa, my man!" cried he, as I passed him, and he didn't speak a bit like an American; "I'd like half a dozen words with you, if you don't mind."

"With the greatest pleasure in life, sir," I replied, thinking, at the same time, what a peculiar looking gentleman he was.

"Is it long since you left Dublin?" asks he, quite calm like, and pretending to see nothing of the start I gave.

"Would that be any business of yours?" I said, sharp and short, and looking at him in a way he couldn't mistake.

"Certainly it would be," says he. "A cousin of mine knew a Sir Nicolas Steele in Dublin three years ago, and I was wondering if it was the same."

"Then you should have asked my guv'nor," says I, while my heart began to jump so that I could hardly hold my hand still.

"Oh, no offence!" cries he, and with that he slipped a five-franc piece into my hand.

"You've been in Paris long?" he asks.

"A month or more," says I, thinking where I could have him.

"Are you going back to England soon?"

"We are going back at the end of November.

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 Sir Nicolas has engagements in London that month."

"Oh! then you are going back."

"Why, what would we be doing all the winter here in Paris?"

He seemed to think a while over this, taking a drink of the hock and rolling his bleary eyes as though he was looking for some one in the garden. Presently he said;

"Do you like the situation you're in?"

"Oh!" said I, "it's much the same as other situations. Here to-day and gone to-morrow."

"Then you travel a good deal?"

"That's so—but travel or no travel, it's all the same to me."

"Your master seems a pleasant sort of gentleman?"

"I should call him that."

"He's a baronet or something, isn't he?"

"Exactly; he's Sir Nicolas Steele of Castle Rath, County Kerry."

"A generous man, I should say."

I looked at him straight, for I'd read him up by this time.

"It's a cold morning for talking in the open air, sir," says I, and with that I turned on my heel and left him.

Now, though I had taken it coolly enough, a duller head than mine could have seen through the man's talk.

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"What's in the wind is this," said I to myself when I got back to the hotel, "you've heard some gossip, my fine gentleman, and you want to get to the bottom of it. If it's true that a cousin of yours knew Sir Nicolas Steele in Dublin three years ago, then you'll write to him, and what you'll learn won't keep your sister at the Hôtel de Lille. Maybe that cousin is in Europe; more probably he's in America, which gives us a month. Any way, it's you that we've got to play, and the sooner we begin the better."

This was my thought, and yet, simple as it seemed, there was something happened later in the day which gave a new turn altogether to it. I'd been bothering my head with the matter all afternoon, making nothing new of it outside the fact that the danger signal had been rung, so to speak, when what would happen but that, just before seven o'clock, I met the man again, face to face, in the corridor of the hotel, and the sight of him fairly took my breath away. I shouldn't have called him a healthy person any time, but now his eyes were sunken away something dreadful to see—while his cheeks were hollow like the cheeks of one just got up from a fever bed. White as his face had been in the morning, the color of it in the afternoon was like a bit of plaster of Paris. And what was more than this was the way he walked, feeling his road with his hands, like a blind man, and staring before him as though he was frightened that every step he took might land him on nothing.

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Never have I seen the muscles of a man's mouth twitch so much, or a man's fingers look so like claws. If he had been stark raving mad he could not have given me a greater shock; and I stood there, feeling like a child that has seen something horrible on the stairs and does not know whether to go forward or to go back.

There was a minute when, seeing him clutch hold of the banister and fix his dreadful eyes on me, I thought he was going to strike me. He half raised his right arm, but let it drop quickly again and began to mumble something that I could not hear. His speech was thick like that of a drunken man, and vet I could have sworn that drink was not the matter with him. Quite otherwise, he appeared to be in great pain; and when he got his words out at last, they came with gasps like the words of a man suffering.

"Where's your shoddy baronet?" he asked.

"What's that?" said I.

"Your Nicolas Steele, card-sharper and thief?" he went on, and this took me more aback than if he'd hit me.

"Look here," said I, "you're a bold man, but if you don't want to be horsewhipped out of this hotel, don't say that twice."

"Then you mean to say that he isn't?"

"A hundred times! A more honorable gentleman doesn't breathe in Paris, and if it wasn't for the state you are in, young man, I'd let you know it too."

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This silenced him a bit. He stood rocking on his heels for a minute or more, and then, muttering something between his teeth which I could not make out, he continued his march up the stairs. A quarter of an hour later, Sir Nicolas himself drove up with the young American, and he hadn't been in the hotel two minutes before I'd told him what had passed and what I'd seen. Strange to say, he took it as calm as a man hearing of the weather.

"The fellow's a lunatic—that's what he is," he cried, while he began to dress for the opera; "she's told me his history, coming home. He's a drug- drinker, and what he remembers to-day he'll know nothing of to-morrow, or perhaps for a month or more. Ye needn't mind him no more than a toy-pistol. I have her word for it, and that's good enough for me."

"Then his cousin wasn't in Dublin three years ago?" asked I.

"Indeed and he was, and that's the humor of it. He left before my affair, d'ye see, and if they write him, it's a pretty tale of me he'll be telling. Bedad! I couldn't have wished it better if me own hands had the planning of it."

"I'm glad to hear that, sir," said I, "so long as the young lady doesn't listen."

"Listen! Not she. 'Tis easy for the ears to be shut when the heart is open. Sure, won't I be marrying her within the month? She's American, you must remember, and tied to nobody's apron-

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 strings. Oh, it was a famous day that kept us at the Hôtel de Lille!"

He said this quite unconcerned, and not a bit ready to argue the point out with me. It was all very well for him to glide over it in that easy way, but what I wanted to know was, where had Michel Grey first heard talk about us? That the gossip was new to him was evident from the fact that he played billiards with my master the very first night he came to Paris. What chatter he had heard was heard between supper that evening and breakfast two days after. And this was what troubled me, even in the face of Sir Nicolas' tale about him taking drugs and forget- ting. "There's danger moving," I thought, "and if you're married within the month, Nicky, I'm a Chinaman."

This is how the thing looked to me, then and for days after. While, on the one hand, Michel Grey talked no more, either to me or to Sir Nicolas, of his suspicions, on the other hand, I could see that he would have no truck with us, and was doing his best to make his sister think as he did. That he did not succeed in this is to be set down to many things, but above all to the fact that for days together he would hang about the hotel like a man without a mind; and was, as all the world could see, tottering fast to his grave. What drug he drank, or where he learned the habit, no man could say, but a more pitiable spectacle than he made, looking for all the world like a blind thing come out of a coffin, I hope never to see.

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 Luckily for us, there was no affection lost between him and Miss Dora. Talk as he might, the day was rare when she did not plan some excursion with my master. They spent hours together out at Fontainebleau or Versailles—were half their leisure time at the picture-galleries, the other half at the cafés and theatres. I saw them walking arm-in-arm in the gardens, I saw him kiss her when she went to her painting in the morning, I saw him kiss her when she came home again to déjeúner, and I began to think that after all he was right and I was wrong. Then, all of a sudden, the trouble came, and we woke up from our dream.

Michel Grey had disappeared. For the first time since we had been at the hotel, he had exchanged words with my master over the dinner- table. It did not come to blows, but the hands of the people around alone kept the two men apart, and Sir Nicolas was heard by twenty folks to say that he'd beat the life out of the American with his hunting-crop. That night and the next Michel Grey did not sleep in his bed at the Hôtel de Lille. At ten o'clock two mornings later his sister Dora was knocking at my master's door, wanting to know what he had done with him.

I can see her now, with her pretty hair streaming down her back, and her face so flushed that she might have been rubbing her cheeks with a glove. Many women would have thought nothing of a man going off like that; but the quarrel stuck in her head, I suppose, and she was as scared as a rabbit. When

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Sir Nicolas came out to her, she was no longer gentle with him as she had been before this, but stamped her foot and spoke angrily, with quick, biting words.

"Well," she cried, "where is he? You know, of course?"

"As God is my witness, I know nothing," said he.

"But you were with him last—you were the last to speak to him."

"Indeed, and I was; and when he'd done with me, he went straight to his bedroom. Dora, it's not lies that I'd tell you at such a time."

"Then where is he? what has happened to him? what shall I tell my father? Oh, they love him at home; indeed they do!"

She began to cry at this, and my master took her hand.

"You poor little thing!" said he, drawing her head down upon his shoulder. "Would I harm him, whatever he was—and your brother, too? Don't ye see, child, that he's just gone off in a bit of a huff, and will be back before your tears are dry. Ye'll be the first to laugh when he walks in here."

"He is not the man to do that," said she, though she was no longer angry. "I am sure of it. I dreamed of him all night. He is dead, Nicolas."

Now what should Sir Nicolas do when she said this but give her a great kiss, and burst out laughing.

"Dead!" said he, "then I'm thinking we should get ready for the waking, and ask him to crack the first bottle. Bedad! he's as dead as I am, little

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 woman, and don't you think any such thing. Whatever put that into your head?"

"I could not tell you," said she. "We do not think these things—we know them."

At this he set off laughing again, and did his best to cheer her up—though it was poor work he made of it at the best. By and by, when he had seen a nice little breakfast sent up to her rooms, he came to me, and I knew then that he took it worse than I thought he would.

