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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12461 ***
+
+CASTLES IN THE AIR
+
+By Baroness Emmuska Orczy
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ FOREWORD
+ CASTLES IN THE AIR
+ CHAPTER I. — A ROLAND FOR HIS OLIVER
+ CHAPTER II. — A FOOL’S PARADISE
+ CHAPTER III. — ON THE BRINK
+ CHAPTER IV. — CARISSIMO
+ CHAPTER V. — THE TOYS
+ CHAPTER VI. — HONOUR AMONG——
+ CHAPTER VII. — AN OVER-SENSITIVE HEART
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+In presenting this engaging rogue to my readers, I feel that I owe
+them, if not an apology, at least an explanation for this attempt at
+enlisting sympathy in favour of a man who has little to recommend him
+save his own unconscious humour. In very truth my good friend Ratichon
+is an unblushing liar, thief, a forger—anything you will; his vanity is
+past belief, his scruples are non-existent. How he escaped a convict
+settlement it is difficult to imagine, and hard to realize that he
+died—presumably some years after the event recorded in the last chapter
+of his autobiography—a respected member of the community, honoured by
+that same society which should have raised a punitive hand against him.
+Yet this I believe to be the case. At any rate, in spite of close
+research in the police records of the period, I can find no mention of
+Hector Ratichon. “Heureux le peuple qui n’a pas d’histoire” applies,
+therefore, to him, and we must take it that Fate and his own sorely
+troubled country dealt lightly with him.
+
+Which brings me back to my attempt at an explanation. If Fate dealt
+kindly, why not we? Since time immemorial there have been worse
+scoundrels unhung than Hector Ratichon, and he has the saving grace—
+which few possess—of unruffled geniality. Buffeted by Fate, sometimes
+starving, always thirsty, he never complains; and there is all through
+his autobiography what we might call an “Ah, well!” attitude about his
+outlook on life. Because of this, and because his very fatuity makes us
+smile, I feel that he deserves forgiveness and even a certain amount of
+recognition.
+
+The fragmentary notes, which I have only very slightly modified, came
+into my hands by a happy chance one dull post-war November morning in
+Paris, when rain, sleet and the north wind drove me for shelter under
+the arcades of the Odéon, and a kindly vendor of miscellaneous printed
+matter and mouldy MSS. allowed me to rummage amongst a load of old
+papers which he was about to consign to the rubbish heap. I imagine
+that the notes were set down by the actual person to whom the genial
+Hector Ratichon recounted the most conspicuous events of his chequered
+career, and as I turned over the torn and musty pages, which hung
+together by scraps of mouldy thread, I could not help feeling the
+humour—aye! and the pathos—of that drabby side of old Paris which was
+being revealed to me through the medium of this rogue’s adventures. And
+even as, holding the fragments in my hand, I walked home that morning
+through the rain something of that same quaint personality seemed once
+more to haunt the dank and dreary streets of the once dazzling Ville
+Lumière. I seemed to see the shabby bottle-green coat, the nankeen
+pantaloons, the down-at-heel shoes of this “confidant of Kings”; I
+could hear his unctuous, self-satisfied laugh, and sensed his furtive
+footstep whene’er a gendarme came into view. I saw his ruddy, shiny
+face beaming at me through the sleet and the rain as, like a veritable
+squire of dames, he minced his steps upon the boulevard, or, like a
+reckless smuggler, affronted the grave dangers of mountain fastnesses
+upon the Juras; and I was quite glad to think that a life so full of
+unconscious humour had not been cut short upon the gallows. And I
+thought kindly of him, for he had made me smile.
+
+There is nothing fine about him, nothing romantic; nothing in his
+actions to cause a single thrill to the nerves of the most
+unsophisticated reader. Therefore, I apologize in that I have not held
+him up to a just obloquy because of his crimes, and I ask indulgence
+for his turpitudes because of the laughter which they provoke.
+
+EMMUSKA ORCZY. _Paris, 1921_.
+
+
+
+
+CASTLES IN THE AIR
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. — A ROLAND FOR HIS OLIVER
+
+1.
+
+My name is Ratichon—Hector Ratichon, at your service, and I make so
+bold as to say that not even my worst enemy would think of minimizing
+the value of my services to the State. For twenty years now have I
+placed my powers at the disposal of my country: I have served the
+Republic, and was confidential agent to Citizen Robespierre; I have
+served the Empire, and was secret factotum to our great Napoléon; I
+have served King Louis—with a brief interval of one hundred days— for
+the past two years, and I can only repeat that no one, in the whole of
+France, has been so useful or so zealous in tracking criminals, nosing
+out conspiracies, or denouncing traitors as I have been.
+
+And yet you see me a poor man to this day: there has been a
+persistently malignant Fate which has worked against me all these
+years, and would—but for a happy circumstance of which I hope anon to
+tell you—have left me just as I was, in the matter of fortune, when I
+first came to Paris and set up in business as a volunteer police agent
+at No. 96 Rue Daunou.
+
+My apartment in those days consisted of an antechamber, an outer office
+where, if need be, a dozen clients might sit, waiting their turn to
+place their troubles, difficulties, anxieties before the acutest brain
+in France, and an inner room wherein that same acute brain—mine, my
+dear Sir—was wont to ponder and scheme. That apartment was not
+luxuriously furnished—furniture being very dear in those days—but there
+were a couple of chairs and a table in the outer office, and a cupboard
+wherein I kept the frugal repast which served me during the course of a
+long and laborious day. In the inner office there were more chairs and
+another table, littered with papers: letters and packets all tied up
+with pink tape (which cost three sous the metre), and bundles of
+letters from hundreds of clients, from the highest and the lowest in
+the land, you understand, people who wrote to me and confided in me
+to-day as kings and emperors had done in the past. In the antechamber
+there was a chair-bedstead for Theodore to sleep on when I required him
+to remain in town, and a chair on which he could sit.
+
+And, of course, there was Theodore!
+
+Ah! my dear Sir, of him I can hardly speak without feeling choked with
+the magnitude of my emotion. A noble indignation makes me dumb.
+Theodore, sir, has ever been the cruel thorn that times out of number
+hath wounded my over-sensitive heart. Think of it! I had picked him out
+of the gutter! No! no! I do not mean this figuratively! I mean that,
+actually and in the flesh, I took him up by the collar of his tattered
+coat and dragged him out of the gutter in the Rue Blanche, where he was
+grubbing for trifles out of the slime and mud. He was frozen, Sir, and
+starved—yes, starved! In the intervals of picking filth up out of the
+mud he held out a hand blue with cold to the passers-by and
+occasionally picked up a sou. When I found him in that pitiable
+condition he had exactly twenty centimes between him and absolute
+starvation.
+
+And I, Sir Hector Ratichon, the confidant of two kings, three autocrats
+and an emperor, took that man to my bosom—fed him, clothed him, housed
+him, gave him the post of secretary in my intricate, delicate,
+immensely important business—and I did this, Sir, at a salary which, in
+comparison with his twenty centimes, must have seemed a princely one to
+him.
+
+His duties were light. He was under no obligation to serve me or to be
+at his post before seven o’clock in the morning, and all that he had to
+do then was to sweep out the three rooms, fetch water from the well in
+the courtyard below, light the fire in the iron stove which stood in my
+inner office, shell the haricots for his own mess of pottage, and put
+them to boil. During the day his duties were lighter still. He had to
+run errands for me, open the door to prospective clients, show them
+into the outer office, explain to them that his master was engaged on
+affairs relating to the kingdom of France, and generally prove himself
+efficient, useful and loyal—all of which qualities he assured me, my
+dear Sir, he possessed to the fullest degree. And I believed him, Sir;
+I nurtured the scorpion in my over-sensitive bosom! I promised him ten
+per cent. on all the profits of my business, and all the remnants from
+my own humble repasts—bread, the skins of luscious sausages, the bones
+from savoury cutlets, the gravy from the tasty carrots and onions. You
+would have thought that his gratitude would become boundless, that he
+would almost worship the benefactor who had poured at his feet the full
+cornucopia of comfort and luxury. Not so! That man, Sir, was a snake in
+the grass—a serpent—a crocodile! Even now that I have entirely severed
+my connexion with that ingrate, I seem to feel the wounds, like
+dagger-thrusts, which he dealt me with so callous a hand. But I have
+done with him—done, I tell you! How could I do otherwise than to send
+him back to the gutter from whence I should never have dragged him? My
+goodness, he repaid with an ingratitude so black that you, Sir, when
+you hear the full story of his treachery, will exclaim aghast.
+
+Ah, you shall judge! His perfidy commenced less than a week after I had
+given him my third best pantaloons and three sous to get his hair cut,
+thus making a man of him. And yet, you would scarcely believe it, in
+the matter of the secret documents he behaved toward me like a
+veritable Judas!
+
+Listen, my dear Sir.
+
+I told you, I believe, that I had my office in the Rue Daunou. You
+understand that I had to receive my clients—many of whom were of
+exalted rank—-in a fashionable quarter of Paris. But I actually lodged
+in Passy—being fond of country pursuits and addicted to fresh air—in a
+humble hostelry under the sign of the “Grey Cat”; and here, too,
+Theodore had a bed. He would walk to the office a couple of hours
+before I myself started on the way, and I was wont to arrive as soon
+after ten o’clock of a morning as I could do conveniently.
+
+On this memorable occasion of which I am about to tell you—it was
+during the autumn of 1815—I had come to the office unusually early, and
+had just hung my hat and coat in the outer room, and taken my seat at
+my desk in the inner office, there to collect my thoughts in
+preparation for the grave events which the day might bring forth, when,
+suddenly, an ill-dressed, dour-looking individual entered the room
+without so much as saying, “By your leave,” and after having pushed
+Theodore—who stood by like a lout—most unceremoniously to one side.
+Before I had time to recover from my surprise at this unseemly
+intrusion, the uncouth individual thrust Theodore roughly out of the
+room, slammed the door in his face, and having satisfied himself that
+he was alone with me and that the door was too solid to allow of
+successful eavesdropping, he dragged the best chair forward—the one,
+sir, which I reserve for lady visitors.
+
+He threw his leg across it, and, sitting astride, he leaned his elbows
+over the back and glowered at me as if he meant to frighten me.
+
+“My name is Charles Saurez,” he said abruptly, “and I want your
+assistance in a matter which requires discretion, ingenuity and
+alertness. Can I have it?”
+
+I was about to make a dignified reply when he literally threw the next
+words at me: “Name your price, and I will pay it!” he said.
+
+What could I do, save to raise my shoulders in token that the matter of
+money was one of supreme indifference to me, and my eyebrows in a
+manner of doubt that M. Charles Saurez had the means wherewith to repay
+my valuable services? By way of a rejoinder he took out from the inner
+pocket of his coat a greasy letter-case, and with his exceedingly grimy
+fingers extracted therefrom some twenty banknotes, which a hasty glance
+on my part revealed as representing a couple of hundred francs.
+
+“I will give you this as a retaining fee,” he said, “if you will
+undertake the work I want you to do; and I will double the amount when
+you have carried the work out successfully.”
+
+Four hundred francs! It was not lavish, it was perhaps not altogether
+the price I would have named, but it was very good, these hard times.
+You understand? We were all very poor in France in that year 1815 of
+which I speak.
+
+I am always quite straightforward when I am dealing with a client who
+means business. I pushed aside the litter of papers in front of me,
+leaned my elbows upon my desk, rested my chin in my hands, and said
+briefly:
+
+“M. Charles Saurez, I listen!”
+
+He drew his chair a little closer and dropped his voice almost to a
+whisper.
+
+“You know the Chancellerie of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?” he
+asked.
+
+“Perfectly,” I replied.
+
+“You know M. de Marsan’s private office? He is chief secretary to M. de
+Talleyrand.”
+
+“No,” I said, “but I can find out.”
+
+“It is on the first floor, immediately facing the service staircase,
+and at the end of the long passage which leads to the main staircase.”
+
+“Easy to find, then,” I remarked.
+
+“Quite. At this hour and until twelve o’clock, M. de Marsan will be
+occupied in copying a document which I desire to possess. At eleven
+o’clock precisely there will be a noisy disturbance in the corridor
+which leads to the main staircase. M. de Marsan, in all probability,
+will come out of his room to see what the disturbance is about. Will
+you undertake to be ready at that precise moment to make a dash from
+the service staircase into the room to seize the document, which no
+doubt will be lying on the top of the desk, and bring it to an address
+which I am about to give you?”
+
+“It is risky,” I mused.
+
+“Very,” he retorted drily, “or I’d do it myself, and not pay you four
+hundred francs for your trouble.”
+
+“Trouble!” I exclaimed, with withering sarcasm.
+
+“Trouble, you call it? If I am caught, it means penal servitude—New
+Caledonia, perhaps—”
+
+“Exactly,” he said, with the same irritating calmness; “and if you
+succeed it means four hundred francs. Take it or leave it, as you
+please, but be quick about it. I have no time to waste; it is past nine
+o’clock already, and if you won’t do the work, someone else will.”
+
+For a few seconds longer I hesitated. Schemes, both varied and wild,
+rushed through my active brain: refuse to take this risk, and denounce
+the plot to the police; refuse it, and run to warn M. de Marsan; refuse
+it, and— I had little time for reflection. My uncouth client was
+standing, as it were, with a pistol to my throat—with a pistol and four
+hundred francs! The police might perhaps give me half a louis for my
+pains, or they might possibly remember an unpleasant little incident in
+connexion with the forgery of some Treasury bonds which they have never
+succeeded in bringing home to me—one never knows! M. de Marsan might
+throw me a franc, and think himself generous at that!
+
+All things considered, then, when M. Charles Saurez suddenly said,
+“Well?” with marked impatience, I replied, “Agreed,” and within five
+minutes I had two hundred francs in my pocket, with the prospect of two
+hundred more during the next four and twenty hours. I was to have a
+free hand in conducting my own share of the business, and M. Charles
+Saurez was to call for the document at my lodgings at Passy on the
+following morning at nine o’clock.
+
+2.
+
+I flatter myself that I conducted the business with remarkable skill.
+At precisely ten minutes to eleven I rang at the Chancellerie of the
+Ministry for Foreign Affairs. I was dressed as a respectable
+commissionnaire, and I carried a letter and a small parcel addressed to
+M. de Marsan. “First floor,” said the concierge curtly, as soon as he
+had glanced at the superscription on the letter. “Door faces top of the
+service stairs.”
+
+I mounted and took my stand some ten steps below the landing, keeping
+the door of M. de Marsan’s room well in sight. Just as the bells of
+Notre Dame boomed the hour I heard what sounded like a furious
+altercation somewhere in the corridor just above me. There was much
+shouting, then one or two cries of “Murder!” followed by others of
+“What is it?” and “What in the name of ——— is all this infernal row
+about?” Doors were opened and banged, there was a general running and
+rushing along that corridor, and the next minute the door in front of
+me was opened also, and a young man came out, pen in hand, and shouting
+just like everybody else:
+
+“What the ——— is all this infernal row about?”
+
+“Murder, help!” came from the distant end of the corridor, and M. de
+Marsan—undoubtedly it was he—did what any other young man under the
+like circumstances would have done: he ran to see what was happening
+and to lend a hand in it, if need be. I saw his slim figure
+disappearing down the corridor at the very moment that I slipped into
+his room. One glance upon the desk sufficed: there lay the large
+official-looking document, with the royal signature affixed thereto,
+and close beside it the copy which M. de Marsan had only half
+finished—the ink on it was still wet. Hesitation, Sir, would have been
+fatal. I did not hesitate; not one instant. Three seconds had scarcely
+elapsed before I picked up the document, together with M. de Marsan’s
+half-finished copy of the same, and a few loose sheets of Chancellerie
+paper which I thought might be useful. Then I slipped the lot inside my
+blouse. The bogus letter and parcel I left behind me, and within two
+minutes of my entry into the room I was descending the service
+staircase quite unconcernedly, and had gone past the concierge’s lodge
+without being challenged. How thankful I was to breathe once more the
+pure air of heaven. I had spent an exceedingly agitated five minutes,
+and even now my anxiety was not altogether at rest. I dared not walk
+too fast lest I attracted attention, and yet I wanted to put the river,
+the Pont Neuf, and a half dozen streets between me and the Chancellerie
+of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. No one who has not gone through
+such an exciting adventure as I have just recorded can conceive what
+were my feelings of relief and of satisfaction when I at last found
+myself quietly mounting the stairs which led to my office on the top
+floor of No. 96 Rue Daunou.
+
+3.
+
+Now, I had not said anything to Theodore about this affair. It was
+certainly arranged between us when he entered my service as
+confidential clerk and doorkeeper that in lieu of wages, which I could
+not afford to pay him, he would share my meals with me and have a bed
+at my expense in the same house at Passy where I lodged; moreover, I
+would always give him a fair percentage on the profits which I derived
+from my business. The arrangement suited him very well. I told you that
+I picked him out of the gutter, and I heard subsequently that he had
+gone through many an unpleasant skirmish with the police in his day,
+and if I did not employ him no one else would.
+
+After all, he did earn a more or less honest living by serving me. But
+in this instance, since I had not even asked for his assistance, I felt
+that, considering the risks of New Caledonia and a convict ship which I
+had taken, a paltry four hundred francs could not by any stretch of the
+imagination rank as a “profit” in a business—and Theodore was not
+really entitled to a percentage, was he?
+
+So when I returned I crossed the ante-chamber and walked past him with
+my accustomed dignity; nor did he offer any comment on my get-up. I
+often affected a disguise in those days, even when I was not engaged in
+business, and the dress and get-up of a respectable commissionnaire was
+a favourite one with me. As soon as I had changed I sent him out to
+make purchases for our luncheon—five sous’ worth of stale bread, and
+ten sous’ worth of liver sausage, of which he was inordinately fond. He
+would take the opportunity on the way of getting moderately drunk on as
+many glasses of absinthe as he could afford. I saw him go out of the
+outer door, and then I set to work to examine the precious document.
+
+Well, one glance was sufficient for me to realize its incalculable
+value! Nothing more or less than a Treaty of Alliance between King
+Louis XVIII of France and the King of Prussia in connexion with certain
+schemes of naval construction. I did not understand the whole
+diplomatic verbiage, but it was pretty clear to my unsophisticated mind
+that this treaty had been entered into in secret by the two monarchs,
+and that it was intended to prejudice the interests both of Denmark and
+of Russia in the Baltic Sea.
+
+I also realized that both the Governments of Denmark and Russia would
+no doubt pay a very considerable sum for the merest glance at this
+document, and that my client of this morning was certainly a secret
+service agent—otherwise a spy—of one of those two countries, who did
+not choose to take the very severe risks which I had taken this
+morning, but who would, on the other hand, reap the full reward of the
+daring coup, whilst I was to be content with four hundred francs!
+
+Now, I am a man of deliberation as well as of action, and at this
+juncture—feeling that Theodore was still safely out of the way—I
+thought the whole matter over quietly, and then took what precautions I
+thought fit for the furthering of my own interests.
+
+To begin with, I set to work to make a copy of the treaty on my own
+account. I have brought the study of calligraphy to a magnificent
+degree of perfection, and the writing on the document was easy enough
+to imitate, as was also the signature of our gracious King Louis and of
+M. de Talleyrand, who had countersigned it.
+
+If you remember, I had picked up two or three loose sheets of paper off
+M. de Marsan’s desk; these bore the arms of the Chancellerie of Foreign
+Affairs stamped upon them, and were in every way identical with that on
+which the original document had been drafted. When I had finished my
+work I flattered myself that not the greatest calligraphic expert could
+have detected the slightest difference between the original and the
+copy which I had made.
+
+The work took me a long time. When at last I folded up the papers and
+slipped them once more inside my blouse it was close upon two. I
+wondered why Theodore had not returned with our luncheon, but on going
+to the little anteroom which divides my office from the outer door,
+great was my astonishment to see him lolling there on the rickety chair
+which he affectioned, and half asleep. I had some difficulty in rousing
+him. Apparently he had got rather drunk while he was out, and had then
+returned and slept some of his booze off, without thinking that I might
+be hungry and needing my luncheon.
+
+“Why didn’t you let me know you had come back?” I asked curtly, for
+indeed I was very cross with him.
+
+“I thought you were busy,” he replied, with what I thought looked like
+a leer.
+
+I have never really cared for Theodore, you understand.
+
+However, I partook of our modest luncheon with him in perfect amity and
+brotherly love, but my mind was busy all the time. I began to wonder if
+Theodore suspected something; if so, I knew that I could not trust him.
+He would try and ferret things out, and then demand a share in my
+hard-earned emoluments to which he was really not entitled. I did not
+feel safe with that bulky packet of papers on me, and I felt that
+Theodore’s bleary eyes were perpetually fixed upon the bulge in the
+left-hand side of my coat. At one moment he looked so strange that I
+thought he meant to knock me down.
+
+So my mind was quickly made up.
+
+After luncheon I would go down to my lodgings at Passy, and I knew of a
+snug little hiding-place in my room there where the precious documents
+would be quite safe until such time as I was to hand them—or one of
+them—to M. Charles Saurez.
+
+This plan I put into execution, and with remarkable ingenuity too.
+
+While Theodore was busy clearing up the debris of our luncheon, I not
+only gave him the slip, but as I went out I took the precaution of
+locking the outer door after me, and taking the key away in my pocket.
+I thus made sure that Theodore could not follow me. I then walked to
+Passy—a matter of two kilometres—and by four o’clock I had the
+satisfaction of stowing the papers safely away under one of the tiles
+in the flooring of my room, and then pulling the strip of carpet in
+front of my bed snugly over the hiding-place.
+
+Theodore’s attic, where he slept, was at the top of the house, whilst
+my room was on the ground floor, and so I felt that I could now go back
+quite comfortably to my office in the hope that more remunerative work
+and more lavish clients would come my way before nightfall.
+
+4.
+
+It was a little after five o’clock when I once more turned the key in
+the outer door of my rooms in the Rue Daunou.
+
+Theodore did not seem in the least to resent having been locked in for
+two hours. I think he must have been asleep most of the time. Certainly
+I heard a good deal of shuffling when first I reached the landing
+outside the door; but when I actually walked into the apartment with an
+air of quiet unconcern Theodore was sprawling on the chair-bedstead,
+with eyes closed, a nose the colour of beetroot, and emitting sounds
+through his thin, cracked lips which I could not, Sir, describe
+graphically in your presence.
+
+I took no notice of him, however, even though, as I walked past him, I
+saw that he opened one bleary eye and watched my every movement. I went
+straight into my private room and shut the door after me. And here, I
+assure you, my dear Sir, I literally fell into my favourite chair,
+overcome with emotion and excitement. Think what I had gone through!
+The events of the last few hours would have turned any brain less keen,
+less daring than that of Hector Ratichon. And here was I, alone at
+last, face to face with the future. What a future, my dear Sir! Fate
+was smiling on me at last. At last I was destined to reap a rich reward
+for all the skill, the energy, the devotion, which up to this hour I
+had placed at the service of my country and my King—or my Emperor, as
+the case might be—without thought of my own advantage. Here was I now
+in possession of a document—two documents—each one of which was worth
+at least a thousand francs to persons whom I could easily approach. One
+thousand francs! Was I dreaming? Five thousand would certainly be paid
+by the Government whose agent M. Charles Saurez admittedly was for one
+glance at that secret treaty which would be so prejudicial to their
+political interests; whilst M. de Marsan himself would gladly pay
+another five thousand for the satisfaction of placing the precious
+document intact before his powerful and irascible uncle.
+
+Ten thousand francs! How few were possessed of such a sum in these
+days! How much could be done with it! I would not give up business
+altogether, of course, but with my new capital I would extend it and,
+there was a certain little house, close to Chantilly, a house with a
+few acres of kitchen garden and some fruit trees, the possession of
+which would render me happier than any king. . . . I would marry! Oh,
+yes! I would certainly marry—found a family. I was still young, my dear
+Sir, and passably good looking. In fact there was a certain young
+widow, comely and amiable, who lived not far from Passy, who had on
+more than one occasion given me to understand that I was more than
+passably good looking. I had always been susceptible where the fair sex
+was concerned, and now . . . oh, now! I could pick and choose! The
+comely widow had a small fortune of her own, and there were others! . .
+.
+
+Thus I dreamed on for the better part of an hour, until, soon after six
+o’clock, there was a knock at the outer door and I heard Theodore’s
+shuffling footsteps crossing the small anteroom. There was some
+muttered conversation, and presently my door was opened and Theodore’s
+ugly face was thrust into the room.
+
+“A lady to see you,” he said curtly.
+
+Then, he dropped his voice, smacked his lips, and winked with one eye.
+“Very pretty,” he whispered, “but has a young man with her whom she
+calls Arthur. Shall I send them in?”
+
+I then and there made up my mind that I would get rid of Theodore now
+that I could afford to get a proper servant. My business would in
+future be greatly extended; it would become very important, and I was
+beginning to detest Theodore. But I said “Show the lady in!” with
+becoming dignity, and a few moments later a beautiful woman entered my
+room.
+
+I was vaguely conscious that a creature of my own sex walked in behind
+her, but of him I took no notice. I rose to greet the lady and invited
+her to sit down, but I had the annoyance of seeing the personage whom
+deliberately she called “Arthur” coming familiarly forward and leaning
+over the back of her chair.
+
+I hated him. He was short and stout and florid, with an
+impertinent-looking moustache, and hair that was very smooth and oily
+save for two tight curls, which looked like the horns of a young goat,
+on each side of the centre parting. I hated him cordially, and had to
+control my feelings not to show him the contempt which I felt for his
+fatuousness and his air of self-complacency. Fortunately the beautiful
+being was the first to address me, and thus I was able to ignore the
+very presence of the detestable man.
+
+“You are M. Ratichon, I believe,” she said in a voice that was dulcet
+and adorably tremulous, like the voice of some sweet, shy young thing
+in the presence of genius and power.
+
+“Hector Ratichon,” I replied calmly. “Entirely at your service,
+Mademoiselle.” Then I added, with gentle, encouraging kindliness,
+“Mademoiselle...?”
+
+“My name is Geoffroy,” she replied, “Madeleine Geoffroy.”
+
+She raised her eyes—such eyes, my dear Sir!—of a tender, luscious grey,
+fringed with lashes and dewy with tears. I met her glance. Something in
+my own eyes must have spoken with mute eloquence of my distress, for
+she went on quickly and with a sweet smile. “And this,” she said,
+pointing to her companion, “is my brother, Arthur Geoffroy.”
+
+An exclamation of joyful surprise broke from my lips, and I beamed and
+smiled on M. Arthur, begged him to be seated, which he refused, and
+finally I myself sat down behind my desk. I now looked with unmixed
+benevolence on both my clients, and then perceived that the lady’s
+exquisite face bore unmistakable signs of recent sorrow.
+
+“And now, Mademoiselle,” I said, as soon as I had taken up a position
+indicative of attention and of encouragement, “will you deign to tell
+me how I can have the honour to serve you?”
+
+“Monsieur,” she began in a voice that trembled with emotion, “I have
+come to you in the midst of the greatest distress that any human being
+has ever been called upon to bear. It was by the merest accident that I
+heard of you. I have been to the police; they cannot—will not—act
+without I furnish them with certain information which it is not in my
+power to give them. Then when I was half distraught with despair, a
+kindly agent there spoke to me of you. He said that you were attached
+to the police as a voluntary agent, and that they sometimes put work in
+your way which did not happen to be within their own scope. He also
+said that sometimes you were successful.”
+
+“Nearly always, Mademoiselle,” I broke in firmly and with much dignity.
+“Once more I beg of you to tell me in what way I may have the honour to
+serve you.”
+
+“It is not for herself, Monsieur,” here interposed M. Arthur, whilst a
+blush suffused Mlle. Geoffroy’s lovely face, “that my sister desires to
+consult you, but for her fiancé M. de Marsan, who is very ill indeed,
+hovering, in fact, between life and death. He could not come in person.
+The matter is one that demands the most profound secrecy.”
+
+“You may rely on my discretion, Monsieur,” I murmured, without showing,
+I flatter myself, the slightest trace of that astonishment which, at
+mention of M. de Marsan’s name, had nearly rendered me speechless.
+
+“M. de Marsan came to see me in utmost distress, Monsieur,” resumed the
+lovely creature. “He had no one in whom he could—or rather
+dared—confide. He is in the Chancellerie for Foreign Affairs. His uncle
+M. de Talleyrand thinks a great deal of him and often entrusts him with
+very delicate work. This morning he gave M. de Marsan a valuable paper
+to copy—a paper, Monsieur, the importance of which it were impossible
+to overestimate. The very safety of this country, the honour of our
+King, are involved in it. I cannot tell you its exact contents, and it
+is because I would not tell more about it to the police that they would
+not help me in any way, and referred me to you. How could they, said
+the chief Commissary to me, run after a document the contents of which
+they did not even know? But you will be satisfied with what I have told
+you, will you not, my dear M. Ratichon?” she continued, with a pathetic
+quiver in her voice and a look of appeal in her eyes which St. Anthony
+himself could not have resisted, “and help me to regain possession of
+that paper, the final loss of which would cost M. de Marsan his life.”
+
+To say that my feeling of elation of a while ago had turned to one of
+supreme beatitude would be to put it very mildly indeed. To think that
+here was this lovely being in tears before me, and that it lay in my
+power to dry those tears with a word and to bring a smile round those
+perfect lips, literally made my mouth water in anticipation—for I am
+sure that you will have guessed, just as I did in a moment, that the
+valuable document of which this adorable being was speaking, was snugly
+hidden away under the flooring of my room in Passy. I hated that
+unknown de Marsan. I hated this Arthur who leaned so familiarly over
+her chair, but I had the power to render her a service beside which
+their lesser claims on her regard would pale.
+
+However, I am not the man to act on impulse, even at a moment like
+this. I wanted to think the whole matter over first, and . . . well . .
+. I had made up my mind to demand five thousand francs when I handed
+the document over to my first client to-morrow morning. At any rate,
+for the moment I acted—if I may say so—with great circumspection and
+dignity.
+
+“I must presume, Mademoiselle,” I said in my most business-like manner,
+“that the document you speak of has been stolen.”
+
+“Stolen, Monsieur,” she assented whilst the tears once more gathered in
+her eyes, “and M. de Marsan now lies at death’s door with a terrible
+attack of brain fever, brought on by shock when he discovered the
+loss.”
+
+“How and when was it stolen?” I asked.
+
+“Some time during the morning,” she replied. “M. de Talleyrand gave the
+document to M. de Marsan at nine o’clock, telling him that he wanted
+the copy by midday. M. de Marsan set to work at once, laboured
+uninterruptedly until about eleven o’clock, when a loud altercation,
+followed by cries of ‘Murder!’ and of ‘Help!’ and proceeding from the
+corridor outside his door, caused him to run out of the room in order
+to see what was happening. The altercation turned out to be between two
+men who had pushed their way into the building by the main staircase,
+and who became very abusive to the gendarme who ordered them out. The
+men were not hurt; nevertheless they screamed as if they were being
+murdered. They took to their heels quickly enough, and I don’t know
+what has become of them, but . . .”
+
+“But,” I concluded blandly, “whilst M. de Marsan was out of the room
+the precious document was stolen.”
+
+“It was, Monsieur,” exclaimed Mlle. Geoffroy piteously. “You will find
+it for us . . . will you not?”
+
+Then she added more calmly: “My brother and I are offering ten thousand
+francs reward for the recovery of the document.”
+
+I did not fall off my chair, but I closed my eyes. The vision which the
+lovely lady’s words had conjured up dazzled me.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” I said with solemn dignity, “I pledge you my word of
+honour that I will find the document for you and lay it at your feet or
+die in your service. Give me twenty hours, during which I will move
+heaven and earth to discover the thief. I will go at once to the
+Chancellerie and collect what evidence I can. I have worked under M. de
+Robespierre, Mademoiselle, under the great Napoléon, and under the
+illustrious Fouché! I have never been known to fail, once I have set my
+mind upon a task.”
+
+“In that case you will earn your ten thousand francs, my friend,” said
+the odious Arthur drily, “and my sister and M. de Marsan will still be
+your debtors. Are there any questions you would like to ask before we
+go?”
+
+“None,” I said loftily, choosing to ignore his sneering manner. “If
+Mademoiselle deigns to present herself here to-morrow at two o’clock I
+will have news to communicate to her.”
+
+You will admit that I carried off the situation in a becoming manner.
+Both Mademoiselle and Arthur Geoffroy gave me a few more details in
+connexion with the affair. To these details I listened with well
+simulated interest. Of course, they did not know that there were no
+details in connexion with this affair that I did not know already. My
+heart was actually dancing within my bosom. The future was so
+entrancing that the present appeared like a dream; the lovely being
+before me seemed like an angel, an emissary from above come to tell me
+of the happiness which was in store for me. The house near
+Chantilly—the little widow—the kitchen garden—the magic words went on
+hammering in my brain. I longed now to be rid of my visitors, to be
+alone once more, so as to think out the epilogue of this glorious
+adventure. Ten thousand francs was the reward offered me by this
+adorable creature! Well, then, why should not M. Charles Saurez, on his
+side, pay me another ten thousand for the same document, which was
+absolutely undistinguishable from the first?
+
+Ten thousand, instead of two hundred which he had the audacity to offer
+me!
+
+Seven o’clock had struck before I finally bowed my clients out of the
+room. Theodore had gone. The lazy lout would never stay as much as five
+minutes after his appointed time, so I had to show the adorable
+creature and her fat brother out of the premises myself. But I did not
+mind that. I flatter myself that I can always carry off an awkward
+situation in a dignified manner. A brief allusion to the inefficiency
+of present-day servants, a jocose comment on my own simplicity of
+habits, and the deed was done. M. Arthur Geoffroy and Mademoiselle
+Madeleine his sister were half-way down the stairs. A quarter of an
+hour later I was once more out in the streets of Paris. It was a
+beautiful, balmy night. I had two hundred francs in my pocket and there
+was a magnificent prospect of twenty thousand francs before me! I could
+afford some slight extravagance. I had dinner at one of the fashionable
+restaurants on the quay, and I remained some time out on the terrace
+sipping my coffee and liqueur, dreaming dreams such as I had never
+dreamed before. At ten o’clock I was once more on my way to Passy.
+
+5.
+
+When I turned the corner of the street and came is sight of the squalid
+house where I lodged, I felt like a being from another world. Twenty
+thousand francs—a fortune!—was waiting for me inside those dingy walls.
+Yes, twenty thousand, for by now I had fully made up my mind. I had two
+documents concealed beneath the floor of my bedroom—one so like the
+other that none could tell them apart. One of these I would restore to
+the lovely being who had offered me ten thousand francs for it, and the
+other I would sell to my first and uncouth client for another ten
+thousand francs!
+
+Four hundred! Bah! Ten thousand shall you pay for the treaty, my friend
+of the Danish or Russian Secret Service! Ten thousand!—it is worth that
+to you!
+
+In that happy frame of mind I reached the front door of my dingy abode.
+Imagine my surprise on being confronted with two agents of police, each
+with fixed bayonet, who refused to let me pass.
+
+“But I lodge here,” I said.
+
+“Your name?” queried one of the men. “Hector Ratichon,” I replied.
+Whereupon they gave me leave to enter.
+
+It was very mysterious. My heart beat furiously. Fear for the safety of
+my precious papers held me in a death-like grip. I ran straight to my
+room, locked the door after me, and pulled the curtains together in
+front of the window. Then, with hands that trembled as if with ague, I
+pulled aside the strip of carpet which concealed the hiding-place of
+what meant a fortune to me.
+
+I nearly fainted with joy; the papers were there—quite safely. I took
+them out and replaced them inside my coat.
+
+Then I ran up to see if Theodore was in. I found him in bed. He told me
+that he had left the office whilst my visitors were still with me, as
+he felt terribly sick. He had been greatly upset when, about an hour
+ago, the maid-of-all-work had informed him that the police were in the
+house, that they would allow no one—except the persons lodging in the
+house—to enter it, and no one, once in, would be allowed to leave. How
+long these orders would hold good Theodore did not know.
+
+I left him moaning and groaning and declaring that he felt very ill,
+and I went in quest of information. The corporal in command of the
+gendarmes was exceedingly curt with me at first, but after a time he
+unbent and condescended to tell me that my landlord had been denounced
+for permitting a Bonapartiste club to hold its sittings in his house.
+So far so good. Such denunciations were very frequent these days, and
+often ended unpleasantly for those concerned, but the affair had
+obviously nothing to do with me. I felt that I could breathe again. But
+there was still the matter of the consigne. If no one, save the persons
+who lodged in the house, would be allowed to enter it, how would M.
+Charles Saurez contrive to call for the stolen document and,
+incidentally, to hand me over the ten thousand francs I was hoping for?
+And if no one, once inside the house, would be allowed to leave it, how
+could I meet Mlle. Geoffroy to-morrow at two o’clock in my office and
+receive ten thousand francs from her in exchange for the precious
+paper?
+
+Moreover the longer the police stayed in this house and poked their
+noses about in affairs that concerned hardworking citizens like
+myself—why—the greater the risk would be of the matter of the stolen
+document coming to light.
+
+It was positively maddening.
+
+I never undressed that night, but just lay down on my bed, thinking.
+The house was very still at times, but at others I could hear the tramp
+of the police agents up and down the stairs and also outside my window.
+The latter gave on a small, dilapidated back garden which had a wooden
+fence at the end of it. Beyond it were some market gardens belonging to
+a M. Lorraine. It did not take me very long to realize that that way
+lay my fortune of twenty thousand francs. But for the moment I remained
+very still. My plan was already made. At about midnight I went to the
+window and opened it cautiously. I had heard no noise from that
+direction for some time, and I bent my ear to listen.
+
+Not a sound! Either the sentry was asleep, or he had gone on his round,
+and for a few moments the way was free. Without a moment’s hesitation I
+swung my leg over the sill.
+
+Still no sound. My heart beat so fast that I could almost hear it. The
+night was very dark. A thin mist-like drizzle was falling; in fact the
+weather conditions were absolutely perfect for my purpose. With utmost
+wariness I allowed myself to drop from the window-ledge on to the soft
+ground below.
+
+If I was caught by the sentry I had my answer ready: I was going to
+meet my sweetheart at the end of the garden. It is an excuse which
+always meets with the sympathy of every true-hearted Frenchman. The
+sentry would, of course, order me back to my room, but I doubt if he
+would ill-use me; the denunciation was against the landlord, not
+against me.
+
+Still not a sound. I could have danced with joy. Five minutes more and
+I would be across the garden and over that wooden fence, and once more
+on my way to fortune. My fall from the window had been light, as my
+room was on the ground floor; but I had fallen on my knees, and now, as
+I picked myself up, I looked up, and it seemed to me as if I saw
+Theodore’s ugly face at his attic window. Certainly there was a light
+there, and I may have been mistaken as to Theodore’s face being
+visible. The very next second the light was extinguished and I was left
+in doubt.
+
+But I did not pause to think. In a moment I was across the garden, my
+hands gripped the top of the wooden fence, I hoisted myself up—with
+some difficulty, I confess—but at last I succeeded. I threw my leg over
+and gently dropped down on the other side.
+
+Then suddenly two rough arms encircled my waist, and before I could
+attempt to free myself a cloth was thrown over my head, and I was
+lifted up and carried away, half suffocated and like an insentient
+bundle.
+
+When the cloth was removed from my face I was half sitting, half lying,
+in an arm-chair in a strange room which was lighted by an oil lamp that
+hung from the ceiling above. In front of me stood M. Arthur Geoffroy
+and that beast Theodore.
+
+M. Arthur Geoffroy was coolly folding up the two valuable papers for
+the possession of which I had risked a convict ship and New Caledonia,
+and which would have meant affluence for me for many days to come.
+
+It was Theodore who had removed the cloth from my face. As soon as I
+had recovered my breath I made a rush for him, for I wanted to strangle
+him. But M. Arthur Geoffroy was too quick and too strong for me. He
+pushed me back into the chair.
+
+“Easy, easy, M. Ratichon,” he said pleasantly; “do not vent your wrath
+upon this good fellow. Believe me, though his actions may have deprived
+you of a few thousand francs, they have also saved you from lasting and
+biting remorse. This document, which you stole from M. de Marsan and so
+ingeniously duplicated, involved the honour of our King and our
+country, as well as the life of an innocent man. My sister’s fiancé
+would never have survived the loss of the document which had been
+entrusted to his honour.”