"Well," says he, "the fool's gone, right enough. There's no word or sign yet. I'll begin to think by and by that harm has come to him."

"In that case, sir," said I, "it's pity that what was said two nights ago couldn't wait."

"How do you mean?" he asked.

"Why—it's no good disguising it—you threatened to murder him."

"Good God! Would they think that?"

"There's some that might."

He stood stock still when I had said this, and his face was very white.

"It's luck to make one gnash the teeth," said he presently. "I'd have married her within the week!"

"There's no reason why you shouldn't now, sir," said I, "always supposing that it's well with him. But there are things to do."

"You think so?"

"Certainly; and if it was me that was concerned,

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I'd be up at the police-station before the clock struck again."

"Do you believe they would find him?"

"They might, or they might not; but it would be cover for you."

"I'll do that," said he shortly. "Is there any thing else?"

"One thing," said I. "This young fellow has a father in America. If three days pass and we hear nothing of him, send a cable out to Boston, and advise that a reward be offered—a big one, say ten thousand dollars. Meanwhile, offer a reward of two thousand francs yourself."

"But I'd have to pay. What's the sense in that?"

"Sir," I said, "if Mr. Grey of Boston will offer a reward of ten thousand dollars for the recovery of his son, there is one man who will find him."

"And who is that, pray?"

"Myself."

He looked at me with blank amazement. Then he said quite simply;

"Ye're a clever man. I'd be sorry for the day when we parted."

"But we must part, sir," said I.

"’Tis no time for nonsense, sure," said he.

"And it's no nonsense I mean, sir. If I'm to find this man and to claim this reward, the work must be done away from here."

"Where would it be done, then?"

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"From the house in the Rue Dupin, where we lived two years ago."

He thought over it a little while, and then he said;

"It's the devil of a head ye've got. How did you come to think of it?"

"Common-sense taught me," said I. "There's many a worse friend, sir."

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 after this talk I left the Hôtel de Lille and took a lodging in a little house in the Rue Dupin. It was the first time in my life that ever I'd set to work to hunt a man, and I knew at the beginning of it that I had a stiff job before me. Notwithstanding the light way we had taken Michel Grey's disappearance, seven days had passed and no living soul had heard a word of him. He had gone like a light in a wind, and had left neither letter nor message. While some were bold enough to say that Nicolas Steele could have told the tale, most people were deceived by the pains my master took to trace the missing man. None the less, it was not hidden from me that the police were watching him, and that any minute he might be face to face with the greatest peril of his life.

My object in moving from the hotel to the Rue Dupin was a simple one. Jonathan Grey, the father of the missing man, had walked into the trap we had set for him like a child into a sweetstuff-shop. His answer to his daughter's cable was immediate. "Offer the reward," he said, and we had offered it.

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 That is to say, we had printed a thousand bills and had burned them.

"Once get those bills about Paris," said I to Sir Nicolas, "and your man's here in a couple of hours. That don't suit us when ten thousand dollars are at stake—not by a long way. If Michel Grey is to be found at all, I'm going to find him, and to bank half the reward in my name. The other half is yours by every right."

"I've nothing to say against that," exclaimed he; "it's what I was thinking of myself. But ye don't tell me who's to claim the money, and all the world knowing that you're my servant. You don't forget that we're dealing with Yankees?"

"I forget nothing, sir," said I, "and that's what takes me to the Rue Dupin. The man who will claim the reward is my friend, Jim Pascoe"

"What! Jim Pascoe, the tout?"

"No other. If there's any thing in Paris that's new to him, I should be glad to hear of it. He'll do the job for a hundred pounds, and gladly."

"Ye don't fear to trust him?"

"Fear!" replied I, "why, I know enough about Jim Pascoe to buy a dozen men."

This was a true word, and half an hour after it was spoken I was seated with Jim in the little bit of a cabin in the Rue Dupin, where I told him the tale. Jim was a man who got his living the best way he could, but chiefly at Auteuil and Longchamps, and in being father-in-law to the English mugs who want

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 to "do" Paris. If any one could say what bad become of Michel Grey, he was the man; and I'd hardly got the words out of my lips when he jumped down my throat with his theory.

"Bigg," says he, "your man's in a drug-den—and what's more, he's in a private drug-den. It's a wonder his people haven't had any note for money before this—that is, if Grey hasn't a banking account of his own in Paris."

"I don't follow you there," says I. "What do you mean by a private drug-den?"

"Why, a place where they dose 'em and bleed 'em at the same time. Such shops are cheap this way. They trap a man with cash, aud make it pleasant for him so long as his money lasts, then they knock him on the head or leave him to skip the golden gutter. You couldn't have named a worse job. I doubt that you'll ever set eyes on Grey again, if you live to be a hundred."

This was a facer! I'd thought all along that the American was laid by the heels in some opium-shop, but that we should have any difficulty in getting him out was a fact that never entered my head.

"Then you don't take the thing on, Jim?" said I.

"Oh, I'm not saying that!" cried he; "but it's worth more than a hundred. I'm like to have my head cracked before I'm out of it."

"I'll make it two hundred and fifty," said I, "and not a penny more."

"You're on," says he. " And now for a word about

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 the chap's duds. What was he wearing when last you saw him?"

I gave him a full account of Michel Grey and his clothes, and he went away. Twenty-four hours after I got a line from him:

"Come up to the Rue de la Loire. I have found your man."

You may imagine that I didn't lose much time in doing as he asked me. While I couldn't really believe that the thing was to end in the simple way his letter made out, none the less the fact that we stood a good chance now of putting our hands on the ten thousand dollars came home to me.

"Bigg," said I, "you'll be set up for a twelve-month, and Sir Nicolas 'll be off to New York to marry a Yankee—that is, if he doesn't close on that pretty bit of goods up at the Hôtel de Lille. Was there ever such a town?"

I found Jim sitting on a dirty bed in a dirty little house near the boulevard end of the street he had named. He didn't look at all hopeful, as I expected he would, and the cigar that he held in his hand had gone out.

Well," says he, "you got my letter?"

"Why should I be here if I hadn't?" says I.

"Ah, true!" he went on; "and I may as well tell you at once—I believe your man's at the Maison d'Or, up in Montmartre."

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"How did you find that out?" I asked.

"I traced him by his stick," said he; "an orange-wood cane, with a globe of silver and a little map of the world on the top of it. Is that it?"

"The same," cried I.

"And he wore a hat of black felt, large beyond usual?"

"He did that."

"Then he's at the Maison d'Or; and how we're to get him out, God knows."

"Why, what's the difficulty?"

"I don't like the house," says he, shifting his eyes curiously.

"But what's the matter with it?"

"Oh, there's nothing the matter with it—except that a good many who go in never come out again. I've no fancy for that myself."

"Jim," says I, "you haven't got the heart of a rabbit. What nonsense you're talking! Take me up to the shop, and let me have a look at it."

"I was going to suggest that," says he. "It 'll be dark in an hour, and no one to tread on our heels. I know the woman who keeps the cabaret at the back of the place. It was from the top of a shed in her garden that I looked down into the lower rooms."

"Why not knock at the door at once and have done with it?" says I.

"It would be worth more than your life or mine to do that," cried he. "All the neighborhood knows it. There's not a man that would venture in."

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"Then what makes you think that this Grey is there?"

"He was two days at an opium-den in the Rue d'Oran, which is not a stone's- throw off, and was last seen at the cabaret I speak of. He was then with the man who runs the Maison d'Or. Folks knew him from my description of his hat and stick. I guessed at once that I should hear of him in a drug-shop. That's what took me to the Rue d'Oran."

"You're friends with the woman who runs this beer-shop, did you say?"

"The best possible, though I wouldn't walk with her in the Bois—not for choice, leastwise."

"Then let's get up there at once. If Grey is in the shop, the closer the eye we keep on it the better."

He assented to this, and we went off together in a closed cab. It was then almost full dusk, and threatening for a wet night. In fact, we hadn't got to the top of the Rue du Faubourg when the rain began to pelt down in earnest, the people scuttling into the cafés, and the water flooding the gutters. When at last our rickety old cab began to lumber up the slopes of Montmartre, the lamps in the streets were dancing before a stiff west wind, and the sky above us was black as ink. Where we'd got to, I couldn't for the life of me tell; but by and by Jim stopped the driver before a third-rate drinking-den, and we stepped out in a dirty street, where the mud was almost up to our ankles.

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"This is the place," said he; while it rained so fast that the water began to run off his hat. "Jam your tile over your eyes, and follow me. You will want a twenty-franc piece to shut the old woman's mouth. After that, it's easy."

He led the way into a bit of a bar, where four or five shabby customers were drinking beer and talking to women who matched them down to the ankles. But we weren't there more than a moment, for after a word in French lingo to the chap who served the drink, we passed on to a small parlor which overlooked a bit of a yard. Here a squat little woman, who didn't appear to have washed her face for a fortnight, was in talk with a girl who had a guitar in her hand—a poor, bespangled, squalid-looking wretch, who made her living, I don't doubt, by capering about before the scum in the bar. They left off when we came in, and then Jim fell to parleying with the woman, and a fine noise they made of it.

"She thinks you're a nark," said he to me in the middle of it. "Give us the twenty-franc piece, and see if that will cool her."

I handed him over the money, and they got to work again. This time the woman took it different; and when I'd whispered to him to promise her twenty francs more when we were through, she left off talking of a sudden, and led us down some dark stairs to a stinking kitchen where I wouldn't have housed a dog. Two minutes after we were out in the back yard, and she had left us.

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"Now," said Jim, "we're the better for wanting her, though she's a wonderful woman when you take her right. The fact is, she's just as crazy as the others about that house yonder, and is half afeared of having any thing to do with us. But she's lent me the steps, and that's all I care a crack about."

It was raining cats and dogs now, and bitter cold, but we were both excited by what we'd come to do, and didn't feel it more than the touch of a feather. For my part, I'd thought little of the danger up to that time, but when I stood out in that dark yard and looked up to the black shape of a windowless and prison-like house, I must say that I got a shiver through me.

"Jim," said I, "two's not many for a job like this. Did you bring your pistol?"

"I did so," he whispered. "You don't find me going far without it in Paris. Will you go first, or shall I?"

"You go," said I, "since you know the way. I'm on your heels—though what you're to see through that wall I'd like to learn."

"There's windows on the lower story," cried he; "but keep your mouth shut, and tread light."

Saying this, he went up the steps, and I followed him. I have made it plain, I think, that the cabaret or beer-shop, or whatever you like to call it, stood back to back with the house we'd come to enquire about. There was only a yard and a high wall between them; but at the end of this yard, and

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 jammed up against the wall, was a shed for lumber, so built that when you set the steps on its roof you could put your fingers on the top of the bricks above and haul yourself up. It didn't take Jim and I a minute to do this; and once astride the wall, we had our first view of the Maison d'Or.

I must say, and I always have said, that there was something uncanny in the very look of that house. Its heavy, blackened shape seemed to rise up like the shape of a dead-house or a prison. Many of its lower windows were heavily barred with iron bars. The paved yard around it was reeking with filth and rubbish. No sound, no light came out of it. It was just a great mass of brick-work looming up in the darkness, and I could understand easily enough how all the wild tales about it had come to be told. Sitting there, astride on the wall, and peering at such casements as faced the back of the cabaret, I should not have been a bit surprised if I'd have seen some inhuman thing stalking the yard below me. My heart was in my mouth—my nerves twitched like a woman's. And Jim was not a whit better.

"Do you make any thing of it?" he whispered, after we'd been on the wall a minute or two.

"The devil a bit!" said I.

"It ain't exactly a palace of varieties, is it?" he continued presently; "but Grey's in there, right enough. It was through that mite of a window on your left that I got a sight of the place last night. There was a light there then. I don't fancy we'll do much to-night."

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"Nor me neither," said I, for I was right down scared, and that's the fact of it.

"Shall we try again to-morrow night?" said he, and I could see he was in a hurry to be off.

"We might as well, for all the good we're doing," said I; and with that I turned to put my foot on the steps again. A moment later I saw a thing which fairly took my breath away.

The window which was dark had suddenly become light. A man with a lamp in his hand passed it, and following him with quick steps was no other than my master, Nicolas Steele.

"Good God!" said I, half aloud, in spite of myself. "What are you doing in there?" and then, as I'm a man, I began to tremble. But Jim had already turned on me.

"Bigg," cried he, "you're playing me double! What's Nicolas Steele doing in there?"

"Ask me another," said I. "It's a thing I can't tell you."

"But I can!" said he, and he was angry too. "He's gone to get Grey out and claim the money."

"Jim, shut your mouth," said I, "and don't make him out the biggest fool alive!"

"You're playing me false!" cried he, raising his voice sillily.

"No such thing," said I. "And look here—I'll prove it. I'm going in after him."

"You are!" exclaimed he. "Then I'll say 'Good-evening' to you."

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"Jim," said I, "don't you see it may be a matter of life or death with him? Help me in this, and I'll give you another hundred."

"Help you—how can I help you?"

"I'll tell you in a word. Run into the beer-shop there, and bring all the men you can find to these leads. Promise them twenty francs apiece to shout when I call to them. They'll do it quick enough if you say the police are with us on the other side."

"But you, yourself?"

"I'm going to throw these steps across the gap there, and force that window. After that, I'm trusting to bluff."

"You take your life in your hands," said he.

"Don't you trouble about that. You get the men. Quick's the word for this job."

He didn't wait for any more, but tumbled down to the shed again, and when I had waited five minutes and had seen him come out with half a dozen loafers at his tail, I dragged the steps up to the top of the wall, and then used them to bridge the gap which lay between the little window and myself. Luckily, the sill was old and broad; and though the window itself was not more than three feet square, it was unbarred. At any other time, I might have been a bit giddy clambering across that gap, for there was a drop of near twenty feet below me, but there were too many things running in my head to let me think of that, and half a minute hadn't gone before I had forced the window with my pocket-knife and dropped into

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 a narrow passage on the second floor of the Maison d'Or.

Ten seconds, perhaps, I stood to assure myself that I was all right. Then I drew my revolver, and putting it to the full cock, I began to look about me. It was plain in a minute that I was in a passage with doors opening down one side of it. The glimmer of a light showed at the far end; but elsewhere it was all dark, and, what was more, strangely silent. The air itself was heavy, like the air of a bakehouse. I had to gasp for my breath; there was a choking sensation in my throat which nearly made me faint. Stinking fumes, like the fumes of stale opium, filled all the corridor and seemed to exude from the rooms. I staggered under the power of them, and had to bite my lips to prevent myself coughing.

So far as furniture went, there was little that I could see in the passage. A heavy carpet was soft to the feet, and thick curtains, made of some soft stuff, were hung over the openings to the doors. Yet what appeared more curious than any thing was the queer silence in the place. While I stood there, half choking for my breath, and half hidden behind one of the thickest of the curtains, I didn't hear so much as a creak of a door or the fall of a foot. The house might have been a dead-house with spectres for tenants.

You may ask me, fairly enough, what I had meant to do when I crossed the gap and forced my way into this queer place. I can only answer that I

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 know no more than the dead. What I did was done on impulse. It was only when I stood in the passage, and heard my heart beating like a machine, that I began to think what a fool I had made of myself. And I must have stood there five minutes, afraid to go on, afraid to go back, when all of a sudden some one else decided for me. A door opened not two yards away, and out walked Sir Nicolas Steele and a little Frenchman. They were talking together angrily; and they went straight down the passage and turned the corner where the light was.

Though the door of the room from which they had come had only been open for a moment, I had seen a sight strange enough to have upset a stronger man than me. In a great Eastern-like room, all lit up with queer-colored lanterns, and having a fountain of water splashing in the middle of it, some twenty men were lying on little beds. Most of them looked to me to be dead with sleep, but one was raving, with his face buried in his pillow, while another seemed to be crawling on his hands and knees to the water which bubbled under the dome. The door was only open a second, as I say, but the view behind it gave me a shiver, and the shiver was still on me when, treading like a cat, I followed my master down the passage and came within a yard of him at the corner of it.

I was now near by the light, but curtains, hung crosswise in the passage, hid me well enough. I could see from my place that Sir Nicolas was arguing

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 with the Frenchman at the top of a little flight of iron stairs. When they had talked for about a minute the Frenchman pointed to a door at the bottom of the flight, and my master made a step downward as though to reach the door. But his foot was hardly on the stairs when something happened which sent me as stiff as a corpse, and drew from me a cry which might have come from a madman. The stairs which I had seen a minute before I saw no longer. They had swung away under my master's touch, and with another cry joined to mine, he went headlong down to the floor below.

What happened in the next few minutes I can hardly tell. I remember, perfectly, that the Frenchman stood for a minute glaring at me, and hissing words between his teeth. Then he pressed a knob on the railings at his side, and the staircase swung back into its place.

So astonished was I to see such a thing that I never thought of the danger to myself. All that I could do was to stand and stare like one bewitched, and I don't believe that I had moved foot or hand when the man closed with me, and we went rolling over and over on the floor together. Strong man as I am, I don't think that I have ever been so near to death as I was that night. Now up, now down, with the cold sweat on my forehead, and the devil's fingers tearing the flesh out of my neck, I halloed to Jim to help me, and fought the Frenchman through. When I had done with him at last, I was

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 covered with blood—but it was Jim who pulled me to my feet, Jim and Michel Grey, who stood, half-dressed, in the passage.

The noise and din which followed this business is not to be described by any man like me. While I stood half-blinded, and with roaring sounds in my ears, gendarmes seemed to be filling all the Maison d'Or. But I had my wits about me, and I turned to Jim.

"Get Grey out," said I, "and take him in a cab to the Hôtel de Lille. We'll lose the reward if you don't. Tell him his father's there. I'm after Sir Nicolas."

"Is he here?" he asked, as he went to do what I bid him.

"God knows whether he is alive or dead," said I; and with that I called to the gendarmes and showed them the swinging staircase.