+
+“I would have returned it to Mademoiselle to-morrow,” I murmured.
+
+“Only one copy of it, I think,” he retorted; “the other you would have
+sold to whichever spy of the Danish or Russian Governments happened to
+have employed you in this discreditable business.”
+
+“How did you know?” I said involuntarily.
+
+“Through a very simple process of reasoning, my good M. Ratichon,” he
+replied blandly. “You are a very clever man, no doubt, but the
+cleverest of us is at times apt to make a mistake. You made two, and I
+profited by them. Firstly, after my sister and I left you this
+afternoon, you never made the slightest pretence of making inquiries or
+collecting information about the mysterious theft of the document. I
+kept an eye on you throughout the evening. You left your office and
+strolled for a while on the quays; you had an excellent dinner at the
+Restaurant des Anglais; then you settled down to your coffee and
+liqueur. Well, my good M. Ratichon, obviously you would have been more
+active in the matter if you had not known exactly where and when and
+how to lay your hands upon the document, for the recovery of which my
+sister had offered you ten thousand francs.”
+
+I groaned. I had not been quite so circumspect as I ought to have been,
+but who would have thought—
+
+“I have had something to do with police work in my day,” continued M.
+Geoffroy blandly, “though not of late years; but my knowledge of their
+methods is not altogether rusty and my powers of observation are not
+yet dulled. During my sister’s visit to you this afternoon I noticed
+the blouse and cap of a commissionnaire lying in a bundle in a corner
+of your room. Now, though M. de Marsan has been in a burning fever
+since he discovered his loss, he kept just sufficient presence of mind
+at the moment to say nothing about that loss to any of the Chancellerie
+officials, but to go straight home to his apartments in the Rue Royale
+and to send for my sister and for me. When we came to him he was
+already partly delirious, but he pointed to a parcel and a letter which
+he had brought away from his office. The parcel proved to be an empty
+box and the letter a blank sheet of paper; but the most casual inquiry
+of the concierge at the Chancellerie elicited the fact that a
+commissionaire had brought these things in the course of the morning.
+That was your second mistake, my good M. Ratichon; not a very grave
+one, perhaps, but I have been in the police, and somehow, the moment I
+caught sight of that blouse and cap in your office, I could not help
+connecting it with the commissionnaire who had brought a bogus parcel
+and letter to my future brother-in-law a few minutes before that
+mysterious and unexplained altercation took place in the corridor.”
+
+Again I groaned. I felt as a child in the hands of that horrid creature
+who seemed to be dissecting all the thoughts which had run riot through
+my mind these past twenty hours.
+
+“It was all very simple, my good M. Ratichon,” now concluded my
+tormentor still quite amiably. “Another time you will have to be more
+careful, will you not? You will also have to bestow more confidence
+upon your partner or servant. Directly I had seen that
+commissionnaire’s blouse and cap, I set to work to make friends with M.
+Theodore. When my sister and I left your office in the Rue Daunou, we
+found him waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs. Five francs
+loosened his tongue: he suspected that you were up to some game in
+which you did not mean him to have a share; he also told us that you
+had spent two hours in laborious writing, and that you and he both
+lodged at a dilapidated little inn, called the ‘Grey Cat,’ in Passy. I
+think he was rather disappointed that we did not shower more questions,
+and therefore more emoluments, upon him. Well, after I had denounced
+this house to the police as a Bonapartiste club, and saw it put under
+the usual consigne, I bribed the corporal of the gendarmerie in charge
+of it to let me have Theodore’s company for the little job I had in
+hand, and also to clear the back garden of sentries so as to give you a
+chance and the desire to escape. All the rest you know. Money will do
+many things, my good M. Ratichon, and you see how simple it all was. It
+would have been still more simple if the stolen document had not been
+such an important one that the very existence of it must be kept a
+secret even from the police. So I could not have you shadowed and
+arrested as a thief in the usual manner! However, I have the document
+and its ingenious copy, which is all that matters. Would to God,” he
+added with a suppressed curse, “that I could get hold equally easily of
+the Secret Service agent to whom you, a Frenchman, were going to sell
+the honour of your country!”
+
+Then it was that—though broken in spirit and burning with thoughts of
+the punishment I would mete out to Theodore—my full faculties returned
+to me, and I queried abruptly:
+
+“What would you give to get him?”
+
+“Five hundred francs,” he replied without hesitation. “Can you find
+him?”
+
+“Make it a thousand,” I retorted, “and you shall have him.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“Will you give me five hundred francs now,” I insisted, “and another
+five hundred when you have the man, and I will tell you?”
+
+“Agreed,” he said impatiently.
+
+But I was not to be played with by him again. I waited in silence until
+he had taken a pocket-book from the inside of his coat and counted out
+five hundred francs, which he kept in his hand.
+
+“Now—” he commanded.
+
+“The man,” I then announced calmly, “will call on me for the document
+at my lodgings at the hostelry of the ‘Grey Cat’ to-morrow morning at
+nine o’clock.”
+
+“Good,” rejoined M. Geoffroy. “We shall be there.”
+
+He made no demur about giving me the five hundred francs, but half my
+pleasure in receiving them vanished when I saw Theodore’s bleary eyes
+fixed ravenously upon them.
+
+“Another five hundred francs,” M. Geoffroy went on quietly, “will be
+yours as soon as the spy is in our hands.”
+
+I did get that further five hundred of course, for M. Charles Saurez
+was punctual to the minute, and M. Geoffroy was there with the police
+to apprehend him. But to think that I might have had twenty thousand—!
+
+And I had to give Theodore fifty francs on the transaction, as he
+threatened me with the police when I talked of giving him the sack.
+
+But we were quite good friends again after that until— But you shall
+judge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. — A FOOL’S PARADISE
+
+1.
+
+Ah! my dear Sir, I cannot tell you how poor we all were in France in
+that year of grace 1816—so poor, indeed, that a dish of roast pork was
+looked upon as a feast, and a new gown for the wife an unheard-of
+luxury.
+
+The war had ruined everyone. Twenty-two years! and hopeless humiliation
+and defeat at the end of it. The Emperor handed over to the English; a
+Bourbon sitting on the throne of France; crowds of foreign soldiers
+still lording it all over the country—until the country had paid its
+debts to her foreign invaders, and thousands of our own men still
+straggling home through Germany and Belgium—the remnants of Napoléon’s
+Grand Army—ex-prisoners of war, or scattered units who had found their
+weary way home at last, shoeless, coatless, half starved and perished
+from cold and privations, unfit for housework, for agriculture, or for
+industry, fit only to follow their fallen hero, as they had done
+through a quarter of a century, to victory and to death.
+
+With me, Sir, business in Paris was almost at a standstill. I, who had
+been the confidential agent of two kings, three democrats and one
+emperor; I, who had held diplomatic threads in my hands which had
+caused thrones to totter and tyrants to quake, and who had brought more
+criminals and intriguers to book than any other man alive—I now sat in
+my office in the Rue Daunou day after day with never a client to darken
+my doors, even whilst crime and political intrigue were more rife in
+Paris than they had been in the most corrupt days of the Revolution and
+the Consulate.
+
+I told you, I think, that I had forgiven Theodore his abominable
+treachery in connexion with the secret naval treaty, and we were the
+best of friends—that is, outwardly, of course. Within my inmost heart I
+felt, Sir, that I could never again trust that shameless traitor—that I
+had in very truth nurtured a serpent in my bosom. But I am proverbially
+tender-hearted. You will believe me or not, I simply could not turn
+that vermin out into the street. He deserved it! Oh, even he would have
+admitted when he was quite sober, which was not often, that I had every
+right to give him the sack, to send him back to the gutter whence he
+had come, there to grub once more for scraps of filth and to stretch a
+half-frozen hand to the charity of the passers by.
+
+But I did not do it, Sir. No, I did not do it. I kept him on at the
+office as my confidential servant; I gave him all the crumbs that fell
+from mine own table, and he helped himself to the rest. I made as
+little difference as I could in my intercourse with him. I continued to
+treat him almost as an equal. The only difference I did make in our
+mode of life was that I no longer gave him bed and board at the
+hostelry where I lodged in Passy, but placed the chair-bedstead in the
+anteroom of the office permanently at his disposal, and allowed him
+five sous a day for his breakfast.
+
+But owing to the scarcity of business that now came my way, Theodore
+had little or nothing to do, and he was in very truth eating his head
+off, and with that, grumble, grumble all the time, threatening to leave
+me, if you please, to leave my service for more remunerative
+occupation. As if anyone else would dream of employing such an
+out-at-elbows mudlark—a jail-bird, Sir, if you’ll believe me.
+
+Thus the Spring of 1816 came along. Spring, Sir, with its beauty and
+its promises, and the thoughts of love which come eternally in the
+minds of those who have not yet wholly done with youth. Love, Sir! I
+dreamed of it on those long, weary afternoons in April, after I had
+consumed my scanty repast, and whilst Theodore in the anteroom was
+snoring like a hog. At even, when tired out and thirsty, I would sit
+for a while outside a humble café on the outer boulevards, I watched
+the amorous couples wander past me on their way to happiness. At night
+I could not sleep, and bitter were my thoughts, my revilings against a
+cruel fate that had condemned me—a man with so sensitive a heart and so
+generous a nature—to the sorrows of perpetual solitude.
+
+That, Sir, was my mood, when on a never-to-be-forgotten afternoon
+toward the end of April, I sat mooning disconsolately in my private
+room and a timid rat-tat at the outer door of the apartment roused
+Theodore from his brutish slumbers. I heard him shuffling up to the
+door, and I hurriedly put my necktie straight and smoothed my hair,
+which had become disordered despite the fact that I had only indulged
+in a very abstemious déjeuner.
+
+When I said that the knock at my door was in the nature of a timid
+rat-rat I did not perhaps describe it quite accurately. It was timid,
+if you will understand me, and yet bold, as coming from one who might
+hesitate to enter and nevertheless feels assured of welcome. Obviously
+a client, I thought.
+
+Effectively, Sir, the next moment my eyes were gladdened by the sight
+of a lovely woman, beautifully dressed, young, charming, smiling but to
+hide her anxiety, trustful, and certainly wealthy.
+
+The moment she stepped into the room I knew that she was wealthy; there
+was an air of assurance about her which only those are able to assume
+who are not pestered with creditors. She wore two beautiful diamond
+rings upon her hands outside her perfectly fitting glove, and her
+bonnet was adorned with flowers so exquisitely fashioned that a
+butterfly would have been deceived and would have perched on it with
+delight.
+
+Her shoes were of the finest kid, shiny at the toes like tiny mirrors,
+whilst her dainty ankles were framed in the filmy lace frills of her
+pantalets.
+
+Within the wide brim of her bonnet her exquisite face appeared like a
+rosebud nestling in a basket. She smiled when I rose to greet her, gave
+me a look that sent my susceptible heart a-flutter and caused me to
+wish that I had not taken that bottle-green coat of mine to the Mont de
+Piété only last week. I offered her a seat, which she took, arranging
+her skirts about her with inimitable grace.
+
+“One moment,” I added, as soon as she was seated, “and I am entirely at
+your service.”
+
+I took up pen and paper—an unfinished letter which I always keep handy
+for the purpose—and wrote rapidly. It always looks well for a lawyer or
+an _agent confidentiel_ to keep a client waiting for a moment or two
+while he attends to the enormous pressure of correspondence which, if
+allowed to accumulate for five minutes, would immediately overwhelm
+him. I signed and folded the letter, threw it with a nonchalant air
+into a basket filled to the brim with others of equal importance,
+buried my face in my hands for a few seconds as if to collect my
+thoughts, and finally said:
+
+“And now, Mademoiselle, will you deign to tell me what procures me the
+honour of your visit?”
+
+The lovely creature had watched my movements with obvious impatience, a
+frown upon her exquisite brow. But now she plunged straightway into her
+story.
+
+“Monsieur,” she said with that pretty, determined air which became her
+so well, “my name is Estelle Bachelier. I am an orphan, an heiress, and
+have need of help and advice. I did not know to whom to apply. Until
+three months ago I was poor and had to earn my living by working in a
+milliner’s shop in the Rue St. Honoré. The concierge in the house where
+I used to lodge is my only friend, but she cannot help me for reasons
+which will presently be made clear to you. She told me, however, that
+she had a nephew named Theodore, who was clerk to M. Ratichon, advocate
+and confidential agent. She gave me your address; and as I knew no one
+else I determined to come and consult you.”
+
+I flatter myself, that though my countenance is exceptionally mobile, I
+possess marvellous powers for keeping it impassive when necessity
+arises. In this instance, at mention of Theodore’s name, I showed
+neither surprise nor indignation. Yet you will readily understand that
+I felt both. Here was that man, once more revealed as a traitor.
+Theodore had an aunt of whom he had never as much as breathed a word.
+He had an aunt, and that aunt a concierge—_ipso facto_, if I may so
+express it, a woman of some substance, who, no doubt, would often have
+been only too pleased to extend hospitality to the man who had so
+signally befriended her nephew; a woman, Sir, who was undoubtedly
+possessed of savings which both reason and gratitude would cause her to
+invest in an old-established and substantial business run by a
+trustworthy and capable man, such, for instance, as the bureau of a
+confidential agent in a good quarter of Paris, which, with the help of
+a little capital, could be rendered highly lucrative and beneficial to
+all those, concerned.
+
+I determined then and there to give Theodore a piece of my mind and to
+insist upon an introduction to his aunt. After which I begged the
+beautiful creature to proceed.
+
+“My father, Monsieur,” she continued, “died three months ago, in
+England, whither he had emigrated when I was a mere child, leaving my
+poor mother to struggle along for a livelihood as best she could. My
+mother died last year, Monsieur, and I have had a hard life; and now it
+seems that my father made a fortune in England and left it all to me.”
+
+I was greatly interested in her story.
+
+“The first intimation I had of it, Monsieur, was three months ago, when
+I had a letter from an English lawyer in London telling me that my
+father, Jean Paul Bachelier—that was his name, Monsieur—had died out
+there and made a will leaving all his money, about one hundred thousand
+francs, to me.”
+
+“Yes, yes!” I murmured, for my throat felt parched and my eyes dim.
+
+Hundred thousand francs! Ye gods!
+
+“It seems,” she proceeded demurely, “that my father put it in his will
+that the English lawyers were to pay me the interest on the money until
+I married or reached the age of twenty-one. Then the whole of the money
+was to be handed over to me.”
+
+I had to steady myself against the table or I would have fallen over
+backwards! This godlike creature, to whom the sum of one hundred
+thousand francs was to be paid over when she married, had come to me
+for help and advice! The thought sent my brain reeling! I am so
+imaginative!
+
+“Proceed, Mademoiselle, I pray you,” I contrived to say with dignified
+calm.
+
+“Well, Monsieur, as I don’t know a word of English, I took the letter
+to Mr. Farewell, who is the English traveller for Madame Cécile, the
+milliner for whom I worked. He is a kind, affable gentleman and was
+most helpful to me. He was, as a matter of fact, just going over to
+England the very next day. He offered to go and see the English lawyers
+for me, and to bring me back all particulars of my dear father’s death
+and of my unexpected fortune.”
+
+“And,” said I, for she had paused a moment, “did Mr. Farewell go to
+England on your behalf?”
+
+“Yes, Monsieur. He went and returned about a fortnight later. He had
+seen the English lawyers, who confirmed all the good news which was
+contained in their letter. They took, it seems, a great fancy to Mr.
+Farewell, and told him that since I was obviously too young to live
+alone and needed a guardian to look after my interests, they would
+appoint him my guardian, and suggested that I should make my home with
+him until I was married or had attained the age of twenty-one. Mr.
+Farewell told me that though this arrangement might be somewhat
+inconvenient in his bachelor establishment, he had been unable to
+resist the entreaties of the English lawyers, who felt that no one was
+more fitted for such onerous duties than himself, seeing that he was
+English and so obviously my friend.”
+
+“The scoundrel! The blackguard!” I exclaimed in an unguarded outburst
+of fury. . . .
+
+“Your pardon, Mademoiselle,” I added more calmly, seeing that the
+lovely creature was gazing at me with eyes full of astonishment not
+unmixed with distrust, “I am anticipating. Am I to understand, then,
+that you have made your home with this Mr. Farewell?”
+
+“Yes, Monsieur, at number sixty-five Rue des Pyramides.”
+
+“Is he a married man?” I asked casually.
+
+“He is a widower, Monsieur.”
+
+“Middle-aged?”
+
+“Quite elderly, Monsieur.”
+
+I could have screamed with joy. I was not yet forty myself.
+
+“Why!” she added gaily, “he is thinking of retiring from business—he
+is, as I said, a commercial traveller—in favour of his nephew, M.
+Adrien Cazalès.”
+
+Once more I had to steady myself against the table. The room swam round
+me. One hundred thousand francs!—a lovely creature!—an unscrupulous
+widower!—an equally dangerous young nephew. I rose and tottered to the
+window. I flung it wide open—a thing I never do save at moments of
+acute crises.
+
+The breath of fresh air did me good. I returned to my desk, and was
+able once more to assume my habitual dignity and presence of mind.
+
+“In all this, Mademoiselle,” I said in my best professional manner, “I
+do not gather how I can be of service to you.”
+
+“I am coming to that, Monsieur,” she resumed after a slight moment of
+hesitation, even as an exquisite blush suffused her damask cheeks. “You
+must know that at first I was very happy in the house of my new
+guardian. He was exceedingly kind to me, though there were times
+already when I fancied . . .”
+
+She hesitated—more markedly this time—and the blush became deeper on
+her cheeks. I groaned aloud.
+
+“Surely he is too old,” I suggested.
+
+“Much too old,” she assented emphatically.
+
+Once more I would have screamed with joy had not a sharp pang, like a
+dagger-thrust, shot through my heart.
+
+“But the nephew, eh?” I said as jocosely, as indifferently as I could.
+“Young M. Cazalès? What?”
+
+“Oh!” she replied with perfect indifference. “I hardly ever see him.”
+
+Unfortunately it were not seemly for an avocat and the _agent
+confidentiel_ of half the Courts of Europe to execute the measures of a
+polka in the presence of a client, or I would indeed have jumped up and
+danced with glee. The happy thoughts were hammering away in my mind:
+“The old one is much too old—the young one she never sees!” and I could
+have knelt down and kissed the hem of her gown for the exquisite
+indifference with which she had uttered those magic words: “Oh! I
+hardly ever see him!”—words which converted my brightest hopes into
+glowing possibilities.
+
+But, as it was, I held my emotions marvellously in check, and with
+perfect sang-froid once more asked the beauteous creature how I could
+be of service to her in her need.
+
+“Of late, Monsieur,” she said, as she raised a pair of limpid, candid
+blue eyes to mine, “my position in Mr. Farewell’s house has become
+intolerable. He pursues me with his attentions, and he has become
+insanely jealous. He will not allow me to speak to anyone, and has even
+forbidden M. Cazalès, his own nephew, the house. Not that I care about
+that,” she added with an expressive shrug of the shoulders.
+
+“He has forbidden M. Cazalès the house,” rang like a paean in my ear.
+“Not that she cares about that! Tra la, la, la, la, la!” What I
+actually contrived to say with a measured and judicial air was:
+
+“If you deign to entrust me with the conduct of your affairs, I would
+at once communicate with the English lawyers in your name and suggest
+to them the advisability of appointing another guardian. . . . I would
+suggest, for instance . . . er . . . that I . . .”
+
+“How can you do that, Monsieur?” she broke in somewhat impatiently,
+“seeing that I cannot possibly tell you who these lawyers are?”
+
+“Eh?” I queried, gasping.
+
+“I neither know their names nor their residence in England.”
+
+Once more I gasped. “Will you explain?” I murmured.
+
+“It seems, Monsieur, that while my dear mother lived she always refused
+to take a single sou from my father, who had so basely deserted her. Of
+course, she did not know that he was making a fortune over in England,
+nor that he was making diligent inquiries as to her whereabouts when he
+felt that he was going to die. Thus, he discovered that she had died
+the previous year and that I was working in the atelier of Madame
+Cécile, the well-known milliner. When the English lawyers wrote to me
+at that address they, of course, said that they would require all my
+papers of identification before they paid any money over to me, and so,
+when Mr. Farewell went over to England, he took all my papers with him
+and . . .”
+
+She burst into tears and exclaimed piteously:
+
+“Oh! I have nothing now, Monsieur—nothing to prove who I am! Mr.
+Farewell took everything, even the original letter which the English
+lawyers wrote to me.”
+
+“Farewell,” I urged, “can be forced by the law to give all your papers
+up to you.”
+
+“Oh! I have nothing now, Monsieur—he threatened to destroy all my
+papers unless I promised to become his wife! And I haven’t the least
+idea how and where to find the English lawyers. I don’t remember either
+their name or their address; and if I did, how could I prove my
+identity to their satisfaction? I don’t know a soul in Paris save a few
+irresponsible millinery apprentices and Madame Cécile, who, no doubt,
+is hand in glove with Mr. Farewell. I am all alone in the world and
+friendless. . . . I have come to you, Monsieur, in my distress . . .
+and you will help me, will you not?”
+
+She looked more adorable in grief than she had ever done before.
+
+To tell you that at this moment visions floated in my mind, before
+which Dante’s visions of Paradise would seem pale and tame, were but to
+put it mildly. I was literally soaring in heaven. For you see I am a
+man of intellect and of action. No sooner do I see possibilities before
+me than my brain soars in an empyrean whilst conceiving daring plans
+for my body’s permanent abode in elysium. At this present moment, for
+instance—to name but a few of the beatific visions which literally
+dazzled me with their radiance—I could see my fair client as a lovely
+and blushing bride by my side, even whilst Messieurs X. and X., the two
+still unknown English lawyers, handed me a heavy bag which bore the
+legend “One hundred thousand francs.” I could see . . . But I had not
+the time now to dwell on these ravishing dreams. The beauteous creature
+was waiting for my decision. She had placed her fate in my hands; I
+placed my hand on my heart.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” I said solemnly, “I will be your adviser and your
+friend. Give me but a few days’ grace, every hour, every minute of
+which I will spend in your service. At the end of that time I will not
+only have learned the name and address of the English lawyers, but I
+will have communicated with them on your behalf, and all your papers
+proving your identity will be in your hands. Then we can come to a
+decision with regard to a happier and more comfortable home for you. In
+the meanwhile I entreat you to do nothing that may precipitate Mr.
+Farewell’s actions. Do not encourage his advances, but do not repulse
+them, and above all keep me well informed of everything that goes on in
+his house.”
+
+She spoke a few words of touching gratitude, then she rose, and with a
+gesture of exquisite grace she extracted a hundred-franc note from her
+reticule and placed it upon my desk.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” I protested with splendid dignity, “I have done nothing
+as yet.”
+
+“Ah! but you will, Monsieur,” she entreated in accents that completed
+my subjugation to her charms. “Besides, you do not know me! How could I
+expect you to work for me and not to know if, in the end, I should
+repay you for all your trouble? I pray you to take this small sum
+without demur. Mr. Farewell keeps me well supplied with pocket money.
+There will be another hundred for you when you place the papers in my
+hands.”
+
+I bowed to her, and, having once more assured her of my unswerving
+loyalty to her interests, I accompanied her to the door, and anon saw
+her graceful figure slowly descend the stairs and then disappear along
+the corridor.
+
+Then I went back to my room, and was only just in time to catch
+Theodore calmly pocketing the hundred-franc note which my fair client
+had left on the table. I secured the note and I didn’t give him a black
+eye, for it was no use putting him in a bad temper when there was so
+much to do.
+
+2.
+
+That very same evening I interviewed the concierge at No. 65 Rue des
+Pyramides. From him I learned that Mr. Farewell lived on a very small
+income on the top floor of the house, that his household consisted of a
+housekeeper who cooked and did the work of the apartment for him, and
+an odd-job man who came every morning to clean boots, knives, draw
+water and carry up fuel from below. I also learned that there was a
+good deal of gossip in the house anent the presence in Mr. Farewell’s
+bachelor establishment of a young and beautiful girl, whom he tried to
+keep a virtual prisoner under his eye.
+
+The next morning, dressed in a shabby blouse, alpaca cap, and trousers
+frayed out round the ankles, I—Hector Ratichon, the confidant of
+kings—was lounging under the porte-cochere of No. 65 Rue des Pyramides.
+I was watching the movements of a man, similarly attired to myself, as
+he crossed and recrossed the courtyard to draw water from the well or
+to fetch wood from one of the sheds, and then disappeared up the main
+staircase.
+
+A casual, tactful inquiry of the concierge assured me that that man was
+indeed in the employ of Mr. Farewell.
+
+I waited as patiently and inconspicuously as I could, and at ten
+o’clock I saw that my man had obviously finished his work for the
+morning and had finally come down the stairs ready to go home. I
+followed him.
+
+I will not speak of the long halt in the cabaret du Chien Noir, where
+he spent an hour and a half in the company of his friends, playing
+dominoes and drinking eau-de-vie whilst I had perforce to cool my heels
+outside. Suffice it to say that I did follow him to his house just
+behind the fish-market, and that half an hour later, tired out but
+triumphant, having knocked at his door, I was admitted into the squalid
+room which he occupied.
+
+He surveyed me with obvious mistrust, but I soon reassured him.
+
+“My friend Mr. Farewell has recommended you to me,” I said with my
+usual affability. “I was telling him just awhile ago that I needed a
+man to look after my office in the Rue Daunou of a morning, and he told
+me that in you I would find just the man I wanted.”
+
+“Hm!” grunted the fellow, very sullenly I thought. “I work for Farewell
+in the mornings. Why should he recommend me to you? Am I not giving
+satisfaction?”
+
+“Perfect satisfaction,” I rejoined urbanely; “that is just the point.
+Mr. Farewell desires to do you a good turn seeing that I offered to pay
+you twenty sous for your morning’s work instead of the ten which you
+are getting from him.”
+
+I saw his eyes glisten at mention of the twenty sous.
+
+“I’d best go and tell him then that I am taking on your work,” he said;
+and his tone was no longer sullen now.
+
+“Quite unnecessary,” I rejoined. “I arranged everything with Mr.
+Farewell before I came to you. He has already found someone else to do
+his work, and I shall want you to be at my office by seven o’clock
+to-morrow morning. And,” I added, for I am always cautious and
+judicious, and I now placed a piece of silver in his hand, “here are
+the first twenty sous on account.”
+
+He took the money and promptly became very civil, even obsequious. He
+not only accompanied me to the door, but all the way down the stairs,
+and assured me all the time that he would do his best to give me entire
+satisfaction.
+
+I left my address with him, and sure enough, he turned up at the office
+the next morning at seven o’clock precisely.
+
+Theodore had had my orders to direct him in his work, and I was left
+free to enact the second scene of the moving drama in which I was
+determined to play the hero and to ring down the curtain to the sound
+of the wedding bells.
+
+3.
+
+I took on the work of odd-job man at 65 Rue des Pyramides. Yes, I! Even
+I, who had sat in the private room of an emperor discussing the
+destinies of Europe.
+
+But with a beautiful bride and one hundred thousand francs as my goal I
+would have worked in a coal mine or on the galleys for such a guerdon.
+
+The task, I must tell you, was terribly irksome to a man of my
+sensibilities, endowed with an active mind and a vivid imagination. The
+dreary monotony of fetching water and fuel from below and polishing the
+boots of that arch-scoundrel Farewell would have made a less stout
+spirit quail. I had, of course, seen through the scoundrel’s game at
+once. He had rendered Estelle quite helpless by keeping all her papers
+of identification and by withholding from her all the letters which, no
+doubt, the English lawyers wrote to her from time to time. Thus she was
+entirely in his power. But, thank heaven! only momentarily, for I,
+Hector Ratichon, argus-eyed, was on the watch. Now and then the
+monotony of my existence and the hardship of my task were relieved by a
+brief glimpse of Estelle or a smile of understanding from her lips; now
+and then she would contrive to murmur as she brushed past me while I
+was polishing the scoundrel’s study floor, “Any luck yet?” And this
+quiet understanding between us gave me courage to go on with my task.
+
+After three days I had conclusively made up my mind that Mr. Farewell
+kept his valuable papers in the drawer of the bureau in the study.
+After that I always kept a lump of wax ready for use in my pocket. On
+the fifth day I was very nearly caught trying to take an impression of
+the lock of the bureau drawer. On the seventh I succeeded, and took the
+impression over to a locksmith I knew of, and gave him an order to have
+a key made to fit it immediately. On the ninth day I had the key.
+
+Then commenced a series of disappointments and of unprofitable days
+which would have daunted one less bold and less determined. I don’t
+think that Farewell ever suspected me, but it is a fact that never once
+did he leave me alone in his study whilst I was at work there polishing
+the oak floor. And in the meanwhile I could see how he was pursuing my
+beautiful Estelle with his unwelcome attentions. At times I feared that
+he meant to abduct her; his was a powerful personality and she seemed
+like a little bird fighting against the fascination of a serpent.
+Latterly, too, an air of discouragement seemed to dwell upon her lovely
+face. I was half distraught with anxiety, and once or twice, whilst I
+knelt upon the hard floor, scrubbing and polishing as if my life
+depended on it, whilst he—the unscrupulous scoundrel—sat calmly at his
+desk, reading or writing, I used to feel as if the next moment I must
+attack him with my scrubbing-brush and knock him down senseless whilst
+I ransacked his drawers. My horror of anything approaching violence
+saved me from so foolish a step.
+
+Then it was that in the hour of my blackest despair a flash of genius
+pierced through the darkness of my misery. For some days now Madame
+Dupont, Farewell’s housekeeper, had been exceedingly affable to me.
+Every morning now, when I came to work, there was a cup of hot coffee
+waiting for me, and, when I left, a small parcel of something
+appetizing for me to take away.
+
+“Hallo!” I said to myself one day, when, over a cup of coffee, I caught
+sight of her small, piggy eyes leering at me with an unmistakable
+expression of admiration. “Does salvation lie where I least expected
+it?”
+
+For the moment I did nothing more than wink at the fat old thing, but
+the next morning I had my arm round her waist—a metre and a quarter,
+Sir, where it was tied in the middle—and had imprinted a kiss upon her
+glossy cheek. What that love-making cost me I cannot attempt to
+describe. Once Estelle came into the kitchen when I was staggering
+under a load of a hundred kilos sitting on my knee. The reproachful
+glance which she cast at me filled my soul with unspeakable sorrow.
+
+But I was working for her dear sake; working that I might win her in
+the end.
+
+A week later Mr. Farewell was absent from home for the evening. Estelle
+had retired to her room, and I was a welcome visitor in the kitchen,
+where Madame Dupont had laid out a regular feast for me. I had brought
+a couple of bottles of champagne with me and, what with the
+unaccustomed drink and the ogling and love-making to which I treated
+her, a hundred kilos of foolish womanhood was soon hopelessly addled
+and incapable. I managed to drag her to the sofa, where she remained
+quite still, with a beatific smile upon her podgy face, her eyes
+swimming in happy tears.
+
+I had not a moment to lose. The very next minute I was in the study and
+with a steady hand was opening the drawers of the bureau and turning
+over the letters and papers which I found therein.
+
+Suddenly an exclamation of triumph escaped my lips.
+
+I held a packet in my hand on which was written in a clear hand: “The
+papers of Mlle. Estelle Bachelier.” A brief examination of the packet
+sufficed. It consisted of a number of letters written in English, which
+language I only partially understand, but they all bore the same
+signature, “John Pike and Sons, solicitors,” and the address was at the
+top, “168 Cornhill, London.” It also contained my Estelle’s birth
+certificate, her mother’s marriage certificate, and her police
+registration card.
+
+I was rapt in the contemplation of my own ingenuity in having thus
+brilliantly attained my goal, when a stealthy noise in the next room
+roused me from my trance and brought up vividly to my mind the awful
+risks which I was running at this moment. I turned like an animal at
+bay to see Estelle’s beautiful face peeping at me through the half-open
+door.
+
+“Hist!” she whispered. “Have you got the papers?”
+
+I waved the packet triumphantly. She, excited and adorable, stepped
+briskly into the room.
+
+“Let me see,” she murmured excitedly.
+
+But I, emboldened by success, cried gaily:
+
+“Not till I have received compensation for all that I have done and
+endured.”
+
+“Compensation?”
+
+“In the shape of a kiss.”
+
+Oh! I won’t say that she threw herself in my arms then and there. No,
+no! She demurred. All young girls, it seems, demur under the
+circumstances; but she was adorable, coy and tender in turns, pouting
+and coaxing, and playing like a kitten till she had taken the papers
+from me and, with a woman’s natural curiosity, had turned the English
+letters over and over, even though she could not read a word of them.
+
+Then, Sir, in the midst of her innocent frolic and at the very moment
+when I was on the point of snatching the kiss which she had so
+tantalizingly denied me, we heard the opening and closing of the front
+door.
+
+Mr. Farewell had come home, and there was no other egress from the
+study save the sitting-room, which in its turn had no other egress but
+the door leading into the very passage where even now Mr. Farewell was
+standing, hanging up his hat and cloak on the rack.
+
+4.
+
+We stood hand in hand—Estelle and I—fronting the door through which Mr.
+Farewell would presently appear.
+
+“To-night we fly together,” I declared.
+
+“Where to?” she whispered.
+
+“Can you go to the woman at your former lodgings?”
+
+“Yes!”
+
+“Then I will take you there to-night. To-morrow we will be married
+before the Procureur du Roi; in the evening we leave for England.”
+
+“Yes, yes!” she murmured.
+
+“When he comes in I’ll engage him in conversation,” I continued
+hurriedly. “You make a dash for the door and run downstairs as fast as
+you can. I’ll follow as quickly as may be and meet you under the
+porte-cochere.”
+
+She had only just time to nod assent when the door which gave on the
+sitting-room was pushed open, and Farewell, unconscious at first of our
+presence, stepped quietly into the room.
+
+“Estelle,” he cried, more puzzled than angry when he suddenly caught
+sight of us both, “what are you doing here with that lout?”
+
+I was trembling with excitement—not fear, of course, though Farewell
+was a powerful-looking man, a head taller than I was. I stepped boldly
+forward, covering the adored one with my body.
+
+“The lout,” I said with calm dignity, “has frustrated the machinations
+of a knave. To-morrow I go to England in order to place Mademoiselle
+Estelle Bachelier under the protection of her legal guardians,
+Messieurs Pike and Sons, solicitors, of London.”
+
+He gave a cry of rage, and before I could retire to some safe
+entrenchment behind the table or the sofa, he was upon me like a mad
+dog. He had me by the throat, and I had rolled backwards down on to the
+floor, with him on the top of me, squeezing the breath out of me till I
+verily thought that my last hour had come. Estelle had run out of the
+room like a startled hare. This, of course, was in accordance with my
+instructions to her, but I could not help wishing then that she had
+been less obedient and somewhat more helpful.
+
+As it was, I was beginning to feel a mere worm in the grip of that
+savage scoundrel, whose face I could perceive just above me, distorted
+with passion, whilst hoarse ejaculations escaped his trembling lips:
+
+“You meddlesome fool! You oaf! You toad! This for your interference!”
+he added as he gave me a vigorous punch on the head.
+
+I felt my senses reeling. My head was swimming, my eyes no longer could
+see distinctly. It seemed as if an unbearable pressure upon my chest
+would finally squeeze the last breath out of my body.
+
+I was trying to remember the prayers I used to murmur at my mother’s
+knee, for verily I thought that I was dying, when suddenly, through my
+fading senses, came the sound of a long, hoarse cry, whilst the floor
+was shaken as with an earthquake. The next moment the pressure on my
+chest seemed to relax. I could hear Farewell’s voice uttering language
+such as it would be impossible for me to put on record; and through it
+all hoarse and convulsive cries of: “You shan’t hurt him—you limb of
+Satan, you!”
+
+Gradually strength returned to me. I could see as well as hear, and
+what I saw filled me with wonder and with pride. Wonder at Ma’ame
+Dupont’s pluck! Pride in that her love for me had given such power to
+her mighty arms! Aroused from her slumbers by the sound of the scuffle,
+she had run to the study, only to find me in deadly peril of my life.
+Without a second’s hesitation she had rushed on Farewell, seized him by
+the collar, pulled him away from me, and then thrown the whole weight
+of her hundred kilos upon him, rendering him helpless.
+
+Ah, woman! lovely, selfless woman! My heart a prey to remorse, in that
+I could not remain in order to thank my plucky deliverer, I
+nevertheless finally struggled to my feet and fled from the apartment
+and down the stairs, never drawing breath till I felt Estelle’s hand
+resting confidingly upon my arm.
+
+5.
+
+I took her to the house where she used to lodge, and placed her under
+the care of the kind concierge who was Theodore’s aunt. Then I, too,
+went home, determined to get a good night’s rest. The morning would be
+a busy one for me. There would be the special licence to get, the cure
+of St. Jacques to interview, the religious ceremony to arrange for, and
+the places to book on the stagecoach for Boulogne _en route_ for
+England—and fortune.
+
+I was supremely happy and slept the sleep of the just. I was up betimes
+and started on my round of business at eight o’clock the next morning.
+I was a little troubled about money, because when I had paid for the
+licence and given to the cure the required fee for the religious
+service and ceremony, I had only five francs left out of the hundred
+which the adored one had given me. However, I booked the seats on the
+stage-coach and determined to trust to luck. Once Estelle was my wife,
+all money care would be at an end, since no power on earth could stand
+between me and the hundred thousand francs, the happy goal for which I
+had so ably striven.
+
+The marriage ceremony was fixed for eleven o’clock, and it was just
+upon ten when, at last, with a light heart and springy step, I ran up
+the dingy staircase which led to the adored one’s apartments. I knocked
+at the door. It was opened by a young man, who with a smile courteously
+bade me enter. I felt a little bewildered—and slightly annoyed. My
+Estelle should not receive visits from young men at this hour. I pushed
+past the intruder in the passage and walked boldly into the room
+beyond.
+
+Estelle was sitting upon the sofa, her eyes bright, her mouth smiling,
+a dimple in each cheek. I approached her with outstretched arms, but
+she paid no heed to me, and turned to the young man, who had followed
+me into the room.
+
+“Adrien,” she said, “this is kind M. Ratichon, who at risk of his life
+obtained for us all my papers of identification and also the valuable
+name and address of the English lawyers.”
+
+“Monsieur,” added the young man as he extended his hand to me, “Estelle
+and I will remain eternally your debtors.”
+
+I struck at the hand which he had so impudently held out to me and
+turned to Estelle with my usual dignified calm, but with wrath
+expressed in every line of my face.
+
+“Estelle,” I said, “what is the meaning of this?”
+
+“Oh,” she retorted with one of her provoking smiles, “you must not call
+me Estelle, you know, or Adrien will smack your face. We are indeed
+grateful to you, my good M. Ratichon,” she continued more seriously,
+“and though I only promised you another hundred francs when your work
+for me was completed, my husband and I have decided to give you a
+thousand francs in view of the risks which you ran on our behalf.”
+
+“Your husband!” I stammered.
+
+“I was married to M. Adrien Cazalès a month ago,” she said, “but we had
+perforce to keep our marriage a secret, because Mr. Farewell once vowed
+to me that unless I became his wife he would destroy all my papers of
+identification, and then—even if I ever succeeded in discovering who
+were the English lawyers who had charge of my father’s money—I could
+never prove it to them that I and no one else was entitled to it. But
+for you, dear M. Ratichon,” added the cruel and shameless one, “I
+should indeed never have succeeded.”
+
+In the midst of this overwhelming cataclysm I am proud to say that I
+retained mastery over my rage and contrived to say with perfect calm:
+
+“But why have deceived me, Mademoiselle? Why have kept your marriage a
+secret from me? Was I not toiling and working and risking my life for
+you?”
+
+“And would you have worked quite so enthusiastically for me,” queried
+the false one archly, “if I had told you everything?”
+
+I groaned. Perhaps she was right. I don’t know.
+
+I took the thousand francs and never saw M. and Mme. Cazalès again.