Five minutes after, we were down in a filthy cellar, standing over the motionless body of my master. But his groans told us that he lived, and when lights were brought we knew to what he owed his life. He had fallen on the dead body of another victim of the Maison d'Or.

Well, that's the story of the phantom staircase, though there are some things left you might like to know. How did Sir Nicolas Steele come to the shop, for instance? Why, it appeared that after they had got Grey in the house—which was one of the largest

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 and one of the lowest dens in Paris—they'd kept him drunk with the drug, in the hope that he'd add more money to what they'd robbed him of. On the day Jim and I set out for the cabaret, Grey had sent a messenger down to the Hôtel de Lille to get some of his traps and things. Sir Nicolas came across this messenger, and bribed the whole tale out of him. After that, he didn't want to lose a minute tracing the man, and he went straight off to Montmartre, leaving word at the police-station of what he'd done. The police had long been watching the shop, and when they heard that an Englishman was going there, they sent gendarmes after him—and lucky, too, or this story would not have been written.

How Sir Nicolas was so foolish as to stand between us and the chance of a reward, I only learned when he came to consciousness, nine days after we took him off the dead man's body in the cellar.

"And didn't I begin to be afraid of the whole thing?" said he. "Sure, the police were watching me night and day just as if I was a murderer. Reward or no reward, I was glad to have done with it."

And that was the truth, though old Jonathan Grey, after he'd heard what the police had to say, paid over every shilling of the money he'd promised, and gave me a hundred more for myself. But he was out of Paris while my master lay unconscious, and though Dora Grey cried enough for three, her studies in painting closed on the spot.

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The Maison d'Or is pulled down now. I've no doubt myself that many a good man walked down those steps to his death. A more cunning trap you couldn't find. The whole flight of steps swung on a hinge at the top, and was caught at the bottom by a bit of the landing which projected, and which a spring held in its place. And it was a better weapon for a rogue than any knife or pistol.

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 did not forget his visit to the Maison d'Or for a very long time. He would have remembered it longer if I had not found something else for him to think about, and set him going on a job which I shall always look back upon as the boldest we ever undertook in all our years together. It was this job which carried me for the first time in my life to the city of Vienna; and I can recollect, as if it happened yesterday, the night when we arrived there, and played the first card in as big an undertaking as two men ever put their hands to.

They were just beginning to light up the shops in the Graben and the Kohlmarkt, when we found the place we wanted, and stood for a minute, bitter cold as it was, to look at all the pretty things in the windows. Such passers-by as we saw were mostly business folk hurrying home to their dinners. Trade was done for the day, and done early, as it always is in that queen of cities, Vienna. Yet Sir Nicolas and I were at the very start of the greatest venture of our lives.

It seemed odd to me, I will say, to stand there in that old-town street of pretty shops and pretty

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 women, and to remember what an errand bad brought us from Paris to the far end of Europe. Nor, I make sure, did it come home any the less to Sir Nicolas Steele. He had been crying out, ever since we left the Northern station, that failure was dogging our footsteps. He had stopped already before the shops of three jewellers and had refused to go in. And now, when we had found Lobmeyr's, and had only to turn the handle of their door to set the thing in train, what must he do but begin to laugh like a schoolboy and declare he couldn't go on with it.

"Sure," said he, rocking on his heels before the great glass window, "’tis a queer errand, I'm thinking."

"If that's your idea, sir," said I, "it's a pity you didn't stop in Paris. We shall do no good gaping here like schoolboys."

"But what if they won't take my references?"

"Ask me that when they have declined them. Count Horowitz's letter should be good enough for any shopkeeper in Vienna."

"Faith, ye're right there! but you forget that they might wire to Rome to confirm it."

"And if they do, what then? How's he to know that you're calling yourself Count Laon, or that the real Count Laon is in Paris? He'll think he's come here sudden and wants a word."

"That's true," said he, becoming very serious and even a bit nervous, I thought—"that's true; and I may very well pass for a Frenchman. Would you be asking for the big diamonds at once?"

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"Certainly I would, sir. There's nothing to be got by beating about the bush. Say it's a commission from London. That and your letter will be enough."

He heard me out, still hesitating.

"Don't you think we'd do better in the morning?" he whispered, with his hand on the door of the shop.

"Sir," said I, for I knew the time had come when it must be neck or nothing, "if you want to turn your back on ten thousand pounds, which you can have almost for the asking, my advice is that you take the next train back to Paris."

"Well," said he, turning the handle suddenly, "you're a bold man, and ye've got the devil's own head on your shoulders. Bedad! I'll go through with it, if it lands the pair of us in the town jail before the morning."

He said this, and the next moment we were in the shop. It was a smallish place, so to speak, for such a man as Lobmeyr, who's talked of as the biggest diamond merchant in Vienna; but you could see with half an eye that there was valuable stuff under the glass cases, and there was the suggestion of solidity in the very chairs. I hadn't been in the house ten seconds when I marked a couple of rubies which would have fetched a thousand pounds apiece in Bond Street, and as for diamonds, they were there as big as nuts, and of a quality which made the whole shop a perfect sparkle of dazzling lights. I saw at once that we should get what we wanted; and I waited for. Sir Nicolas to speak to the bald-headed little man, who

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 bowed and scraped directly he set eyes on us, and did nothing else for the next ten minutes.

My master spoke in French, and though there were things that I could not follow, I had not been in Paris all those months without getting a bit of a grip on the lingo. I was anxious enough, you may understand, that Sir Nicolas should carry himself with confidence; but I must say that directly he had passed the shop-door he played the game like a man.

"Good-evening," said he. "I am the Comte de Laon, and have an introduction to Herr Lobmeyr from my friend Count Horowitz. Is it possible to see him to-night?"

"Perfectly," replied the other; "he is at this moment in his office."

"Then pray present this note to him, and say that the Comte de Laon and Sir Nicolas Steele of London would be glad of ten minutes' conversation with him."

You must know that we had arranged this tale on our way from France. He was to be the Comte de Laon; I was to be Sir Nicolas Steele. I had seen the young count chumming a good deal in Paris with the Austrian Horowitz, and I had put Sir Nicolas Steele up to the idea that he should get a letter of introduction from the Austrian to two or three people in Vienna. Once we were in possession of the document (and Horowitz gave it readily enough, although he knew nothing about Nicolas Steele, except that he was the best whip in the city), it was easy enough to

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 scrape out the name of the party whom it favored, and to put in another name. The name we chose was that of Comte de Laon. I will tell you why presently.

So soon as we were in the private office, and face to face with Lobmeyr, I began to reckon up my man. That he was no fool was to be seen with half an eye. His head was long and well-balanced; his eyes were small and keen; he had whiskers which were just turning gray, and those big hands which stamp a man of commanding character. And he didn't bow or scrape like the other chap in the shop, but put on his glasses and read our letter through from end to end before he said a word. I watched him like a cat watches a mouse, and when he stuck for a minute in one place, my heart was in my mouth. But presently he handed the letter back to Sir Nicolas, and the smile on his face told me that all was well.

"Of course," said he, and I'm sure his French wasn't any better than mine, "Count Horowitz is known to me, and any friend of his is welcome. In what way can I be of service to the Comte de Laon?"

"You can sell me a diamond," cried Sir Nicolas, leaning back in his chair like a man who is doing another a favor.

"That is very easily done," said Lobmeyr. "I wish all those who brought letters of introduction to me came upon the same errand. Are you seeking a single stone or a set?"

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"I am seeking a single stone, Brazilian if possible, quite white, circular in shape, and weighing not less than fifty carats."

The effect of this speech upon the man was as funny as any thing I ever saw. No sooner were the words out of my master's mouth than Lobmeyr wheeled round his chair and let his spectacles drop upon his knees.

"Fifty carats!" exclaimed he. "Oh, my dear sir, you might go half round Europe and not get such a stone as you seek!"

"Exactly, that is what I said to myself when I was asked by the person whose agent I am to find him such a diamond. 'There are only two houses likely to have so fine a thing,' said I; 'one is Streeter's of London, the other is Lobmeyr's of Vienna.' It is not possible for me to be in London this winter; therefore I go to Lobmeyr."

The man smiled again. He had begun to take the bait like a pike takes a roach.

"Well," said he, "I must justify your confidence in me. I have no diamond in the house which cor- responds exactly to your description, but I have a stone weighing forty-six carats, of which there is no equal in Europe. We call it the Golden Fleece. If you will wait a moment I will show it to you."

Saying this, he swung himself round in his chair again, and opened the great safe which stood behind him. When ten seconds had passed Sir Nicolas had the diamond in his hand, and the whole room seemed

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 full of the sparkle of its lights. So bright, for a fact, was the stone, so magnificent, and of such a size, that even I lost my head at the sight of it, and stood gaping like a child at a wonder. It was just as if the man had taken a fortune from his safe and put it into our hands.

Sir Nicolas was the first to remember himself, and when he did so, he began to speak in such rapid French that I could not follow him. After a bit, however, he checked himself, and then I heard him say:

"In all things except size, it is the diamond I am seeking. Whether size would be a vital objection, the person who commissions me alone could say. He is to meet me to-morrow night at eight o'clock at the Hôtel Métropole. If you will bring the stone there, you shall have a 'yes' or 'no' in ten minutes."