+
+But I met Ma’ame Dupont by accident soon after. She has left Mr.
+Farewell’s service.
+
+She still weighs one hundred kilos.
+
+I often call on her of an evening.
+
+Ah, well!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. — ON THE BRINK
+
+1.
+
+You would have thought that after the shameful way in which Theodore
+treated me in the matter of the secret treaty that I would then and
+there have turned him out of doors, sent him back to grub for scraps
+out of the gutter, and hardened my heart once and for all against that
+snake in the grass whom I had nurtured in my bosom.
+
+But, as no doubt you have remarked ere this, I have been burdened by
+Nature with an over-sensitive heart. It is a burden, my dear Sir, and
+though I have suffered inexpressibly under it, I nevertheless agree
+with the English poet, George Crabbe, whose works I have read with a
+great deal of pleasure and profit in the original tongue, and who avers
+in one of his inimitable “Tales” that it is “better to love amiss than
+nothing to have loved.”
+
+Not that I loved Theodore, you understand? But he and I had shared so
+many ups and downs together of late that I was loath to think of him as
+reduced to begging his bread in the streets. Then I kept him by me, for
+I thought that he might at times be useful to me in my business.
+
+I kept him to my hurt, as you will presently see.
+
+In those days—I am now speaking of the time immediately following the
+Restoration of our beloved King Louis XVIII to the throne of his
+forbears—Parisian society was, as it were, divided into two distinct
+categories: those who had become impoverished by the revolution and the
+wars of the Empire, and those who had made their fortunes thereby.
+Among the former was M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, a handsome young
+officer of cavalry; and among the latter was one Mauruss Mosenstein, a
+usurer of the Jewish persuasion, whose wealth was reputed in millions,
+and who had a handsome daughter biblically named Rachel, who a year ago
+had become Madame la Marquise de Firmin-Latour.
+
+From the first moment that this brilliant young couple appeared upon
+the firmament of Parisian society I took a keen interest in all their
+doings. In those days, you understand, it was in the essence of my
+business to know as much as possible of the private affairs of people
+in their position, and instinct had at once told me that in the case of
+M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour such knowledge might prove very
+remunerative.
+
+Thus I very soon found out that M. le Marquis had not a single louis of
+his own to bless himself with, and that it was Papa Mosenstein’s
+millions that kept up the young people’s magnificent establishment in
+the Rue de Grammont.
+
+I also found out that Mme. la Marquise was some dozen years older than
+Monsieur, and that she had been a widow when she married him. There
+were rumours that her first marriage had not been a happy one. The
+husband, M. le Compte de Naquet, had been a gambler and a spendthrift,
+and had dissipated as much of his wife’s fortune as he could lay his
+hands on, until one day he went off on a voyage to America, or goodness
+knows where, and was never heard of again. Mme. la Comtesse, as she
+then was, did not grieve over her loss; indeed, she returned to the
+bosom of her family, and her father—a shrewd usurer, who had amassed an
+enormous fortune during the wars—succeeded, with the aid of his
+apparently bottomless moneybags, in having his first son-in-law
+declared deceased by Royal decree, so as to enable the beautiful Rachel
+to contract another, yet more brilliant alliance, as far as name and
+lineage were concerned, with the Marquis de Firmin-Latour.
+
+Indeed, I learned that the worthy Israelite’s one passion was the
+social advancement of his daughter, whom he worshipped. So, as soon as
+the marriage was consummated and the young people were home from their
+honeymoon, he fitted up for their use the most extravagantly sumptuous
+apartment Paris had ever seen. Nothing seemed too good or too luxurious
+for Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour. He desired her to cut a
+brilliant figure in Paris society—nay, to be the Ville Lumiere’s
+brightest and most particular star. After the town house he bought a
+chateau in the country, horses and carriages, which he placed at the
+disposal of the young couple; he kept up an army of servants for them,
+and replenished their cellars with the choicest wines. He threw money
+about for diamonds and pearls which his daughter wore, and paid all his
+son-in-law’s tailors’ and shirt-makers’ bills. But always the money was
+his, you understand? The house in Paris was his, so was the chateau on
+the Loire; he lent them to his daughter. He lent her the diamonds, and
+the carriages, and the boxes at the opera and the Français. But here
+his generosity ended. He had been deceived in his daughter’s first
+husband; some of the money which he had given her had gone to pay the
+gambling debts of an unscrupulous spendthrift. He was determined that
+this should not occur again. A man might spend his wife’s money—indeed,
+the law placed most of it at his disposal in those days—but he could
+not touch or mortgage one sou that belonged to his father-in-law. And,
+strangely enough, Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour acquiesced and
+aided her father in his determination. Whether it was the Jewish blood
+in her, or merely obedience to old Mosenstein’s whim, it were
+impossible to say. Certain it is that out of the lavish pin-money which
+her father gave her as a free gift from time to time, she only doled
+out a meagre allowance to her husband, and although she had everything
+she wanted, M. le Marquis on his side had often less than twenty francs
+in his pocket.
+
+A very humiliating position, you will admit, Sir, for a dashing young
+cavalry officer. Often have I seen him gnawing his finger-nails with
+rage when, at the end of a copious dinner in one of the fashionable
+restaurants—where I myself was engaged in a business capacity to keep
+an eye on possibly light-fingered customers—it would be Mme. la
+Marquise who paid the bill, even gave the pourboire to the waiter. At
+such times my heart would be filled with pity for his misfortunes, and,
+in my own proud and lofty independence, I felt that I did not envy him
+his wife’s millions.
+
+Of course, he borrowed from every usurer in the city for as long as
+they would lend him any money; but now he was up to his eyes in debt,
+and there was not a Jew inside France who would have lent him one
+hundred francs.
+
+You see, his precarious position was as well known as were his
+extravagant tastes and the obstinate parsimoniousness of M. Mosenstein.
+
+But such men as M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, you understand, Sir,
+are destined by Nature first and by fortuitous circumstances afterwards
+to become the clients of men of ability like myself. I knew that sooner
+or later the elegant young soldier would be forced to seek the advice
+of someone wiser than himself, for indeed his present situation could
+not last much longer. It would soon be “sink” with him, for he could no
+longer “swim.”
+
+And I was determined that when that time came he should turn to me as
+the drowning man turns to the straw.
+
+So where M. le Marquis went in public I went, when possible. I was
+biding my time, and wisely too, as you will judge.
+
+2.
+
+Then one day our eyes met: not in a fashionable restaurant, I may tell
+you, but in a discreet one situated on the slopes of Montmartre. I was
+there alone, sipping a cup of coffee after a frugal dinner. I had
+drifted in there chiefly because I had quite accidentally caught sight
+of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour walking arm-in-arm up the Rue Lepic
+with a lady who was both youthful and charming—a well-known dancer at
+the opera. Presently I saw him turn into that discreet little
+restaurant, where, in very truth, it was not likely that Mme. la
+Marquise would follow him. But I did. What made me do it, I cannot say;
+but for some time now it had been my wish to make the personal
+acquaintance of M. de Firmin-Latour, and I lost no opportunity which
+might help me to attain this desire.
+
+Somehow the man interested me. His social and financial position was
+peculiar, you will admit, and here, methought, was the beginning of an
+adventure which might prove the turning-point in his career and . . .
+my opportunity. I was not wrong, as you will presently see. Whilst
+silently eating my simple dinner, I watched M. de Firmin-Latour.
+
+He had started the evening by being very gay; he had ordered champagne
+and a succulent meal, and chatted light-heartedly with his companion,
+until presently three young women, flashily dressed, made noisy
+irruption into the restaurant.
+
+M. de Firmin-Latour’s friend hailed them, introduced them to him, and
+soon he was host, not to one lady, but to four, and instead of two
+dinners he had to order five, and more champagne, and then
+dessert—peaches, strawberries, bonbons, liqueurs, flowers, and what
+not, until I could see that the bill which presently he would be called
+upon to pay would amount to far more than his quarterly allowance from
+Mme. la Marquise, far more, presumably, than he had in his pocket at
+the present moment.
+
+My brain works with marvellous rapidity, as you know. Already I had
+made up my mind to see the little comedy through to the end, and I
+watched with a good deal of interest and some pity the clouds of
+anxiety gathering over M. de Firmin-Latour’s brow.
+
+The dinner party lasted some considerable time; then the inevitable
+cataclysm occurred. The ladies were busy chattering and rouging their
+lips when the bill was presented. They affected to see and hear
+nothing: it is a way ladies have when dinner has to be paid for; but I
+saw and heard everything. The waiter stood by, silent and obsequious at
+first, whilst M. le Marquis hunted through all his pockets. Then there
+was some whispered colloquy, and the waiter’s attitude lost something
+of its correct dignity. After that the proprietor was called, and the
+whispered colloquy degenerated into altercation, whilst the ladies—not
+at all unaware of the situation—giggled amongst themselves. Finally, M.
+le Marquis offered a promissory note, which was refused.
+
+Then it was that our eyes met. M. de Firmin-Latour had flushed to the
+roots of his hair. His situation was indeed desperate, and my
+opportunity had come. With consummate sang-froid, I advanced towards
+the agitated group composed of M. le Marquis, the proprietor, and the
+head waiter. I glanced at the bill, the cause of all this turmoil,
+which reposed on a metal salver in the head waiter’s hand, and with a
+brief:
+
+“If M. le Marquis will allow me . . .” I produced my pocket-book.
+
+The bill was for nine hundred francs.
+
+At first M. le Marquis thought that I was about to pay it—and so did
+the proprietor of the establishment, who made a movement as if he would
+lie down on the floor and lick my boots. But not so. To begin with, I
+did not happen to possess nine hundred francs, and if I did, I should
+not have been fool enough to lend them to this young scapegrace. No!
+What I did was to extract from my notebook a card, one of a series
+which I always keep by me in case of an emergency like the present one.
+It bore the legend: “Comte Hercule de Montjoie, secrétaire particulier
+de M. le Duc d’Otrante,” and below it the address, “Palais du
+Commissariat de Police, 12 Quai d’Orsay.” This card I presented with a
+graceful flourish of the arm to the proprietor of the establishment,
+whilst I said with that lofty self-assurance which is one of my finest
+attributes and which I have never seen equalled:
+
+“M. le Marquis is my friend. I will be guarantee for this trifling
+amount.”
+
+The proprietor and head waiter stammered excuses. Private secretary of
+M. le Duc d’Otrante! Think of it! It is not often that such personages
+deign to frequent the restaurants of Montmartre. M. le Marquis, on the
+other hand, looked completely bewildered, whilst I, taking advantage of
+the situation, seized him familiarly by the arm, and leading him toward
+the door, I said with condescending urbanity:
+
+“One word with you, my dear Marquis. It is so long since we have met.”
+
+I bowed to the ladies.
+
+“Mesdames,” I said, and was gratified to see that they followed my
+dramatic exit with eyes of appreciation and of wonder. The proprietor
+himself offered me my hat, and a moment or two later M. de
+Firmin-Latour and I were out together in the Rue Lepic.
+
+“My dear Comte,” he said as soon as he had recovered his breath, “how
+can I think you? . . .”
+
+“Not now, Monsieur, not now,” I replied. “You have only just time to
+make your way as quickly as you can back to your palace in the Rue de
+Grammont before our friend the proprietor discovers the several
+mistakes which he has made in the past few minutes and vents his wrath
+upon your fair guests.”
+
+“You are right,” he rejoined lightly. “But I will have the pleasure to
+call on you to-morrow at the Palais du Commissariat.”
+
+“Do no such thing, Monsieur le Marquis,” I retorted with a pleasant
+laugh. “You would not find me there.”
+
+“But—” he stammered.
+
+“But,” I broke in with my wonted business-like and persuasive manner,
+“if you think that I have conducted this delicate affair for you with
+tact and discretion, then, in your own interest I should advise you to
+call on me at my private office, No. 96 Rue Daunou. Hector Ratichon, at
+your service.”
+
+He appeared more bewildered than ever.
+
+“Rue Daunou,” he murmured. “Ratichon!”
+
+“Private inquiry and confidential agent,” I rejoined. “My brains are at
+your service should you desire to extricate yourself from the
+humiliating financial position in which it has been my good luck to
+find you, and yours to meet with me.”
+
+With that I left him, Sir, to walk away or stay as he pleased. As for
+me, I went quickly down the street. I felt that the situation was
+absolutely perfect; to have spoken another word might have spoilt it.
+Moreover, there was no knowing how soon the proprietor of that humble
+hostelry would begin to have doubts as to the identity of the private
+secretary of M. le Duc d’Otrante. So I was best out of the way.
+
+3.
+
+The very next day M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour called upon me at my
+office in the Rue Daunou. Theodore let him in, and the first thing that
+struck me about him was his curt, haughty manner and the look of
+disdain wherewith he regarded the humble appointments of my business
+premises. He himself was magnificently dressed, I may tell you. His
+bottle-green coat was of the finest cloth and the most perfect cut I
+had ever seen. His kerseymere pantaloons fitted him without a wrinkle.
+He wore gloves, he carried a muff of priceless zibeline, and in his
+cravat there was a diamond the size of a broad bean.
+
+He also carried a malacca cane, which he deposited upon my desk, and a
+gold-rimmed spy-glass which, with a gesture of supreme affectation, he
+raised to his eye.
+
+“Now, M. Hector Ratichon,” he said abruptly, “perhaps you will be good
+enough to explain.”
+
+I had risen when he entered. But now I sat down again and coolly
+pointed to the best chair in the room.
+
+“Will you give yourself the trouble to sit down, M. le Marquis?” I
+riposted blandly.
+
+He called me names—rude names! but I took no notice of that . . . and
+he sat down.
+
+“Now!” he said once more.
+
+“What is it you desire to know, M. le Marquis?” I queried.
+
+“Why you interfered in my affairs last night?”
+
+“Do you complain?” I asked.
+
+“No,” he admitted reluctantly, “but I don’t understand your object.”
+
+“My object was to serve you then,” I rejoined quietly, “and later.”
+
+“What do you mean by ‘later’?”
+
+“To-day,” I replied, “to-morrow; whenever your present position becomes
+absolutely unendurable.”
+
+“It is that now,” he said with a savage oath.
+
+“I thought as much,” was my curt comment.
+
+“And do you mean to assert,” he went on more earnestly, “that you can
+find a way out of it?”
+
+“If you desire it—yes!” I said.
+
+“How?”
+
+He drew his chair nearer to my desk, and I leaned forward, with my
+elbows on the table, the finger-tips of one hand in contact with those
+of the other.
+
+“Let us begin by reviewing the situation, shall we, Monsieur?” I began.
+
+“If you wish,” he said curtly.
+
+“You are a gentleman of refined, not to say luxurious tastes, who finds
+himself absolutely without means to gratify them. Is that so?”
+
+He nodded.
+
+“You have a wife and a father-in-law who, whilst lavishing costly
+treasures upon you, leave you in a humiliating dependence on them for
+actual money.”
+
+Again he nodded approvingly.
+
+“Human nature,” I continued with gentle indulgence, “being what it is,
+you pine after what you do not possess—namely, money. Houses,
+equipages, servants, even good food and wine, are nothing to you beside
+that earnest desire for money that you can call your own, and which, if
+only you had it, you could spend at your pleasure.”
+
+“To the point, man, to the point!” he broke in impatiently.
+
+“One moment, M. le Marquis, and I have done. But first of all, with
+your permission, shall we also review the assets in your life which we
+will have to use in order to arrive at the gratification of your
+earnest wish?”
+
+“Assets? What do you mean?”
+
+“The means to our end. You want money; we must find the means to get it
+for you.”
+
+“I begin to understand,” he said, and drew his chair another inch or
+two closer to me.
+
+“Firstly, M. le Marquis,” I resumed, and now my voice had become
+earnest and incisive, “firstly you have a wife, then you have a
+father-in-law whose wealth is beyond the dreams of humble people like
+myself, and whose one great passion in life is the social position of
+the daughter whom he worships. Now,” I added, and with the tip of my
+little finger I touched the sleeve of my aristocratic client, “here at
+once is your first asset. Get at the money-bags of papa by threatening
+the social position of his daughter.”
+
+Whereupon my young gentleman jumped to his feet and swore and abused me
+for a mudlark and a muckworm and I don’t know what. He seized his
+malacca cane and threatened me with it, and asked me how the devil I
+dared thus to speak of Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour. He cursed,
+and he stormed and he raved of his sixteen quarterings and of my
+loutishness. He did everything in fact except walk out of the room.
+
+I let him go on quite quietly. It was part of his programme, and we had
+to go through the performance. As soon as he gave me the chance of
+putting in a word edgeways I rejoined quietly:
+
+“We are not going to hurt Madame la Marquise, Monsieur; and if you do
+not want the money, let us say no more about it.”
+
+Whereupon he calmed down; after a while he sat down again, this time
+with his cane between his knees and its ivory knob between his teeth.
+
+“Go on,” he said curtly.
+
+Nor did he interrupt me again whilst I expounded my scheme to him—one
+that, mind you, I had evolved during the night, knowing well that I
+should receive his visit during the day; and I flatter myself that no
+finer scheme for the bleeding of a parsimonious usurer was ever devised
+by any man.
+
+If it succeeded—and there was no reason why it should not—M. de
+Firmin-Latour would pocket a cool half-million, whilst I, sir, the
+brain that had devised the whole scheme, pronounced myself satisfied
+with the paltry emolument of one hundred thousand francs, out of which,
+remember, I should have to give Theodore a considerable sum.
+
+We talked it all over, M. le Marquis and I, the whole afternoon. I may
+tell you at once that he was positively delighted with the plan, and
+then and there gave me one hundred francs out of his own meagre purse
+for my preliminary expenses.
+
+The next morning we began work.
+
+I had begged M. le Marquis to find the means of bringing me a few
+scraps of the late M. le Comte de Naquet’s—Madame la Marquise’s first
+husband—handwriting. This, fortunately, he was able to do. They were a
+few valueless notes penned at different times by the deceased gentleman
+and which, luckily for us all, Madame had not thought it worth while to
+keep under lock and key.
+
+I think I told you before, did I not? what a marvellous expert I am in
+every kind of calligraphy, and soon I had a letter ready which was to
+represent the first fire in the exciting war which we were about to
+wage against an obstinate lady and a parsimonious usurer.
+
+My identity securely hidden under the disguise of a commissionnaire, I
+took that letter to Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour’s sumptuous abode
+in the Rue de Grammont.
+
+M. le Marquis, you understand, had in the meanwhile been thoroughly
+primed in the rôle which he was to play; as for Theodore, I thought it
+best for the moment to dispense with his aid.
+
+The success of our first skirmish surpassed our expectations.
+
+Ten minutes after the letter had been taken upstairs to Mme. la
+Marquise, one of the maids, on going past her mistress’s door, was
+startled to hear cries and moans proceeding from Madame’s room. She
+entered and found Madame lying on the sofa, her face buried in the
+cushions, and sobbing and screaming in a truly terrifying manner. The
+maid applied the usual restoratives, and after a while Madame became
+more calm and at once very curtly ordered the maid out of the room.
+
+M. le Marquis, on being apprised of this mysterious happening, was much
+distressed; he hurried to his wife’s apartments, and was as gentle and
+loving with her as he had been in the early days of their honeymoon.
+But throughout the whole of that evening, and, indeed, for the next two
+days, all the explanation that he could get from Madame herself was
+that she had a headache and that the letter which she had received that
+afternoon was of no consequence and had nothing to do with her
+migraine.
+
+But clearly the beautiful Rachel was extraordinarily agitated. At night
+she did not sleep, but would pace up and down her apartments in a state
+bordering on frenzy, which of course caused M. le Marquis a great deal
+of anxiety and of sorrow.
+
+Finally, on the Friday morning it seemed as if Madame could contain
+herself no longer. She threw herself into her husband’s arms and
+blurted out the whole truth. M. le Comte de Naquet, her first husband,
+who had been declared drowned at sea, and therefore officially deceased
+by Royal decree, was not dead at all. Madame had received a letter from
+him wherein he told her that he had indeed suffered shipwreck, then
+untold misery on a desert island for three years, until he had been
+rescued by a passing vessel, and finally been able, since he was
+destitute, to work his way back to France and to Paris. Here he had
+lived for the past few months as best he could, trying to collect
+together a little money so as to render himself presentable before his
+wife, whom he had never ceased to love.
+
+Inquiries discreetly conducted had revealed the terrible truth, that
+Madame had been faithless to him, had light-heartedly assumed the death
+of her husband, and had contracted what was nothing less than a
+bigamous marriage. Now he, M. de Naquet, standing on his rights as
+Rachel Mosenstein’s only lawful husband, demanded that she should
+return to him, and as a prelude to a permanent and amicable
+understanding, she was to call at three o’clock precisely on the
+following Friday at No. 96 Rue Daunou, where their reconciliation and
+reunion was to take place.
+
+The letter announcing this terrible news and making this preposterous
+demand she now placed in the hands of M. le Marquis, who at first was
+horrified and thunderstruck, and appeared quite unable to deal with the
+situation or to tender advice. For Madame it meant complete social
+ruin, of course, and she herself declared that she would never survive
+such a scandal. Her tears and her misery made the loving heart of M. le
+Marquis bleed in sympathy. He did all he could to console and comfort
+the lady, whom, alas! he could no longer look upon as his wife. Then,
+gradually, both he and she became more composed. It was necessary above
+all things to make sure that Madame was not being victimized by an
+impostor, and for this purpose M. le Marquis generously offered himself
+as a disinterested friend and adviser. He offered to go himself to the
+Rue Daunou at the hour appointed and to do his best to induce M. le
+Comte de Naquet—if indeed he existed—to forgo his rights on the lady
+who had so innocently taken on the name and hand of M. le Marquis de
+Firmin-Latour. Somewhat more calm, but still unconsoled, the beautiful
+Rachel accepted this generous offer. I believe that she even found five
+thousand francs in her privy purse which was to be offered to M. de
+Naquet in exchange for a promise never to worry Mme. la Marquise again
+with his presence. But this I have never been able to ascertain with
+any finality. Certain it is that when at three o’clock on that same
+afternoon M. de Firmin-Latour presented himself at my office, he did
+not offer me a share in any five thousand francs, though he spoke to me
+about the money, adding that he thought it would look well if he were
+to give it back to Madame, and to tell her that M. de Naquet had
+rejected so paltry a sum with disdain.
+
+I thought such a move unnecessary, and we argued about it rather
+warmly, and in the end he went away, as I say, without offering me any
+share in the emolument. Whether he did put his project into execution
+or not I never knew. He told me that he did. After that there followed
+for me, Sir, many days, nay, weeks, of anxiety and of strenuous work.
+Mme. la Marquise received several more letters from the supposititious
+M. de Naquet, any one of which would have landed me, Sir, in a vessel
+bound for New Caledonia. The discarded husband became more and more
+insistent as time went on, and finally sent an ultimatum to Madame
+saying that he was tired of perpetual interviews with M. le Marquis de
+Firmin-Latour, whose right to interfere in the matter he now wholly
+denied, and that he was quite determined to claim his lawful wife
+before the whole world.
+
+Madame la Marquise, in the meanwhile, had passed from one fit of
+hysterics into another. She denied her door to everyone and lived in
+the strictest seclusion in her beautiful apartment of the Rue de
+Grammont. Fortunately this all occurred in the early autumn, when the
+absence of such a society star from fashionable gatherings was not as
+noticeable as it otherwise would have been. But clearly we were working
+up for the climax, which occurred in the way I am about to relate.
+
+4.
+
+Ah, my dear Sir, when after all these years I think of my adventure
+with that abominable Marquis, righteous and noble indignation almost
+strikes me dumb. To think that with my own hands and brains I literally
+put half a million into that man’s pocket, and that he repaid me with
+the basest ingratitude, almost makes me lose my faith in human nature.
+Theodore, of course, I could punish, and did so adequately; and where
+my chastisement failed, Fate herself put the finishing touch.
+
+But M. de Firmin-Latour . . .!
+
+However, you shall judge for yourself.
+
+As I told you, we now made ready for the climax; and that climax, Sir,
+I can only describe as positively gorgeous. We began by presuming that
+Mme. la Marquise had now grown tired of incessant demands for
+interviews and small doles of money, and that she would be willing to
+offer a considerable sum to her first and only lawful husband in
+exchange for a firm guarantee that he would never trouble her again as
+long as she lived.
+
+We fixed the sum at half a million francs, and the guarantee was to
+take the form of a deed duly executed by a notary of repute and signed
+by the supposititious Comte de Naquet. A letter embodying the demand
+and offering the guarantee was thereupon duly sent to Mme. la Marquise,
+and she, after the usual attack of hysterics, duly confided the matter
+to M. de Firmin-Latour.
+
+The consultation between husband and wife on the deplorable subject was
+touching in the extreme; and I will give that abominable Marquis credit
+for playing his rôle in a masterly manner. At first he declared to his
+dear Rachel that he did not know what to suggest, for in truth she had
+nothing like half a million on which she could lay her hands. To speak
+of this awful pending scandal to Papa Mosenstein was not to be thought
+of. He was capable of repudiating the daughter altogether who was
+bringing such obloquy upon herself and would henceforth be of no use to
+him as a society star.
+
+As for himself in this terrible emergency, he, of course, had less than
+nothing, or his entire fortune would be placed—if he had one—at the
+feet of his beloved Rachel. To think that he was on the point of losing
+her was more than he could bear, and the idea that she would soon
+become the talk of every gossip-monger in society, and mayhap be put in
+prison for bigamy, wellnigh drove him crazy.
+
+What could be done in this awful perplexity he for one could not think,
+unless indeed his dear Rachel were willing to part with some of her
+jewellery; but no! he could not think of allowing her to make such a
+sacrifice.
+
+Whereupon Madame, like a drowning man, or rather woman, catching at a
+straw, bethought her of her emeralds. They were historic gems, once the
+property of the Empress Marie-Thérèse, and had been given to her on her
+second marriage by her adoring father. No, no! she would never miss
+them; she seldom wore them, for they were heavy and more valuable than
+elegant, and she was quite sure that at the Mont de Piété they would
+lend her five hundred thousand francs on them. Then gradually they
+could be redeemed before papa had become aware of their temporary
+disappearance. Madame would save the money out of the liberal allowance
+she received from him for pin-money. Anything, anything was preferable
+to this awful doom which hung over her head.
+
+But even so M. le Marquis demurred. The thought of his proud and
+fashionable Rachel going to the Mont de Piété to pawn her own jewels
+was not to be thought of. She would be seen, recognized, and the
+scandal would be as bad and worse than anything that loomed on the
+black horizon of her fate at this hour.
+
+What was to be done? What was to be done?
+
+Then M. le Marquis had a brilliant idea. He knew of a man, a very
+reliable, trustworthy man, attorney-at-law by profession, and therefore
+a man of repute, who was often obliged in the exercise of his
+profession to don various disguises when tracking criminals in the
+outlying quarters of Paris. M. le Marquis, putting all pride and
+dignity nobly aside in the interests of his adored Rachel, would borrow
+one of these disguises and himself go to the Mont de Piété with the
+emeralds, obtain the five hundred thousand francs, and remit them to
+the man whom he hated most in all the world, in exchange for the
+aforementioned guarantee.
+
+Madame la Marquise, overcome with gratitude, threw herself, in the
+midst of a flood of tears, into the arms of the man whom she no longer
+dared to call her husband, and so the matter was settled for the
+moment. M. le Marquis undertook to have the deed of guarantee drafted
+by the same notary of repute whom he knew, and, if Madame approved of
+it, the emeralds would then be converted into money, and the interview
+with M. le Comte de Naquet fixed for Wednesday, October 10th, at some
+convenient place, subsequently to be determined on—in all probability
+at the bureau of that same ubiquitous attorney-at-law, M. Hector
+Ratichon, at 96 Rue Daunon.
+
+All was going on excellently well, as you observe. I duly drafted the
+deed, and M. de Firmin-Latour showed it to Madame for her approval. It
+was so simply and so comprehensively worded that she expressed herself
+thoroughly satisfied with it, whereupon M. le Marquis asked her to
+write to her shameful persecutor in order to fix the date and hour for
+the exchange of the money against the deed duly signed and witnessed.
+M. le Marquis had always been the intermediary for her letters, you
+understand, and for the small sums of money which she had sent from
+time to time to the factitious M. de Naquet; now he was to be entrusted
+with the final negotiations which, though at a heavy cost, would bring
+security and happiness once more in the sumptuous palace of the Rue de
+Grammont.
+
+Then it was that the first little hitch occurred. Mme. la
+Marquise—whether prompted thereto by a faint breath of suspicion, or
+merely by natural curiosity—altered her mind about the appointment. She
+decided that M. le Marquis, having pledged the emeralds, should bring
+the money to her, and she herself would go to the bureau of M. Hector
+Ratichon in the Rue Daunou, there to meet M. de Naquet, whom she had
+not seen for seven years, but who had once been very dear to her, and
+herself fling in his face the five hundred thousand francs, the price
+of his silence and of her peace of mind.
+
+At once, as you perceive, the situation became delicate. To have
+demurred, or uttered more than a casual word of objection, would in the
+case of M. le Marquis have been highly impolitic. He felt that at once,
+the moment he raised his voice in protest: and when Madame declared
+herself determined he immediately gave up arguing the point.
+
+The trouble was that we had so very little time wherein to formulate
+new plans. Monsieur was to go the very next morning to the Mont de
+Piété to negotiate the emeralds, and the interview with the fabulous M.
+de Naquet was to take place a couple of hours later; and it was now
+three o’clock in the afternoon.
+
+As soon as M. de Firmin-Latour was able to leave his wife, he came
+round to my office. He appeared completely at his wits’ end, not
+knowing what to do.
+
+“If my wife,” he said, “insists on a personal interview with de Naquet,
+who does not exist, our entire scheme falls to the ground. Nay, worse!
+for I shall be driven to concoct some impossible explanation for the
+non-appearance of that worthy, and heaven only knows if I shall succeed
+in wholly allaying my wife’s suspicions.
+
+“Ah!” he added with a sigh, “it is doubly hard to have seen fortune so
+near one’s reach and then to see it dashed away at one fell swoop by
+the relentless hand of Fate.”
+
+Not one word, you observe, of gratitude to me or of recognition of the
+subtle mind that had planned and devised the whole scheme.
+
+But, Sir, it is at the hour of supreme crises like the present one that
+Hector Ratichon’s genius soars up to the empyrean. It became great,
+Sir; nothing short of great; and even the marvellous schemes of the
+Italian Macchiavelli paled before the ingenuity which I now displayed.
+
+Half an hour’s reflection had sufficed. I had made my plans, and I had
+measured the full length of the terrible risks which I ran. Among these
+New Caledonia was the least. But I chose to take the risks, Sir; my
+genius could not stoop to measuring the costs of its flight. While M.
+de Firmin-Latour alternately raved and lamented I had already planned
+and contrived. As I say, we had very little time: a few hours wherein
+to render ourselves worthy of Fortune’s smiles. And this is what I
+planned.
+
+You tell me that you were not in Paris during the year 1816 of which I
+speak. If you had been, you would surely recollect the sensation caused
+throughout the entire city by the disappearance of M. le Marquis de
+Firmin-Latour, one of the most dashing young officers in society and
+one of its acknowledged leaders. It was the 10th day of October. M. le
+Marquis had breakfasted in the company of Madame at nine o’clock. A
+couple of hours later he went out, saying he would be home for
+déjeuner. Madame clearly expected him, for his place was laid, and she
+ordered the déjeuner to be kept back over an hour in anticipation of
+his return. But he did not come. The afternoon wore on and he did not
+come. Madame sat down at two o’clock to déjeuner alone. She told the
+major-domo that M. le Marquis was detained in town and might not be
+home for some time. But the major-domo declared that Madame’s voice, as
+she told him this, sounded tearful and forced, and that she ate
+practically nothing, refusing one succulent dish after another.
+
+The staff of servants was thus kept on tenterhooks all day, and when
+the shadows of evening began to draw in, the theory was started in the
+kitchen that M. le Marquis had either met with an accident or been
+foully murdered. No one, however, dared speak of this to Madame la
+Marquise, who had locked herself up in her room in the early part of
+the afternoon, and since then had refused to see anyone. The major-domo
+was now at his wits’ end. He felt that in a measure the responsibility
+of the household rested upon his shoulders. Indeed he would have taken
+it upon himself to apprise M. Mauruss Mosenstein of the terrible
+happenings, only that the worthy gentleman was absent from Paris just
+then.
+
+Mme. la Marquise remained shut up in her room until past eight o’clock.
+Then she ordered dinner to be served and made pretence of sitting down
+to it; but again the major-domo declared that she ate nothing, whilst
+subsequently the confidential maid who had undressed her vowed that
+Madame had spent the whole night walking up and down the room.
+
+Thus two agonizing days went by; agonizing they were to everybody.
+Madame la Marquise became more and more agitated, more and more
+hysterical as time went on, and the servants could not help but notice
+this, even though she made light of the whole affair, and desperate
+efforts to control herself. The heads of her household, the major-domo,
+the confidential maid, the chef de cuisine, did venture to drop a hint
+or two as to the possibility of an accident or of foul play, and the
+desirability of consulting the police; but Madame would not hear a word
+of it; she became very angry at the suggestion, and declared that she
+was perfectly well aware of M. le Marquis’s whereabouts, that he was
+well and would return home almost immediately.
+
+As was only natural, tongues presently began to wag. Soon it was common
+talk in Paris that M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour had disappeared from
+his home and that Madame was trying to put a bold face upon the
+occurrence. There were surmises and there was gossip— oh! interminable
+and long-winded gossip! Minute circumstances in connexion with M. le
+Marquis’s private life and Mme. la Marquise’s affairs were freely
+discussed in the cafés, the clubs and restaurants, and as no one knew
+the facts of the case, surmises soon became very wild.
+
+On the third day of M. le Marquis’s disappearance Papa Mosenstein
+returned to Paris from Vichy, where he had just completed his annual
+cure. He arrived at Rue de Grammont at three o’clock in the afternoon,
+demanded to see Mme. la Marquise at once, and then remained closeted
+with her in her apartment for over an hour. After which he sent for the
+inspector of police of the section, with the result that that very same
+evening M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour was found locked up in an humble
+apartment on the top floor of a house in the Rue Daunou, not ten
+minutes’ walk from his own house. When the police—acting on information
+supplied to them by M. Mauruss Mosenstein—forced their way into that
+apartment, they were horrified to find M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour
+there, tied hand and foot with cords to a chair, his likely calls for
+help smothered by a woollen shawl wound loosely round the lower part of
+his face.
+
+He was half dead with inanition, and was conveyed speechless and
+helpless to his home in the Rue de Grammont, there, presumably, to be
+nursed back to health by Madame his wife.
+
+5.
+
+Now in all this matter, I ask you, Sir, who ran the greatest risk? Why,
+I—Hector Ratichon, of course—Hector Ratichon, in whose apartment M. de
+Firmin-Latour was discovered in a position bordering on absolute
+inanition. And the proof of this is, that that selfsame night I was
+arrested at my lodgings at Passy, and charged with robbery and
+attempted murder.
+
+It was a terrible predicament for a respectable citizen, a man of
+integrity and reputation, in which to find himself; but Papa Mosenstein
+was both tenacious and vindictive. His daughter, driven to desperation
+at last, and terrified that M. le Marquis had indeed been foully
+murdered by M. de Naquet, had made a clean breast of the whole affair
+to her father, and he in his turn had put the minions of the law in
+full possession of all the facts; and since M. le Comte de Naquet had
+vanished, leaving no manner of trace or clue of his person behind him,
+the police, needing a victim, fell back on an innocent man.
+Fortunately, Sir, that innocence clear as crystal soon shines through
+every calumny. But this was not before I had suffered terrible
+indignities and all the tortures which base ingratitude can inflict
+upon a sensitive heart.
+
+Such ingratitude as I am about to relate to you has never been equalled
+on this earth, and even after all these years, Sir, you see me overcome
+with emotion at the remembrance of it all. I was under arrest,
+remember, on a terribly serious charge, but, conscious of mine own
+innocence and of my unanswerable system of defence, I bore the
+preliminary examination by the juge d’instruction with exemplary
+dignity and patience. I knew, you see, that at my very first
+confrontation with my supposed victim the latter would at once say:
+
+“Ah! but no! This is not the man who assaulted me.”
+
+Our plan, which so far had been overwhelmingly successful, had been
+this.
+
+On the morning of the tenth, M. de Firmin-Latour having pawned the
+emeralds, and obtained the money for them, was to deposit that money in
+his own name at the bank of Raynal Frères and then at once go to the
+office in the Rue Daunou.
+
+There he would be met by Theodore, who would bind him comfortably but
+securely to a chair, put a shawl around his mouth and finally lock the
+door on him. Theodore would then go to his mother’s and there remain
+quietly until I needed his services again.
+
+It had been thought inadvisable for me to be seen that morning anywhere
+in the neighbourhood of the Rue Daunou, but that perfidious reptile
+Theodore ran no risks in doing what he was told. To begin with he is a
+past master in the art of worming himself in and out of a house without
+being seen, and in this case it was his business to exercise a double
+measure of caution. And secondly, if by some unlucky chance the police
+did subsequently connect him with the crime, there was I, his employer,
+a man of integrity and repute, prepared to swear that the man had been
+in my company at the other end of Paris all the while that M. le
+Marquis de Firmin-Latour was, by special arrangement, making use of my
+office in the Rue Daunou, which I had lent him for purposes of
+business.
+
+Finally it was agreed between us that when M. le Marquis would
+presently be questioned by the police as to the appearance of the man
+who had assaulted and robbed him, he would describe him as tall and
+blond, almost like an Angliche in countenance. Now I possess—as you
+see, Sir—all the finest characteristics of the Latin race, whilst
+Theodore looks like nothing on earth, save perhaps a cross between a
+rat and a monkey.
+
+I wish you to realize, therefore, that no one ran any risks in this
+affair excepting myself. I, as the proprietor of the apartment where
+the assault was actually supposed to have taken place, did run a very
+grave risk, because I could never have proved an alibi. Theodore was
+such a disreputable mudlark that his testimony on my behalf would have
+been valueless. But with sublime sacrifice I accepted these risks, and
+you will presently see, Sir, how I was repaid for my selflessness. I
+pined in a lonely prison-cell while these two limbs of Satan concocted
+a plot to rob me of my share in our mutual undertaking.
+
+Well, Sir, the day came when I was taken from my prison-cell for the
+purpose of being confronted with the man whom I was accused of having
+assaulted. As you will imagine, I was perfectly calm. According to our
+plan the confrontation would be the means of setting me free at once. I
+was conveyed to the house in the Rue de Grammont, and here I was kept
+waiting for some little time while the juge d’instruction went in to
+prepare M. le Marquis, who was still far from well. Then I was
+introduced into the sick-room. I looked about me with the perfect
+composure of an innocent man about to be vindicated, and calmly gazed
+on the face of the sick man who was sitting up in his magnificent bed,
+propped up with pillows.
+
+I met his glance firmly whilst M. le Juge d’instruction placed the
+question to him in a solemn and earnest tone:
+
+“M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, will you look at the prisoner before
+you and tell us whether you recognize in him the man who assaulted
+you?”
+
+And that perfidious Marquis, Sir, raised his eyes and looked me
+squarely—yes! squarely—in the face and said with incredible assurance:
+
+“Yes, Monsieur le Juge, that is the man! I recognize him.”
+
+To me it seemed then as if a thunderbolt had crashed through the
+ceiling and exploded at my feet. I was like one stunned and dazed; the
+black ingratitude, the abominable treachery, completely deprived me of
+speech. I felt choked, as if some poisonous effluvia—the poison, Sir,
+of that man’s infamy—had got into my throat. That state of inertia
+lasted, I believe, less than a second; the next I had uttered a hoarse
+cry of noble indignation.
+
+“You vampire, you!” I exclaimed. “You viper! You . . .”