"Are you staying in the hotel?"

"No, I have an apartment for the winter in the Singer Strasse, No. 16, so that we are almost neighbors. But my friend will be at the Métropole to-morrow night, and with your permission we will then take his opinion of the Golden Fleece. The price you said"

"Is one hundred thousand florins."

"Ten thousand pounds," said Sir Nicolas, turning to me, and handing me the stone; "do you find it dear?"

I looked at it for some moments through a glass I had brought with me for the purpose. Then I said, in English:

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"It is a thousand pounds more than it is worth."

Lobmeyr, it proved,—and this was very lucky for us,—did not understand a word of our own language.

"This gentleman here," cried Sir Nicolas, pointing to me, "who is one of the finest judges in the world of Brazilian stones, is of the opinion that you are asking ten thousand florins too much."

"In that case, M. le Comte, it would be for you to make me an offer of ten thousand florins less. Like all business men, I am open to offers, though I do not say that I will accept them. The diamond I am showing you is the first of its kind in Europe. For exquisite color and shape, for quality generally, I could hardly match it if you gave me a month for the task. It will remain for me to say yes or no when you are prepared to bid for it."

He said it all very sweetly, and when he had done, and the diamond was locked up in the safe again, we arranged for him to bring it to the Hôtel Métropole on the following evening at eight o'clock, and there to ask for the Comte de Laon. Then we got out of his shop, and only when we were under the shadow of the church of St. Stephen did either of us breathe freely again.

"Well," said Sir Nicolas, speaking first, "if Count Laon ever gets to hear that I took his name in Vienna, he'll be admitting that I did him credit. Bedad! I'm just proud of myself."

"You've the right to be that, sir," said I; "and as for Count Laon hearing any thing about it, why

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 should be? He was at his place in Normandy a week ago. I don't suppose there's any thing in the air just now to bring him to Vienna."

"Gospel truth you speak there, and 'tis only for twenty-four hours that we shall be wanting it. Midnight to-morrow should see us out of Vienna."

"With ten thousand pounds in our pockets, and no harm done to any one, sir."

"The devil a bit! Oh, it was a lucky day when you told me to write the history of a diamond—that is, if Benjamin King doesn't draw back. You never know quite whether you've got a Yankee by the tail, or whether he's got you by the teeth. But I've no doubts myself but what he'll buy."

"Nor me, either, sir. They say he never refused to buy a diamond with a history yet."

"And sure, was there ever a better history written than the one we put in the Figaro—about a stone that didn't exist, too? Man, it was a colossal notion of yours. If ye don't mind, we'll be off to drink a glass of wine to the health of it."

I had no objection to this, you may imagine; nor could I gainsay him when he declared that the whole thing was my idea. Mine the plan was, mine all through, and never a prettier one born, I'll swear. For, you see, what had brought us from Paris to Vienna was this—we had come to sell to Benjamin King, the American bacon merchant, a diamond which did not exist. How the thing came about is told in a few words. I happened to read one day in

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 Galignan's Messenger that King had a weakness for collecting historical jewelry. They said he would buy any diamond with a history; and no sooner had I seen the paragraph than I got the notion.

"By the Lord Harry," said I to myself, "you've only got to make up a sham story to palm off on this joker any rubbishy stone at twice its price. Your yarn must be well done, of course, and must have the look of truth about it. But given a steady head and plenty of cheek, there's thousands in the deal."

Well, this was my first inkling of it, but as the day went on, I found the notion working me up into a perfect fever. The more I thought of it, the more money there seemed in it. I convinced myself that you'd only got to plan the thing on a large enough scale to make a fortune. King was a millionnaire; he was in Paris; it was ten to one he would swallow a tempting bait. "If," said I, "we can buy a stone for one thousand and sell it to him for two, there's a thousand pounds. Or, again, if we can buy a stone for ten thousand and sell it to him for twenty because of the sham history we're going to make up about it—where are. we then? Why, ten thousand to the good, and nobody but a swindling old bacon merchant a penny the worse." The idea was colossal, as Sir Nicolas said. It remained only for cool heads and steady nerves to go through with it.

Three days after this notion came to me, there appeared in the Paris Figaro a little bit of news which

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 I never should have heard in the ordinary way, but which I read greedily enough under the circumstances. I say that I read it; I should say, perhaps, that I made it out word by word, and chuckled over it like a boy reading his first love-letter. The fact was that Sir Nicolas himself had written it, first in English, then in French; and had sent it along to the paper by one of the writing chaps he used to meet in the Hotel de Lille. It was a short paragraph, but more than enough for our purposes; and as it is necessary to my story, I print the English of it here;

"Sir Nicolas Steele, whose devotion to every form of le sport has won him the affections of many Parisians, is likely, they say, shortly to offer for sale here a famous white diamond, the history of which is scarcely less eventful than that of the old 'Sancy' stone itself. This is one of the diamonds which Diana of Poictiers [sic] wore—one of those stones which Mazarin took, with the 'Mirror of Portugal,' from the Duke of Epernon, to whom they had been sold by Henrietta of France. It will be remembered that the old 'Sancy' stone was stolen in the year 1791. Sir Nicolas Steele has documentary evidence, dating back to the earliest years of the century, that the diamond he now possesses was one of those taken by the mob who sacked the Treasury in the first days of the Revolution. Apart from its most interesting historical

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 associations, the gem is a very fine one, weighing nearly fifty carats, and possessing a lustre only to be found in the choicest treasures of the Brazilian mines."

This is what Sir Nicolas wrote after he had given twenty-four hours' thought to the matter; and I will say that there never was a man who entered into a thing more willingly, or with more spirit.

"Hildebrand," said he, "’tis the idea of a life-time, no less. There's only one corner which frightens me. Where will you be getting your diamond if King takes the bait?"

"You leave that to me, sir," said I. "It's queer if you can't buy a fifty-carat stone somewhere in Paris. And you won't buy it in your own name either. If King came to hear, not only that you were selling diamonds, but buying them, we should have to put up the shutters."

"Ye see far," cried he; "there's few men would have planned it. Yet even now 'tis not all straight to me. You must remember that we've no credit in the place, and who'll be lending us fifty-carat diamonds on our bare word? That's what you're wanting."

"I'm not wanting any thing of the kind, sir," said I. "If this Yankee tumbles into the trap—and the documents we're preparing would deceive the devil himself—he'll either buy or not buy. If he buys, he'll write you a check there and then. You'll have the

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 money in twenty-four hours, and your jeweller will have this. It's strange if he won't wait that long when he hears the tale you can tell, ay, better than any man in Paris."

He began to be convinced at this, and for six days and nights we worked like niggers, getting old musty parchments from Castle Rath, my master's place in Ireland, and writing into them a sham account of the supposed Mazarin diamond. By the time we'd done, we had a pile which would have satisfied all the judges in France; and then only did we communicate with Benjamin King, who was staying at the Hotel Windsor. He replied, by a messenger, saying that he was sorry to miss the opportunity of seeing so famous a diamond, but business compelled him to leave Paris for Vienna that very evening, and he might not be in the city again for three months.

"Was there ever such luck on God's earth?" cried Sir Nicolas, when he heard this tale. "That we should lose him by twenty-four hours! It's enough to make a man shoot himself."

"No such thing, sir," said I. "What is to be done in Paris is to be done in Vienna. For the matter of that, you'll buy the diamond easier there than here, and there won't be so much risk in taking another name. What's to stop you telling King that you also must be in Vienna, say, in a fortnight's time, and will call upon him there? The job's worth the money, any way."

Well, he thought it over, and fourteen days after

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 this talk we found ourselves in the Austrian capital, and at Lobmeyr's shop, as I have told you. Why Sir Nicolas took the name of the Comte de Laon, you know now. To put it short, we meant to buy the diamond in that name, and to sell it in our own. The count was the intimate friend of Horowitz, a well-known man in Vienna, though then at Rome. We had got letters of introduction from Horowitz, who spent part of his summer holidays in Paris, and we had altered them so that they no longer recommended Nicolas Steele but the Comte de Laon. And armed with these, we began our dealings with Lobmeyr, as you have seen; and it remained only to sell the Golden Fleece to Benjamin King as the identical diamond which Mazarin bought from the Duke of Epernon..

You may ask, and naturally, what were the risks we ran in this, the greatest job of all our lives. I can tell you almost in a word. The risks were two—viz. (1) That Lobmeyr might find out that we were buying a diamond in Vienna under a sham name, and refuse to let the stone go out of his possession; (2) that King might learn the same thing, and decline to believe in our documents. In either case, a visit from the police would be likely to follow the discovery. It is to be understood, therefore, that we preferred private apartments in the Singer Strasse to the publicity of an hotel, and that we had no intention of remaining more than forty-eight hours in Vienna if luck would play the game for us in that time.

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It was to our private apartments that we turned when we left the shop in the Graben, and began to see how we stood. So far, fortune was with us. We had found the diamond, we had caught our man. If all went well we might settle with King on the following evening, and be off to Paris again by the midnight train. And if it turned out like that, I knew that we should carry away five thousand apiece as the profit of the venture.

You may imagine that the next twenty-four hours were anxious ones. I went up to the Métropole in the morning and engaged a room in the name of Sir Nicolas Steele, saying that he would dine at the hotel with his friend, the Comte de Laon. That carried out our idea of having two names in Vienna. If any one said to Sir Nicolas, "You are not the Comte de Laon," he had only to point to me; if any one said to me, "You are not Sir Nicolas Steele," I had only to point to my master. For the matter of that, a big hotel is far too busy looking after its guests to be bothering about the identity of people; and no one asked me a single question when I booked the room and ordered the dinner, to which we had already invited Benjamin King, the bacon merchant.

Punctually at seven o'clock that night the three of us sat down to table—Sir Nicolas, King, and myself. My master was clever enough to monopolize most of the conversation, giving it out that I spoke French only; and lucky for me, King's daughter, a pretty little thing I'd seen in Paris, had gone off to the

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 theatre with some friends. I could hold my tongue in her absence, and leave Sir Nicolas to do the blarney, which he did in his own pretty way. King was a big, coarse-made man with a rasping Chicago accent on him; and I think that he was not a little pleased at sitting down with a real Irish baronet and a supposed French count—for, in all our dealings with him, I took the name Comte de Laon, while at the jeweller's I was always Sir Nicolas Steele. Any way, he was civil enough, and when the cigars were lit, he began to talk about the diamond.

"Wal," cried he, "and where's your bull's eye, Sir Nicolas. Out with it! Eh, count,"—and here he turned to me,—"you've heard of the marble he carries in his pocket? Belonged to one of the French queens, he says—Dianner or somebody."

"Indeed, and there's no doubt of it," says my master. "Diana of Poictiers wore it upon her own pretty neck, and so did our own Henrietta. There's no more question that it's a Mazarin than that I am Nicolas Steele of Castle Rath. Ye'll have read the papers, Mr. King?"

"That's so; me and my daughter read 'em yesterday. We haven't got the dust off our hands yet."

"Then you know all I can tell you?"

"I guess we do, and I'm waiting to see your bit of glass. What was the figure you named?"

"One hundred thousand dollars," said my master, without turning a hair. "I'd sooner throw it into the Danube than sell it for less."

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"It's a long price," said King, looking serious. "A man must cut a hole in pigs to buy his diamonds at that figure."

"He can buy them for half the sum, if he cares nothing for their history," cried Sir Nicolas quickly. "This stone has no second, but the great Sancy diamond, in all Europe. It has helped to make history; in one way it is priceless."

"Then show it and have done with it," says King, in a mighty proud way.

"There is nothing easier," says my master, "though it is too valuable to carry like a watch in the pocket. My friend Comte de Laon, here, has it at his bankers'. His man is coming up to the hotel at eight o'clock. It should be that and more, now."

With this he turned and said something in rapid French. While I did not understand him, I bowed and smiled as I had been doing all dinner-time; and at that very moment a waiter announced that a gentleman wished to see the Comte de Laon.

We rose together, Sir Nicolas and I; and one quick glance passed between us. Then he turned to King—

"If ye'll sit here for the half of a minute," says he, "you shall hold the stone in your fingers."

"There's no hurry," says King, leaning back in his chair, "though I'd be glad of a green cigar, I guess."

"The waiter shall bring you one," says Sir Nicolas at the door; and with that he pulled me into the passage.

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"Remember," cried he in a whisper, directly the door had shut upon us, "we change names again."

"Should I be likely to forget?" says I—and that was all, for the next minute we were down stairs, and the diamond was in Sir Nicolas's hand.

They had shown Lobmeyr into a little room at the side of the dining-hall. I can see him now, wrapped from head to foot in a heavy sable coat, his little eyes dancing like stars as they tried to read us up. He had brought the Golden Fleece in a beautiful shagreen case, and there never was a prettier thing to see than that diamond, I'll stake my life. But events were moving too fast for me to pay any attention to it then, and I was all ears for the talk between the two. One false step, one silly word—and the trick would be blown to the winds. It remained to control our tongues as if curbs of iron held them. Nor, to give Sir Nicolas his due, did he waste any words.

"Before we come to the important question of price, Herr Lobmeyr," said he, after the usual compliments had passed between them, "I'd be glad if I may take the opinion of the friend for whom I am acting in this case. He's at table upstairs, and his judgment and that of other friends with me will help to decide. You will permit me, I am sure, to show the jewel?"

He said this and I felt my heart begin to thump like any thing. If Lobmeyr refused to let the stone go out of his possession, we were done. And he did

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 not give in any too readily. I saw his eyes searching the pair of us through and through. Only after a long pause did he bow an unwilling assent, and Sir Nicolas went off upon the errand which meant all to us.

What passed in the minutes during which he was gone I can't quite tell you. I, for my part, was so excited that I could hardly sit on my chair. As for Lobmeyr, I guessed by his looks that he didn't half like the job. And this was running in my head all the time, that he might refuse to leave the stone behind him until he had the cash in his hand. Possibly Benjamin King might buy the diamond and promise to pay for it next day. If we had to make a fuss, if once King met Lobmeyr and the two understood each other, the bubble would be pricked for good and all; and the sooner we cleared out of Vienna the better. And this thought made me hot and cold in turns. "We must find some way," said I, "to shut his mouth—must give him some security." Yet, what security had we? Nothing but a check-book and our cheek.

All this was in my mind, and I was turning it over and over, pretending at the same time to listen to Lobmeyr's talk, when Sir Nicolas came back again. He had left the diamond behind him, but his looks told me in a minute what had happened. "We have lost the throw," said I to myself; and at this my heart seemed to sink into my boots. As for Lobmeyr, when he saw that his diamond was not in my

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 master's hand, he rose up quick from his chair just as if we had tried to rob him.

"Well," said he, and there was a power of meaning in his tone—"well, M. le Comte, and what do your friends say?"

"That we must have a week to answer you definitely, but that, if we accept the stone, the price you ask will be paid."

The man heard him out, his features gradually relaxing in a smile.

"Nothing could be fairer," said he; "you have only to return me the diamond."

"Ah!" exclaimed. Sir Nicolas carelessly, "I should have explained to you that we are not alone in so large a venture as this. We have others to consult, and we propose that you leave the stone with us until we have their answer."

At this request, the whole look on Lobmeyr's face changed instantly. His eyes seemed to dart fire.

"M. le Comte," said he, "I do not leave this hotel without my diamond or the money for it."

He spoke the words slowly and firmly—but, to me hearing them, they came like a thunderclap. It was just as if he had snatched five thousand pounds from my hands and pitched them out of the window. What to do, what to say, I could not think. I simply stood and stared, imitating my master, whose tongue seemed stuck to his mouth. Meanwhile, Lobmeyr was beginning to work himself up—he

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 raised his voice until you might have heard him on the "third" of the hotel.

"I say that I will not leave the stone," he repeated. "Return it to me or pay me! I will wait here until I receive the money: I will not be put off"

He went on like this, just as foreigners will, and really, at one time, I thought he would send for the police on the spot. What with his talk and the talk of Sir Nicolas, who argued and pleaded until he was black in the face, we might have been in a brawl at a fair. But the hullaballoo saved us, for they were in the very middle of it when the idea came to me—

"Offer him a check on the Bank of England," whispered I to Sir Nicolas in a pause; "he'll take that quick enough—a check to be cashed this day week, if we buy."

I said the words, and acting upon them, I pulled out my check-book—for we always had a bit of an account at the Bank—and wrote a check for ten thousand pounds, signing it "Nicolas Babbington Steele," my master's full name. Then I passed it over, without comment, to Lobmeyr.

But I knew that he would take it, for an Englishman's check is still as good as gold in Vienna; and five minutes after the idea came to me, he was out of the hotel, and my master was capering about the room like a village lad with a sugar-stick.

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 16 spirits! But the divine effort is never relaxed; the carrion in the sun will convert itself to grass and flowers; and man, though in brothels, or jails, or gibbets, is on his way to all that is good and true." And at another place he writes: "The destiny of organized Nature is amelioration, and who en tell its limits? Whilst he lives, to scatter the seeds of science and of song, that climate, corn, animals, men, may be milder, and: the germs of love and benefit may be multiplied."

Emerson believed in living in the Present—not in the Past, nor in the Future. He writes: "Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them, There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.

"Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with Nature in the present, above time.

"This should be plain enough. Yet see what


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 Rh strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentence of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see—painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them, and are willing to let the words go; for, at any time, they can use words as good when occasion comes. If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasure as old rubbish."

"Nature," writes Emerson, "suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul."

And again: "We must go alone. … Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All men have my blood, and I have all men's. Not for that will I adopt their petulance or


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 vanisher. He would be present at one moment, the next he would have glided silently away. And, even on the rare occasions when he decided not to vanish, he seldom did much more than clear his throat nervously and juggle with his pince-nez.

Peter, in his boyhood, had been thrilled once by a narrative of a man who got stuck in the Sargasso Sea. It seemed to him now that the monotony of the Sargasso Sea had been greatly exaggerated.