+
+I would have thrown myself on him and strangled him with glee, but that
+the minions of the law had me by the arms and dragged me away out of
+the hateful presence of that traitor, despite my objurgations and my
+protestations of innocence. Imagine my feelings when I found myself
+once more in a prison-cell, my heart filled with unspeakable bitterness
+against that perfidious Judas. Can you wonder that it took me some time
+before I could collect my thoughts sufficiently to review my situation,
+which no doubt to the villain himself who had just played me this
+abominable trick must have seemed desperate indeed? Ah! I could see it
+all, of course! He wanted to see me sent to New Caledonia, whilst he
+enjoyed the fruits of his unpardonable backsliding. In order to retain
+the miserable hundred thousand francs which he had promised me he did
+not hesitate to plunge up to the neck in this heinous conspiracy.
+
+Yes, conspiracy! for the very next day, when I was once more hailed
+before the juge d’instruction, another confrontation awaited me: this
+time with that scurvy rogue Theodore. He had been suborned by M. le
+Marquis to turn against the hand that fed him. What price he was paid
+for this Judas trick I shall never know, and all that I do know is that
+he actually swore before the juge d’instruction that M. le Marquis de
+Firmin-Latour called at my office in the late forenoon of the tenth of
+October; that I then ordered him—Theodore—to go out to get his dinner
+first, and then to go all the way over to Neuilly with a message to
+someone who turned out to be non-existent. He went on to assert that
+when he returned at six o’clock in the afternoon he found the office
+door locked, and I—his employer—presumably gone. This at first greatly
+upset him, because he was supposed to sleep on the premises, but seeing
+that there was nothing for it but to accept the inevitable, he went
+round to his mother’s rooms at the back of the fish-market and remained
+there ever since, waiting to hear from me.
+
+That, Sir, was the tissue of lies which that jailbird had concocted for
+my undoing, knowing well that I could not disprove them because it had
+been my task on that eventful morning to keep an eye on M. le Marquis
+whilst he went to the Mont de Piété first, and then to MM. Raynal
+Frères, the bankers where he deposited the money. For this purpose I
+had been obliged to don a disguise, which I had not discarded till
+later in the day, and thus was unable to disprove satisfactorily the
+monstrous lies told by that perjurer.
+
+Ah! I can see that sympathy for my unmerited misfortunes has filled
+your eyes with tears. No doubt in your heart you feel that my situation
+at that hour was indeed desperate, and that I—Hector Ratichon, the
+confidant of kings, the benefactor of the oppressed—did spend the next
+few years of my life in a penal settlement, where those
+arch-malefactors themselves should have been. But no, Sir! Fate may be
+a fickle jade, rogues may appear triumphant, but not for long, Sir, not
+for long! It is brains that conquer in the end . . . brains backed by
+righteousness and by justice.
+
+Whether I had actually foreseen the treachery of those two
+rattlesnakes, or whether my habitual caution and acumen alone prompted
+me to take those measures of precaution of which I am about to tell
+you, I cannot truthfully remember. Certain it is that I did take those
+precautions which ultimately proved to be the means of compensating me
+for most that I had suffered.
+
+It had been a part of the original plan that, on the day immediately
+following the tenth of October, I, in my own capacity as Hector
+Ratichon, who had been absent from my office for twenty-four hours,
+would arrive there in the morning, find the place locked, force an
+entrance into the apartment, and there find M. le Marquis in his
+pitiable plight. After which I would, of course, immediately notify the
+police of the mysterious occurrence.
+
+That had been the rôle which I had intended to play. M. le Marquis
+approved of it and had professed himself quite willing to endure a
+twenty-four-hours’ martyrdom for the sake of half a million francs.
+But, as I have just had the honour to tell you, something which I will
+not attempt to explain prompted me at the last moment to modify my plan
+in one little respect. I thought it too soon to go back to the Rue
+Daunou within twenty-four hours of our well-contrived coup, and I did
+not altogether care for the idea of going myself to the police in order
+to explain to them that I had found a man gagged and bound in my
+office. The less one has to do with these minions of the law the
+better. Mind you, I had envisaged the possibility of being accused of
+assault and robbery, but I did not wish to take, as it were, the very
+first steps myself in that direction. You might call this a matter of
+sentiment or of prudence, as you wish.
+
+So I waited until the evening of the second day before I got the key
+from Theodore. Then before the concierge at 96 Rue Daunou had closed
+the porte-cochere for the night, I slipped into the house unobserved,
+ran up the stairs to my office and entered the apartment. I struck a
+light and made my way to the inner room where the wretched Marquis hung
+in the chair like a bundle of rags. I called to him, but he made no
+movement. As I had anticipated, he had fainted for want of food. Of
+course, I was very sorry for him, for his plight was pitiable, but he
+was playing for high stakes, and a little starvation does no man any
+harm. In his case there was half a million at the end of his brief
+martyrdom, which could, at worst, only last another twenty-four hours.
+I reckoned that Mme. la Marquise could not keep the secret of her
+husband’s possible whereabouts longer than that, and in any event I was
+determined that, despite all risks, I would go myself to the police on
+the following day.
+
+In the meanwhile, since I was here and since M. le Marquis was
+unconscious, I proceeded then and there to take the precaution which
+prudence had dictated, and without which, seeing this man’s treachery
+and Theodore’s villainy, I should undoubtedly have ended my days as a
+convict. What I did was to search M. le Marquis’s pockets for anything
+that might subsequently prove useful to me.
+
+I had no definite idea in the matter, you understand; but I had vague
+notions of finding the bankers’ receipt for the half-million francs.
+
+Well, I did not find that, but I did find the receipt from the Mont de
+Piété for a parure of emeralds on which half a million francs had been
+lent. This I carefully put away in my waistcoat pocket, but as there
+was nothing else I wished to do just then I extinguished the light and
+made my way cautiously out of the apartment and out of the house. No
+one had seen me enter or go out, and M. le Marquis had not stirred
+while I went through his pockets.
+
+6.
+
+That, Sir, was the precaution which I had taken in order to safeguard
+myself against the machinations of traitors. And see how right I was;
+see how hopeless would have been my plight at this hour when Theodore,
+too, turned against me like the veritable viper that he was. I never
+really knew when and under what conditions the infamous bargain was
+struck which was intended to deprive me of my honour and of my liberty,
+nor do I know what emolument Theodore was to receive for his treachery.
+Presumably the two miscreants arranged it all some time during that
+memorable morning of the tenth even whilst I was risking my life in
+their service.
+
+As for M. de Firmin-Latour, that worker of iniquity who, in order to
+save a paltry hundred thousand francs from the hoard which I had helped
+him to acquire, did not hesitate to commit such an abominable crime, he
+did not long remain in the enjoyment of his wealth or of his peace of
+mind.
+
+The very next day I made certain statements before M. le Juge
+d’instruction with regard to M. Mauruss Mosenstein, which caused the
+former to summon the worthy Israelite to his bureau, there to be
+confronted with me. I had nothing more to lose, since those execrable
+rogues had already, as it were, tightened the rope about my neck, but I
+had a great deal to gain—revenge above all, and perhaps the gratitude
+of M. Mosenstein for opening his eyes to the rascality of his
+son-in-law.
+
+In a stream of eloquent words which could not fail to carry conviction,
+I gave then and there in the bureau of the juge d’instruction my
+version of the events of the past few weeks, from the moment when M. le
+Marquis de Firmin-Latour came to consult me on the subject of his
+wife’s first husband, until the hour when he tried to fasten an
+abominable crime upon me. I told how I had been deceived by my own
+employé, Theodore, a man whom I had rescued out of the gutter and
+loaded with gifts, how by dint of a clever disguise which would have
+deceived his own mother he had assumed the appearance and personality
+of M. le Comte de Naquet, first and only lawful lord of the beautiful
+Rachel Mosenstein. I told of the interviews in my office, my earnest
+desire to put an end to this abominable blackmailing by informing the
+police of the whole affair. I told of the false M. de Naquet’s threats
+to create a gigantic scandal which would forever ruin the social
+position of the so-called Marquis de Firmin-Latour. I told of M. le
+Marquis’s agonized entreaties, his prayers, supplications, that I would
+do nothing in the matter for the sake of an innocent lady who had
+already grievously suffered. I spoke of my doubts, my scruples, my
+desire to do what was just and what was right.
+
+A noble expose of the situation, Sir, you will admit. It left me hot
+and breathless. I mopped my head with a handkerchief and sank back,
+gasping, in the arms of the minions of the law. The juge d’instruction
+ordered my removal, not back to my prison-cell but into his own
+ante-room, where I presently collapsed upon a very uncomfortable bench
+and endured the additional humiliation of having a glass of water held
+to my lips. Water! when I had asked for a drink of wine as my throat
+felt parched after that lengthy effort at oratory.
+
+However, there I sat and waited patiently whilst, no doubt, M. le Juge
+d’Instruction and the noble Israelite were comparing notes as to their
+impression of my marvellous speech. I had not long to wait. Less than
+ten minutes later I was once more summoned into the presence of M. le
+Juge; and this time the minions of the law were ordered to remain in
+the antechamber. I thought this was of good augury; and I waited to
+hear M. le Juge give forth the order that would at once set me free.
+But it was M. Mosenstein who first addressed me, and in very truth
+surprise rendered me momentarily dumb when he did it thus:
+
+“Now then, you consummate rascal, when you have given up the receipt of
+the Mont de Piété which you stole out of M. le Marquis’s pocket you may
+go and carry on your rogueries elsewhere and call yourself mightily
+lucky to have escaped so lightly.”
+
+I assure you, Sir, that a feather would have knocked me down. The
+coarse insult, the wanton injustice, had deprived me of the use of my
+limbs and of my speech. Then the juge d’instruction proceeded dryly:
+
+“Now then, Ratichon, you have heard what M. Mauruss Mosenstein has been
+good enough to say to you. He did it with my approval and consent. I am
+prepared to give an _ordonnance de non-lieu_ in your favour which will
+have the effect of at once setting you free if you will restore to this
+gentleman here the Mont de Piété receipt which you appear to have
+stolen.”
+
+“Sir,” I said with consummate dignity in the face of this reiterated
+taunt, “I have stolen nothing—”
+
+M. le Juge’s hand was already on the bell-pull.
+
+“Then,” he said coolly, “I can ring for the gendarmes to take you back
+to the cells, and you will stand your trial for blackmail, theft,
+assault and robbery.”
+
+I put up my hand with an elegant and perfectly calm gesture.
+
+“Your pardon, M. le Juge,” I said with the gentle resignation of
+undeserved martyrdom, “I was about to say that when I re-visited my
+rooms in the Rue Daunou after a three days’ absence, and found the
+police in possession, I picked up on the floor of my private room a
+white paper which on subsequent examination proved to be a receipt from
+the Mont de Piété for some valuable gems, and made out in the name of
+M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour.”
+
+“What have you done with it, you abominable knave?” the irascible old
+usurer rejoined roughly, and I regret to say that he grasped his
+malacca cane with ominous violence.
+
+But I was not to be thus easily intimidated.
+
+“Ah! voilà, M. le Juge,” I said with a shrug of the shoulders. “I have
+mislaid it. I do not know where it is.”
+
+“If you do not find it,” Mosenstein went on savagely, “you will find
+yourself on a convict ship before long.”
+
+“In which case, no doubt,” I retorted with suave urbanity, “the police
+will search my rooms where I lodge, and they will find the receipt from
+the Mont de Piété, which I had mislaid. And then the gossip will be all
+over Paris that Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour had to pawn her
+jewels in order to satisfy the exigencies of her first and only lawful
+husband who has since mysteriously disappeared; and some people will
+vow that he never came back from the Antipodes, whilst others—by far
+the most numerous—will shrug their shoulders and sigh: ‘One never
+knows!’ which will be exceedingly unpleasant for Mme. la Marquise.”
+
+Both M. Mauruss Mosenstein and the juge d’instruction said a great deal
+more that afternoon. I may say that their attitude towards me and the
+language that they used were positively scandalous. But I had become
+now the master of the situation and I could afford to ignore their
+insults. In the end everything was settled quite amicably. I agreed to
+dispose of the receipt from the Mont de Piété to M. Mauruss Mosenstein
+for the sum of two hundred francs, and for another hundred I would
+indicate to him the banking house where his precious son-in-law had
+deposited the half-million francs obtained for the emeralds. This
+latter information I would indeed have offered him gratuitously had he
+but known with what immense pleasure I thus put a spoke in that knavish
+Marquis’s wheel of fortune.
+
+The worthy Israelite further agreed to pay me an annuity of two hundred
+francs so long as I kept silent upon the entire subject of Mme. la
+Marquise’s first husband and of M. le Marquis’s rôle in the mysterious
+affair of the Rue Daunou. For thus was the affair classed amongst the
+police records. No one outside the chief actors of the drama and M. le
+Juge d’Instruction ever knew the true history of how a dashing young
+cavalry officer came to be assaulted and left to starve for three days
+in the humble apartment of an attorney-at-law of undisputed repute. And
+no one outside the private bureau of M. le Juge d’Instruction ever knew
+what it cost the wealthy M. Mosenstein to have the whole affair
+“classed” and hushed up.
+
+As for me, I had three hundred francs as payment for work which I had
+risked my neck and my reputation to accomplish. Three hundred instead
+of the hundred thousand which I had so richly deserved: that, and a
+paltry two hundred francs a year, which was to cease the moment that as
+much as a rumour of the whole affair was breathed in public. As if I
+could help people talking!
+
+But M. le Marquis did not enjoy the fruits of his villainy, and I had
+again the satisfaction of seeing him gnaw his finger-nails with rage
+whenever the lovely Rachel paid for his dinner at fashionable
+restaurants. Indeed Papa Mosenstein tightened the strings of his
+money-bags even more securely than he had done in the past. Under
+threats of prosecution for theft and I know not what, he forced his
+son-in-law to disgorge that half-million which he had so pleasantly
+tucked away in the banking house of Raynal Frères, and I was indeed
+thankful that prudence had, on that memorable morning, suggested to me
+the advisability of dogging the Marquis’s footsteps. I doubt not but
+what he knew whence had come the thunderbolt which had crushed his last
+hopes of an independent fortune, and no doubt too he does not cherish
+feelings of good will towards me.
+
+But this eventuality leaves me cold. He has only himself to thank for
+his misfortune. Everything would have gone well but for his treachery.
+We would have become affluent, he and I and Theodore. Theodore has gone
+to live with his mother, who has a fish-stall in the Halles; she gives
+him three sous a day for washing down the stall and selling the fish
+when it has become too odorous for the ordinary customers.
+
+And he might have had five hundred francs for himself and remained my
+confidential clerk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. — CARISSIMO
+
+1.
+
+You must not think for a moment, my dear Sir, that I was ever actually
+deceived in Theodore. Was it likely that I, who am by temperament and
+habit accustomed to read human visages like a book, was it likely, I
+say, that I would fail to see craftiness in those pale, shifty eyes,
+deceit in the weak, slobbering mouth, intemperance in the whole aspect
+of the shrunken, slouchy figure which I had, for my subsequent sorrow,
+so generously rescued from starvation?
+
+Generous? I was more than generous to him. They say that the poor are
+the friends of the poor, and I told you how poor we were in those days!
+Ah! but poor! my dear Sir, you have no conception! Meat in Paris in the
+autumn of 1816 was 24 francs the kilo, and milk 1 franc the quarter
+litre, not to mention eggs and butter, which were delicacies far beyond
+the reach of cultured, well-born people like myself.
+
+And yet throughout that trying year I fed Theodore—yes, I fed him. He
+used to share onion pie with me whenever I partook of it, and he had
+haricot soup every day, into which I allowed him to boil the skins of
+all the sausages and the luscious bones of all the cutlets of which I
+happened to partake. Then think what he cost me in drink! Never could I
+leave a half or quarter bottle of wine but he would finish it; his
+impudent fingers made light of every lock and key. I dared not allow as
+much as a sou to rest in the pocket of my coat but he would ferret it
+out the moment I hung the coat up in the outer room and my back was
+turned for a few seconds. After a while I was forced—yes, I, Sir, who
+have spoken on terms of equality with kings—I was forced to go out and
+make my own purchases in the neighbouring provision shops. And why?
+Because if I sent Theodore and gave him a few sous wherewith to make
+these purchases, he would spend the money at the nearest cabaret in
+getting drunk on absinthe.
+
+He robbed me, Sir, shamefully, despite the fact that he had ten per
+cent, commission on all the profits of the firm. I gave him twenty
+francs out of the money which I had earned at the sweat of my brow in
+the service of Estelle Bachelier. Twenty francs, Sir! Reckoning two
+hundred francs as business profit on the affair, a generous provision
+you will admit! And yet he taunted me with having received a thousand.
+This was mere guesswork, of course, and I took no notice of his taunts:
+did the brains that conceived the business deserve no payment? Was my
+labour to be counted as dross?—the humiliation, the blows which I had
+to endure while he sat in hoggish content, eating and sleeping without
+thought for the morrow? After which he calmly pocketed the twenty
+francs to earn which he had not raised one finger, and then demanded
+more.
+
+No, no, my dear Sir, you will believe me or not, that man could not go
+straight. Times out of count he would try and deceive me, despite the
+fact that, once or twice, he very nearly came hopelessly to grief in
+the attempt.
+
+Now, just to give you an instance. About this time Paris was in the
+grip of a gang of dog-thieves as unscrupulous and heartless as they
+were daring. Can you wonder at it? with that awful penury about and a
+number of expensive “tou-tous” running about the streets under the very
+noses of the indigent proletariat? The ladies of the aristocracy and of
+the wealthy bourgeoisie had imbibed this craze for lap-dogs during
+their sojourn in England at the time of the emigration, and being women
+of the Latin race and of undisciplined temperament, they were just then
+carrying their craze to excess.
+
+As I was saying, this indulgence led to wholesale thieving. Tou-tous
+were abstracted from their adoring mistresses with marvellous
+adroitness; whereupon two or three days would elapse while the adoring
+mistress wept buckets full of tears and set the police of M. Fouché,
+Duc d’Otrante, by the ears in search of her pet. The next act in the
+tragi-comedy would be an anonymous demand for money—varying in amount
+in accordance with the known or supposed wealth of the lady—and an
+equally anonymous threat of dire vengeance upon the tou-tou if the
+police were put upon the track of the thieves.
+
+You will ask me, no doubt, what all this had to do with Theodore. Well!
+I will tell you.
+
+You must know that of late he had become extraordinarily haughty and
+independent. I could not keep him to his work. His duties were to sweep
+the office—he did not do it; to light the fires—I had to light them
+myself every morning; to remain in the anteroom and show clients in—he
+was never at his post. In fact he was never there when I did want him:
+morning, noon and night he was out—gadding about and coming home, Sir,
+only to eat and sleep. I was seriously thinking of giving him the sack.
+And then one day he disappeared! Yes, Sir, disappeared completely as if
+the earth had swallowed him up. One morning—it was in the beginning of
+December and the cold was biting—I arrived at the office and found that
+his chair-bed which stood in the antechamber had not been slept in; in
+fact that it had not been made up overnight. In the cupboard I found
+the remnants of an onion pie, half a sausage, and a quarter of a litre
+of wine, which proved conclusively that he had not been in to supper.
+
+At first I was not greatly disturbed in my mind. I had found out quite
+recently that Theodore had some sort of a squalid home of his own
+somewhere behind the fish-market, together with an old and wholly
+disreputable mother who plied him with drink whenever he spent an
+evening with her and either he or she had a franc in their pocket.
+Still, after these bouts spent in the bosom of his family he usually
+returned to sleep them off at my expense in my office.
+
+I had unfortunately very little to do that day, so in the late
+afternoon, not having seen anything of Theodore all day, I turned my
+steps toward the house behind the fish-market where lived the mother of
+that ungrateful wretch.
+
+The woman’s surprise when I inquired after her precious son was
+undoubtedly genuine. Her lamentations and crocodile tears certainly
+were not. She reeked of alcohol, and the one room which she inhabited
+was indescribably filthy. I offered her half a franc if she gave me
+authentic news of Theodore, knowing well that for that sum she would
+have sold him to the devil. But very obviously she knew nothing of his
+whereabouts, and I soon made haste to shake the dirt of her abode from
+my heels.
+
+I had become vaguely anxious.
+
+I wondered if he had been murdered somewhere down a back street, and if
+I should miss him very much.
+
+I did not think that I would.
+
+Moreover, no one could have any object in murdering Theodore. In his
+own stupid way he was harmless enough, and he certainly was not
+possessed of anything worth stealing. I myself was not over-fond of the
+man—but I should not have bothered to murder him.
+
+Still, I was undoubtedly anxious, and slept but little that night
+thinking of the wretch. When the following morning I arrived at my
+office and still could see no trace of him, I had serious thoughts of
+putting the law in motion on his behalf.
+
+Just then, however, an incident occurred which drove all thoughts of
+such an insignificant personage as Theodore from my mind.
+
+I had just finished tidying up the office when there came a peremptory
+ring at the outer door, repeated at intervals of twenty seconds or so.
+It meant giving a hasty glance all round to see that no fragments of
+onion pie or of cheap claret lingered in unsuspected places, and it
+meant my going, myself, to open the door to my impatient visitor.
+
+I did it, Sir, and then at the door I stood transfixed. I had seen many
+beautiful women in my day—great ladies of the Court, brilliant ladies
+of the Consulate, the Directorate and the Empire—but never in my life
+had I seen such an exquisite and resplendent apparition as the one
+which now sailed through the antechamber of my humble abode.
+
+Sir, Hector Ratichon’s heart has ever been susceptible to the charms of
+beauty in distress. This lovely being, Sir, who now at my invitation
+entered my office and sank with perfect grace into the arm-chair, was
+in obvious distress. Tears hung on the fringe of her dark lashes, and
+the gossamer-like handkerchief which she held in her dainty hand was
+nothing but a wet rag. She gave herself exactly two minutes wherein to
+compose herself, after which she dried her eyes and turned the full
+artillery of her bewitching glance upon me.
+
+“Monsieur Ratichon,” she began, even before I had taken my accustomed
+place at my desk and assumed that engaging smile which inspires
+confidence even in the most timorous; “Monsieur Ratichon, they tell me
+that you are so clever, and—oh! I am in such trouble.”
+
+“Madame,” I rejoined with noble simplicity, “you may trust me to do the
+impossible in order to be of service to you.”
+
+Admirably put, you will admit. I have always been counted a master of
+appropriate diction, and I had been quick enough to note the plain band
+of gold which encircled the third finger of her dainty left hand,
+flanked though it was by a multiplicity of diamond, pearl and other
+jewelled rings.
+
+“You are kind, Monsieur Ratichon,” resumed the beauteous creature more
+calmly. “But indeed you will require all the ingenuity of your
+resourceful brain in order to help me in this matter. I am struggling
+in the grip of a relentless fate which, if you do not help me, will
+leave me broken-hearted.”
+
+“Command me, Madame,” I riposted quietly.
+
+From out the daintiest of reticules the fair lady now extracted a very
+greasy and very dirty bit of paper, and handed it to me with the brief
+request: “Read this, I pray you, my good M. Ratichon.” I took the
+paper. It was a clumsily worded, ill-written, ill-spelt demand for five
+thousand francs, failing which sum the thing which Madame had lost
+would forthwith be destroyed.
+
+I looked up, puzzled, at my fair client.
+
+“My darling Carissimo, my dear M. Ratichon,” she said in reply to my
+mute query.
+
+“Carissimo?” I stammered, yet further intrigued.
+
+“My darling pet, a valuable creature, the companion of my lonely
+hours,” she rejoined, once more bursting into tears. “If I lose him, my
+heart will inevitably break.”
+
+I understood at last.
+
+“Madame has lost her dog?” I asked.
+
+She nodded.
+
+“It has been stolen by one of those expert dog thieves, who then levy
+blackmail on the unfortunate owner?”
+
+Again she nodded in assent.
+
+I read the dirty, almost illegible scrawl through more carefully this
+time. It was a clumsy notification addressed to Mme. la Comtesse de
+Nolé de St. Pris to the effect that her tou-tou was for the moment
+safe, and would be restored to the arms of his fond mistress provided
+the sum of five thousand francs was deposited in the hands of the
+bearer of the missive.
+
+Minute directions were then given as to where and how the money was to
+be deposited. Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé was, on the third day from this
+at six o’clock in the evening precisely, to go in person and alone to
+the angle of the Rue Guénégaud and the Rue Mazarine, at the rear of the
+Institut.
+
+There two men would meet her, one of whom would have Carissimo in his
+arms; to the other she must hand over the money, whereupon the pet
+would at once be handed back to her. But if she failed to keep this
+appointment, or if in the meanwhile she made the slightest attempt to
+trace the writer of the missive or to lay a trap for his capture by the
+police, Carissimo would at once meet with a summary death.
+
+These were the usual tactics of experienced dog thieves, only that in
+this case the demand was certainly exorbitant. Five thousand francs!
+But even so . . . I cast a rapid and comprehensive glance on the
+brilliant apparition before me—the jewelled rings, the diamonds in the
+shell-like ears, the priceless fur coat—and with an expressive shrug of
+the shoulders I handed the dirty scrap of paper back to its fair
+recipient.
+
+“Alas, Madame,” I said, taking care that she should not guess how much
+it cost me to give her such advice, “I am afraid that in such cases
+there is nothing to be done. If you wish to save your pet you will have
+to pay. . .”
+
+“Ah! but, Monsieur,” she exclaimed tearfully, “you don’t understand.
+Carissimo is all the world to me, and this is not the first time, nor
+yet the second, that he has been stolen from me. Three times, my good
+M. Ratichon, three times has he been stolen, and three times have I
+received such peremptory demands for money for his safe return; and
+every time the demand has been more and more exorbitant. Less than a
+month ago M. le Comte paid three thousand francs for his recovery.”
+
+“Monsieur le Comte?” I queried.
+
+“My husband, Sir,” she replied, with an exquisite air of hauteur. “M.
+le Comte de Nolé de St. Pris.”
+
+“Ah, then,” I continued calmly, “I fear me that Monsieur de Nolé de St.
+Pris will have to pay again.”
+
+“But he won’t!” she now cried out in a voice broken with sobs, and
+incontinently once more saturated her gossamer handkerchief with her
+tears.
+
+“Then I see nothing for it, Madame,” I rejoined, much against my will
+with a slight touch of impatience, “I see nothing for it but that
+yourself . . .”
+
+“Ah! but, Monsieur,” she retorted, with a sigh that would have melted a
+heart of stone, “that is just my difficulty. I cannot pay . . .”
+
+“Madame,” I protested.
+
+“Oh! if I had money of my own,” she continued, with an adorable gesture
+of impatience, “I would not worry. Mais voilà: I have not a silver
+franc of my own to bless myself with. M. le Comte is over generous. He
+pays all my bills without a murmur—he pays my dressmaker, my furrier;
+he loads me with gifts and dispenses charity on a lavish scale in my
+name. I have horses, carriages, servants—everything I can possibly want
+and more, but I never have more than a few hundred francs to dispose
+of. Up to now I have never for a moment felt the want of money. To-day,
+when Carissimo is being lost to me, I feel the entire horror of my
+position.”
+
+“But surely, Madame,” I urged, “M. le Comte . . .”
+
+“No, Monsieur,” she replied. “M. le Comte has flatly refused this time
+to pay these abominable thieves for the recovery of Carissimo. He
+upbraids himself for having yielded to their demands on the three
+previous occasions. He calls these demands blackmailing, and vows that
+to give them money again is to encourage them in their nefarious
+practices. Oh! he has been cruel to me, cruel!—for the first time in my
+life, Monsieur, my husband has made me unhappy, and if I lose my
+darling now I shall indeed be broken-hearted.”
+
+I was silent for a moment or two. I was beginning to wonder what part I
+should be expected to play in the tragedy which was being unfolded
+before me by this lovely and impecunious creature.
+
+“Madame la Comtesse,” I suggested tentatively, after a while, “your
+jewellery . . . you must have a vast number which you seldom wear . . .
+five thousand francs is soon made up. . . .”
+
+You see, Sir, my hopes of a really good remunerative business had by
+now dwindled down to vanishing point. All that was left of them was a
+vague idea that the beautiful Comtesse would perhaps employ me as an
+intermediary for the sale of some of her jewellery, in which case . . .
+But already her next words disillusioned me even on that point.
+
+“No, Monsieur,” she said; “what would be the use? Through one of the
+usual perverse tricks of fate, M. le Comte would be sure to inquire
+after the very piece of jewellery of which I had so disposed, and
+moreover . . .”
+
+“Moreover—yes, Mme. la Comtesse?”
+
+“Moreover, my husband is right,” she concluded decisively. “If I give
+in to those thieves to-day and pay them five thousand francs, they
+would only set to work to steal Carissimo again and demand ten thousand
+francs from me another time.”
+
+I was silent. What could I say? Her argument was indeed unanswerable.
+
+“No, my good M. Ratichon,” she said very determinedly after a while. “I
+have quite decided that you must confound those thieves. They have
+given me three days’ grace, as you see in their abominable letter. If
+after three days the money is not forthcoming, and if in the meanwhile
+I dare to set a trap for them or in any way communicate with the
+police, my darling Carissimo will be killed and my heart be broken.”
+
+“Madame la Comtesse,” I entreated, for of a truth I could not bear to
+see her cry again.
+
+“You must bring Carissimo back to me, M. Ratichon,” she continued
+peremptorily, “before those awful three days have elapsed.”
+
+“I swear that I will,” I rejoined solemnly; but I must admit that I did
+it entirely on the spur of the moment, for of a truth I saw no prospect
+whatever of being able to accomplish what she desired.
+
+“Without my paying a single louis to those execrable thieves,” the
+exquisite creature went on peremptorily,
+
+“It shall be done, Madame la Comtesse.”
+
+“And let me tell you,” she now added, with the sweetest and archest of
+smiles, “that if you succeed in this, M. le Comte de Nolé de St. Pris
+will gladly pay you the five thousand francs which he refuses to give
+to those miscreants.”
+
+Five thousand francs! A mist swam before my eyes,
+
+“Mais, Madame la Comtesse . . .” I stammered.
+
+“Oh!” she added, with an adorable uptilting of her little chin, “I am
+not promising what I cannot fulfil. M. le Comte de Nolé only said this
+morning, apropos of dog thieves, that he would gladly give ten thousand
+francs to anyone who succeeded in ridding society of such pests.”
+
+I could have knelt down on the hard floor, Sir, and . . .
+
+“Well then, Madame,” was my ready rejoinder, “why not ten thousand
+francs to me?”
+
+She bit her coral lips . . . but she also smiled. I could see that my
+personality and my manners had greatly impressed her.
+
+“I will only be responsible for the first five thousand,” she said
+lightly. “But, for the rest, I can confidently assure you that you will
+not find a miser in M. le Comte de Nolé de St. Pris.”
+
+I could have knelt down on the hard floor, Sir, and kissed her
+exquisitely shod feet. Five thousand francs certain! Perhaps ten! A
+fortune, Sir, in those days! One that would keep me in comfort—nay,
+affluence, until something else turned up. I was swimming in the
+empyrean and only came rudely to earth when I recollected that I should
+have to give Theodore something for his share of the business. Ah!
+fortunately that for the moment he was comfortably out of the way!
+Thoughts that perhaps he had been murdered after all once more coursed
+through my brain: not unpleasantly, I’ll admit. I would not have raised
+a finger to hurt the fellow, even though he had treated me with the
+basest ingratitude and treachery; but if someone else took the trouble
+to remove him, why indeed should I quarrel with fate?
+
+Back I came swiftly to the happy present. The lovely creature was
+showing me a beautifully painted miniature of Carissimo, a King Charles
+spaniel of no common type. This she suggested that I should keep by me
+for the present for purposes of identification. After this we had to go
+into the details of the circumstances under which she had lost her pet.
+She had been for a walk with him, it seems, along the Quai Voltaire,
+and was returning home by the side of the river, when suddenly a number
+of workmen in blouses and peaked caps came trooping out of a side
+street and obstructed her progress. She had Carissimo on the lead, and
+she at once admitted to me that at first she never thought of
+connecting this pushing and jostling rabble with any possible theft.
+She held her ground for awhile, facing the crowd: for a few moments she
+was right in the midst of it, and just then she felt the dog straining
+at the lead. She turned round at once with the intention of picking him
+up, when to her horror she saw that there was only a bundle of
+something weighty at the end of the lead, and that the dog had
+disappeared.
+
+The whole incident occurred, the lovely creature declared, within the
+space of thirty seconds; the next instant the crowd had scattered in
+several directions, the men running and laughing as they went. Mme. la
+Comtesse was left standing alone on the quay. Not a passer-by in sight,
+and the only gendarme visible, a long way down the Quai, had his back
+turned toward her. Nevertheless she ran and hied him, and presently he
+turned and, realizing that something was amiss, he too ran to meet her.
+He listened to her story, swore lustily, but shrugged his shoulders in
+token that the tale did not surprise him and that but little could be
+done. Nevertheless he at once summoned those of his colleagues who were
+on duty in the neighbourhood, and one of them went off immediately to
+notify the theft at the nearest commissariat of police. After which
+they all proceeded to a comprehensive scouring of the many tortuous
+sidestreets of the quartier; but, needless to say, there was no sign of
+Carissimo or of his abductors.
+
+That night my lovely client went home distracted.
+
+The following evening, when, broken-hearted, she wandered down the
+quays living over again the agonizing moments during which she lost her
+pet, a workman in a blue blouse, with a peaked cap pulled well over his
+eyes, lurched up against her and thrust into her hand the missive which
+she had just shown me. He then disappeared into the night, and she had
+only the vaguest possible recollection of his appearance.
+
+That, Sir, was the substance of the story which the lovely creature
+told me in a voice oft choked with tears. I questioned her very closely
+and in my most impressive professional manner as to the identity of any
+one man among the crowd who might have attracted her attention, but all
+that she could tell me was that she had a vague impression of a wizened
+hunchback with evil face, shaggy red beard and hair, and a black patch
+covering the left eye.
+
+2.
+
+Not much data to go on, you will, I think, admit, and I can assure you,
+Sir, that had I not possessed that unbounded belief in myself which is
+the true hall-mark of genius, I would at the outset have felt
+profoundly discouraged.
+
+As it was, I found just the right words of consolation and of hope
+wherewith to bow my brilliant client out of my humble apartments, and
+then to settle down to deep and considered meditation. Nothing, Sir, is
+so conducive to thought as a long, brisk walk through the crowded
+streets of Paris. So I brushed my coat, put on my hat at a becoming
+angle, and started on my way.
+
+I walked as far as Suresnes, and I thought. After that, feeling
+fatigued, I sat on the terrace of the Café Bourbon, overlooking the
+river. There I sipped my coffee and thought. I walked back into Paris
+in the evening, and still thought, and thought, and thought. After that
+I had some dinner, washed down by an agreeable bottle of wine—did I
+mention that the lovely creature had given me a hundred francs on
+account?—then I went for a stroll along the Quai Voltaire, and I may
+safely say that there is not a single side and tortuous street in its
+vicinity that I did not explore from end to end during the course of
+that never to be forgotten evening.
+
+But still my mind remained in a chaotic condition. I had not succeeded
+in forming any plan. What a quandary, Sir! Oh! what a quandary! Here
+was I, Hector Ratichon, the confidant of kings, the right hand of two
+emperors, set to the task of stealing a dog—for that is what I should
+have to do—from an unscrupulous gang of thieves whose identity, abode
+and methods were alike unknown to me. Truly, Sir, you will own that
+this was a herculean task.
+
+Vaguely my thoughts reverted to Theodore. He might have been of good
+counsel, for he knew more about thieves than I did, but the ungrateful
+wretch was out of the way on the one occasion when he might have been
+of use to me who had done so much for him. Indeed, my reason told me
+that I need not trouble my head about Theodore. He had vanished; that
+he would come back presently was, of course, an indubitable fact;
+people like Theodore never vanish completely. He would come back and
+demand I know not what, his share, perhaps, in a business which was so
+promising even if it was still so vague.
+
+Five thousand francs! A round sum! If I gave Theodore five hundred the
+sum would at once appear meagre, unimportant. Four thousand five
+hundred francs!—it did not even _sound_ well to my mind.
+
+So I took care that Theodore vanished from my mental vision as
+completely as he had done for the last two days from my ken, and as
+there was nothing more that could be done that evening, I turned my
+weary footsteps toward my lodgings at Passy.
+
+All that night, Sir, I lay wakeful and tossing in my bed, alternately
+fuming and rejecting plans for the attainment of that golden goal—the
+recovery of Mme. de Nolé’s pet dog. And the whole of the next day I
+spent in vain quest. I visited every haunt of ill-fame known to me
+within the city. I walked about with a pistol in my belt, a hunk of
+bread and cheese in my pocket, and slowly growing despair in my heart.
+
+In the evening Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé called for news of Carissimo,
+and I could give her none. She cried, Sir, and implored, and her tears
+and entreaties got on to my nerves until I felt ready to fall into
+hysterics. One more day and all my chances of a bright and wealthy
+future would have vanished. Unless the money was forthcoming on the
+morrow, the dog would be destroyed, and with him my every hope of that
+five thousand francs. And though she still irradiated charm and luxury
+from her entire lovely person, I begged her not to come to the office
+again, and promised that as soon as I had any news to impart I would at
+once present myself at her house in the Faubourg St. Germain.
+
+That night I never slept one wink. Think of it, Sir! The next few hours
+were destined to see me either a prosperous man for many days to come,
+or a miserable, helpless, disappointed wretch. At eight o’clock I was
+at my office. Still no news of Theodore. I could now no longer dismiss
+him from my mind. Something had happened to him, I could have no doubt.
+This anxiety, added to the other more serious one, drove me to a state
+bordering on frenzy. I hardly knew what I was doing. I wandered all day
+up and down the Quai Voltaire, and the Quai des Grands Augustins, and
+in and around the tortuous streets till I was dog-tired, distracted,
+half crazy.
+
+I went to the Morgue, thinking to find there Theodore’s dead body, and
+found myself vaguely looking for the mutilated corpse of Carissimo.
+Indeed, after a while Theodore and Carissimo became so inextricably
+mixed up in my mind that I could not have told you if I was seeking for
+the one or for the other and if Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé was now
+waiting to clasp her pet dog or my man-of-all-work to her exquisite
+bosom.
+
+She in the meanwhile had received a second, yet more peremptory,
+missive through the same channel as the previous one. A grimy deformed
+man, with ginger-coloured hair, and wearing a black patch over one eye,
+had been seen by one of the servants lolling down the street where
+Madame lived, and subsequently the concierge discovered that an
+exceedingly dirty scrap of paper had been thrust under the door of his
+lodge. The writer of the epistle demanded that Mme. la Comtesse should
+stand in person at six o’clock that same evening at the corner of the
+Rue Guénégaud, behind the Institut de France. Two men, each wearing a
+blue blouse and peaked cap, would meet her there. She must hand over
+the money to one of them, whilst the other would have Carissimo in his
+arms. The missive closed with the usual threats that if the police were
+mixed up in the affair, or the money not forthcoming, Carissimo would
+be destroyed.
+
+Six o’clock was the hour fixed by these abominable thieves for the
+final doom of Carissimo. It was now close on five. In a little more
+than an hour my last hope of five or ten thousand francs and a smile of
+gratitude from a pair of lovely lips would have gone, never again to
+return. A great access of righteous rage seized upon me. I determined
+that those miserable thieves, whoever they were, should suffer for the
+disappointment which I was now enduring. If I was to lose five thousand
+francs, they at least should not be left free to pursue their evil
+ways. I would communicate with the police; the police should meet the
+miscreants at the corner of the Rue Guénégaud. Carissimo would die; his
+lovely mistress would be brokenhearted. I would be left to mourn yet
+another illusion of a possible fortune, but they would suffer in gaol
+or in New Caledonia the consequences of all their misdeeds.
+
+Fortified by this resolution, I turned my weary footsteps in the
+direction of the gendarmerie where I intended to lodge my denunciation
+of those abominable thieves and blackmailers. The night was dark, the
+streets ill-lighted, the air bitterly cold. A thin drizzle, half rain,
+half snow, was descending, chilling me to the bone.
+
+I was walking rapidly along the river bank with my coat collar pulled
+up to my ears, and still instinctively peering up every narrow street
+which debouches on the quay. Then suddenly I spied Theodore. He was
+coming down the Rue Beaune, slouching along with head bent in his usual
+way. He appeared to be carrying something, not exactly heavy, but
+cumbersome, under his left arm. Within the next few minutes he would
+have been face to face with me, for I had come to a halt at the angle
+of the street, determined to have it out with the rascal then and there
+in spite of the cold and in spite of my anxiety about Carissimo.