Nemesis was certainly giving Peter his due. He had wormed his way into the Rastall-Retford home-circle by grossly deceitful means. The moment he heard that Eve had gone to live with Mrs. Rastall-Retford, and had ascertained that the Rastall-Retford with whom he had been at Cambridge and whom he still met occasionally at his club when he did not see him first, was this lady's son, he had set himself to court young Mr. Rastall-Retford. He had cornered him at the club and begun to talk about the dear old 'Varsity days, ignoring the embarrassment of the latter, whose only clear recollection of the dear old 'Varsity days as linking Peter and himself was of a certain bump-supper night, when sundry of the festive, led and inspired by Peter, had completely wrecked his rooms and shaved off half a growing moustache. He conveyed to young Mr. Rastall-Retford the impression that, in the dear old 'Varsity days, they had shared each other's joys and sorrows, and, generally, had made Damon and Pythias look like a pair of cross-talk knockabouts at one of the rowdier music-halls. Not to invite so old a friend to stay at his home, if he ever happened to be down that way, would, he hinted, be grossly churlish. Mr. Rastall-Retford, impressed, issued the invitation. And now Peter was being punished for his deceit. Nemesis may not be an Alfred Shrubb, but give her time and she gets there.

It was towards the middle of the second week of his visit that Eve, coming into the drawing-room before dinner, found Peter standing in front of the fire. They had not been alone together for several days.

"Well?" said he.

Eve went to the fire and warmed her hands.

"Well?" she said, dispiritedly.

She was feeling nervous and ill. Mrs. Rastall-Retford had been in one of her more truculent moods all day, and for the first time Eve had the sensation of being thoroughly beaten. She dreaded the long hours to bedtime. The thought that there might be bridge after dinner made her feel physically ill. She felt she could not struggle through a bridge night.

On the occasions when she was in one of her dangerous moods, Mrs. Rastall-Retford sometimes chose rest as a cure, sometimes relaxation. Rest meant that she retired to her room immediately after dinner, and expended her venom on her maid; relaxation meant bridge, and bridge seemed to bring out all her worst points. They played the game for counters at her house, and there had been occasions in Eve's experience when the loss of a hundred or so of these useful little adjuncts to Fun in the Home had lashed her almost into a frenzy. She wa sone of those bridge players who keep up a running quarrel with Fate during the game, and when she was not abusing Fate she was generally reproaching her partner. Eve was always her partner; and to-night she devoutly hoped that her employer would elect to rest. She always played badly with Mrs. Rastall-Retford, through sheer nervousness. Once she had revoked, and there and been a terrible moment and much subsequent recrimination.

Peter looked at her curiously.

"You're pale to-night," he said.

"I have a headache."

"H'm! How is our hostess? Fair? Or stormy?"

"As I was passing her door I heard her bullying her maid, so I suppose stormy."

"That means a bad time for you?" he said, sympathetically.

"I suppose so. If we play bridge. But she may go to bed directly after dinner."

She tried to keep her voice level, but he detected the break.

"Eve," he said, quickly, "won't you let me take you away from here? You've no business in this sort of game. You're not tough enough. You've got to be loved and made a fuss of and"

She laughed shakily.

"Perhaps you can give me the address of some lady who wants a companion to love and make a fuss of?"

"I can give you the address of a man."

She rested an arm on the mantelpiece and stood looking into the blaze, without replying.

Before he could speak again there was a step outside the door, and Mrs. Rastall-Retford rustled into the room.

Eve had not misread the storm-signals. Her employer's mood was still as it had been earlier in the day. Dinner passed in almost complete silence. Mrs. Rastall-Retford sat brooding dumbly. Her eye was cold and


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 next stage in the story of the great white diamond carries me to the seventh day after the dinner at the Métropole. The situation brought about by the events of that night was a very simple one. King had gone off to Buda-Pesth with the diamond, promising to let us have his answer within the week; Lobmeyr had gone off with a worthless check on the Bank of England, which he was not to cash until seven days had passed. During the between-time we were safe enough, and could go about Vienna as we pleased. But on the seventh morning the danger-bell rang, suddenly and in a way we had never looked for. To put it short, King wrote saying that his return to the Métropole was delayed for five days, but that he would give us a definite answer about the Mazarin directly he was back.

"Hildebrand," said Sir Nicolas, when he read this note, "the game is just up, don't you think? Lobmeyr will never wait another week. And he'll be learning that the check's froth before then. It couldn't have happened worse."

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Truth to tell, I was inclined to side with him. I had no fancy to see the shape of an Austrian prison; and yet to clear out of Vienna and leave ten thousand pounds behind us seemed a cruel thing indeed.

"Look here, sir," said I, "the first thing to do is to lie low, and to keep out of our rooms in the Singer Strasse. If the police do get enquiring about us, we may as well have the start of them. I'll take your traps up to that little French hotel by the arsenal during the morning; and after breakfast I'll call on Lobmeyr and see if he won't wait five days. It's strange if he's in all that hurry."

Well, he agreed to this, though he was very gloomy about it; and when I had engaged a room for him at the Hotel Henri IV., booking him as Mr. Winstanley of London, I went down to the Graben, meaning to call upon Lobmeyr. I can remember the events of that morning as if the whole thing happened yesterday—the biting cold, the snow shining crisp in the sun, the hurry-scurry of all who shopped. Nor shall I ever forget the creeping feeling which came over me, when, and just as I was ten yards from Lobmeyr's house, I saw two policemen get out of a cab and go straight in at the door.

Now, if you're engaged on a bit of shaky business,—if for days past you have been saying to yourself, "This will bring me into a law-court or a cell,"—the last thing you care to see is a policeman. I can tell you that for five minutes after I watched those two men get out of the cab and go into Lobmeyr's

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 place, I stood stock still, as if they had glued me to the pavement.

"Good God!" said I to myself, "here's the end of your ten thousand, Bigg, any way. And if you're not precious smart, here's the end of your public engagements for months to come. What's brought those men there, you can't say. Perhaps he's heard that the real Comte de Laon is in Paris; perhaps he's tried to cash the check and got it back again. That don't concern you—what you've got to do is to show your heels and quick about it."

True enough, my first impulse was to run for it, and not stop until Sir Nicolas and I were inside a train for the frontier. A second thought held me back. How was I to be sure, just because I had seen two policemen enter Lobmeyr's shop, that those two policemen were concerned in my fortunes? And it might be, I said, that we could cheat them, even if they were. Once King came back to Vienna, the game was ours. And if we could keep out of the clutches of enquiring busybodies for five days, we might, at the end of that time, tell them to go to the devil or stay at home, just as they pleased.

All this passed through my mind like a flash of lightning while I stood gaping with astonishment at the sight of the policemen. And no sooner had I weighed the matter up than I saw the light through it. Next door to Lobmeyr's there was a meerschaum-pipe shop. A big wooden partition divided the two houses, and to step behind this was the work

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 of a second. But scarce was I in the cover when the two sergeants of police were back again in the cab, and the direction they had given to the coachman was ringing in my ears:

"Singer Strasse Sechzehn."

The gift to gabble in German is not among my acquirements, as you may learn from the story; but German or no German, I don't want any one to tell me what "Singer Strasse Sechzehn" meant.

"They're going straight to our shop to search it," said I to myself; "and that's just the worst thing that could happen to us. They'll find we're missing, and then the fun will begin. Oh, Nicky, Nicky! the devil himself took the tickets when we set out on this job."

You see my mind turned to Nicky at once, for though I had left him snug at the hotel by the Arsenal, I could not say but that he had gone up to his old rooms for the letters, and in that case, the Lord only knew what would follow. I saw that the police might have him even while I was running like a madman to the Hôtel Henri IV. Spurred on by the fear, I flew over the ground like one bewitched. When at last I reached the hotel, he met me on the steps of it, and I nearly knocked him down in my excitement.

"Thank God for this, sir!" said I; and then I told him.

"Ye don't mean to say that," cried he, turning very white.

"Indeed and I do; I saw the cab start with the

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 pair of them inside. There's nothing to be done now but to lie as low as moles. The odds are that they'll search the railway stations and the big hotels; but they'll hardly come to a shop like this."

"That's true," said he; "and yet to think that we wanted only five days of winning! Oh, if King would only come back!"

It was all very well for him to say, "Oh, if King would only come back!" and, for the matter of that, I could almost have prayed for the same thing. King alone could save us. If he turned up, we could pay Lobmeyr or return him his diamond. But King was in Buda-Pesth, and we might as well have prayed for the moon. Meanwhile the police were in the Singer Strasse!

This was how the thing stood—then and for the next three days. The life we lived is not to be told here. Sufficient to say that the pair of us started at every shadow we saw; turned pale every time a waiter entered the room. It's well enough to read in books about haunted men; but I've no fancy myself to play the rôle, nor ever had. What I went through at that little Hotel Henri IV. I would not go through again for a thousand pounds, and that's saying something. So badly did the thing wear me, so strangely did it act on my nerves, lying boxed up there like a rat and not knowing from minute to minute whether I was free or a prisoner, that on the third afternoon, at dark, I made up my mind to do something; and I left the hotel while my master was

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 asleep on his bed, worn out with the anxiety and the watching.