+
+All of a sudden he raised his head and saw me, and in a second he
+turned on his heel and began to run up the street in the direction
+whence he had come. At once I gave chase. I ran after him—and then,
+Sir, he came for a second within the circle of light projected by a
+street lanthorn. But in that one second I had seen that which turned my
+frozen blood into liquid lava—a tail, Sir!—a dog’s tail, fluffy and
+curly, projecting from beneath that recreant’s left arm.
+
+A dog, Sir! a dog! Carissimo! the darling of Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé’s
+heart! Carissimo, the recovery of whom would mean five thousand francs
+into my pocket! Carissimo! I knew it! For me there existed but one dog
+in all the world; one dog and one spawn of the devil, one arch-traitor,
+one limb of Satan! Theodore!
+
+How he had come by Carissimo I had not time to conjecture. I called to
+him. I called his accursed name, using appellations which fell far
+short of those which he deserved. But the louder I called the faster he
+ran, and I, breathless, panting, ran after him, determined to run him
+to earth, fearful lest I should lose him in the darkness of the night.
+All down the Rue Beaune we ran, and already I could hear behind me the
+heavy and more leisured tramp of a couple of gendarmes who in their
+turn had started to give chase.
+
+I tell you, Sir, the sound lent wings to my feet. A chance—a last
+chance—was being offered me by a benevolent Fate to earn that five
+thousand francs, the keystone to my future fortune. If I had the
+strength to seize and hold Theodore until the gendarmes came up, and
+before he had time to do away with the dog, the five thousand francs
+could still be mine.
+
+So I ran, Sir, as I had never run before; the beads of perspiration
+poured down from my forehead; the breath came stertorous and hot from
+my heaving breast.
+
+Then suddenly Theodore disappeared!
+
+Disappeared, Sir, as if the earth had swallowed him up! A second ago I
+had seen him dimly, yet distinctly through the veil of snow and rain
+ahead of me, running with that unmistakable shuffling gait of his,
+hugging the dog closely under his arm. I had seen him—another effort
+and I might have touched him!—now the long and deserted street lay dark
+and mysterious before me, and behind me I could hear the measured tramp
+of the gendarmes and their peremptory call of “Halt, in the name of the
+King!”
+
+But not in vain, Sir, am I called Hector Ratichon; not in vain have
+kings and emperors reposed confidence in my valour and my presence of
+mind. In less time than it takes to relate I had already marked with my
+eye the very spot—down the street—where I had last seen Theodore. I
+hurried forward and saw at once that my surmise had been correct. At
+that very spot, Sir, there was a low doorway which gave on a dark and
+dank passage. The door itself was open. I did not hesitate. My life
+stood in the balance but I did not falter. I might be affronting within
+the next second or two a gang of desperate thieves, but I did not
+quake.
+
+I turned into that doorway, Sir; the next moment I felt a stunning blow
+between my eyes. I just remember calling out with all the strength of
+my lungs: “Police! Gendarmes! A moi!” Then nothing more.
+
+3.
+
+I woke with the consciousness of violent wordy warfare carried on
+around me. I was lying on the ground, and the first things I saw were
+three or four pairs of feet standing close together. Gradually out of
+the confused hubbub a few sentences struck my reawakened senses.
+
+“The man is drunk.”
+
+“I won’t have him inside the house.”
+
+“I tell you this is a respectable house.” This from a shrill feminine
+voice. “We’ve never had the law inside our doors before.”
+
+By this time I had succeeded in raising myself on my elbow, and, by the
+dim light of a hanging lamp somewhere down the passage, I was pretty
+well able to take stock of my surroundings.
+
+The half-dozen bedroom candlesticks on a table up against the wall, the
+row of keys hanging on hooks fixed to a board above, the glass
+partition with the words “Concierge” and “Réception” painted across it,
+all told me that this was one of those small, mostly squalid and
+disreputable lodging houses or hotels in which this quarter of Paris
+still abounds.
+
+The two gendarmes who had been running after me were arguing the matter
+of my presence here with the proprietor of the place and with the
+concierge.
+
+I struggled to my feet. Whereupon for the space of a solid two minutes
+I had to bear as calmly as I could the abuse and vituperation which the
+feminine proprietor of this “respectable house” chose to hurl at my
+unfortunate head. After which I obtained a hearing from the bewildered
+minions of the law. To them I gave as brief and succinct a narrative as
+I could of the events of the past three days. The theft of
+Carissimo—the disappearance of Theodore—my meeting him a while ago,
+with the dog under his arm—his second disappearance, this time within
+the doorway of this “respectable abode,” and finally the blow which
+alone had prevented me from running the abominable thief to earth.
+
+The gendarmes at first were incredulous. I could see that they were
+still under the belief that my excitement was due to over-indulgence in
+alcoholic liquor, whilst Madame the proprietress called me an
+abominable liar for daring to suggest that she harboured thieves within
+her doors. Then suddenly, as if in vindication of my character, there
+came from a floor above the sound of a loud, shrill bark.
+
+“Carissimo!” I cried triumphantly. Then I added in a rapid whisper,
+“Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé is rich. She spoke of a big reward for the
+recovery of her pet.”
+
+These happy words had the effect of stimulating the zeal of the
+gendarmes. Madame the proprietress grew somewhat confused and
+incoherent, and finally blurted it out that one of her lodgers—a highly
+respectable gentleman—did keep a dog, but that there was no crime in
+that surely.
+
+“One of your lodgers?” queried the representative of the law. “When did
+he come?”
+
+“About three days ago,” she replied sullenly.
+
+“What room does he occupy?”
+
+“Number twenty-five on the third floor.”
+
+“He came with his dog?” I interposed quickly, “a spaniel?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And your lodger, is he an ugly, slouchy creature—with hooked nose,
+bleary eyes and shaggy yellow hair?”
+
+But to this she vouchsafed no reply.
+
+Already the matter had passed out of my hands. One of the gendarmes
+prepared to go upstairs and bade me follow him, whilst he ordered his
+comrade to remain below and on no account to allow anyone to enter or
+leave the house. The proprietress and concierge were warned that if
+they interfered with the due execution of the law they would be
+severely dealt with; after which we went upstairs.
+
+For a while, as we ascended, we could hear the dog barking furiously,
+then, presently, just as we reached the upper landing, we heard a loud
+curse, a scramble, and then a piteous whine quickly smothered.
+
+My very heart stood still. The next moment, however, the gendarme had
+kicked open the door of No. 25, and I followed him into the room. The
+place looked dirty and squalid in the extreme—just the sort of place I
+should have expected Theodore to haunt. It was almost bare save for a
+table in the centre, a couple of rickety chairs, a broken-down bedstead
+and an iron stove in the corner. On the table a tallow candle was
+spluttering and throwing a very feeble circle of light around.
+
+At first glance I thought that the room was empty, then suddenly I
+heard another violent expletive and became aware of a man sitting close
+beside the iron stove. He turned to stare at us as we entered, but to
+my surprise it was not Theodore’s ugly face which confronted us. The
+man sitting there alone in the room where I had expected to see
+Theodore and Carissimo had a shaggy beard of an undoubted ginger hue.
+He had on a blue blouse and a peaked cap; beneath his cap his lank hair
+protruded more decided in colour even than his beard. His head was sunk
+between his shoulders, and right across his face, from the left eyebrow
+over the cheek and as far as his ear, he had a hideous crimson scar,
+which told up vividly against the ghastly pallor of his face.
+
+But there was no sign of Theodore!
+
+At first my friend the gendarme was quite urbane. He asked very
+politely to see Monsieur’s pet dog. Monsieur denied all knowledge of a
+dog, which denial only tended to establish his own guilt and the
+veracity of mine own narrative. The gendarme thereupon became more
+peremptory and the man promptly lost his temper.
+
+I, in the meanwhile, was glancing round the room and soon spied a wall
+cupboard which had obviously been deliberately screened by the
+bedstead. While my companion was bringing the whole majesty of the law
+to bear upon the miscreant’s denegations I calmly dragged the bedstead
+aside and opened the cupboard door.
+
+An ejaculation from my quivering throat brought the gendarme to my
+side. Crouching in the dark recess of the wall cupboard was
+Carissimo—not dead, thank goodness! but literally shaking with terror.
+I pulled him out as gently as I could, for he was so frightened that he
+growled and snapped viciously at me. I handed him to the gendarme, for
+by the side of Carissimo I had seen something which literally froze my
+blood within my veins. It was Theodore’s hat and coat, which he had
+been wearing when I chased him to this house of mystery and of
+ill-fame, and wrapped together with it was a rag all smeared with
+blood, whilst the same hideous stains were now distinctly visible on
+the door of the cupboard itself.
+
+I turned to the gendarme, who at once confronted the abominable
+malefactor with the obvious proofs of a horrible crime. But the
+depraved wretch stood by, Sir, perfectly calm and with a cynicism in
+his whole bearing which I had never before seen equalled!
+
+“I know nothing about that coat,” he asserted with a shrug of the
+shoulders, “nor about the dog.”
+
+The gendarme by this time was purple with fury.
+
+“Not know anything about the dog?” he exclaimed in a voice choked with
+righteous indignation. “Why, he . . . he barked!”
+
+But this indisputable fact in no way disconcerted the miscreant.
+
+“I heard a dog yapping,” he said with consummate impudence, “but I
+thought he was in the next room. No wonder,” he added coolly, “since he
+was in a wall cupboard.”
+
+“A wall cupboard,” the gendarme rejoined triumphantly, “situated in the
+very room which you occupy at this moment.”
+
+“That is a mistake, my friend,” the cynical wretch retorted, undaunted.
+“I do not occupy this room. I do not lodge in this hotel at all.”
+
+“Then how came you to be here?”
+
+“I came on a visit to a friend who happened to be out when I arrived. I
+found a pleasant fire here, and I sat down to warm myself. Your noisy
+and unwarranted irruption into this room has so bewildered me that I no
+longer know whether I am standing on my head or on my heels.”
+
+“We’ll show you soon enough what you are standing on, my fine fellow,”
+the gendarme riposted with breezy, cheerfulness. “Allons!”
+
+I must say that the pampered minion of the law arose splendidly to the
+occasion. He seized the miscreant by the arm and took him downstairs,
+there to confront him with the proprietress of the establishment, while
+I—with marvellous presence of mind—took possession of Carissimo and hid
+him as best I could beneath my coat.
+
+In the hall below a surprise and a disappointment were in store for me.
+I had reached the bottom of the stairs when the shrill feminine accents
+of Mme. the proprietress struck unpleasantly on my ear.
+
+“No! no! I tell you!” she was saying. “This man is not my lodger. He
+never came here with a dog. There,” she added volubly, and pointing an
+unwashed finger at Carissimo who was struggling and growling in my
+arms, “there is the dog. A gentleman brought him with him last
+Wednesday, when he inquired if he could have a room here for a few
+nights. Number twenty-five happened to be vacant, and I have no
+objection to dogs. I let the gentleman have the room, and he paid me
+twenty sous in advance when he took possession and told me he would
+keep the room three nights.”
+
+“The gentleman? What gentleman?” the gendarme queried, rather inanely I
+thought.
+
+“My lodger,” the woman replied. “He is out for the moment, but he will
+be back presently I make no doubt. The dog is his. . . .”
+
+“What is he like?” the minion of the law queried abruptly.
+
+“Who? the dog?” she retorted impudently.
+
+“No, no! Your lodger.”
+
+Once more the unwashed finger went up and pointed straight at me.
+
+“He described him well enough just now; thin and slouchy in his ways.
+He has lank, yellow hair, a nose perpetually crimson—with the cold no
+doubt—and pale, watery eyes. . . .”
+
+“Theodore,” I exclaimed mentally.
+
+Bewildered, the gendarme pointed to his prisoner.
+
+“But this man . . . ?” he queried.
+
+“Why,” the proprietress replied. “I have seen Monsieur twice, or was it
+three times? He would visit number twenty-five now and then.”
+
+I will not weary you with further accounts of the close examination to
+which the representative of the law subjected the personnel of the
+squalid hotel. The concierge and the man of all work did indeed confirm
+what the proprietress said, and whilst my friend the gendarme —puzzled
+and floundering—was scratching his head in complete bewilderment, I
+thought that the opportunity had come for me to slip quietly out by the
+still open door and make my way as fast as I could to the sumptuous
+abode in the Faubourg St. Germain, where the gratitude of Mme. de Nolé,
+together with five thousand francs, were even now awaiting me.
+
+After Madame the proprietress had identified Carissimo, I had once more
+carefully concealed him under my coat. I was ready to seize my
+opportunity, after which I would be free to deal with the matter of
+Theodore’s amazing disappearance. Unfortunately just at this moment the
+little brute gave a yap, and the minion of the law at once interposed
+and took possession of him.
+
+“The dog belongs to the police now, Sir,” he said sternly.
+
+The fatuous jobbernowl wanted his share of the reward, you see.
+
+4.
+
+Having been forced thus to give up Carissimo, and with him all my hopes
+of a really substantial fortune, I was determined to make the
+red-polled miscreant suffer for my disappointment, and the minions of
+the law sweat in the exercise of their duty.
+
+I demanded Theodore! My friend, my comrade, my right hand! I had seen
+him not ten minutes ago, carrying in his arms this very dog, whom I had
+subsequently found inside a wall cupboard beside a blood-stained coat.
+Where was Theodore? Pointing an avenging finger at the red-headed
+reprobate, I boldly accused him of having murdered my friend with a
+view to robbing him of the reward offered for the recovery of the dog.
+
+This brought a new train of thought into the wooden pates of the
+gendarmes. A quartet of them had by this time assembled within the
+respectable precincts of the Hôtel des Cadets. One of them—senior to
+the others—at once dispatched a younger comrade to the nearest
+commissary of police for advice and assistance.
+
+Then he ordered us all into the room pompously labelled “Réception,”
+and there proceeded once more to interrogate us all, making copious
+notes in his leather-bound book all the time, whilst I, moaning and
+lamenting the loss of my faithful friend and man of all work, loudly
+demanded the punishment of his assassin.
+
+Theodore’s coat, his hat, the blood-stained rag, had all been brought
+down from No. 25 and laid out upon the table ready for the inspection
+of M. the Commissary of Police.
+
+That gentleman arrived with two private agents, armed with full powers
+and wrapped in the magnificent imperturbability of the law. The
+gendarme had already put him _au fait_ of the events, and as soon as he
+was seated behind the table upon which reposed the “pièces de
+conviction,” he in his turn proceeded to interrogate the ginger-pated
+miscreant.
+
+But strive how he might, M. the Commissary elicited no further
+information from him than that which we all already possessed. The man
+gave his name as Aristide Nicolet. He had no fixed abode. He had come
+to visit his friend who lodged in No. 25 in the Hôtel des Cadets. Not
+finding him at home he had sat by the fire and had waited for him. He
+knew absolutely nothing of the dog and absolutely nothing of the
+whereabouts of Theodore.
+
+“We’ll soon see about that!” asserted M. the Commissary.
+
+He ordered a perquisition of every room and every corner of the hotel,
+Madame the proprietress loudly lamenting that she and her respectable
+house would henceforth be disgraced for ever. But the thieves—whoever
+they were—were clever. Not a trace of any illicit practice was found on
+the premises—and not a trace of Theodore.
+
+Had he indeed been murdered? The thought now had taken root in my mind.
+For the moment I had even forgotten Carissimo and my vanished five
+thousand francs.
+
+Well, Sir! Aristide Nicolet was marched off to the depot—still
+protesting his innocence. The next day he was confronted with Mme. la
+Comtesse de Nolé, who could not say more than that he might have formed
+part of the gang who had jostled her on the Quai Voltaire, whilst the
+servant who had taken the missive from him failed to recognize him.
+
+Carissimo was restored to the arms of his loving mistress, but the
+reward for his recovery had to be shared between the police and myself:
+three thousand francs going to the police who apprehended the thief,
+and two thousand to me who had put them on the track.
+
+It was not a fortune, Sir, but I had to be satisfied. But in the
+meanwhile the disappearance of Theodore had remained an unfathomable
+mystery. No amount of questionings and cross-questionings, no amount of
+confrontations and perquisitions, had brought any new matter to light.
+Aristide Nicolet persisted in his statements, as did the proprietress
+and the concierge of the Hôtel des Cadets in theirs. Theodore had
+undoubtedly occupied room No. 25 in the hotel during the three days
+while I was racking my brain as to what had become of him. I equally
+undoubtedly saw him for a few moments running up the Rue Beaune with
+Carissimo’s tail projecting beneath his coat. Then he entered the open
+doorway of the hotel, and henceforth his whereabouts remained a
+baffling mystery.
+
+Beyond his coat and hat, the stained rag and the dog himself, there was
+not the faintest indication of what became of him after that. The
+concierge vowed that he did not enter the hotel—Aristide Nicolet vowed
+that he did not enter No. 25. But then the dog was in the cupboard, and
+so were the hat and coat; and even the police were bound to admit that
+in the short space of time between my last glimpse of Theodore and the
+gendarme’s entry into room 25 it would be impossible for the most
+experienced criminal on earth to murder a man, conceal every trace of
+the crime, and so to dispose of the body as to baffle the most minute
+inquiry and the most exhaustive search.
+
+Sometimes when I thought the whole matter out I felt that I was growing
+crazy.
+
+5.
+
+Thus about a week or ten days went by and I had just come reluctantly
+to the conclusion that there must be some truth in the old mediaeval
+legends which tell us that the devil runs away with his elect from time
+to time, when I received a summons from M. the Commissary of Police to
+present myself at his bureau.
+
+He was pleasant and urbane as usual, but to my anxious query after
+Theodore he only gave me the old reply: “No trace of him can be found.”
+
+Then he added: “We must therefore take it for granted, my good M.
+Ratichon, that your man of all work is—of his own free will—keeping out
+of the way. The murder theory is untenable; we have had to abandon it.
+The total disappearance of the body is an unanswerable argument against
+it. Would you care to offer a reward for information leading to the
+recovery of your missing friend?”
+
+I hesitated. I certainly was not prepared to pay anyone for finding
+Theodore.
+
+“Think it over, my good M. Ratichon,” rejoined M. le Commissaire
+pleasantly. “But in the meanwhile I must tell you that we have decided
+to set Aristide Nicolet free. There is not a particle of evidence
+against him either in the matter of the dog or of that of your friend.
+Mme. de Nolé’s servants cannot swear to his identity, whilst you have
+sworn that you last saw the dog in your man’s arms. That being so, I
+feel that we have no right to detain an innocent man.”
+
+Well, Sir, what could I say? I knew well enough that there was not a
+tittle of solid evidence against the man Nicolet, nor had I the power
+to move the police of His Majesty the King from their decision. In my
+heart of hearts I had the firm conviction that the ginger-polled
+ruffian knew all about Carissimo and all about the present whereabouts
+of that rascal Theodore. But what could I say, Sir? What could I do?
+
+I went home that night to my lodgings at Passy more perplexed than ever
+I had been in my life before.
+
+The next morning I arrived at my office soon after nine. The problem
+had presented itself to me during the night of finding a new man of all
+work who would serve me on the same terms as that ungrateful wretch
+Theodore.
+
+I mounted the stairs with a heavy step and opened the outer door of my
+apartment with my private key; and then, Sir, I assure you that for one
+brief moment I felt that my knees were giving way under me and that I
+should presently measure my full length on the floor.
+
+There, sitting at the table in my private room, was Theodore. He had
+donned one of the many suits of clothes which I always kept at the
+office for purposes of my business, and he was calmly consuming a
+luscious sausage which was to have been part of my dinner today, and
+finishing a half-bottle of my best Bordeaux.
+
+He appeared wholly unconscious of his enormities, and when I taxed him
+with his villainies and plied him with peremptory questions he met me
+with a dogged silence and a sulky attitude which I have never seen
+equalled in all my life. He flatly denied that he had ever walked the
+streets of Paris with a dog under his arm, or that I had ever chased
+him up the Rue Beaune. He denied ever having lodged in the Hôtel des
+Cadets, or been acquainted with its proprietress, or with a red-polled,
+hunchback miscreant named Aristide Nicolet. He denied that the coat and
+hat found in room No. 25 were his; in fact, he denied everything, and
+with an impudence, Sir, which was past belief.
+
+But he put the crown to his insolence when he finally demanded two
+hundred francs from me: his share in the sum paid to me by Mme. de Nolé
+for the recovery of her dog. He demanded this, Sir, in the name of
+justice and of equity, and even brandished our partnership contract in
+my face.
+
+I was so irate at his audacity, so disgusted that presently I felt that
+I could not bear the sight of him any longer. I turned my back on him
+and walked out of my own private room, leaving him there still munching
+my sausage and drinking my Bordeaux.
+
+I was going through the antechamber with a view to going out into the
+street for a little fresh air when something in the aspect of the
+chair-bedstead on which that abominable brute Theodore had apparently
+spent the night attracted my attention. I turned over one of the
+cushions, and with a cry of rage which I took no pains to suppress I
+seized upon what I found lying beneath: a blue linen blouse, Sir, a
+peaked cap, a ginger-coloured wig and beard!
+
+The villain! The abominable mountebank! The wretch! The . . . I was
+wellnigh choking with wrath.
+
+With the damning pieces of conviction in my hand, I rushed back into
+the inner room. Already my cry of indignation had aroused the vampire
+from his orgy. He stood before me sheepish, grinning, and taunted me,
+Sir—taunted me for my blindness in not recognizing him under the
+disguise of the so-called Aristide Nicolet.
+
+It was a disguise which he had kept by him in case of an emergency when
+first he decided to start business as a dog thief. Carissimo had been
+his first serious venture and but for my interference it would have
+been a wholly successful one. He had worked the whole thing out with
+marvellous cleverness, being greatly assisted by Madame Sand, the
+proprietress of the Hôtel des Cadets, who was a friend of his mother’s.
+The lady, it seems, carried on a lucrative business of the same sort
+herself, and she undertook to furnish him with the necessary
+confederates for the carrying out of his plan. The proceeds of the
+affair were to be shared equally between himself and Madame; the
+confederates, who helped to jostle Mme. de Nolé whilst her dog was
+being stolen, were to receive five francs each for their trouble.
+
+When he met me at the corner of the Rue Beaune he was on his way to the
+Rue Guénégaud, hoping to exchange Carissimo for five thousand francs.
+When he met me, however, he felt that the best thing to do for the
+moment was to seek safety in flight. He had only just time to run back
+to the hotel to warn Mme. Sand of my approach and beg her to detain me
+at any cost. Then he flew up the stairs, changed into his disguise,
+Carissimo barking all the time furiously. Whilst he was trying to
+pacify the dog, the latter bit him severely in the arm, drawing a good
+deal of blood—the crimson scar across his face was a last happy
+inspiration which put the finishing touch to his disguise and to the
+hoodwinking of the police and of me. He had only just time to staunch
+the blood from his arm and to thrust his own clothes and Carissimo into
+the wall cupboard when the gendarme and I burst in upon him.
+
+I could only gasp. For one brief moment the thought rushed through my
+mind that I would denounce him to the police for . . . for . . .
+
+But that was just the trouble. Of what could I accuse him? Of murdering
+himself or of stealing Mme. de Nolé’s dog? The commissary would hardly
+listen to such a tale . . . and it would make me seem ridiculous. . . .
+
+So I gave Theodore the soundest thrashing he ever had in his life, and
+fifty francs to keep his mouth shut.
+
+But did I not tell you that he was a monster of ingratitude?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. — THE TOYS
+
+1.
+
+You are right, Sir, I very seldom speak of my halcyon days—those days
+when the greatest monarch the world has ever known honoured me with his
+intimacy and confidence. I had my office in the Rue St. Roch then, at
+the top of a house just by the church, and not a stone’s throw from the
+palace, and I can tell you, Sir, that in those days ministers of state,
+foreign ambassadors, aye! and members of His Majesty’s household, were
+up and down my staircase at all hours of the day. I had not yet met
+Theodore then, and fate was wont to smile on me.
+
+As for M. le Duc d’Otrante, Minister of Police, he would send to me or
+for me whenever an intricate case required special acumen,
+resourcefulness and secrecy. Thus in the matter of the English
+files—have I told you of it before? No? Well, then, you shall hear.
+
+Those were the days, Sir, when the Emperor’s Berlin Decrees were going
+to sweep the world clear of English commerce and of English enterprise.
+It was not a case of paying heavy duty on English goods, or a still
+heavier fine if you smuggled; it was total prohibition, and hanging if
+you were caught bringing so much as a metre of Bradford cloth or half a
+dozen Sheffield files into the country. But you know how it is, Sir:
+the more strict the law the more ready are certain lawless human
+creatures to break it. Never was smuggling so rife as it was in those
+days—I am speaking now of 1810 or 11—never was it so daring or
+smugglers so reckless.
+
+M. le Duc d’Otrante had his hands full, I can tell you. It had become a
+matter for the secret police; the coastguard or customs officials were
+no longer able to deal with it.
+
+Then one day Hypolite Leroux came to see me. I knew the man well—a keen
+sleuthhound if ever there was one—and well did he deserve his name, for
+he was as red as a fox.
+
+“Ratichon,” he said to me, without preamble, as soon as he had seated
+himself opposite to me, and I had placed half a bottle of good Bordeaux
+and a couple of glasses on the table. “I want your help in the matter
+of these English files. We have done all that we can in our department.
+M. le Duc has doubled the customs personnel on the Swiss frontier, the
+coastguard is both keen and efficient, and yet we know that at the
+present moment there are thousands of English files used in this
+country, even inside His Majesty’s own armament works. M. le Duc
+d’Otrante is determined to put an end to the scandal. He has offered a
+big reward for information which will lead to the conviction of one or
+more of the chief culprits, and I am determined to get that reward—with
+your help, if you will give it.”
+
+“What is the reward?” I asked simply.
+
+“Five thousand francs,” he replied. “Your knowledge of English and
+Italian is what caused me to offer you a share in this splendid
+enterprise—”
+
+“It’s no good lying to me, Leroux,” I broke in quietly, “if we are
+going to work amicably together.”
+
+He swore.
+
+“The reward is ten thousand francs.” I made the shot at a venture,
+knowing my man well.
+
+“I swear that it is not,” he asserted hotly.
+
+“Swear again,” I retorted, “for I’ll not deal with you for less than
+five thousand.”
+
+He did swear again and protested loudly. But I was firm.
+
+“Have another glass of wine,” I said.
+
+After which he gave in.
+
+The affair was bound to be risky. Smugglers of English goods were
+determined and desperate men who were playing for high stakes and
+risking their necks on the board. In all matters of smuggling a
+knowledge of foreign languages was an invaluable asset. I spoke Italian
+well and knew some English. I knew my worth. We both drank a glass of
+cognac and sealed our bond then and there.
+
+After which Leroux drew his chair closer to my desk.
+
+“Listen, then,” he said. “You know the firm of Fournier Frères, in the
+Rue Colbert?”
+
+“By name, of course. Cutlers and surgical instrument makers by
+appointment to His Majesty. What about them?”
+
+“M. le Duc has had his eyes on them for some time.”
+
+“Fournier Frères!” I ejaculated. “Impossible! A more reputable firm
+does not exist in France.”
+
+“I know, I know,” he rejoined impatiently. “And yet it is a curious
+fact that M. Aristide Fournier, the junior partner, has lately bought
+for himself a house at St. Claude.”
+
+“At St. Claude?” I ejaculated.
+
+“Yes,” he responded dryly. “Very near to Gex, what?”
+
+I shrugged my shoulders, for indeed the circumstances did appear
+somewhat strange.
+
+Do you know Gex, my dear Sir? Ah, it is a curious and romantic spot. It
+has possibilities, both natural and political, which appear to have
+been expressly devised for the benefit of the smuggling fraternity.
+Nestling in the midst of the Jura mountains, it is outside the customs
+zone of the Empire. So you see the possibilities, do you not? Gex soon
+became the picturesque warehouse of every conceivable kind of
+contraband goods. On one side of it there was the Swiss frontier, and
+the Swiss Government was always willing to close one eye in the matter
+of customs provided its palm was sufficiently greased by the
+light-fingered gentry. No difficulty, therefore, as you see, in getting
+contraband goods—even English ones—as far as Gex.
+
+Here they could be kept hidden until a fitting opportunity occurred for
+smuggling them into France, opportunities for which the Jura, with
+their narrow defiles and difficult mountain paths, afforded magnificent
+scope. St. Claude, of which Leroux had just spoken as the place where
+M. Aristide Fournier had recently bought himself a house, is in France,
+only a few kilometres from the neutral zone of Gex. It seemed a strange
+spot to choose for a wealthy and fashionable member of Parisian
+bourgeois society, I was bound to admit.
+
+“But,” I mused, “one cannot go to Gex without a permit from the
+police.”
+
+“Not by road,” Leroux assented. “But you will own that there are means
+available to men who are young and vigorous like M. Fournier, who
+moreover, I understand, is an accomplished mountaineer. You know Gex,
+of course?”
+
+I had crossed the Jura once, in my youth, but was not very intimately
+familiar with the district. Leroux had a carefully drawn-out map of it
+in his pocket; this he laid out before me.
+
+“These two roads,” he began, tracing the windings of a couple of thin
+red lines on the map with the point of his finger, “are the only two
+made ones that lead in and out of the district. Here is the Valserine,”
+he went on, pointing to a blue line, “which flows from north to south,
+and both the roads wind over bridges that span the river close to our
+frontier. The French customs stations are on our side of those bridges.
+But, besides those two roads, the frontier can, of course, be crossed
+by one or other of the innumerable mountain tracks which are only
+accessible to pedestrians or mules. That is where our customs officials
+are powerless, for the tracks are precipitous and offer unlimited cover
+to those who know every inch of the ground. Several of them lead
+directly into St. Claude, at some considerable distance from the
+customs stations, and it is these tracks which are being used by M.
+Aristide Fournier for the felonious purpose of trading with the
+enemy—on this I would stake my life. But I mean to be even with him,
+and if I get the help which I require from you, I am convinced that I
+can lay him by the heels.”
+
+“I am your man,” I concluded simply.
+
+“Very well,” he resumed. “Are you prepared to journey with me to Gex?”
+
+“When do you start?”
+
+“To-day.”
+
+“I shall be ready.”
+
+He gave a deep sigh of satisfaction.
+
+“Then listen to my plan,” he said. “We’ll journey together as far as
+St. Claude; from there you will push on to Gex, and take up your abode
+in the city, styling yourself an interpreter. This will give you the
+opportunity of mixing with some of the smuggling fraternity, and it
+will be your duty to keep both your eyes and ears open. I, on the other
+hand, will take up my quarters at Mijoux, the French customs station,
+which is on the frontier, about half a dozen kilometres from Gex. Every
+day I’ll arrange to meet you, either at the latter place or somewhere
+half-way, and hear what news you may have to tell me. And mind,
+Ratichon,” he added sternly, “it means running straight, or the reward
+will slip through our fingers.”
+
+I chose to ignore the coarse insinuation, and only riposted quietly:
+
+“I must have money on account. I am a poor man, and will be out of
+pocket by the transaction from the hour I start for Gex to that when
+you pay me my fair share of the reward.”
+
+By way of a reply he took out a case from his pocket. I saw that it was
+bulging over with banknotes, which confirmed me in my conviction both
+that he was actually an emissary of the Minister of Police and that I
+could have demanded an additional thousand francs without fear of
+losing the business.
+
+“I’ll give you five hundred on account,” he said as he licked his ugly
+thumb preparatory to counting out the money before me.
+
+“Make it a thousand,” I retorted; “and call it ‘additional,’ not ‘on
+account.’”
+
+He tried to argue.
+
+“I am not keen on the business,” I said with calm dignity, “so if you
+think that I am asking too much—there are others, no doubt, who would
+do the work for less.”
+
+It was a bold move. But it succeeded. Leroux laughed and shrugged his
+shoulders. Then he counted out ten hundred-franc notes and laid them
+out upon the desk. But before I could touch them he laid his large bony
+hands over the lot and, looking me straight between the eyes, he said
+with earnest significance:
+
+“English files are worth as much as twenty francs apiece in the
+market.”
+
+“I know.”
+
+“Fournier Frères would not take the risks which they are doing for a
+consignment of less than ten thousand.”
+
+“I doubt if they would,” I rejoined blandly.
+
+“It will be your business to find out how and when the smugglers
+propose to get their next consignment over the frontier.”
+
+“Exactly.”
+
+“And to communicate any information you may have obtained to me.”
+
+“And to keep an eye on the valuable cargo, of course?” I concluded.
+
+“Yes,” he said roughly, “an eye. But hands off, understand, my good
+Ratichon, or there’ll be trouble.”
+
+He did not wait to hear my indignant protest. He had risen to his feet,
+and had already turned to go. Now he stretched his great coarse hand
+out to me.
+
+“All in good part, eh?”
+
+I took his hand. He meant no harm, did old Leroux. He was just a
+common, vulgar fellow who did not know a gentleman when he saw one.
+
+And we parted the best of friends.
+
+2.
+
+A week later I was at Gex. At St. Claude I had parted from Leroux, and
+then hired a chaise to take me to my destination. It was a matter of
+fifteen kilometres by road over the frontier of the customs zone and
+through the most superb scenery I had ever seen in my life. We drove
+through narrow gorges, on each side of which the mountain heights rose
+rugged and precipitous to incalculable altitudes above. From time to
+time only did I get peeps of almost imperceptible tracks along the
+declivities, tracks on which it seemed as if goats alone could obtain a
+footing. Once—hundreds of feet above me—I spied a couple of mules
+descending what seemed like a sheer perpendicular path down the
+mountain side. The animals appeared to be heavily laden, and I
+marvelled what forbidden goods lay hidden within their packs and
+whether in the days that were to come I too should be called upon to
+risk my life on those declivities following in the footsteps of the
+reckless and desperate criminals whom it was my duty to pursue.
+
+I confess that at the thought, and with those pictures of grim nature
+before me, I felt an unpleasant shiver coursing down my spine.
+
+Nothing of importance occurred during the first fortnight of my sojourn
+at Gex. I was installed in moderately comfortable, furnished rooms in
+the heart of the city, close to the church and market square. In one of
+my front windows, situated on the ground floor, I had placed a card
+bearing the inscription: “Aristide Barrot, Interpreter,” and below,
+“Anglais, Allemand, Italien.” I had even had a few
+clients—conversations between the local police and some poor wretches
+caught in the act of smuggling a few yards of Swiss silk or a couple of
+cream cheeses over the French frontier, and sent back to Gex to be
+dealt with by the local authorities.
+
+Leroux had found lodgings at Mijoux, and twice daily he walked over to
+Gex to consult with me. We met, mornings and evenings, at the café
+restaurant of the Crâne Chauve, an obscure little tavern situated on
+the outskirts of the city. He was waxing impatient at what he called my
+supineness, for indeed so far I had had nothing to report.
+
+There was no sign of M. Aristide Fournier. No one in Gex appeared to
+know anything about him, though the proprietor of the principal hotel
+in the town did recollect having had a visitor of that name once or
+twice during the past year. But, of course, during this early stage of
+my stay in the town it was impossible for me to believe anything that I
+was told. I had not yet succeeded in winning the confidence of the
+inhabitants, and it was soon pretty evident to me that the whole
+countryside was engaged in the perilous industry of smuggling. Everyone
+from the mayor downwards did a bit of a deal now and again in
+contraband goods. In ordinary cases it only meant fines if one was
+caught, or perhaps imprisonment for repeated offenses.
+
+But four or five days after my arrival at Gex I saw three fellows
+handed over to the police of the department. They had been caught in
+the act of trying to ford the Valserine with half a dozen pack-mules
+laden with English cloth. They were hanged at St. Claude two days
+later.
+
+I can assure you, Sir, that the news of this summary administration of
+justice sent another cold shiver down my spine, and I marvelled if
+indeed Leroux’s surmises were correct and if a respectable tradesman
+like Aristide Fournier would take such terrible risks even for the sake
+of heavy gains.
+
+I had been in Gex just a fortnight when the weather, which hitherto had
+been splendid, turned to squalls and storms. We were then in the second
+week of September. A torrential rain had fallen the whole of one day,
+during which I had only been out in order to meet Leroux, as usual, at
+the Café du Crâne Chauve. I had just come home from our evening
+meeting—it was then ten o’clock—and I was preparing to go comfortably
+to bed, when I was startled by a violent ring at the front-door bell.
+
+I had only just time to wonder if this belated visitor desired to see
+me or my worthy landlady, Mme. Bournon, when her heavy footsteps
+resounded along the passage. The next moment I heard my name spoken
+peremptorily by a harsh voice, and Mme. Bournon’s reply that M.
+Aristide Barrot was indeed within. A few seconds later she ushered my
+nocturnal visitor into my room.
+
+He was wrapped in a dark mantle from head to foot, and he wore a
+wide-brimmed hat pulled right over his eyes. He did not remove either
+as he addressed me without further preamble.
+
+“You are an interpreter, Sir?” he queried, speaking very rapidly and in
+sharp commanding tones.
+
+“At your service,” I replied.
+
+“My name is Ernest Berty. I want you to come with me at once to my
+house. I require your services as intermediary between myself and some
+men who have come to see me on business. These men whom I wish you to
+see are Russians,” he added, I fancied as an afterthought, “but they
+speak English fluently.”
+
+I suppose that I looked just as I felt—somewhat dubious owing to the
+lateness of the hour and the darkness of the night, not to speak of the
+abominable weather, for he continued with marked impatience:
+
+“It is imperative that you should come at once. Though my house is at
+some little distance from here, I have a chaise outside which will also
+bring you back, and,” he added significantly, “I will pay you whatever
+you demand.”
+
+“It is very late,” I demurred, “the weather—”
+
+“Your fee, man!” he broke in roughly, “and let’s get on!”
+
+“Five hundred francs,” I said at a venture.
+
+“Come!” was his curt reply. “I will give you the money as we drive
+along.”
+
+I wished I had made it a thousand; apparently my services were worth a
+great deal to him. However, I picked up my mantle and my hat, and
+within a few seconds was ready to go. I shouted up to Mme. Bournon that
+I would not be home for a couple of hours, but that as I had my key I
+need not disturb her when I returned.
+
+Once outside the door I almost regretted my ready acquiescence in this
+nocturnal adventure. The rain was beating down unmercifully, and at
+first I saw no sign of a vehicle; but in answer to my visitor’s sharp
+command I followed him down the street as far as the market square, at
+the corner of which I spied the dim outline of a carriage and a couple
+of horses.
+
+Without wasting too many words, M. Ernest Berty bundled me into the
+carriage, and very soon we were on the way. The night was impenetrably
+dark and the chaise more than ordinarily rickety. I had but little
+opportunity to ascertain which way we were going. A small lanthorn
+fixed opposite to me in the interior of the carriage, and flickering
+incessantly before my eyes, made it still more impossible for me to see
+anything outside the narrow window. My companion sat beside me, silent
+and absorbed. After a while I ventured to ask him which way we were
+driving.
+
+“Through the town,” he replied curtly. “My house is just outside
+Divonne.”
+
+Now, Divonne is, as I knew, quite close to the Swiss frontier. It is a
+matter of seven or eight kilometres—an hour’s drive at the very least
+in this supremely uncomfortable vehicle. I tried to induce further
+conversation, but made no headway against my companion’s taciturnity.
+However, I had little cause for complaint in another direction. After
+the first quarter of an hour, and when we had left the cobblestones of
+the city behind us, he drew a bundle of notes from his pocket, and by
+the flickering light of the lanthorn he counted out ten fifty-franc
+notes and handed them without another word to me.
+
+The drive was unspeakably wearisome; but after a while I suppose that
+the monotonous rumbling of the wheels and the incessant patter of the
+rain against the window-panes lulled me into a kind of torpor. Certain
+it is that presently—much sooner than I had anticipated—the chaise drew
+up with a jerk, and I was roused to full consciousness by hearing M.
+Berty’s voice saying curtly:
+
+“Here we are! Come with me!”
+
+I was stiff, Sir, and I was shivering—not so much with cold as with
+excitement. You will readily understand that all my faculties were now
+on the qui vive. Somehow or other during the wearisome drive by the
+side of my close-tongued companion my mind had fastened on the
+certitude that my adventure of this night bore a close connexion to the
+firm of Fournier Frères and to the English files which were causing so
+many sleepless nights to M. le Duc d’Otrante, Minister of Police.
+
+But nothing in my manner, as I stepped out of the carriage under the
+porch of the house which loomed dark and massive out of the surrounding
+gloom, betrayed anything of what I felt. Outwardly I was just a worthy
+bourgeois, an interpreter by profession, and delighted at the
+remunerative work so opportunely put in my way.
+
+The house itself appeared lonely as well as dark. M. Berty led the way
+across a narrow passage, at the end of which there was a door which he
+pushed open, saying in his usual abrupt manner: “Go in there and wait.
+I’ll send for you directly.”
+
+Then he closed the door on me, and I heard his footsteps recrossing the
+corridor and presently ascending some stairs. I was left alone in a
+small, sparsely furnished room, dimly lighted by an oil lamp which hung
+down from the ceiling. There was a table in the middle of the room, a
+square of carpet on the floor, and a couple of chairs beside a small
+iron stove. I noticed that the single window was closely shuttered and
+barred. I sat down and waited. At first the silence around me was only
+broken by the pattering of the rain against the shutters and the
+soughing of the wind down the iron chimney pipe, but after a little
+while my senses, which by this time had become super-acute, were
+conscious of various noises within the house itself: footsteps
+overhead, a confused murmur of voices, and anon the unmistakable sound
+of a female voice raised as if in entreaty or in complaint.
+
+Somehow a vague feeling of alarm possessed itself of my nervous system.
+I began to realise my position—alone, a stranger in a house as to whose
+situation I had not the remotest idea, and among a set of men who, if
+my surmises were correct, were nothing less than a gang of determined
+and dangerous criminals. The voices, especially the female one, were
+now sounding more clear. I tiptoed to the door, and very gently opened
+it. There was indeed no mistaking the tone of desperate pleading which
+came from some room above and through & woman’s lips. I even caught the
+words: “Oh, don’t! Oh, don’t! Not again!” repeated at intervals with
+pitiable insistence.
+
+Mastering my not unnatural anxiety, I opened the door a little farther
+and slipped out into the passage, all my instincts of chivalry towards
+beauty in distress aroused by those piteous cries. Forgetful of every
+possible danger and of all prudence, I had already darted down the
+corridor, determined to do my duty as a gentleman as soon as I had
+ascertained whence had come those cries of anguish, when I heard the
+frou-frou of skirts and a rapid patter of small feet down the stairs.
+The next moment a radiant vision, all white muslin, fair curls and the
+scent of violets, descended on me from above, a soft hand closed over
+mine and drew me, unresisting, back into the room from whence I had
+just come.
+
+Bewildered, I gazed on the winsome apparition before me, and beheld a
+young girl, slender as a lily, dressed in a soft, clinging gown which
+made her appear more slender still, her fair hair arranged in a tangle
+of unruly curls round the dainty oval of her face.
+
+She was exquisite, Sir! And the slenderness of her! You cannot imagine
+it! She looked like a young sapling bending to the gale. But what cut
+me to the heart was the look of terror and of misery in her face. She
+clasped her hands together and the tears gathered in her eyes.
+
+“Go, Sir, go at once!” she murmured under her breath, speaking very
+rapidly. “Do not waste a minute, I beg of you! As you value your life,
+go before it is too late!”
+
+“But, Mademoiselle,” I stammered; for indeed her words and appearance
+had roused all my worst fears, but also all my instincts of the
+sleuth-hound scenting his quarry.
+
+“Don’t argue, I beg of you,” continued the lovely creature, who indeed
+seemed the prey of overwhelming emotions—fear, horror, pity. “When he
+comes back do not let him find you here. I’ll explain, I’ll know what
+to say, only I entreat you—go!”
+
+Sir, I have many faults, but cowardice does not happen to be one of
+them, and the more the angel pleaded the more determined was I to see
+this business through. I was, of course, quite convinced by now that I
+was on the track of M. Aristide Fournier and the English files, and I
+was not going to let five thousand francs and the gratitude of the
+Minister of Police slip through my fingers so easily.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” I rejoined as calmly as I could, “let me assure you
+that though your anxiety for me is like manna to a starving man, I have
+no fears for my own safety. I have come here in the capacity of a
+humble interpreter; I certainly am not worth putting out of the way.
+Moreover, I have been paid for my services, and these I will render to
+my employer to the best of my capabilities.”
+
+“Ah, but you don’t know,” she retorted, not departing one jot from her
+attitude of terror and of entreaty, “you don’t understand. This house,
+Monsieur,” she added in a hoarse whisper, “is nothing but a den of
+criminals wherein no honest man or woman is safe.”
+
+“Pardon, Mademoiselle,” I riposted as lightly and as gallantly as I
+could, “I see before me the living proof that angels, at any rate,
+dwell therein.”
+
+“Alas! Sir,” she rejoined, with a heart-rending sigh, “if you mean me,
+I am only to be pitied. My dear mother and I are naught but slaves to
+the will of my brother, who uses us as tools for his nefarious ends.”
+
+“But . . .” I stammered, horrified beyond speech at the vista of
+villainy which her words had opened up before me.
+
+“My mother, Sir,” she said simply, “is old and ailing; she is dying of
+anguish at sight of her son’s misdeeds. I would not, could not leave
+her, yet I would give my life to see her free from that miscreant’s
+clutches!”
+
+My whole soul was stirred to its depths by the intensity of passion
+which rang through this delicate creature’s words. What weird and
+awesome mystery of iniquity and of crime lay hid, I wondered, between
+these walls? In what tragedy had I thus accidentally become involved
+while fulfilling my prosaic duty in the interest of His Majesty’s
+exchequer? As in a flash it suddenly came to me that perhaps I could
+serve both this lovely creature and the Emperor better by going out of
+the house now, and lying hidden all the night through somewhere in its
+vicinity until in daylight I could locate its exact situation. Then I
+could communicate with Leroux at once and procure the apprehension of
+this Berty—or Fournier—who apparently was a desperate criminal. Already
+a bold plan was taking shape in my brain, and with my mind’s eye I had
+measured the distance which separated me from the front door and safety
+when, in the distance, I heard heavy footsteps slowly descending the
+stairs. I looked at my lovely companion, and saw her eyes gradually
+dilating with increased horror. She gave a smothered cry, pressed her
+handkerchief to her lips, then she murmured hoarsely, “Too late!” and
+fled precipitately from the room, leaving me a prey to mingled emotions
+such as I had never experienced before.
+
+3.
+
+A moment or two later M. Ernest Berty, or whatever his real name may
+have been, entered the room. Whether he had encountered his exquisite
+sister on the corridor or the stairs, I could not tell; his face, in
+the dim light of the hanging lamp, looked impenetrable and sinister.
+
+“This way, M. Barrot,” he said curtly.
+
+Just for one brief moment the thought occurred to me to throw myself
+upon him with my whole weight—which was considerable—and make a wild
+dash for the front door. But it was more than probable that I should be
+intercepted and brought back, after which no doubt I would be an object
+of suspicion to these rascals and my life would not be worth an hour’s
+purchase. With the young girl’s warnings ringing in my ears, I felt
+that my one chance of safety and of circumventing these criminals lay
+in my seeming ingenuousness and complete guileless-ness.
+
+I assumed a perfect professional manner and followed my companion up
+the stairs. He ushered me into a room just above the one where I had
+been waiting up to now. Three men dressed in rough clothes were sitting
+at a table on which stood a couple of tankards and four empty pewter
+mugs. My employer offered me a glass of ale, which I declined. Then we
+got to work.
+
+At the first words which M. Berty uttered I knew that all my surmises
+had been correct. Whether he himself was M. Aristide Fournier, or
+another partner of that firm, or some other rascal engaged in nefarious
+doings, I could not know; certain it was that through the medium of
+cipher words and phrases which he thought were unintelligible to me,
+and which he ordered me to interpret into English, he was giving
+directions to the three men with regard to the convoying of contraband
+cargo over the frontier.
+
+There was much talk of “toys” and “babies”—the latter were to take a
+walk in the mountains and to avoid the “thorns”; the “toys” were to be
+securely fastened and well protected against water. It was obviously a
+case of mules and of the goods, the “thorns” being the customs
+officials. By the time that we had finished I was absolutely convinced
+in my mind that the cargo was one of English files or razors, for it
+was evidently extraordinarily valuable and not at all bulky, seeing
+that two “babies” were to carry all the “toys” for a considerable
+distance. The men, too, were obviously English. I tried the few words
+of Russian that I knew on them, and their faces remained perfectly
+blank.
+
+Yes, indeed, I was on the track of M. Aristide Fournier, and of one of
+the most important hauls of enemy goods which had ever been made in
+France. Not only that. I had also before me one of the most brutish
+criminals it had ever been my misfortune to come across. A bully, a
+fiend of cruelty. In very truth my fertile brain was seething with
+plans for eventually laying that abominable ruffian by the heels:
+hanging would be a merciful punishment for such a miscreant. Yes,
+indeed, five thousand francs—a goodly sum in those days, Sir—was
+practically assured me. But over and above mere lucre there was the
+certainty that in a few days’ time I should see the light of gratitude
+shining out of a pair of lustrous blue eyes, and a winning smile
+chasing away the look of fear and of sorrow from the sweetest face I
+had seen for many a day.
+
+Despite the turmoil that was raging in my brain, however, I flatter
+myself that my manner with the rascals remained consistently calm,
+businesslike, indifferent to all save to the work in hand. The
+soi-disant Ernest Berty spoke invariably in French, either dictating
+his orders or seeking information, and I made verbal translation into
+English of all that he said. The séance lasted close upon an hour, and
+presently I gathered that the affair was terminated and that I could
+consider myself dismissed.
+
+I was about to take my leave, having apparently completed my work, when
+M. Ernest Berty called me back with a curt command.
+
+“One moment, M. Barrot,” he said.
+
+“At Monsieur’s service,” I responded blandly.
+
+“As you see,” he continued, “these fellows do not know a word of
+French. All along the way which they will have to traverse they will
+meet friendly outposts, who will report to them on the condition of the
+roads and warn them of any danger that might be ahead. Their ignorance
+of our language may be a source of infinite peril to them. They need an
+interpreter to accompany them over the mountains.”
+
+He paused for a moment or two, then added abruptly:
+
+“Would you care to go? The matter is important,” he went on quietly,
+“and I am willing to pay you. It means a couple of nights’ journey—a
+halt in the mountains during the day—and there will be ten thousand
+francs for you if the ‘toys’ reach St. Claude safely.”
+
+I suppose that something in my face betrayed the eagerness which I
+felt. Here was indeed the finger of Providence pointing to the best
+means of undoing this abominable criminal. Not that I intended to risk
+my neck for any ten thousand francs he chose to offer me, but as the
+trusted guide of his ingenuous “babies” I could convoy them—not to St.
+Claude, as he blandly believed, but straight into the arms of Leroux
+and the customs officials.
+
+“Then that is understood,” he said in his usual dictatorial manner,
+taking my consent for granted. “Ten thousand francs. And you will
+accompany these gentlemen and their ‘babies’ as far as St. Claude?”
+
+“I am a poor man, Sir,” I responded meekly.
+
+“Of course you are,” he broke in roughly.
+
+Then from a number of papers which lay upon the table, he selected one
+which he held out to me.
+
+“Do you know St. Cergues?” he asked.
+
+“Yes,” I replied. “It is a short walk from Gex.”
+
+“This,” he added, pointing to a paper which I had taken from him, “is a
+plan of the village and of the Pass of Cergues close by. Study it
+carefully. At some point some way up the pass, which I have marked with
+a cross, I and my men with the ‘babies’ will be waiting for you
+to-morrow evening at eight o’clock. You cannot possibly fail to find
+the spot, for the plan is very accurate and very minute, and it is less
+than five hundred metres from the last house at the entrance of the
+pass. I shall escort the men until then, and hand them over into your
+charge for the mountain journey. Is that clear?”
+
+“Perfectly.”
+
+“Very well, then; you may go. The carriage is outside the door. You
+know your way.”
+
+He dismissed me with a curt nod, and the next two minutes saw me
+outside this house of mystery and installed inside the ramshackle
+vehicle on my way back to my lodgings.
+
+I was worn out with fatigue and excitement, and I imagine that I slept
+most of the way. Certain it is that the journey home was not nearly so
+long as the outward one had been. The rain was still coming down
+heavily, but I cared nothing about the weather, nothing about fatigue.
+My path to fame and fortune had been made easier for me than in my
+wildest dreams I would have dared to hope. In the morning I would see
+Leroux and make final arrangements for the capture of those impudent
+smugglers, and I thought the best way would be for him to meet me and
+the “babies” and the “toys” at the very outset of our journey, as I did
+not greatly relish the idea of crossing lonely and dangerous mountain
+paths in the company of these ruffians.
+
+I reached home without adventure. The vehicle drew up just outside my
+lodgings, and I was about to alight when my eyes were attracted by
+something white which lay on the front seat of the carriage,
+conspicuously placed so that the light from the inside lanthorn fell
+full upon it. I had been too tired and too dazed, I suppose, to notice
+the thing before, but now, on closer inspection, I saw that it was a
+note, and that it was addressed to me: “M. Aristide Barrot,
+Interpreter,” and below my name were the words: “Very urgent.”
+
+I took the note feeling a thrill of excitement running through my veins
+at its touch. I alighted, and the vehicle immediately disappeared into
+the night. I had only caught one glimpse of the horses, and none at all
+of the coachman. Then I went straight into my room, and by the light of
+the table lamp I unfolded and read the mysterious note. It bore no
+signature, but at the first words I knew that the writer was none other
+than the lovely young creature who had appeared to me like an angel of
+innocence in the midst of that den of thieves.
+
+
+“Monsieur,” she had written in a hand which had clearly been trembling
+with agitation, “you are good, you are kind; I entreat you to be
+merciful. My dear mother, whom I worship, is sick with terror and
+misery. She will die if she remains any longer under the sway of that
+inhuman monster who, alas! is my own brother. And if I lose her I shall
+die, too, for I should no longer have anyone to stand between me and
+his cruelties.
+
+“My dear mother has some relations living at St. Claude. She would have
+gone to them before now, but my brother keeps us both virtual prisoners
+here, and we have no means of arranging for such a perilous journey for
+ourselves. Now, by the most extraordinary stroke of good fortune, my
+brother will be absent all day to-morrow and the following night. My
+dear mother and I feel that God Himself is showing us the way to our
+release.
+
+“Will you, can you help us, dear M. Barrot? Mother and I will be at Gex
+to-morrow at one hour after sundown. We will lie perdu in the little
+Taverne du Roi de Rome, where, if you come to us, you will find us
+waiting anxiously. If you can do nothing to help us, we must return
+broken-hearted to our hated prison; but something in my heart tells me
+that you can help us. All that we want is a vehicle of some sort and
+the escort of a brave man like yourself as far as St. Claude, where our
+relatives will thank you on their knees for your kindness and
+generosity to two helpless, miserable, unprotected women, and I will
+kiss your hands in unbounded gratitude and devotion.”
+
+
+It were impossible, Monsieur, to tell you of the varied emotions which
+filled my heart when I had perused that heart-rending appeal. All my
+instincts of chivalry were aroused. I was determined to do my duty to
+these helpless ladies as a man and as a gallant knight. Even before I
+finally went to bed I had settled in my mind what I meant to do.
+Fortunately it was quite possible for me to reconcile my duties to my
+Emperor and those which I owed to myself in the matter of the reward
+for the apprehension of the smugglers, with my burning desire to be the
+saviour and protector of the lovely creature whose beauty had inflamed
+my impressionable heart, and to have my hands kissed by her in
+gratitude and devotion.
+
+The next morning Leroux and I were deep in our plans, whilst we sipped
+our coffee outside the Crâne Chauve. He was beside himself with joy and
+excitement at the prospective haul, which would, of course, redound
+enormously to his credit, even though the success of the whole
+undertaking would be due to my acumen, my resourcefulness and my pluck.
+Fortunately I found him not only ready but eager to render me what
+assistance he could in the matter of the two ladies who had thrown
+themselves so entirely on my protection.
+
+“We might get valuable information out of them,” he remarked. “In the
+excess of their gratitude they may betray many more secrets and
+nefarious doings of the firm of Fournier Frères.”
+
+“Which further proves,” I remarked, “how deeply you and Monsieur le
+Ministre of Police are indebted to me over this affair.”
+
+He did not argue the point. Indeed, we were both of us far too much
+excited to waste words in useless bickerings. Our plans for the evening
+were fairly simple. We both pored over the map which Fournier-Berty had
+given me, until we felt that we could reach blindfolded the spot which
+had been marked with a cross. We then arranged that Leroux should
+betake himself thither with a strong posse of gendarmes during the day,
+and lie hidden in the vicinity until such time as I myself appeared
+upon the scene, identified my friends of the night before, parleyed
+with them for a minute or two, and finally retired, leaving the law in
+all its majesty, as represented by Leroux, to deal with the rascals.
+
+In the meantime I also mapped out for myself my own share in this
+night’s adventurous work. I had hired a vehicle to take me as far as
+St. Cergues; here I intended to leave it at the local inn, and then
+proceed on foot up the mountain pass to the appointed spot. As soon as
+I had seen the smugglers safely in the hands of Leroux and the
+gendarmes, I would make my way back to St. Cergues as rapidly as I
+could, step into my vehicle, drive like the wind back to Gex, and place
+myself at the disposal of my fair angel and her afflicted mother.
+
+Leroux promised me that at the customs station on the French frontier
+the officials would look after me and the ladies, and that a pair of
+fresh horses would be ready to take us straight on to St. Claude,
+which, if all was well, we could then reach by daybreak.
+
+Having settled all these matters we parted company, he to arrange his
+own affairs with the Commissary of Police and the customs officials,
+and I to await with as much patience as I could the hour when I could
+start for St. Cergues.
+
+4.
+
+The night—just as I anticipated—promised to be very dark. A thin
+drizzle, which wetted the unfortunate pedestrian to the marrow, had
+replaced the torrential rain of the previous day.
+
+Twilight was closing in very fast. In the late autumn afternoon I drove
+to St. Cergues, after which I left the chaise in the village and boldly
+started to walk up the mountain pass. I had studied the map so
+carefully that I was quite sure of my way, but though my appointment
+with the rascals was for eight o’clock, I wished to reach the appointed
+spot before the last flicker of grey light had disappeared from the
+sky.
+
+Soon I had left the last house well behind me. Boldly I plunged into
+the narrow path. The loneliness of the place was indescribable. Every
+step which I took on the stony track seemed to rouse the echoes of the
+grim heights which rose precipitously on either side of me, and in my
+mind I felt aghast at the extraordinary courage of those men who—like
+Aristide Fournier and his gang—chose to affront such obvious and
+manifold dangers as these frowning mountain regions held for them for
+the sake of paltry lucre.
+
+I had walked, according to my reckoning, just upon five hundred metres
+through the gorge, when on ahead I perceived the flicker of lights
+which appeared to be moving to and fro. The silence and loneliness no
+longer seemed to be absolute. A few metres from where I was men were
+living and breathing, plotting and planning, unconscious of the net
+which the unerring hand of a skilful fowler had drawn round them and
+their misdeeds.
+
+The next moment I was challenged by a peremptory “Halt!” Recognition
+followed. M. Ernest Berty, or Aristide Fournier, whichever he was,
+acknowledged with a few words my punctuality, whilst through the gloom
+I took rapid stock of his little party. I saw the vague outline of
+three men and a couple of mules which appeared to be heavily laden.
+They were assembled on a flat piece of ground which appeared like a
+roofless cavern carved out of the mountain side. The walls of rock
+around them afforded them both cover and refuge. They seemed in no
+hurry to start. They had the long night before them, so one of them
+remarked in English.
+
+However, presently M. Fournier-Berty gave the signal for the start to
+be made, he himself preparing to take leave of his men. Just at that
+moment my ears caught the welcome sound of the tramping of feet, and
+before any of the rascals there could realise what was happening, their
+way was barred by Leroux and his gendarmes, who loudly gave the order,
+“Hands up, in the name of the Emperor!”
+
+I was only conscious of a confused murmur of voices, of the click of
+firearms, of words of command passing to and fro, and of several
+violent oaths uttered in the not unfamiliar voice of M. Aristide
+Fournier. But already I had spied Leroux. I only exchanged a few words
+with him, for indeed my share of the evening’s work was done as far as
+he was concerned, and I made haste to retrace my steps through the
+darkness and the rain along the lonely mountain path toward the goal
+where chivalry and manly ardour beckoned to me from afar.
+
+I found my vehicle waiting for me at St. Cergues, and by the promise of
+an additional pourboire, I succeeded in making the driver whip up his
+horses to some purpose. Less than an hour later we drew up at Gex
+outside the little inn, pretentiously called Le Roi de Rome. On
+alighting I was met by the proprietress who, in answer to my inquiry
+after two ladies who had arrived that afternoon, at once conducted me
+upstairs.
+
+Already my mind was busy conjuring up visions of the fair lady of
+yester-eve. The landlady threw open a door and ushered me into a small
+room which reeked of stale food and damp clothes. I stepped in and
+found myself face to face with a large and exceedingly ugly old woman
+who rose with difficulty from the sofa as I entered.
+
+“M. Aristide Barrot,” she said as soon as the landlady had closed the
+door behind me.
+
+“At your service, Madame,” I stammered. “But—”
+
+I was indeed almost aghast. Never in my life had I seen anything so
+grotesque as this woman. To begin with she was more than ordinarily
+stout and unwieldy—indeed, she appeared like a veritable mountain of
+flesh; but what was so disturbing to my mind was that she was nothing
+but a hideous caricature of her lovely daughter, whose dainty features
+she grotesquely recalled. Her face was seamed and wrinkled, her white
+hair was plastered down above her yellow forehead. She wore an
+old-fashioned bonnet tied under her chin, and her huge bulk was draped
+in a large-patterned cashmere shawl.
+
+“You expected to see my dear daughter beside me, my good M. Barrot,”
+she said after a while speaking with remarkable gentleness and dignity.
+
+“I confess, Madame—” I murmured.
+
+“Ah! the darling has sacrificed herself for my sake. We found to-day
+that though my son was out of the way, he had set his abominable
+servants to watch over us. Soon we realized that we could not both get
+away. It meant one of us staying behind to act the part of unconcern
+and to throw dust in the eyes of our jailers. My daughter—ah! she is an
+angel, Monsieur—feared that the disappointment and my son’s cruelty,
+when he returned on the morrow and found that he had been tricked,
+would seriously endanger my life. She decided that I must go and that
+she would remain.”
+
+“But, Madame—” I protested.
+
+“I know, Monsieur,” she rejoined with the same calm dignity which
+already had commanded my respect, “I know that you think me a selfish
+old woman; but my Angèle—she is an angel, of a truth!—made all the
+arrangements, and I could not help but obey her. But have no fears for
+her safety, Monsieur. My son would not dare lay hands on her as often
+as he has done on me. Angèle will be brave, and our relations at St.
+Claude will, directly we arrive, make arrangements to go and fetch her
+and bring her back to me. My brother is an influential man; he would
+never have allowed my son to martyrize me and Angèle had he known what
+we have had to endure.”
+
+Of course I could not then tell her that all her fears for herself and
+the lovely Angèle could now be laid to rest. Her ruffianly son was even
+now being conveyed by Leroux and his gendarmes to the frontier, where
+the law would take its course. I was indeed not sorry for him. I was
+not sorry to think that he would end his evil life upon the guillotine
+or the gallows. I was only grieved for Angèle who would spend a night
+and a day, perhaps more, in agonized suspense, knowing nothing of the
+events which at one great swoop would free her and her beloved mother
+from the tyranny of a hated brother and send him to expiate his crimes.
+Not only did I grieve, Sir, for the tender victim of that man’s
+brutality, but I trembled for her safety. I did not know what minions
+or confederates Fournier-Berty had left in the lonely house yonder, or
+under what orders they were in case he did not return from his
+nocturnal expedition.
+
+Indeed for the moment I felt so agitated at thought of that beautiful
+angel’s peril that I looked down with anger and scorn at the fat old
+woman who ought to have remained beside her daughter to comfort and to
+shield her.
+
+I was on the point of telling her everything, and dragging her back to
+her post of duty which she should never have relinquished. Fortunately
+my sense of what I owed to my own professional dignity prevented my
+taking such a step. It was clearly not for me to argue. My first duty
+was to stand by this helpless woman in distress, who had been committed
+to my charge, and to convey her safely to St. Claude. After which I
+could see to it that Mademoiselle Angèle was brought along too as
+quickly as influential relatives could contrive.
+
+In the meanwhile I derived some consolation from the thought that at
+any rate for the next four and twenty hours the lovely creature would
+be safe. No news of the arrest of Aristide Fournier could possibly
+reach the lonely house until I myself could return thither and take her
+under my protection.
+
+So I said nothing; but with perfect gallantry, just as if fat Mme.
+Fournier had been a young and beautiful woman, I begged her to give
+herself the trouble of mounting into the carriage which was waiting for
+her.
+
+It took time and trouble, Sir, to hoist that mass of solid flesh into
+the vehicle, and the driver grumbled not a little at the unexpected
+weight. However, his horses were powerful, wiry, mountain ponies, and
+we made headway through the darkness and along the smooth, departmental
+road at moderate speed. I may say that it was a miserably uncomfortable
+journey for me, sitting, as I was forced to do, on the narrow front
+seat of the carriage, without support for my head or room for my legs.
+But Madame’s bulk filled the whole of the back seat, and it never
+seemed to enter her head that I too might like the use of a cushion.
+However, even the worst moments and the weariest journeys must come to
+an end, and we reached the frontier in the small hours of the morning.
+Here we found the customs officials ready to render us any service we
+might require. Leroux had not failed to order the fresh relay of
+horses, and whilst these were being put to, the polite officers of the
+station gave Madame and myself some excellent coffee. Beyond the
+formal: “Madame has nothing to declare for His Majesty’s customs?” and
+my companion’s equally formal: “Nothing, Monsieur, except my personal
+belongings,” they did not ply us with questions, and after half an
+hour’s halt we again proceeded on our way.
+
+We reached St. Claude at daybreak, and following Madame’s directions,
+the driver pulled up in front of a large house in the Avenue du Jura.
+Again there was the same difficulty in hoisting the unwieldy lady out
+of the vehicle, but this time, in response to my vigorous pull at the
+outside bell, the concierge and another man came out of the house, and
+very respectfully they approached Madame and conveyed her into the
+house.
+
+While they did so she apparently gave them some directions about
+myself, for anon the concierge returned, and with extreme politeness
+told me that Madame Fournier greatly hoped that I would stay in St.
+Claude a day or two as she had the desire to see me again very soon.
+She also honoured me with an invitation to dine with her that same
+evening at seven of the clock. This was the first time, I noticed, that
+the name Fournier was actually used in connexion with any of the people
+with whom I had become so dramatically involved. Not that I had ever
+doubted the identity of the ruffianly Ernest Berty; still it was very
+satisfactory to have my surmises confirmed. I concluded that the fine
+house in the Avenue du Jura belonged to Mme. Fournier’s brother, and I
+vaguely wondered who he was. The invitation to dinner had certainly
+been given in her name, and the servants had received her with a show
+of respect which suggested that she was more than a guest in her
+brother’s house.
+
+Be that as it may, I betook myself for the nonce to the Hôtel des
+Moines in the centre of the town and killed time for the rest of the
+day as best I could. For one thing I needed rest after the emotions and
+the fatigue of the past forty-eight hours. Remember, Sir, I had not
+slept for two nights and had spent the last eight hours on the narrow
+front seat of a jolting chaise. So I had a good rest in the afternoon,
+and at seven o’clock I presented myself once more at the house in the
+Avenue du Jura.
+
+My intention was to retire early to bed after spending an agreeable
+evening with the family, who would no doubt overwhelm me with their
+gratitude, and at daybreak I would drive back to Gex after I had heard
+all the latest news from Leroux.
+
+I confess that it was with a pardonable feeling of agitation that I
+tugged at the wrought-iron bell-pull on the perron of the magnificent
+mansion in the Avenue du Jura. To begin with I felt somewhat rueful at
+having to appear before ladies at this hour in my travelling clothes,
+and then, you will admit, Sir, that it was a somewhat awkward
+predicament for a man of highly sensitive temperament to meet on terms
+of equality a refined if stout lady whose son he had just helped to
+send to the gallows. Fortunately there was no likelihood of Mme.
+Fournier being as yet aware of this unpleasant fact: even if she did
+know at this hour that her son’s illicit adventure had come to grief,
+she could not possibly in her mind connect me with his ill-fortune. So
+I allowed the sumptuous valet to take my hat and coat and I followed
+him with as calm a demeanour as I could assume up the richly carpeted
+stairs. Obviously the relatives of Mme. Fournier were more than well to
+do. Everything in the house showed evidences of luxury, not to say
+wealth. I was ushered into an elegant salon wherein every corner showed
+traces of dainty feminine hands. There were embroidered silk cushions
+upon the sofa, lace covers upon the tables, whilst a work basket,
+filled with a riot of many coloured silks, stood invitingly open. And
+through the apartment, Sir, a scent of violets lingered and caressed my
+nostrils, reminding me of a beauteous creature in distress whom it had
+been my good fortune to succour.
+
+I had waited less than five minutes when I heard a swift, elastic step
+approaching through the next room, and a second or so later, before I
+had time to take up an appropriate posture, the door was thrown open
+and the exquisite vision of my waking dreams—the beautiful Angèle—
+stood smiling before me.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” I stammered somewhat clumsily, for of a truth I was
+hardly able to recover my breath, and surprise had well nigh robbed me
+of speech, “how comes it that you are here?”
+
+She only smiled in reply, the most adorable smile I had ever seen on
+any human face, so full of joy, of mischief—aye, of triumph, was it. I
+asked after Madame. Again she smiled, and said Madame was in her room,
+resting from the fatigues of her journey. I had scarce recovered from
+my initial surprise when another—more complete still—confronted me.
+This was the appearance of Monsieur Aristide Fournier, whom I had
+fondly imagined already expiating his crimes in a frontier prison, but
+who now entered, also smiling, also extremely pleasant, who greeted me
+as if we were lifelong friends, and who then—I scarce could believe my
+eyes—placed his arm affectionately round his sister’s waist, while she
+turned her sweet face up to his and gave him a fond—nay, a loving look.
+A loving look to him who was a brute and a bully and a miscreant
+amenable to the gallows! True his appearance was completely changed:
+his eyes were bright and kindly, his mouth continued to smile, his
+manner was urbane in the extreme when he finally introduced himself to
+me as: “Aristide Fournier, my dear Monsieur Ratichon, at your service.”
+
+He knew my name, he knew who I was! whilst I . . . I had to pass my
+hand once or twice over my forehead and to close and reopen my eyes
+several times, for, of a truth, it all seemed like a dream. I tried to
+stammer out a question or two, but I could only gasp, and the lovely
+Angèle appeared highly amused at my distress.
+
+“Let us dine,” she said gaily, “after which you may ask as many
+questions as you like.”
+
+In very truth I was in no mood for dinner. Puzzlement and anxiety
+appeared to grip me by the throat and to choke me. It was all very well
+for the beautiful creature to laugh and to make merry. She had cruelly
+deceived me, played upon the chords of my sensitive heart for purposes
+which no doubt would presently be made clear, but in the meanwhile
+since the smuggling of the English files had been successful—as it
+apparently was—what had become of Leroux and his gendarmes?
+
+What tragedy had been enacted in the narrow gorge of St. Cergues, and
+what, oh! what had become of my hopes of that five thousand francs for
+the apprehension of the smugglers, promised me by Leroux? Can you
+wonder that for the moment the very thought of dinner was abhorrent to
+me? But only for the moment. The next a sumptuous valet had thrown open
+the folding-doors, and down the vista of the stately apartment I
+perceived a table richly laden with china and glass and silver, whilst
+a distinctly savoury odour was wafted to my nostrils.
+
+“We will not answer a single question,” the fair Angèle reiterated with
+adorable determination, “until after we have dined.”
+
+What, Sir, would you have done in my place? I believe that never until
+this hour had Hector Ratichon reached to such a sublimity of manner. I
+bowed with perfect dignity in token of obedience to the fair creature,
+Sir; then without a word I offered her my arm. She placed her hand upon
+it, and I conducted her to the dining-room, whilst Aristide Fournier,
+who at this hour should have been on a fair way to being hanged,
+followed in our wake.
+
+Ah! it seemed indeed a lovely dream: one that lasted through an
+excellent and copious dinner, and which turned to delightful reality
+when, over a final glass of succulent Madeira, Monsieur Aristide
+Fournier slowly counted out one hundred notes, worth one hundred francs
+each, and presented these to me with a gracious nod.
+
+“Your fee, Monsieur,” he said, “and allow me to say that never have I
+paid out so large a sum with such a willing hand.”
+
+“But I have done nothing,” I murmured from out the depths of my
+bewilderment.
+
+Mademoiselle Angèle and Monsieur Fournier looked at one another, and,
+no doubt, I presented a very comical spectacle; for both of them burst
+into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.
+
+“Indeed, Monsieur,” quoth Monsieur Fournier as soon as he could speak
+coherently, “you have done everything that you set out to do and done
+it with perfect chivalry. You conveyed ‘the toys’ safely over the
+frontier as far as St. Claude.”
+
+“But how?” I stammered, “how?”
+
+Again Mademoiselle Angèle laughed, and through the ripples of her
+laughter came her merry words:
+
+“Maman was very fat, was she not, my good Monsieur Ratichon? Did you
+not think she was extraordinarily like me?”
+
+I caught the glance in her eyes, and they were literally glowing with
+mischief. Then all of a sudden I understood. She had impersonated a fat
+mother, covered her lovely face with lines, worn a disfiguring wig and
+an antiquated bonnet, and round her slender figure she had tucked away
+thousands of packages of English files. I could only gasp.
+Astonishment, not to say admiration, at her pluck literally took my
+breath away.
+
+“But, Monsieur Berty?” I murmured, my mind in a turmoil, my thoughts
+running riot through my brain. “The Englishmen, the mules, the packs?”
+
+“Monsieur Berty, as you see, stands before you now in the person of
+Monsieur Fournier,” she replied. “The Englishmen were three faithful
+servants who threw dust not only in your eyes, my dear M. Ratichon, but
+in those of the customs officials, while the packs contained harmless
+personal luggage which was taken by your friend and his gendarmes to
+the customs station at Mijoux, and there, after much swearing, equally
+solemnly released with many apologies to M. Fournier, who was allowed
+to proceed unmolested on his way, and who arrived here safely this
+afternoon, whilst Maman divested herself of her fat and once more
+became the slender Mme. Aristide Fournier, at your service.”
+
+She bobbed me a dainty curtsy, and I could only try and hide the pain
+which this last cruel stab had inflicted on my heart. So she was not
+“Mademoiselle” after all, and henceforth it would even be wrong to
+indulge in dreams of her.
+
+But the ten thousand francs crackled pleasantly in my breast pocket,
+and when I finally took leave of Monsieur Aristide Fournier and his
+charming wife, I was an exceedingly happy man.
+
+But Leroux never forgave me. Of what he suspected me I do not know, or
+if he suspected me at all. He certainly must have known about fat Maman
+from the customs officials who had given us coffee at Mijoux.
+
+But he never mentioned the subject to me at all, nor has he spoken to
+me since that memorable night. To one of his colleagues he once said
+that no words in his vocabulary could possibly be adequate to express
+his feelings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. — HONOUR AMONG ———
+
+1.
+
+Ah, my dear Sir, it is easy enough to despise our profession, but
+believe me that all the finer qualities—those of loyalty and of
+truth—are essential, not only to us, but to our subordinates, if we are
+to succeed in making even a small competence out of it.
+
+Now let me give you an instance. Here was I, Hector Ratichon, settled
+in Paris in that eventful year 1816 which saw the new order of things
+finally swept aside and the old order resume its triumphant sway, which
+saw us all, including our God-given King Louis XVIII, as poor as the
+proverbial church mice and as eager for a bit of comfort and luxury as
+a hungry dog is for a bone; the year which saw the army disbanded and
+hordes of unemployed and unemployable men wandering disconsolate and
+half starved through the country seeking in vain for some means of
+livelihood, while the Allied troops, well fed and well clothed, stalked
+about as if the sacred soil of France was so much dirt under their
+feet; the year, my dear Sir, during which more intrigues were hatched
+and more plots concocted than in any previous century in the whole
+history of France. We were all trying to make money, since there was so
+precious little of it about. Those of us who had brains succeeded, and
+then not always.
+
+Now, I had brains—I do not boast of them; they are a gift from
+Heaven—but I had them, and good looks, too, and a general air of
+strength, coupled with refinement, which was bound to appeal to anyone
+needing help and advice, and willing to pay for both, and yet—but you
+shall judge.
+
+You know my office in the Rue Daunou, you have been in it—plainly
+furnished; but, as I said, these were not days of luxury. There was an
+antechamber, too, where that traitor, blackmailer and thief, Theodore,
+my confidential clerk in those days, lodged at my expense and kept
+importunate clients at bay for what was undoubtedly a liberal
+salary—ten per cent, on all the profits of the business—and yet he was
+always complaining, the ungrateful, avaricious brute!
+
+Well, Sir, on that day in September—it was the tenth, I remember—1816,
+I must confess that I was feeling exceedingly dejected. Not one client
+for the last three weeks, half a franc in my pocket, and nothing but a
+small quarter of Strasburg patty in the larder. Theodore had eaten most
+of it, and I had just sent him out to buy two sous’ worth of stale
+bread wherewith to finish the remainder. But after that? You will
+admit, Sir, that a less buoyant spirit would not have remained so long
+undaunted.
+
+I was just cursing that lout Theodore inwardly, for he had been gone
+half an hour, and I strongly suspected him of having spent my two sous
+on a glass of absinthe, when there was a ring at the door, and I,
+Hector Ratichon, the confidant of kings and intimate counsellor of half
+the aristocracy in the kingdom, was forced to go and open the door just
+like a common lackey.
+
+But here the sight which greeted my eyes fully compensated me for the
+temporary humiliation, for on the threshold stood a gentleman who had
+wealth written plainly upon his fine clothes, upon the dainty linen at
+his throat and wrists, upon the quality of his rich satin necktie and
+the perfect set of his fine cloth pantaloons, which were of an
+exquisite shade of dove-grey. When, then, the apparition spoke,
+inquiring with just a sufficiency of aristocratic hauteur whether M.
+Hector Ratichon were in, you cannot be surprised, my dear Sir, that my
+dejection fell from me like a cast-off mantle and that all my usual
+urbanity of manner returned to me as I informed the elegant gentleman
+that M. Ratichon was even now standing before him, and begged him to
+take the trouble to pass through into my office.
+
+This he did, and I placed a chair in position for him. He sat down,
+having previously dusted the chair with a graceful sweep of his
+lace-edged handkerchief. Then he raised a gold-rimmed eyeglass to his
+right eye with a superlatively elegant gesture, and surveyed me
+critically for a moment or two ere he said:
+
+“I am told, my good M. Ratichon, that you are a trustworthy fellow, and
+one who is willing to undertake a delicate piece of business for a
+moderate honorarium.”
+
+Except for the fact that I did not like the word “moderate,” I was
+enchanted with him.
+
+“Rumour for once has not lied, Monsieur,” I replied in my most
+attractive manner.
+
+“Well,” he rejoined—I won’t say curtly, but with businesslike brevity,
+“for all purposes connected with the affair which I desire to treat
+with you my name, as far as you are concerned, shall be Jean Duval.
+Understand?”
+
+“Perfectly, Monsieur le Marquis,” I replied with a bland smile.
+
+It was a wild guess, but I don’t think that I underestimated my new
+client’s rank, for he did not wince.
+
+“You know Mlle. Mars?” he queried.
+
+“The actress?” I replied. “Perfectly.”
+
+“She is playing in _Le Rêve_ at the Theatre Royal just now.”
+
+“She is.”
+
+“In the first and third acts of the play she wears a gold bracelet set
+with large green stones.”