You ask me what I was going to do—I'll tell you in a word. I meant to go to the Hotel Métropole and ask for King's address. I thought I would wire to him, or find out, at any rate, exactly when he was returning. As the thing went, however, I did neither, for whom should I see, directly I entered the great hall of the hotel, but King's daughter—the pretty little American girl I had remarked in Paris. There she was, sitting alone at a tea table, a perfect little picture. And two minutes after I saw her she was listening to my story.

"You'll excuse me, miss," said I, "but is Mr. King likely to be in Vienna again soon?"

"Indeed he is not," said she, with a pretty, rippling laugh. "I am afraid he won't be here again at all; he is going straight from Mostar, where he is now, to Trieste. I join him at Venice." If she had struck me, she couldn't have made me reel like her words did.

"Going to Trieste!" exclaimed I, doing my best to hide what I felt; "but he's taking Sir Nicolas Steele's great diamond with him, then?"

She laughed again, appearing to enjoy ray confusion.

"Certainly he is," she said; "but he is leaving the money for it behind him. I have just sent round a draft on the Bank of Vienna."

"You have sent a draft?" I almost shouted, forgetting every thing in the excitement of it.

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"Yes," she replied, looking at me very curiously, "to Singer Strasse, No. 16. I sent it ten minutes ago."

"You did!" said I. "Then there's the end of it." It was cruel, look at it as you like. There was the money, which would have done all for us, sent to a house which we dare not go near. I did not doubt that the police had got hold of it already; I was sure that, if we showed our faces to claim it, they would arrest us until the whole thing was explained. The mischief was that we dare not explain the whole thing. That would have been to have given ourselves away to King, who might have prosecuted us for obtaining money by false pretences. If ever two men had run into a blind alley, those two men were Hildebrand Bigg and Nicolas Steele.

Something of this must have showed itself in my face to Miss King, for she asked me suddenly if I were ill; and when I assured her that I was not, and managed to stammer out an excuse, I am sure that she thought she was dealing with a madman. Yet for what she thought, or what she did not think, I did not care a brass farthing; and the next thing I remember is that I was tearing up the street leading to the market-place, and that I never stopped until I was opposite our old quarters, and stood gaping up at the window of my master's sitting-room in the Singer Strasse. I had run along with the wild idea that I might overtake the messenger who had the money; but he was coming down the stairs when I

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 reached the house, and a single glance at the lighted windows told me that the deal was lost. I could see a police officer standing by the fireplace. He seemed to be alone in the room, and he had the letter, which had just come, in his hand. I could see him fingering the very draft which would have been liberty and fortune to us. And at that I left prudence behind me and shut my teeth on the resolution.

"I will have that money, if I strangle him for it," said I, and no sooner said than I was on the stairs leading to the flat, and the revolver, which I always carry, whatever be my country, was full cock in my hands. There is no need to think now of all the risks I ran. However many they might have been, I should have faced them, wound up as I was then with greed of the money and despair of the situation. Yet it came to me, even as I mounted the stairs like a cat, that if there were two men in the room, nothing could save me. I carried my liberty, perhaps my life, with me, yet I would have staked them twice over sooner than turn my back on such a prize.

At the top of the stairs I paused a moment, and put my ear to the keyhole of our room. Though I listened for five minutes I did not hear the sound of any voice; and making sure from this that the police officer was alone in the place, I knocked gently with the butt-end of the revolver upon the door. A loud "Herein!" answered me; but taking no notice of this, I knocked again, and at the second knock the door was thrown wide open, and the man was before

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 me. Quick as he was—and he put out his arm to grasp my collar directly he saw me—I gripped him by the throat in such a lightning grip that his eyes seemed to start straight out of his head, and the flesh of his face went all blue and discolored. Never was a man more taken by surprise than he was. He had looked to be the attacking party; I had forestalled him; and now as he reeled back over my knee, and the gurgling in his throat was an awful thing to hear, I forced him into the bedroom close by, and held him on the bed.

"Now," said I, not caring a rap whether he understood English or the other thing—"now, move a hand and I'll shoot you like a dog. What I've come here for is my money. Let me take that, and I'll give you a hundred pounds. But open your lips, and I'll close them with a bullet."

I said this still clutching his throat, and with my knee hard down upon his chest. He was pretty nearly insensible by that time, and when I made sure that he had not strength enough left to give me trouble, I snatched a sheet from the bed and bound it round his face and arms, tying knots which would have held a bullock. A couple of straps, torn off one of my master's trunks, did for his feet; and a length of rope from my box bound him up to the bed. When I had finished with him, I don't believe that he could move his neck an inch either way; and only then did I look for the money. It was lying, fair for all the world to see, on the table by the

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 window. The draft had been in his hand when I knocked at the door; he had simply laid it down when he came to answer me.

Five minutes before closing time that night, we drew our money from the Bank of Vienna. A quarter of an hour later we were in Lobmeyr's shop. I don't think I ever heard a man apologize so much or look so astonished.

"This will teach you," said Sir Nicolas, "to be less hasty in your conclusions, sir. You have done us a very great injury, which I hope you will at once repair."

"Most certainly, I will," exclaimed Lobmeyr, as he turned his notes over and over, and examined them for the tenth time. "I will send to the police at once. But what was I to think? I telegraphed to Rome for the references of the Comte de Laon, and they said that he was not here at all, but in Normandy."

"And can't you understand," cried Sir Nicolas, "that a man may very well give it out that he's in Normandy and yet be in Vienna? Oh, you're a person of small discernment, Herr Lobmeyer! I shall have to call upon the police myself. And that reminds me, we left one of your agents in a bad way up at the Singer Strasse. You can just send up a man to release him, and give him a thousand florins for the inconvenience. Indeed, we had to tie him up to the bed before he would let us have our own money."

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"I will do it with pleasure," said Lobmeyr, "and add a hundred florins of my own. I cannot express my sorrow at the whole episode. At any rate, you will have one of the finest diamonds in Europe to be a constant pledge of my regrets."

With this adieu we left him, and drove straight to the station.

"Bedad!" said Sir Nicolas, as we took our tickets, "to think that men could go through what we've gone through these past ten days and yet be gay about it! Hildebrand, ye've made a fortune for me, and I'll not forget it to my dying day."

I couldn't deny this, except that part about the fortune. What we really cleared was three thousand five hundred apiece. Benjamin King, like a true Yankee, knocked three thousand off our original figure, and we didn't make a fuss about the balance, you may be sure.

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 18 folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it.

"But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual; that is, must be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say, 'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near to me but through my act."

In something of an anarchistic mood Emerson declares: "Truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!"

To Emerson, All is One, and the soul in All. In his sketch of Plato he says: "The Same, the Same; friend and foe are of one stuff; the plowman, the plow, and the furrow, are of one stuff; and the stuff is such, and so much, that the variations of forms are unimportant."

He quotes the words of the Hindu divinity, Krishna, spoken to the sage: "You are fit to apprehend that you are not distinct from me. That which I am, thou art; and that also is this world, with its gods, and heroes, and mankind. Men contemplate distinctions, because they are stupefied with ignorance. … The


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 {| cellpadding="1" style="margin:1em auto;"
 * rowspan="2"| LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO.
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 menacing, and Peter, working his way through his vegetables, shuddered for Eve. He had understood her allusion to bridge, having been privileged several times during his stay to see his hostess play that game, and he hoped that there would be no bridge to-night.

And this was unselfish of him, for bridge meant sandwiches. Punctually at nine o'clock on bridge nights the butler would deposit on a side-table a plate of chicken sandwiches and (in deference to Peter's vegetarian views) a smaller plate of cheese sandwiches. At the close of play Mrs. Rastall-Retford would take one sandwich from each plate, drink a thimbleful of weak whisky and water, and retire.

Peter could always do with a sandwich or two these days. But he was prepared to abandon them joyfully if his hostess would waive bridge for this particular evening.

It was not to be. In the drawing-room Mrs. Rastall-Retford came out of her trance and called imperiously for the cards.

Peter, when he saw his hand after the first deal, had a presentiment that if all his hands were to be as good as this, the evening was going to be a trying one. On the other occasions when they had played he had found it an extremely difficult task, even with moderate cards, to bring it about that his hostess should always win the odd rubber, for he was an excellent player, and, like most good players, had an artistic conscience which made it painful to him to play a deliberately bad game, even from the best motives. If all his hands were going to be as strong as this first one he saw that there was disaster ahead. He could not help winning.

Mrs. Rastall-Retford, who had dealt the first hand, made a most improper diamond declaration. Her son unfilially doubled, and, Eve having chicane—a tragedy which her partner evidently seemed to consider could have been avoided by the exercise of ordinary common sense—Peter and his partner, despite Peter's best efforts, won the game handsomely.

The son of the house dealt the next hand. Eve sorted her cards listlessly. She was feeling curiously tired. Her brain seemed dulled.


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 Copyright, 1922

Haldeman-Julius Company


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