+
+“I noticed it the other night. I had a seat in the parterre, I may
+say.”
+
+“I want that bracelet,” broke in the soi-disant Jean Duval
+unceremoniously. “The stones are false, the gold strass. I admire Mlle.
+Mars immensely. I dislike seeing her wearing false jewellery. I wish to
+have the bracelet copied in real stones, and to present it to her as a
+surprise on the occasion of the twenty-fifth performance of _Le Rêve_.
+It will cost me a king’s ransom, and her, for the time being, an
+infinite amount of anxiety. She sets great store by the valueless
+trinket solely because of the merit of its design, and I want its
+disappearance to have every semblance of a theft. All the greater will
+be the lovely creature’s pleasure when, at my hands, she will receive
+an infinitely precious jewel the exact counterpart in all save its
+intrinsic value of the trifle which she had thought lost.”
+
+It all sounded deliciously romantic. A flavour of the past
+century—before the endless war and abysmal poverty had killed all
+chivalry in us—clung to this proposed transaction. There was nothing of
+the roturier, nothing of a Jean Duval, in this polished man of the
+world who had thought out this subtle scheme for ingratiating himself
+in the eyes of his lady fair.
+
+I murmured an appropriate phrase, placing my services entirely at M. le
+Marquis’s disposal, and once more he broke in on my polished diction
+with that brusquerie which betrayed the man accustomed to be silently
+obeyed.
+
+“Mlle. Mars wears the bracelet,” he said, “during the third act of _Le
+Rêve_. At the end of the act she enters her dressing-room, and her maid
+helps her to change her dress. During this entr’acte Mademoiselle with
+her own hands puts by all the jewellery which she has to wear during
+the more gorgeous scenes of the play. In the last act—the finale of the
+tragedy—she appears in a plain stuff gown, whilst all her jewellery
+reposes in the small iron safe in her dressing-room. It is while
+Mademoiselle is on the stage during the last act that I want you to
+enter her dressing-room and to extract the bracelet out of the safe for
+me.”
+
+“I, M. le Marquis?” I stammered. “I, to steal a—”
+
+“Firstly, M.—er—er—Ratichon, or whatever your confounded name may be,”
+interposed my client with inimitable hauteur, “understand that my name
+is Jean Duval, and if you forget this again I shall be under the
+necessity of laying my cane across your shoulders and incidentally to
+take my business elsewhere. Secondly, let me tell you that your
+affectations of outraged probity are lost on me, seeing that I know all
+about the stolen treaty which—”
+
+“Enough, M. Jean Duval,” I said with a dignity equal, if not greater,
+than his own; “do not, I pray you, misunderstand me. I am ready to do
+you service. But if you will deign to explain how I am to break open an
+iron safe inside a crowded building and extract therefrom a trinket,
+without being caught in the act and locked up for house-breaking and
+theft, I shall be eternally your debtor.”
+
+“The extracting of the trinket is your affair,” he rejoined dryly. “I
+will give you five hundred francs if you bring the bracelet to me
+within fourteen days.”
+
+“But—” I stammered again.
+
+“Your task will not be such a difficult one after all. I will give you
+the duplicate key of the safe.”
+
+He dived into the breast pocket of his coat, and drew from it a
+somewhat large and clumsy key, which he placed upon my desk.
+
+“I managed to get that easily enough,” he said nonchalantly, “a couple
+of nights ago, when I had the honour of visiting Mademoiselle in her
+dressing-room. A piece of wax in my hand, Mademoiselle’s momentary
+absorption in her reflection while her maid was doing her hair, and the
+impression of the original key was in my possession. But between taking
+a model of the key and the actual theft of the bracelet out of the safe
+there is a wide gulf which a gentleman cannot bridge over. Therefore, I
+choose to employ you, M.—er—er—Ratichon, to complete the transaction
+for me.”
+
+“For five hundred francs?” I queried blandly.
+
+“It is a fair sum,” he argued.
+
+“Make it a thousand,” I rejoined firmly, “and you shall have the
+bracelet within fourteen days.”
+
+He paused a moment in order to reflect; his steel-grey eyes, cool and
+disdainful, were fixed searchingly on my face. I pride myself on the
+way that I bear that kind of scrutiny, so even now I looked bland and
+withal purposeful and capable.
+
+“Very well,” he said, after a few moments, and he rose from his chair
+as he spoke; “it shall be a thousand francs, M.—er—er—Ratichon, and I
+will hand over the money to you in exchange for the bracelet—but it
+must be done within fourteen days, remember.”
+
+I tried to induce him to give me a small sum on account. I was about to
+take terrible risks, remember; housebreaking, larceny, theft—call it
+what you will, it meant the _police correctionelle_ and a couple of
+years in New Orleans for sure. He finally gave me fifty francs, and
+once more threatened to take his business elsewhere, so I had to accept
+and to look as urbane and dignified as I could.
+
+He was out of the office and about to descend the stairs when a thought
+struck me.
+
+“Where and how can I communicate with M. Jean Duval,” I asked, “when my
+work is done?”
+
+“I will call here,” he replied, “at ten o’clock of every morning that
+follows a performance of _Le Rêve_. We can complete our transaction
+then across your office desk.”
+
+The next moment he was gone. Theodore passed him on the stairs and
+asked me, with one of his impertinent leers, whether we had a new
+client and what we might expect from him. I shrugged my shoulders. “A
+new client!” I said disdainfully. “Bah! Vague promises of a couple of
+louis for finding out if Madame his wife sees more of a certain captain
+of the guards than Monsieur the husband cares about.”
+
+Theodore sniffed. He always sniffs when financial matters are on the
+tapis.
+
+“Anything on account?” he queried.
+
+“A paltry ten francs,” I replied, “and I may as well give you your
+share of it now.”
+
+I tossed a franc to him across the desk. By the terms of my contract
+with him, you understand, he was entitled to ten per cent, of every
+profit accruing from the business in lieu of wages, but in this
+instance do you not think that I was justified in looking on one franc
+now, and perhaps twenty when the transaction was completed, as a more
+than just honorarium for his share in it? Was I not taking all the
+risks in this delicate business? Would it be fair for me to give him a
+hundred francs for sitting quietly in the office or sipping absinthe at
+a neighbouring bar whilst I risked New Orleans—not to speak of the
+gallows?
+
+He gave me a strange look as he picked up the silver franc, spat on it
+for luck, bit it with his great yellow teeth to ascertain if it were
+counterfeit or genuine, and finally slipped it into his pocket, and
+shuffled out of the office whistling through his teeth.
+
+An abominably low, deceitful creature, that Theodore, you will see
+anon. But I won’t anticipate.
+
+2.
+
+The next performance of _Le Rêve_ was announced for the following
+evening, and I started on my campaign. As you may imagine, it did not
+prove an easy matter. To obtain access through the stage-door to the
+back of the theatre was one thing—a franc to the doorkeeper had done
+the trick—to mingle with the scene-shifters, to talk with the supers,
+to take off my hat with every form of deep respect to the principals
+had been equally simple.
+
+I had even succeeded in placing a bouquet on the dressing-table of the
+great tragedienne on my second visit to the theatre. Her dressing-room
+door had been left ajar during that memorable fourth act which was to
+see the consummation of my labours. I had the bouquet in my hand,
+having brought it expressly for that purpose. I pushed open the door,
+and found myself face to face with a young though somewhat forbidding
+damsel, who peremptorily demanded what my business might be.
+
+In order to minimise the risk of subsequent trouble, I had assumed the
+disguise of a middle-aged Angliche—red side-whiskers, florid
+complexion, a ginger-coloured wig plastered rigidly over the ears
+towards the temples, high stock collar, nankeen pantaloons, a patch
+over one eye and an eyeglass fixed in the other. My own sainted mother
+would never have known me.
+
+With becoming diffidence I explained in broken French that my deep
+though respectful admiration of Mlle. Mars had prompted me to lay a
+floral tribute at her feet. I desired nothing more.
+
+The damsel eyed me coldly, though at the moment I was looking quite my
+best, diffident yet courteous, a perfect gentleman of the old regime.
+Then she took the bouquet from me and put it down on the
+dressing-table.
+
+I fancied that she smiled, not unkindly, and I ventured to pass the
+time of day. She replied not altogether disapprovingly. She sat down by
+the dressing-table and took up some needlework which she had obviously
+thrown aside on my arrival. Close by, on the floor, was a solid iron
+chest with huge ornamental hinges and a large escutcheon over the lock.
+It stood about a foot high and perhaps a couple of feet long.
+
+There was nothing else in the room that suggested a receptacle for
+jewellery; this, therefore, was obviously the safe which contained the
+bracelet. At the self-same second my eyes alighted on a large and
+clumsy-looking key which lay upon the dressing-table, and my hand at
+once wandered instinctively to the pocket of my coat and closed
+convulsively on the duplicate one which the soi-disant Jean Duval had
+given me.
+
+I talked eloquently for a while. The damsel answered in monosyllables,
+but she sat unmoved at needlework, and after ten minutes or so I was
+forced to beat a retreat.
+
+I returned to the charge at the next performance of _Le Rêve_, this
+time with a box of bonbons for the maid instead of the bouquet for the
+mistress. The damsel was quite amenable to a little conversation, quite
+willing that I should dally in her company. She munched the bonbons and
+coquetted a little with me. But she went on stolidly with her
+needlework, and I could see that nothing would move her out of that
+room, where she had obviously been left in charge.
+
+Then I bethought me of Theodore. I realised that I could not carry this
+affair through successfully without his help. So I gave him a further
+five francs—as I said to him it was out of my own savings—and I assured
+him that a certain M. Jean Duval had promised me a couple of hundred
+francs when the business which he had entrusted to me was
+satisfactorily concluded. It was for this business—so I explained—that
+I required his help, and he seemed quite satisfied.
+
+His task was, of course, a very easy one. What a contrast to the risk I
+was about to run! Twenty-five francs, my dear Sir, just for knocking at
+the door of Mlle. Mars’ dressing-room during the fourth act, whilst I
+was engaged in conversation with the attractive guardian of the iron
+safe, and to say in well-assumed, breathless tones:
+
+“Mademoiselle Mars has been taken suddenly unwell on the stage. Will
+her maid go to her at once?”
+
+It was some little distance from the dressing-room to the wings—down a
+flight of ill-lighted stone stairs which demanded cautious ascent and
+descent. Theodore had orders to obstruct the maid during her progress
+as much as he could without rousing her suspicions.
+
+I reckoned that she would be fully three minutes going, questioning,
+finding out that the whole thing was a hoax, and running back to the
+dressing-room—three minutes in which to open the chest, extract the
+bracelet and, incidentally, anything else of value there might be close
+to my hand. Well, I had thought of that eventuality, too; one must
+think of everything, you know—that is where genius comes in. Then, if
+possible, relock the safe, so that the maid, on her return, would find
+everything apparently in order and would not, perhaps, raise the alarm
+until I was safely out of the theatre.
+
+It could be done—oh, yes, it could be done—with a minute to spare! And
+to-morrow at ten o’clock M. Jean Duval would appear, and I would not
+part with the bracelet until a thousand francs had passed from his
+pocket into mine. I must get Theodore out of the house, by the way,
+before the arrival of M. Duval.
+
+A thousand francs! I had not seen a thousand francs all at once for
+years. What a dinner I would have tomorrow! There was a certain little
+restaurant in the Rue des Pipots where they concocted a cassolette of
+goose liver and pork chops with haricot beans which . . . ! I only tell
+you that.
+
+How I got through the rest of that day I cannot tell you. The evening
+found me—quite an habitué now—behind the stage of the Theatre Royal,
+nodding to one or two acquaintances, most of the people looking on me
+with grave respect and talking of me as the eccentric milor. I was
+supposed to be pining for an introduction to the great tragedienne,
+who, very exclusive as usual, had so far given me the cold shoulder.
+
+Ten minutes after the rise of the curtain on the fourth act I was in
+the dressing-room, presenting the maid with a gold locket which I had
+bought from a cheapjack’s barrow for five and twenty francs—almost the
+last of the fifty which I had received from M. Duval on account. The
+damsel was eyeing the locket somewhat disdainfully and giving me
+grudging thanks for it when there came a hurried knock at the door. The
+next moment Theodore poked his ugly face into the room. He, too, had
+taken the precaution of assuming an excellent disguise—peaked cap set
+aslant over one eye, grimy face, the blouse of a scene-shifter.
+
+“Mlle. Mars,” he gasped breathlessly; “she has been taken ill—on the
+stage—very suddenly. She is in the wings—asking for her maid. They
+think she will faint.”
+
+The damsel rose, visibly frightened.
+
+“I’ll come at once,” she said, and without the slightest flurry she
+picked up the key of the safe and slipped it into her pocket. I fancied
+that she gave me a look as she did this. Oh, she was a pearl among
+Abigails! Then she pointed unceremoniously to the door.
+
+“Milor!” was all she said, but of course I understood. I had no idea
+that English milors could be thus treated by pert maidens. But what
+cared I for social amenities just then? My hand had closed over the
+duplicate key of the safe, and I walked out of the room in the wake of
+the damsel. Theodore had disappeared.
+
+Once in the passage, the girl started to run. A second or two later I
+heard the patter of her high-heeled shoes down the stone stairs. I had
+not a moment to lose.
+
+To slip back into the dressing-room was but an instant’s work. The next
+I was kneeling in front of the chest. The key fitted the lock
+accurately; one turn, and the lid flew open.
+
+The chest was filled with a miscellaneous collection of theatrical
+properties all lying loose—showy necklaces, chains, pendants, all of
+them obviously false; but lying beneath them, and partially hidden by
+the meretricious ornaments, were one or two boxes covered with velvet
+such as jewellers use. My keen eyes noted these at once. I was indeed
+in luck! For the moment, however, my hand fastened on a leather case
+which reposed on the top in one corner, and which very obviously, from
+its shape, contained a bracelet. My hands did not tremble, though I was
+quivering with excitement. I opened the case. There, indeed, was the
+bracelet—the large green stones, the magnificent gold setting, the
+whole jewel dazzlingly beautiful. If it were real—the thought flashed
+through my mind—it would be indeed priceless. I closed the case and put
+it on the dressing-table beside me. I had at least another minute to
+spare—sixty seconds wherein to dive for those velvet-covered boxes
+which— My hand was on one of them when a slight noise caused me
+suddenly to turn and to look behind me. It all happened as quickly as a
+flash of lightning. I just saw a man disappearing through the door. One
+glance at the dressing-table showed me the whole extent of my
+misfortune. The case containing the bracelet had gone, and at that
+precise moment I heard a commotion from the direction of the stairs and
+a woman screaming at the top of her voice: “Thief! Stop thief!”
+
+Then, Sir, I brought upon the perilous situation that presence of mind
+for which the name of Hector Ratichon will for ever remain famous.
+Without a single flurried movement, I slipped one of the velvet-covered
+cases which I still had in my hand into the breast pocket of my coat, I
+closed down the lid of the iron chest and locked it with the duplicate
+key, and I went out of the room, closing the door behind me.
+
+The passage was dark. The damsel was running up the stairs with a
+couple of stage hands behind her. She was explaining to them volubly,
+and to the accompaniment of sundry half-hysterical little cries, the
+infamous hoax to which she had fallen a victim. You might think, Sir,
+that here was I caught like a rat in a trap, and with that
+velvet-covered case in my breast pocket by way of damning evidence
+against me!
+
+Not at all, Sir! Not at all! Not so is Hector Ratichon, the keenest
+secret agent France has ever known, the confidant of kings, brought to
+earth by an untoward move of fate. Even before the damsel and the stage
+hands had reached the top of the stairs and turned into the corridor,
+which was on my left, I had slipped round noiselessly to my right and
+found shelter in a narrow doorway, where I was screened by the
+surrounding darkness and by a projection of the frame. While the three
+of them made straight for Mademoiselle’s dressing-room, and spent some
+considerable time there in uttering varied ejaculations when they found
+the place and the chest to all appearances untouched, I slipped out of
+my hiding-place, sped rapidly along the corridor, and was soon half-way
+down the stairs.
+
+Here my habitual composure in the face of danger stood me in good
+stead. It enabled me to walk composedly and not too hurriedly through
+the crowd behind the scenes—supers, scene-shifters, principals, none of
+whom seemed to be aware as yet of the hoax practised on Mademoiselle
+Mars’ maid; and I reckon that I was out of the stage door exactly five
+minutes after Theodore had called the damsel away.
+
+But I was minus the bracelet, and in my mind there was the firm
+conviction that that traitor Theodore had played me one of his
+abominable tricks. As I said, the whole thing had occurred as quickly
+as a flash of lightning, but even so my keen, experienced eyes had
+retained the impression of a peaked cap and the corner of a blue blouse
+as they disappeared through the dressing-room door.
+
+3.
+
+Tact, wariness and strength were all required, you must admit, in order
+to deal with the present delicate situation. I was speeding along the
+Rue de Richelieu on my way to my office. My intention was to spend the
+night there, where I had a chair-bedstead on which I had oft before
+slept soundly after a day’s hard work, and anyhow it was too late to go
+to my lodgings at Passy at this hour.
+
+Moreover, Theodore slept in the antechamber of the office, and I was
+more firmly convinced than ever that it was he who had stolen the
+bracelet. “Blackleg! Thief! Traitor!” I mused. “But thou hast not done
+with Hector Ratichon yet.”
+
+In the meanwhile I bethought me of the velvet-covered box in my breast
+pocket, and of the ginger-coloured hair and whiskers that I was still
+wearing, and which might prove an unpleasant “piece de conviction” in
+case the police were after the stolen bracelet.
+
+With a view to examining the one and getting rid of the other, I turned
+into the Square Louvois, which, as usual, was very dark and wholly
+deserted. Here I took off my wig and whiskers and threw them over the
+railings into the garden. Then I drew the velvet-covered box from my
+pocket, opened it, and groped for its contents. Imagine my feelings, my
+dear Sir, when I realised that the case was empty! Fate was indeed
+against me that night. I had been fooled and cheated by a traitor, and
+had risked New Orleans and worse for an empty box.
+
+For a moment I must confess that I lost that imperturbable sang-froid
+which is the admiration of all my friends, and with a genuine oath I
+flung the case over the railings in the wake of the milor’s hair and
+whiskers. Then I hurried home.
+
+Theodore had not returned. He did not come in until the small hours of
+the morning, and then he was in a state that I can only describe, with
+your permission, as hoggish. He could hardly speak. I had him at my
+mercy. Neither tact nor wariness was required for the moment. I
+stripped him to his skin; he only laughed like an imbecile. His eyes
+had a horrid squint in them; he was hideous. I found five francs in one
+of his pockets, but neither in his clothes nor on his person did I find
+the bracelet.
+
+“What have you done with it?” I cried, for by this time I was maddened
+with rage.
+
+“I don’t know what you are talking about!” he stammered thickly, as he
+tottered towards his bed. “Give me back my five francs, you thief!” the
+brutish creature finally blurted out ere he fell into a hog-like sleep.
+
+4.
+
+Desperate evils need desperate remedies. I spent the rest of the night
+thinking hard. By the time that dawn was breaking my mind was made up.
+Theodore’s stertorous breathing assured me that he was still
+insentient. I was muscular in those days, and he a meagre, attenuated,
+drink-sodden creature. I lifted him out of his bed in the antechamber
+and carried him into mine in the office. I found a coil of rope, and
+strapped him tightly in the chair-bedstead so that he could not move. I
+tied a scarf round his mouth so that he could not scream. Then, at six
+o’clock, when the humbler eating-houses begin to take down their
+shutters, I went out.
+
+I had Theodore’s five francs in my pocket, and I was desperately
+hungry. I spent ten sous on a cup of coffee and a plate of fried onions
+and haricot beans, and three francs on a savoury pie, highly flavoured
+with garlic, and a quarter-bottle of excellent cognac. I drank the
+coffee and ate the onions and the beans, and I took the pie and cognac
+home.
+
+I placed a table close to the chair-bedstead and on it I disposed the
+pie and the cognac in such a manner that the moment Theodore woke his
+eyes were bound to alight on them. Then I waited. I absolutely ached to
+have a taste of that pie myself, it smelt so good, but I waited.
+
+Theodore woke at nine o’clock. He struggled like a fool, but he still
+appeared half dazed. No doubt he thought that he was dreaming. Then I
+sat down on the edge of the bed and cut myself off a large piece of the
+pie. I ate it with marked relish in front of Theodore, whose eyes
+nearly started out of their sockets. Then I brewed myself a cup of
+coffee. The mingled odour of coffee and garlic filled the room. It was
+delicious. I thought that Theodore would have a fit. The veins stood
+out on his forehead and a kind of gurgle came from behind the scarf
+round his mouth. Then I told him he could partake of the pie and coffee
+if he told me what he had done with the bracelet. He shook his head
+furiously, and I left the pie, the cognac and the coffee on the table
+before him and went into the antechamber, closing the office door
+behind me, and leaving him to meditate on his treachery.
+
+What I wanted to avoid above everything was the traitor meeting M. Jean
+Duval. He had the bracelet—of that I was as convinced as that I was
+alive. But what could he do with a piece of false jewellery? He could
+not dispose of it, save to a vendor of theatrical properties, who no
+doubt was well acquainted with the trinket and would not give more than
+a couple of francs for what was obviously stolen property. After all, I
+had promised Theodore twenty francs; he would not be such a fool as to
+sell that birthright for a mess of pottage and the sole pleasure of
+doing me a bad turn.
+
+There was no doubt in my mind that he had put the thing away somewhere
+in what he considered a safe place pending a reward being offered by
+Mlle. Mars for the recovery of the bracelet. The more I thought of this
+the more convinced I was that that was, indeed, his proposed plan of
+action—oh, how I loathed the blackleg!—and mine henceforth would be to
+dog his every footstep and never let him out of my sight until I forced
+him to disgorge his ill-gotten booty.
+
+At ten o’clock M. Jean Duval arrived, as was his wont, supercilious and
+brusque as usual. I was just explaining to him that I hoped to have
+excellent news for him after the next performance of _Le Rêve_ when
+there was a peremptory ring at the bell. I went to open the door, and
+there stood a police inspector in uniform with a sheaf of papers in his
+hand.
+
+Now, I am not over-fond of our Paris police; they poke their noses in
+where they are least wanted. Their incompetence favours the
+machinations of rogues and frustrates the innocent ambitions of the
+just. However, in this instance the inspector looked amiable enough,
+though his manner, I must say, was, as usual, unpleasantly curt.
+
+“Here, Ratichon,” he said, “there has been an impudent theft of a
+valuable bracelet out of Mademoiselle Mars’ dressing-room at the
+Theatre Royal last night. You and your mate frequent all sorts of
+places of ill-fame; you may hear something of the affair.”
+
+I chose to ignore the insult, and the inspector detached a paper from
+the sheaf which he held and threw it across the table to me.
+
+“There is a reward of two thousand five hundred francs,” he said, “for
+the recovery of the bracelet. You will find on that paper an accurate
+description of the jewel. It contains the celebrated Maroni emerald,
+presented to the ex-Emperor by the Sultan, and given by him to Mlle.
+Mars.”
+
+Whereupon he turned unceremoniously on his heel and went, leaving me
+face to face with the man who had so shamefully tried to swindle me. I
+turned, and resting my elbow on the table and my chin in my hand, I
+looked mutely on the soi-disant Jean Duval and equally mutely pointed
+with an accusing finger to the description of the famous bracelet which
+he had declared to me was merely strass and base metal.
+
+But he had the impudence to turn on me before I could utter a syllable.
+
+“Where is the bracelet?” he demanded. “You consummate liar, you! Where
+is it? You stole it last night! What have you done with it?”
+
+“I extracted, at your request,” I replied with as much dignity as I
+could command, “a piece of theatrical jewellery, which you stated to me
+to be worthless, out of an iron chest, the key of which you placed in
+my hands. I . . .”
+
+“Enough of this rubbish!” he broke in roughly. “You have the bracelet.
+Give it me now, or . . .”
+
+He broke off and looked somewhat alarmed in the direction of the office
+door, from the other side of which there had just come a loud crash,
+followed by loud, if unintelligible, vituperation. What had happened I
+could not guess; all that I could do was to carry off the situation as
+boldly as I dared.
+
+“You shall have the bracelet, Sir,” I said in my most suave manner.
+“You shall have it, but not unless you will pay me three thousand
+francs for it. I can get two thousand five hundred by taking it
+straight to Mlle. Mars.”
+
+“And be taken up by the police for stealing it,” he retorted. “How will
+you explain its being in your possession?”
+
+I did not blanch.
+
+“That is my affair,” I replied. “Will you give me three thousand francs
+for it? It is worth sixty thousand francs to a clever thief like you.”
+
+“You hound!” he cried, livid with rage, and raised his cane as if he
+would strike me.
+
+“Aye, it was cleverly done, M. Jean Duval, whoever you may be. I know
+that the gentleman-thief is a modern product of the old regime, but I
+did not know that the fraternity could show such a fine specimen as
+yourself. Pay Hector Ratichon a thousand francs for stealing a bracelet
+for you worth sixty! Indeed, M. Jean Duval, you deserved to succeed!”
+
+Again he shook his cane at me.
+
+“If you touch me,” I declared boldly, “I shall take the bracelet at
+once to Mlle. Mars.”
+
+He bit his lip and made a great effort to pull himself together.
+
+“I haven’t three thousand francs by me,” he said.
+
+“Go, fetch the money,” I retorted, “and I’ll fetch the bracelet.”
+
+He demurred for a while, but I was firm, and after he had threatened to
+thrash me, to knock me down, and to denounce me to the police, he gave
+in and went to fetch the money.
+
+5.
+
+When I remembered Theodore—Theodore, whom only a thin partition wall
+had separated from the full knowledge of the value of his ill-gotten
+treasure!—I could have torn my hair out by the roots with the magnitude
+of my rage. He, the traitor, the blackleg, was about to triumph, where
+I, Hector Ratichon, had failed! He had but to take the bracelet to
+Mlle. Mars himself and obtain the munificent reward whilst I, after I
+had taken so many risks and used all the brains and tact wherewith
+Nature had endowed me, would be left with the meagre remnants of the
+fifty francs which M. Jean Duval had so grudgingly thrown to me.
+Twenty-five francs for a gold locket, ten francs for a bouquet, another
+ten for bonbons, and five for gratuities to the stage-doorkeeper! Make
+the calculation, my good Sir, and see what I had left. If it had not
+been for the five francs which I had found in Theodore’s pocket last
+night, I would at this moment not only have been breakfastless, but
+also absolutely penniless.
+
+As it was, my final hope—and that a meagre one—was to arouse one spark
+of honesty in the breast of the arch-traitor, and either by cajolery or
+threats, to induce him to share his ill-gotten spoils with me.
+
+I had left him snoring and strapped to the chair-bedstead, and when I
+opened the office door I was marvelling in my mind whether I could
+really bear to see him dying slowly of starvation with that savoury pie
+tantalizingly under his nose. The crash which I had heard a few minutes
+ago prepared me for a change of scene. Even so, I confess that the
+sight which I beheld glued me to the threshold. There sat Theodore at
+the table, finishing the last morsel of pie, whilst the chair-bedstead
+lay in a tangled heap upon the floor.
+
+I cannot tell you how nasty he was to me about the whole thing,
+although I showed myself at once ready to forgive him all his lies and
+his treachery, and was at great pains to explain to him how I had given
+up my own bed and strapped him into it solely for the benefit of his
+health, seeing that at the moment he was threatened with delirium
+tremens.
+
+He would not listen to reason or to the most elementary dictates of
+friendship. Having poured the vials of his bilious temper over my
+devoted head, he became as perverse and as obstinate as a mule. With
+the most consummate impudence I ever beheld in any human being, he
+flatly denied all knowledge of the bracelet.
+
+Whilst I talked he stalked past me into the ante-chamber, where he at
+once busied himself in collecting all his goods and chattels. These he
+stuffed into his pockets until he appeared to be bulging all over his
+ugly-body; then he went to the door ready to go out. On the threshold
+he turned and gave me a supercilious glance over his shoulder.
+
+“Take note, my good Ratichon,” he said, “that our partnership is
+dissolved as from to-morrow, the twentieth day of September.”
+
+“As from this moment, you infernal scoundrel!” I cried.
+
+But he did not pause to listen, and slammed the door in my face.
+
+For two or three minutes I remained quite still, whilst I heard the
+shuffling footsteps slowly descending the corridor. Then I followed
+him, quietly, surreptitiously, as a fox will follow its prey. He never
+turned round once, but obviously he knew that he was being followed.
+
+I will not weary you, my dear Sir, with the details of the dance which
+he led me in and about Paris during the whole of that memorable day.
+Never a morsel passed my lips from breakfast to long after sundown. He
+tried every trick known to the profession to throw me off the scent.
+But I stuck to him like a leech. When he sauntered I sauntered; when he
+ran I ran; when he glued his nose to the window of an eating house I
+halted under a doorway close by; when he went to sleep on a bench in
+the Luxembourg Gardens I watched over him as a mother over a babe.
+
+Towards evening—it was an hour after sunset and the street-lamps were
+just being lighted—he must have thought that he had at last got rid of
+me; for, after looking carefully behind him, he suddenly started to
+walk much faster and with an amount of determination which he had
+lacked hitherto. I marvelled if he was not making for the Rue Daunou,
+where was situated the squalid tavern of ill-fame which he was wont to
+frequent. I was not mistaken.
+
+I tracked the traitor to the corner of the street, and saw him
+disappear beneath the doorway of the Taverne des Trois Tigres. I
+resolved to follow. I had money in my pocket—about twenty-five sous—and
+I was mightily thirsty. I started to run down the street, when suddenly
+Theodore came rushing back out of the tavern, hatless and breathless,
+and before I succeeded in dodging him he fell into my arms.
+
+“My money!” he said hoarsely. “I must have my money at once! You thief!
+You . . .”
+
+Once again my presence of mind stood me in good stead.
+
+“Pull yourself together, Theodore,” I said with much dignity, “and do
+not make a scene in the open street.”
+
+But Theodore was not at all prepared to pull himself together. He was
+livid with rage.
+
+“I had five francs in my pocket last night!” he cried. “You have stolen
+them, you abominable rascal!”
+
+“And you stole from me a bracelet worth three thousand francs to the
+firm,” I retorted. “Give me that bracelet and you shall have your money
+back.”
+
+“I can’t,” he blurted out desperately.
+
+“How do you mean, you can’t?” I exclaimed, whilst a horrible fear like
+an icy claw suddenly gripped at my heart. “You haven’t lost it, have
+you?”
+
+“Worse!” he cried, and fell up against me in semi-unconsciousness.
+
+I shook him violently. I bellowed in his ear, and suddenly, after that
+one moment of apparent unconsciousness, he became, not only wide awake,
+but as strong as a lion and as furious as a bull. We closed in on one
+another. He hammered at me with his fists, calling me every kind of
+injurious name he could think of, and I had need of all my strength to
+ward off his attacks.
+
+For a few moments no one took much notice of us. Fracas and quarrels
+outside the drinking-houses in the mean streets of Paris were so
+frequent these days that the police did not trouble much about them.
+But after a while Theodore became so violent that I was forced to call
+vigorously for help. I thought he meant to murder me. People came
+rushing out of the tavern, and someone very officiously started
+whistling for the gendarmes. This had the effect of bringing Theodore
+to his senses. He calmed down visibly, and before the crowd had had
+time to collect round us we had both sauntered off, walking in apparent
+amity side by side down the street.
+
+But at the first corner Theodore halted, and this time he confined
+himself to gripping me by the arm with one hand whilst with the other
+he grasped one of the buttons of my coat.
+
+“That five francs,” he said in a hoarse, half-choked voice. “I must
+have that five francs! Can’t you see that I can’t have that bracelet
+till I have my five francs wherewith to redeem it?”
+
+“To redeem it!” I gasped. I was indeed glad then that he held me by the
+arm, for it seemed to me as if I was falling down a yawning abyss which
+had opened at my feet.
+
+“Yes,” said Theodore, and his voice sounded as if it came from a great
+distance and through cotton-wool,
+
+“I knew that you would be after that bracelet like a famished hyena
+after a bone, so I tied it securely inside the pocket of the blouse I
+was wearing, and left this with Legros, the landlord of the Trois
+Tigres. It was a good blouse; he lent me five francs on it. Of course,
+he knew nothing about the bracelet then. But he only lends money to
+clients in this manner on the condition that it is repaid within
+twenty-four hours. I have got to pay him back before eight o’clock this
+evening or he will dispose of the blouse as he thinks best. It is close
+on eight o’clock now. Give me back my five francs, you confounded
+thief, before Legros has time to discover the bracelet! We’ll share the
+reward, I promise you. Faith of an honest man. You liar, you cheat,
+you—”
+
+What was the use of talking? I had not got five francs. I had spent ten
+sous in getting myself some breakfast, and three francs in a savoury
+pie flavoured with garlic and in a quarter of a bottle of cognac. I
+groaned aloud. I had exactly twenty-five sous left.
+
+We went back to the tavern hoping against hope that Legros had not yet
+turned out the pockets of the blouse, and that we might induce him, by
+threat or cajolery or the usurious interest of twenty-five sous, to
+grant his client a further twenty-four hours wherein to redeem the
+pledge.
+
+One glance at the interior of the tavern, however, told us that all our
+hopes were in vain. Legros, the landlord, was even then turning the
+blouse over and over, whilst his hideous hag of a wife was talking to
+the police inspector, who was showing her the paper that announced the
+offer of two thousand five hundred francs for the recovery of a
+valuable bracelet, the property of Mlle. Mars, the distinguished
+tragedienne.
+
+We only waited one minute with our noses glued against the windows of
+the Trois Tigres, just long enough to see Legros extracting the leather
+case from the pocket of the blouse, just long enough to hear the police
+inspector saying peremptorily:
+
+“You, Legros, ought to be able to let the police know who stole the
+bracelet. You must know who left that blouse with you last night.”
+
+Then we both fled incontinently down the street.
+
+Now, Sir, was I not right when I said that honour and loyalty are the
+essential qualities in our profession? If Theodore had not been such a
+liar and such a traitor, he and I, between us, would have been richer
+by three thousand francs that day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. — AN OVER-SENSITIVE HEART
+
+1.
+
+No doubt, Sir, that you have noticed during the course of our
+conversations that Nature has endowed me with an over-sensitive heart.
+I feel keenly, Sir, very keenly. Blows dealt me by Fate, or, as has
+been more often the case, by the cruel and treacherous hand of man,
+touch me on the raw. I suffer acutely. I am highly strung. I am one of
+those rare beings whom Nature pre-ordained for love and for happiness.
+I am an ideal family man.
+
+What? You did not know that I was married? Indeed, Sir, I am. And
+though Madame Ratichon does not perhaps fulfil all my ideals of
+exquisite womanhood, nevertheless she has been an able and willing
+helpmate during these last years of comparative prosperity. Yes, you
+see me fairly prosperous now. My industry, my genius—if I may so
+express myself—found their reward at last. You will be the first to
+acknowledge—you, the confidant of my life’s history—that that reward
+was fully deserved. I worked for it, toiled and thought and struggled,
+up to the last; and had Fate been just, rather than grudging, I should
+have attained that ideal which would have filled my cup of happiness to
+the brim.
+
+But, anyway, the episode connected with my marriage did mark the close
+of my professional career, and is therefore worthy of record. Since
+that day, Sir—a happy one for me, a blissful one for Mme. Ratichon—I
+have been able, thanks to the foresight of an all-wise Providence, to
+gratify my bucolic tastes. I live now, Sir, amidst my flowers, with my
+dog and my canary and Mme. Ratichon, smiling with kindly indulgence on
+the struggles and the blunders of my younger colleagues, oft consulted
+by them in matters that require special tact and discretion. I sit and
+dream now beneath the shade of a vine-clad arbour of those glorious
+days of long ago, when kings and emperors placed the destiny of their
+inheritance in my hands, when autocrats and dictators came to me for
+assistance and advice, and the name of Hector Ratichon stood for
+everything that was most astute and most discreet. And if at times a
+gentle sigh of regret escapes my lips, Mme. Ratichon—whose thinness is
+ever my despair, for I admire comeliness, Sir, as being more
+womanly—Mme. Ratichon, I say, comes to me with the gladsome news that
+dinner is served; and though she is not all that I could wish in the
+matter of the culinary arts, yet she can fry a cutlet passably, and one
+of her brothers is a wholesale wine merchant of excellent reputation.
+
+It was soon after my connexion with that abominable Marquis de
+Firmin-Latour that I first made the acquaintance of the present Mme.
+Ratichon, under somewhat peculiar circumstances.
+
+I remember it was on the first day of April in the year 1817 that M.
+Rochez—Fernand Rochez was his exact name—came to see me at my office in
+the Rue Daunou, and the date proved propitious, as you will presently
+see. How M. Rochez came to know of my gifts and powers, I cannot tell
+you. He never would say. He had heard of me through a friend, was all
+that he vouchsafed to say.
+
+Theodore had shown him in. Ah! have I not mentioned the fact that I had
+forgiven Theodore his lies and his treachery, and taken him back to my
+bosom and to my board? My sensitive heart had again got the better of
+my prudence, and Theodore was installed once more in the antechamber of
+my apartments in the Rue Daunou, and was, as heretofore, sharing with
+me all the good things that I could afford. So there he was on duty on
+that fateful first of April which was destined to be the turning-point
+of my destiny. And he showed M. de Rochez in.
+
+At once I knew my man—the type, I mean. Immaculately dressed, scented
+and befrilled, haughty of manner and nonchalant of speech, M. Rochez
+had the word “adventurer” writ all over his well-groomed person. He was
+young, good-looking, his nails were beautifully polished, his
+pantaloons fitted him without a wrinkle. These were of a soft putty
+shade; his coat was bottle-green, and his hat of the latest modish
+shape. A perfect exquisite, in fact.
+
+And he came to the point without much preamble.
+
+“M.—er—Ratichon,” he said, “I have heard of you through a friend, who
+tells me that you are the most unscrupulous scoundrel he has ever come
+across.”
+
+“Sir—!” I began, rising from my seat in indignant protest at the coarse
+insult. But with an authoritative gesture he checked the flow of my
+indignation.
+
+“No comedy, I pray you, Sir,” he said. “We are not at the Theatre
+Molière, but, I presume, in an office where business is transacted both
+briefly and with discretion.”
+
+“At your service, Monsieur,” I replied.
+
+“Then listen, will you?” he went on curtly, “and pray do not interrupt.
+Only speak in answer to a question from me.”
+
+I bowed my head in silence. Thus must the proud suffer when they happen
+to be sparsely endowed with riches.
+
+“You have no doubt heard of Mlle. Goldberg,” M. Rochez continued after
+a moment’s pause, “the lovely daughter of the rich usurer in the Rue
+des Médecins.”
+
+I had heard of Mlle. Goldberg. Her beauty and her father’s wealth were
+reported to be fabulous. I indicated my knowledge of the beautiful lady
+by a mute inclination of the head.
+
+“I love Mlle. Goldberg,” my client resumed, “and I have reason for the
+belief that I am not altogether indifferent to her. Glances, you
+understand, from eyes as expressive as those of the exquisite Jewess
+speak more eloquently than words.”
+
+He had forbidden me to speak, so I could only express concurrence in
+the sentiments which he expressed by a slight elevation of my left
+eyebrow.
+
+“I am determined to win the affections of Mlle. Goldberg,” M. Rochez
+went on glibly, “and equally am I determined to make her my wife.”
+
+“A very natural determination,” I remarked involuntarily.
+
+“My only trouble with regard to pressing my court is the fact that my
+lovely Leah is never allowed outside her father’s house, save in his
+company or that of his sister—an old maid of dour mien and sour
+disposition, who acts the part of a duenna with dog-like tenacity. Over
+and over again have I tried to approach the lady of my heart, only to
+be repelled or roughly rebuked for my insolence by her irascible old
+aunt.”
+
+“You are not the first lover, Sir,” I remarked drily, “who hath seen
+obstacles thus thrown in his way, and—”
+
+“One moment, M.—er—Ratichon,” he broke in sharply. “I have not
+finished. I will not attempt to describe my feelings to you. I have
+been writhing—yes, writhing!—in face of those obstacles of which you
+speak so lightly, and for a long time I have been cudgelling my brains
+as to the possible means whereby I might approach my divinity
+unchecked. Then one day I bethought me of you—”
+
+“Of me, Sir?” I ejaculated, sorely puzzled. “Why of me?”
+
+“None of my friends,” he replied nonchalantly, “would care to undertake
+so scrubby a task as I would assign to you.”
+
+“I pray you to be more explicit,” I retorted with unimpaired dignity.
+
+Once more he paused. Obviously he was a born mountebank, and he
+calculated all his effects to a nicety.
+
+“You, M.—er—Ratichon,” he said curtly at last, “will have to take the
+duenna off my hands.”
+
+I was beginning to understand. So I let him prattle on the while my
+busy brain was already at work evolving the means to render this man
+service, which in its turn I expected to be amply repaid. Thus I cannot
+repeat exactly all that he said, for I was only listening with half an
+ear. But the substance of it all was this: I was to pose as the friend
+of M. Fernand Rochez, and engage the attention of Mlle. Goldberg senior
+the while he paid his court to the lovely Leah. It was not a repellent
+task altogether, because M. Rochez’s suggestion opened a vista of
+pleasant parties at open-air cafés, with foaming tankards of beer, on
+warm afternoons the while the young people sipped sirops and fed on
+love. My newly found friend was pleased to admit that my personality
+and appearance would render my courtship of the elderly duenna a
+comparatively easy one. She would soon, he declared, fall a victim to
+my charms.
+
+After which the question of remuneration came in, and over this we did
+not altogether agree. Ultimately I decided to accept an advance of two
+hundred francs and a new suit of clothes, which I at once declared was
+indispensable under the circumstances, seeing that in my well-worn coat
+I might have the appearance of a fortune-hunter in the eyes of the
+suspicious old dame.
+
+Within my mind I envisaged the possibility of touching M. Rochez for a
+further two hundred francs if and when opportunity arose.
+
+2.
+
+The formal introduction took place on the boulevards one fine afternoon
+shortly after that. Mlle. Leah was walking under the trees with her
+duenna when we—M. Rochez and I—came face to face with them. My friend
+raised his hat, and I did likewise. Mademoiselle Leah blushed and the
+ogre frowned. Sir, she was an ogre!—bony and angular and hook-nosed,
+with thin lips that closed with a snap, and cold grey eyes that sent a
+shiver down your spine! Rochez introduced me to her, and I made myself
+exceedingly agreeable to her, while my friend succeeded in exchanging
+two or three whispered words with his inamorata.
+
+But we did not get very far that day. Mlle. Goldberg senior soon
+marched her lovely charge away.
+
+Ah, Sir, she was lovely indeed! And in my heart I not only envied
+Rochez his good fortune but I also felt how entirely unworthy he was of
+it. Nor did the beautiful Leah give me the impression of being quite so
+deeply struck with his charms as he would have had me believe. Indeed,
+it struck me during those few minutes that I stood dutifully talking to
+her duenna that the fair young Jewess cast more than one approving
+glance in my direction.
+
+Be that as it may, the progress of our respective courtships, now that
+the ice was broken, took on a more decided turn. At first it only
+amounted to meetings on the boulevards and a cursory greeting, but soon
+Mlle. Goldberg senior, delighted with my conversation, would
+deliberately turn to walk with me under the trees the while Fernand
+Rochez followed by the side of his adored. A week later the ladies
+accepted my friend’s offer to sit under the awning of the Café Bourbon
+and to sip sirops, whilst we indulged in tankards of foaming “blondes.”
+
+Within a fortnight, Sir—I may say it without boasting—I had Mlle.
+Goldberg senior in the hollow of my hand. On the boulevards, as soon as
+she caught sight of me, her dour face would be wreathed in smiles, a
+row of large yellow teeth would appear between her thin lips, and her
+cold, grey eyes would soften with a glance of welcome which more than
+ever sent a cold shudder down my spine. While we four were together,
+either promenading or sitting at open-air cafés in the cool of the
+evening, the old duenna had eyes and ears only for me, and if my friend
+Rochez did not get on with his own courtship as fast as he would have
+wished the fault rested entirely with him.
+
+For he did _not_ get on with his courtship, and that was a fact. The
+fair Leah was very sweet, very coy, greatly amused, I fancy, at her
+aunt’s obvious infatuation for me, and not a little flattered at the
+handsome M. Rochez’s attentions to herself. But there it all ended. And
+whenever I questioned Rochez on the subject, he flew into a temper and
+consigned all middle-aged Jewesses to perdition, and all the lovely and
+young ones to a comfortable kind of Hades to which he alone amongst the
+male sex would have access. From which I gathered that I was not wrong
+in my surmises, that the fair Leah had been smitten by my personality
+and my appearance rather than by those of my friend, and that he was
+suffering the pangs of an insane jealousy.
+
+This, of course, he never would admit. All that he told me one day was
+that Leah, with the characteristic timidity of her race, refused to
+marry him unless she could obtain her father’s consent to the union.
+Old Goldberg, duly approached on the matter, flatly forbade his
+daughter to have anything further to do with that fortune-hunter, that
+parasite, that beggarly pick-thank—such, Sir, were but a few
+complimentary epithets which he hurled with great volubility at his
+daughter’s absent suitor.
+
+It was from Mlle. Goldberg, senior, that my friend and I had the
+details of that stormy interview between father and daughter; after
+which, she declared that interviews between the lovers would
+necessarily become very difficult of arrangement. From which you will
+gather that the worthy soul, though she was as ugly as sin, was by this
+time on the side of the angels. Indeed, she was more than that. She
+professed herself willing to aid and abet them in every way she could.
+This Rochez confided to me, together with his assurance that he was
+determined to take his Fate into his own hands and, since the beautiful
+Leah would not come to him of her own accord, to carry her off by
+force.
+
+Ah, my dear Sir, those were romantic days, you must remember! Days when
+men placed the possession of the woman they loved above every treasure,
+every consideration upon earth. Ah, romance! Romance, Sir, was the
+breath of our nostrils, the blood in our veins! Imagine how readily we
+all fell in with my friend’s plans. I, of course, was the moving spirit
+in it all; mine was the genius which was destined to turn gilded
+romance into grim reality. Yes, grim! For you shall see! . . .
+
+Mlle. Goldberg, senior, who appropriately enough was named Sarah, gave
+us the clue how to proceed, after which my genius worked alone.
+
+You must know that old Goldberg’s house in the Rue des Médecins—a large
+apartment house in which he occupied a few rooms on the ground floor
+behind his shop—backed on to a small uncultivated garden which ended in
+a tall brick wall, the meeting-place of all the felines in the
+neighbourhood, and in which there was a small postern gate, now
+disused. This gate gave on a narrow cul-de-sac—grandiloquently named
+Passage Corneille—which was flanked on the opposite side by the tall
+boundary wall of an adjacent convent.
+
+That cul-de-sac was marked out from the very first in my mind as our
+objective. Around and about it, as it were, did I build the edifice of
+my schemes, aided by the ever-willing Sarah. The old maid threw herself
+into the affair with zest, planning and contriving like a veritable
+strategist; and I must admit that she was full of resource and
+invention. We were now in mid-May and enjoying a spell of hot summer
+weather. This gave the inventive Sarah the excuse for using the back
+garden as a place wherein to sit in the cool of the evening in the
+company of her niece.
+
+Ah, you see the whole thing now at a glance, do you not? The postern
+gate, the murky night, the daring lover, the struggling maiden, the
+willing accomplices. The actors were all there, ready for the curtain
+to be rung up on the palpitating drama.
+
+Then it was that a brilliant idea came into my brain. It was born on
+the very day that I realized with indisputable certainty that the
+lovely Leah was not in reality in love with Rochez. He fatuously
+believed that she was ready to fall into his arms, that only maidenly
+timidity held her back, and that the moment she had been snatched from
+her father’s house and found herself in the arms of her adoring lover,
+she would turn to him in the very fullness of love and confidence.
+
+But I knew better. I had caught a look now and again—an undefinable
+glance, which told me the whole pitiable tale. She did not love Rochez;
+and in the drama which we were preparing to enact the curtain would
+fall on his rapture and her unhappiness.
+
+Ah, Sir! imagine what my feelings were when I realized this! This fair
+girl, against whom we were all conspiring like so many traitors, was
+still ignorant of the fatal brink on which she stood. She chatted and
+coquetted and smiled, little dreaming that in a very few days her
+happiness would be wrecked and she would be linked for life to a man
+whom she could never love. Rochez’s idea, of course, was primarily to
+get hold of her fortune. I had already ascertained for him, through the
+ever-willing Sarah, that this fortune came from Leah’s grandfather, who
+had left a sum of two hundred thousand francs on trust for her
+children, she to enjoy the income for her life. There certainly was a
+clause in the will whereby the girl would forfeit that fortune if she
+married without her father’s consent; but according to Rochez’s plans
+this could scarcely be withheld once she had been taken forcibly away
+from home, held in durance, and with her reputation hopelessly
+compromised. She could then pose as an injured victim, throw herself at
+her father’s feet, and beg him to give that consent without which she
+would for ever remain an outcast of society, a pariah amongst her kind.
+
+A pretty piece of villainous combination, you will own! And I, Sir, was
+to lend a hand in this abomination!—nay, I was to be the chief villain
+in the drama! It was I who, even now, was spending the hours of the
+night, when I might have been dreaming sentimental dreams, in oiling
+the lock of the postern gate which was to give us access into papa
+Goldberg’s garden. It was I who, under cover of darkness and guided by
+that old jade Sarah, was to sneak into that garden on the appointed
+night and forcibly seize the unsuspecting maiden and carry her to the
+carriage which Rochez would have in readiness for her.
+
+You see what a coward he was! It was a criminal offence in those days,
+punishable with deportation to New Caledonia, to abduct a young lady
+from her parents’ house; and Rochez left me the dirty work to do in
+case the girl screamed and attracted the police. Now you will tell me
+if I was not justified in doing what I did, and I will abide by your
+judgment.
+
+I was to take all the risks, remember!—New Caledonia, the police, the
+odium attached to so foul a deed; and do you know for what? For a
+paltry thousand francs, which with much difficulty I had induced
+Rochez—nay, forced him!—to hand over to me in anticipation of what I
+was about to accomplish for his sake. A thousand francs! Did this
+miserliness not characterize the man? Was it to such a scrubby knave
+that I, at risk of my life and of my honour, would hand over that jewel
+amongst women, that pearl above price?—a lady with a personal fortune
+amounting to two hundred thousand francs?
+
+No, Sir; I would not! Then and there I vowed that I would not! Mine
+were to be all the risks; then mine should be the reward! What Rochez
+meant to do, that I could too, and with far greater reason. The lovely
+Leah did at times frown on Fernand; but she invariably smiled on me.
+She would fall into my arms far more readily than into his, and papa
+Goldberg would be equally forced to give his consent to her marriage
+with me as with that self-seeking carpet-knight whom he abhorred.
+
+Needless to say, I kept my own counsel, and did not speak of my project
+even to Sarah. To all appearances I was to be the mere tool in this
+affair, the unfortunate cat employed to snatch the roast chestnuts out
+of the fire for the gratification of a mealy-mouthed monkey.
+
+3.
+
+The appointed day and hour were at hand. Fernand Rochez had engaged a
+barouche which was to take him and his lovely victim to a little house
+at Auteuil, which he had rented for the purpose. There the lovers were
+to lie perdu until such time as papa Goldberg had relented and the
+marriage could be duly solemnized in the synagogue of the Rue des
+Halles. Sarah had offered in the meanwhile to do all that in her power
+lay to soften the old man’s heart and to bring about the happy
+conclusion of the romantic adventure.
+
+For the latter we had chosen the night of May 23rd. It was a moonless
+night, and the Passage Corneille, from whence I was to operate, was
+most usefully dark. Sarah Goldberg had, according to convention, left
+the postern gate on the latch, and at ten o’clock precisely I made my
+way up the cul-de-sac and cautiously turned the handle of the door. I
+confess that my heart beat somewhat uncomfortably in my bosom.
+
+I had left Rochez and his barouche in the Rue des Pipots, about a
+hundred metres from the angle of the Passage Corneille, and it was
+along those hundred metres of a not altogether unfrequented street that
+he expected me presently to carry a possibly screaming and struggling
+burden in the very teeth of a gendarmerie always on the look-out for
+exciting captures.
+
+No, Sir; that was not to be! And it was with a resolute if beating
+heart that I presently felt the postern gate yielding to the pressure
+of my hand. The neighbouring church clock of St. Sulpice had just
+finished striking ten. I pushed open the gate and tip-toed across the
+threshold.
+
+In the garden the boughs of a dilapidated old ash tree were soughing in
+the wind above my head, whilst from the top of the boundary wall the
+yarring and yowling of beasts of the feline species grated unpleasantly
+on my ear. I could not see my hand before my eyes, and had just
+stretched it out in order to guide my footsteps when it was seized with
+a kindly yet firm pressure, whilst a voice murmured softly:
+
+“Hush!”
+
+“Who is it?” I whispered in response.
+
+“It is I—Sarah!” the voice replied. “Everything is all right, but Leah
+is unsuspecting. I am sure that if she suspected anything she would not
+set foot outside the door.”
+
+“What shall we do?” I asked.
+
+“Wait here a moment quietly,” Sarah rejoined, speaking in a rapid
+whisper, “under cover of this wall. Within the next few minutes Leah
+will come out of the house. I have left my knitting upon a garden
+chair, and I will ask her to run out and fetch it. That will be your
+opportunity. The chair is in the angle of the wall, there,” she added,
+pointing to her right, “not three paces from where you are standing
+now. Leah has a white dress on. She will have to stoop in order to pick
+up the knitting. I have taken the precaution to entangle the wool in
+the leg of the chair, so she will be some few seconds entirely at your
+mercy. Have you a shawl?”
+
+I had, of course, provided myself with one. A shawl is always a
+necessary adjunct to such adventures. Breathlessly, silently, I
+intimated to my kind accomplice that I would obey her behests and that
+I was prepared for every eventuality. The next moment her hold upon my
+hand relaxed, she gave another quickly-whispered “Hush!” and
+disappeared into the night.
+
+For a second or two after that my ear caught the soft sound of her
+retreating footsteps, then nothing more. To say that I felt anxious and
+ill at ease was but to put it mildly. I was face to face with an
+adventure which might cost me at least five years’ acute discomfort in
+New Caledonia, but which might also bring me as rich a reward as could
+befall any man of modest ambitions: a lovely wife and a comfortable
+fortune. My whole life seemed to be hanging on a thread, and my
+overwrought senses seemed almost to catch the sound of the
+spinning-wheel of Fate weaving the web of my destiny.
+
+A moment or two later I again caught the distinct sound of a gentle
+footfall upon the soft earth. My eyes by now were somewhat accustomed
+to the gloom. It was very dark, you understand; but through the
+darkness I saw something white moving slowly toward me. Then my heart
+thumped more furiously than ever before. I dared not breathe. I saw the
+lovely Leah approaching, or, rather, I felt her approach, for it was
+too dark to see. She moved in the direction which Sarah had indicated
+to me as being the place where stood the garden chair with the knitting
+upon it. I grasped the shawl. I was ready.
+
+Another few seconds of agonising suspense went by. The fair Leah had
+ceased to move. Undoubtedly she was engaged in disentangling the wool
+from the leg of the chair. That was my opportunity. More stealthy than
+any cat, I tiptoed toward the chair—and, indeed, at that moment I
+blessed the sudden yowl set up by some feline in its wrath which rent
+the still night air and effectually drowned any sound which I might
+make.
+
+There, not three paces away from me, was the dim outline of the young
+girl’s form vaguely discernible in the gloom—a white mass, almost
+motionless, against a background of inky blackness. With a quick
+intaking of my breath I sprang forward, the shawl outspread in my hand,
+and with a quick dexterous gesture I threw it over her head, and the
+next second had her, faintly struggling, in my arms. She was as light
+as a feather, and I was as strong as a giant. Think of it, Sir! There
+was I, alone in the darkness, holding in my arms, together with a
+lovely form, a fortune of two hundred thousand francs!
+
+Of that fool Fernand Rochez I did not trouble to think. He had a
+barouche waiting _up_ the Rue des Pipots, a hundred metres from the
+corner of the Passage Corneille, but I had a chaise and pair of horses
+waiting _down_ that same street, and that now was my objective. Yes,
+Sir! I had arranged the whole thing! But I had done it for mine own
+advantage, not for that of the miserly friend who had been too great a
+coward to risk his own skin for the sake of his beloved.
+
+The guerdon was mine, and I was determined this time that no traitor or
+ingrate should filch from me the reward of my labours. With the
+thousand francs which Rochez had given me for my services I had engaged
+the chaise and horses, paid the coachman lavishly, and secured a cosy
+little apartment for my future wife in a pleasant hostelry I knew of at
+Suresnes.
+
+I had taken the precaution to leave the wicket-gate on the latch. With
+my foot I pushed it open, and, keeping well under the cover of the tall
+convent wall, I ran swiftly to the corner of the Rue des Pipots. Here I
+paused a moment. Through the silence of the night my ear caught the
+faint sound of horses snorting and harness jingling in the distance,
+both sides from where I stood; but of gendarmes or passers-by there was
+no sign. Gathering up the full measure of my courage and holding my
+precious burden closer to my heart, I ran quickly down the street.
+
+Within the next few seconds I had the seemingly inanimate maiden safely
+deposited in the inside of the barouche and myself sitting by her side.
+The driver cracked his whip, and whilst I, happy but exhausted, was
+mopping my streaming forehead the chaise rattled gaily along the uneven
+pavements of the great city in the direction of Suresnes.
+
+What that fool Rochez was doing I could not definitely ascertain. I
+looked through the vasistas of the coach, but could see nothing in
+pursuit of us. Then I turned my full attention to my lovely companion.
+It was pitch dark inside the carriage, you understand; only from time
+to time, as we drove past an overhanging street lanthorn, I caught a
+glimpse of that priceless bundle beside me, which lay there so still
+and so snug, still wrapped up in the shawl.
+
+With cautious, loving fingers I undid its folds. Under cover of the
+darkness the sweet and modest creature, released of her bonds, turned
+for an instant to me, and for a few, very few, happy seconds I held her
+in my arms.
+
+“Have no fear, fair one,” I murmured in her ear. “It is I, Hector
+Ratichon, who adores you and who cannot live without you! Forgive me
+for this seeming violence, which was prompted by an undying passion,
+and remember that to me you are as sacred as a divinity until the happy
+hour when I can proclaim you to the world as my beloved wife!”
+
+I pressed her against my heart, and my lips imprinted a delicate kiss
+upon her forehead. After which, with chaste decorum, she once more
+turned away from me, covered her face and head with the shawl, and drew
+back into the remote corner of the carriage, where she remained, silent
+and absorbed, no doubt, in the contemplation of her happiness.
+
+I respected her silence, and I, too, fell to meditating upon my good
+fortune. Here was I, Sir, within sight of a haven wherein I could live
+through the twilight of my days in comfort and in peace, a beautiful
+young wife, a modest fortune! I had never in my wildest dreams
+envisaged a Fate more fair. The little house at Chantilly which I
+coveted, the plot of garden, the espalier peaches—all, all would be
+mine now! It seemed indeed too good to be true!
+
+The very next moment I was rudely awakened from those golden dreams by
+a loud clatter, and stern voices shouting the ominous word, “Halt!” The
+carriage drew up with such a jerk that I was flung off my seat against
+the front window and my nose seriously bruised. A faint cry of terror
+came from the precious bundle beside me.
+
+“Have no fear, my beloved,” I whispered hurriedly. “Your own Hector
+will protect you!”
+
+Already the door of the carriage had been violently torn open; the next
+moment a gruff voice called out peremptorily:
+
+“By order of the Chief Commissary of Police!”
+
+I was dumbfounded. In what manner had the Chief Commissary of Police
+been already apprised of this affair? The whole thing was, of course, a
+swift and vengeful blow dealt to me by that cowardly Rochez. But how,
+in the name of thunder, had he got to work so quickly? But, of course,
+there was no time now for reflection. The gruff voice was going on more
+peremptorily and more insistently:
+
+“Is Hector Ratichon here?”
+
+I was dumb. My throat had closed up, and I could not have uttered a
+sound to save my life. The police had even got my name quite straight!
+
+“Now then, Ratichon,” that same irascible voice continued, “get out of
+there! In the name of the law I charge you with the abduction of a
+defenceless female, and my orders are to bring you forthwith before the
+Chief Commissary of Police.”
+
+Then it was, Sir, that bliss once more re-entered my soul. I had just
+felt a small hand pressing something crisp into mine, whilst a soft
+voice whispered in my ear:
+
+“Give him this, and tell him to let you go in peace. Say that I am
+Mademoiselle Goldberg, your promised wife.”
+
+The feel of that crackling note in my hand at once restored my courage.
+Covering the lovely creature beside me with a protecting arm, I replied
+boldly to the minion of the law.
+
+“This lady,” I said, “is my affianced wife. You, Sir Gendarme, are
+overstepping your powers. I demand that you let us proceed in peace.”
+
+“My orders are—” the gendarme resumed; but already my sensitive ear had
+detected a faint wavering in the gruffness of his voice. The hectoring
+tone had gone out of it. I could not see him, of course, but somehow I
+felt that his attitude had become less arrogant and his glance more
+shifty.
+
+“This gentleman has spoken the truth,” now came in soft, dulcet tones
+from under the shawl that wrapped the head of my beloved. “I am Mlle.
+Goldberg, M. le Gendarme, and I am travelling with M. Hector Ratichon
+entirely of my own free will, since I have promised him that I would be
+his wife.”
+
+“Ah!” the gendarme ejaculated, obviously mollified.
+
+“If Mademoiselle is the fiancée of Monsieur, and is acting of her own
+free will—”
+
+“It is not for you to interfere, eh, my friend?” I broke in jocosely.
+“You will now let us proceed in peace, and for your trouble you will no
+doubt accept this token of my consideration.” And, groping in the
+darkness, I found the rough hand of the gendarme, and speedily pressed
+into it the crisp note which my adored one had given to me.
+
+“Ah!” he said, with very obvious gratification. “If Monsieur Ratichon
+will assure me that Mademoiselle here is indeed his affianced wife,
+then indeed it is not a case of abduction, and—”
+
+“Abduction!” I retorted, flaring up in righteous indignation. “Who
+dares to use the word in connexion with this lovely lady? Mademoiselle
+Goldberg, I swear, will be Madame Ratichon within the next four and
+twenty hours. And the sooner you, Sir Gendarme, allow us to proceed on
+our way the less pain will you cause to this distressed and virtuous
+damsel.”
+
+This settled the whole affair quite comfortably. The gendarme shut the
+carriage door with a bang, and at my request gave the order to the
+driver to proceed. The latter once again cracked his whip, and once
+again the cumbrous vehicle, after an awkward lurch, rattled on its way
+along the cobblestones of the sleeping city.
+
+Once more I was alone with the priceless treasure by my side—alone and
+happy—more happy, I might say, than I had been before. Had not my
+adored one openly acknowledged her love for me and her desire to stand
+with me at the hymeneal altar? To put it vulgarly—though vulgarity in
+every form is repellent to me—she had burnt her boats. She had allowed
+her name to be coupled with mine in the presence of the minions of the
+law. What, after that, could her father do but give his consent to a
+union which alone would save his only child’s reputation from the
+cruelty of waggish tongues?
+
+No doubt, Sir, that I was happy. True, that when the uncouth gendarme
+finally slammed to the door of our carriage and we restarted on our
+way, my ears had been unpleasantly tickled by the sound of prolonged
+and ribald laughter—laughter which sounded strangely and unpleasantly
+familiar. But after a few seconds’ serious reflection I dismissed the
+matter from my thoughts. If, as indeed I gravely suspected, it was
+Fernand Rochez who had striven thus to put a spoke in the wheel of my
+good fortune, he would certainly not have laughed when I drove
+triumphantly away with my conquered bride by my side. And, of course,
+my ears _must_ have deceived me when they caught the sound of a girl’s
+merry laugh mingling with the more ribald one of the man.
+
+4.
+
+I have paused purposely, Sir, ere I embark upon the narration of the
+final stage of this, my life’s adventure.
+
+The chaise was bowling along the banks of the river toward Suresnes.
+Presently the driver struck to his right and plunged into the
+fastnesses of the Bois de Boulogne. For a while, therefore, we were in
+utter darkness. My lovely companion neither moved nor spoke. Somewhere
+in the far distance a church clock struck eleven. One whole hour had
+gone by since first I had embarked on this great undertaking.
+
+I was excited, feverish. The beautiful Leah’s silence and tranquillity
+grated upon my nerves. I could not understand how she could remain
+there so placid when her whole life’s happiness had so suddenly, so
+unexpectedly, been assured. I became more and more fidgety as time went
+on. Soon I felt that I could no longer hold myself in proper control.
+Being of an impulsive disposition, this tranquil acceptance of so great
+a joy became presently intolerable, and, unable to restrain my ardour
+any longer, I seized that passive bundle of loveliness in my arms.
+
+“Have no fear,” I murmured once again, as I pressed her to my heart.
+
+But my admonition was obviously unnecessary. The beautiful Leah showed
+not the slightest sign of fear. She rested her head against my shoulder
+and put one arm around my neck. I was in raptures.
+
+Just then the vehicle swung out of the Bois and once more rattled upon
+the cobblestones. This time we were nearing Suresnes. A vague light,
+emanating from the lanthorns at the bridge-head, was already faintly
+visible ahead of us. Soon it grew brighter. The next moment we passed
+immediately beneath the lanthorns. The interior of the carriage was
+flooded with light . . . and, Sir, I gave a gasp of unadulterated
+dismay! The being whom I held in my arms, whose face was even at that
+moment raised up to my own, was not the lovely Leah! It was Sarah, Sir!
+Sarah Goldberg, the dour, angular aunt, whose yellow teeth gleamed for
+one brief moment through her thin lips as she threw me one of those
+glances of amorous welcome which invariably sent a cold shiver down my
+spine. Sarah Goldberg! I scarce could believe my eyes, and for a moment
+did indeed think that the elusive, swiftly-vanished light of the
+bridge-head lanthorns had played my excited senses a weird and cruel
+trick. But no! The very next second proved my disillusionment. Sarah
+spoke to me!
+
+She spoke to me and laughed! Ah, she was happy, Sir! Happy in that she
+had completely and irrevocably tricked me! That traitor Fernand Rochez
+was up to the neck in the plot which had saddled me for ever with an
+ugly, elderly wife of dour mien and no fortune, while he and the lovely
+Leah were spinning the threads of perfect love at the other end of
+Paris and laughing their fill at my discomfiture. Think, Sir, what I
+suffered during those few brief minutes while the coach lurched through
+the narrow streets of Suresnes, and I had perforce to listen to the
+protestations of undying love from this unprepossessing female!
+
+That love, she vowed, was her excuse, and everything, she asserted, was
+fair in love and war. She knew that after Rochez had attained his
+heart’s desire and carried off the lady of his choice—which he had
+successfully done half an hour before I myself made my way up the
+Passage Corneille—I would pass out of her life for ever. This she could
+not endure. Life at once would become intolerable. And, aided and
+abetted by Rochez and Leah, she had planned and contrived my
+mystification and won me by foul means, since she could not do so by
+fair; and it seemed as if her volubility then was the forecast of what
+my life with her would be in the future. Talk! Talk! Talk! She never
+ceased!
+
+She told me the whole story of the abominable conspiracy against my
+liberty. Her brother, M. Goldberg, she explained, had determined upon
+remarriage. She, Sarah, felt that henceforth she would be in the way of
+everybody; she would have no home. Leah married to Rochez; a new and
+young Mme. Goldberg ruling in the old house of the Rue des Médecins!
+Ah, it was unthinkable!
+
+And I, Sir—I, Hector Ratichon—had, it appears, by my polite manners and
+prepossessing ways, induced this dour old maid to believe that she was
+not altogether indifferent to me. Ah, how I cursed my own charms, when
+I realised whither they had led me! It seems that it was that fickle
+jade Leah who first imagined the whole execrable plot. Rochez was to
+entrust me with the task of carrying off his beloved, and thus I would
+be tricked in the darkness into abducting Mlle. Goldberg senior from
+her home. Then some friends of Rochez arranged to play the comedy of
+false gendarmes, and again I was tricked into acknowledging Sarah as my
+affianced wife before independent witnesses. After that I could no
+longer repudiate mine honourable intentions, for if I did, then I
+should be arraigned before the law on a criminal charge of abduction.
+In this comedy of false gendarmes Rochez himself and the heartless Leah
+had joined with zest and laughed over my discomfiture, whilst the
+friends who played their rôles to such perfection had a paltry hundred
+francs each as the price of this infamous trick. Now my doom was
+sealed, and all that was left for me to do was to think disconsolately
+over my future.
+
+I did bitterly reproach Sarah for her treachery and tried to still her
+protestations of love by pointing out to her that I had absolutely no
+fortune, and could only offer her a life of squalor, not to say of
+what. But this she knew, and vowed that penury by my side would make
+her happier than luxury beside any other man. Ah, Sir, ‘tis given to
+few men to arouse such selfless passion in a woman’s heart, and it hath
+oft been my dream in the past one day thus to be adored for myself
+alone!
+
+But for the moment I was too deeply angered to listen placidly to
+Sarah’s vows of undying affection. My nerves were irritated by her
+fulsome adulation; indeed, I could not bear the sight of her nor yet
+the sound of her voice. You may imagine how thankful I was when the
+chaise came at last to a halt outside the humble little hostelry where
+I had engaged the room which I had so fondly hoped would have been
+occupied by the lovely and fickle Leah.
+
+I bundled Mlle. Goldberg senior into the house, and here again I had to
+endure galling mortification in the shape of sidelong glances cast at
+me and my future bride by the landlord of the hostelry and his ill-bred
+daughter. When I engaged the room I had very foolishly told them that
+it would be occupied by a lovely lady who had consented to be my wife,
+and that she would remain here in happy seclusion until such time as
+all arrangements for our wedding were complete. The humiliation of
+these vulgar people’s irony seemed like the last straw which
+overweighed my forbearance. The room and pension I had already paid two
+days in advance, so I had nothing more to say either to the ribald
+landlord or to Mlle. Goldberg senior. I was bitterly angered against
+her, and refused her the solace of a kindly look or of an encouraging
+pressure from my hand, even though she waited for both with the
+pathetic patience of an old spaniel.
+
+I re-entered the coach, which was to take me back to mine own humble
+lodgings in Passy. Here at least I was alone—alone with my gloomy
+thoughts. My heart was full of wrath against the woman who had so
+basely tricked me, and I viewed with dismay amounting almost to despair
+the prospect of spending the rest of my life in her company. That night
+I slept but little, nor yet the following night, or the night after
+that. Those days I spent in seclusion, thankful for my solitude.
+
+Twice each day did Mlle. Goldberg come to my lodgings. In the foolish
+past I had somewhat injudiciously acquainted her of where I lived. Now
+she came and asked to be allowed to see me, but invariably did I refuse
+thus to gratify her. I felt that time alone would perhaps soften my
+feelings a little towards her. In the meanwhile I must commend her
+discretion and delicacy of procedure. She did not in any way attempt to
+molest me. When she was told by Theodore—whom I employed during the day
+to guard me against unwelcome visitors—that I refused to see her, she
+invariably went away without demur, nor did she refer in any way,
+either with adjurations or threats, to the impending wedding. Indeed,
+Sir, she was a lady of vast discretion.
+
+On the third day, however, I received a visit from M. Goldberg himself.
+I could not refuse to see him. Indeed, he would not be denied, but
+roughly pushed Theodore aside, who tried to hinder him. He had come
+armed with a riding-whip, and nothing but mine own innate dignity saved
+me from outrage. He came, Sir, with a marriage licence for his sister
+and me in one pocket and with a denunciation to the police against me
+for abduction in another. He gave me the choice. What could I do, Sir?
+I was like a helpless babe in the hands of unscrupulous brigands!
+
+The marriage licence was for the following day—at the mairie of the
+eighth arrondissement first, and in the synagogue of the Rue des Halles
+afterwards. I chose the marriage licence. What could I do, Sir? I was
+helpless!
+
+Of my wedding day I have but a dim recollection. It was all hustle and
+bustle; from the mairie to the synagogue, and thence to the house of M.
+Goldberg in the Rue des Médecins. I must say that the old usurer
+received me and my bride with marked amiability. He was, I gathered,
+genuinely pleased that his sister had found happiness and a home by the
+side of an honourable man, seeing that he himself was on the point of
+contracting a fresh alliance with a Jewish lady of unsurpassed
+loveliness.
+
+Of Rochez and Leah we saw nothing that day, and from one or two words
+which M. Goldberg let fall I concluded that he was greatly angered
+against his daughter because of her marriage with a fortune-hunting
+adventurer, who, he weirdly hinted, had already found quick and
+exemplary punishment for his crime. I was sincerely glad to hear this,
+even though I could not get M. Goldberg to explain in what that
+exemplary punishment consisted.
+
+The climax came at six o’clock of that eventful afternoon, at the hour
+when I, with the newly-enthroned Mme. Ratichon on my arm, was about to
+take leave of M. Goldberg. I must admit that at that moment my heart
+was overflowing with bitterness. I had been led like a lamb to the
+slaughter; I had been made to look foolish and absurd in the midst of
+this Israelite community which I despised; I was saddled for the rest
+of my life with an unprepossessing elderly wife, who could do naught
+for me but share the penury, the hard crusts, the onion pies with me
+and Theodore. The only advantage I might ever derive from her was that
+she would darn my stockings, sew the buttons on my vests, and goffer
+the frills of my shirts!
+
+Was this not enough to turn any man’s naturally sweet disposition to
+gall? No doubt my mobile face betrayed something of the bitterness of
+my thoughts, for M. Goldberg at one moment slapped me vigorously on the
+back and bade me be of good cheer, as things were not so bad as I
+imagined. I was on the point of asking him what he meant when I saw
+another gentleman advancing toward me. His face, which was sallow and
+oily, bore a kind of obsequious smile; his clothes were of rusty black,
+and his features were markedly Jewish in character. He had some law
+papers under his arm, and he was perpetually rubbing his thin, bony
+hands together as if he were for ever washing them.
+
+“Monsieur Hector Ratichon,” he said unctuously, “it is with much
+gratification that I bring you the joyful news.”
+
+Joyful news!—to me! Ah, Sir, the words struck at first with cruel irony
+upon mine ear. But not so a second later, for the Jewish gentleman went
+on speaking, and what he said appeared to my reeling senses like songs
+of angels from paradise.
+
+At first I could not grasp his full meaning. A moment ago I had been in
+the depths of despair, and now—now—a whole vista of beatitude opened
+out before me! What the worthy Israelite said was that, by the terms of
+Grandpapa Goldberg’s will, if Leah married without her father’s
+consent, one-half of the fortune destined for her would revert to her
+aunt, Sarah Goldberg, now Madame Hector Ratichon.
+
+Can you wonder that I could scarce believe my ears? One-half that
+fortune meant that a hundred thousand francs would now become mine! M.
+Goldberg had already made it very clear to his daughter and to Rochez
+that he would never give his consent to their marriage, and, as this
+was now consummated, they had already forfeited one-half of the
+grandfather’s fortune in favour of my Sarah. That was the exemplary
+punishment which they were to suffer for their folly.
+
+But their folly—aye! and their treachery—had become my joy. In this
+moment of heavenly rapture I was speechless, but I turned to Sarah with
+loving arms outstretched, and the next instant she nestled against my
+heart like a joyful if elderly bird.
+
+What is said of a people, Sir, is also true of the individual. Happy he
+who hath no history. Since that never-to-be-forgotten hour my life has
+run its simple, uneventful course here in this quiet corner of our
+beautiful France, with my pony and my dog and my chickens, and Mme.
+Ratichon to minister to my creature comforts.
+
+I bought this little property, Sir, soon after my marriage, and my
+office in the Rue Daunou knows me no more. You like the house, Sir? Ah,
+yes! And the garden? . . . After déjeuner you must see my prize
+chickens. Theodore will show them to you. You did not know Theodore was
+here? Well, yes! He lives with us. Madame Ratichon finds him useful
+about the house, and, not being used to luxuries, he is on the whole
+pleasantly contented.
+
+Ah, here comes Madame Ratichon to tell us that the déjeuner is served!
+This way, Sir, under the porch. . . . After you!
+
+THE END
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12461 ***
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+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12461 ***</div>
+
+<h1>CASTLES IN THE AIR</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">By Baroness Emmuska Orczy</h2>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_FORE">FOREWORD</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0002"><b>CASTLES IN THE AIR</b></a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0001">CHAPTER I. &mdash; A ROLAND FOR HIS OLIVER</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0002">CHAPTER II. &mdash; A FOOL’S PARADISE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0003">CHAPTER III. &mdash; ON THE BRINK</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0004">CHAPTER IV. &mdash; CARISSIMO</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0005">CHAPTER V. &mdash; THE TOYS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0006">CHAPTER VI. &mdash; HONOUR AMONG&mdash;&mdash;</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0007">CHAPTER VII. &mdash; AN OVER-SENSITIVE HEART</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_FORE"></a>
+FOREWORD</h2>
+
+<p>
+In presenting this engaging rogue to my readers, I feel that I owe them, if not
+an apology, at least an explanation for this attempt at enlisting sympathy in
+favour of a man who has little to recommend him save his own unconscious
+humour. In very truth my good friend Ratichon is an unblushing liar, thief, a
+forger&mdash;anything you will; his vanity is past belief, his scruples are
+non-existent. How he escaped a convict settlement it is difficult to imagine,
+and hard to realize that he died&mdash;presumably some years after the event
+recorded in the last chapter of his autobiography&mdash;a respected member of
+the community, honoured by that same society which should have raised a
+punitive hand against him. Yet this I believe to be the case. At any rate, in
+spite of close research in the police records of the period, I can find no
+mention of Hector Ratichon. “Heureux le peuple qui n’a pas d’histoire” applies,
+therefore, to him, and we must take it that Fate and his own sorely troubled
+country dealt lightly with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Which brings me back to my attempt at an explanation. If Fate dealt kindly, why
+not we? Since time immemorial there have been worse scoundrels unhung than
+Hector Ratichon, and he has the saving grace&mdash; which few possess&mdash;of
+unruffled geniality. Buffeted by Fate, sometimes starving, always thirsty, he
+never complains; and there is all through his autobiography what we might call
+an “Ah, well!” attitude about his outlook on life. Because of this, and because
+his very fatuity makes us smile, I feel that he deserves forgiveness and even a
+certain amount of recognition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fragmentary notes, which I have only very slightly modified, came into my
+hands by a happy chance one dull post-war November morning in Paris, when rain,
+sleet and the north wind drove me for shelter under the arcades of the Odéon,
+and a kindly vendor of miscellaneous printed matter and mouldy MSS. allowed me
+to rummage amongst a load of old papers which he was about to consign to the
+rubbish heap. I imagine that the notes were set down by the actual person to
+whom the genial Hector Ratichon recounted the most conspicuous events of his
+chequered career, and as I turned over the torn and musty pages, which hung
+together by scraps of mouldy thread, I could not help feeling the
+humour&mdash;aye! and the pathos&mdash;of that drabby side of old Paris which
+was being revealed to me through the medium of this rogue’s adventures. And
+even as, holding the fragments in my hand, I walked home that morning through
+the rain something of that same quaint personality seemed once more to haunt
+the dank and dreary streets of the once dazzling Ville Lumière. I seemed to see
+the shabby bottle-green coat, the nankeen pantaloons, the down-at-heel shoes of
+this “confidant of Kings”; I could hear his unctuous, self-satisfied laugh, and
+sensed his furtive footstep whene’er a gendarme came into view. I saw his
+ruddy, shiny face beaming at me through the sleet and the rain as, like a
+veritable squire of dames, he minced his steps upon the boulevard, or, like a
+reckless smuggler, affronted the grave dangers of mountain fastnesses upon the
+Juras; and I was quite glad to think that a life so full of unconscious humour
+had not been cut short upon the gallows. And I thought kindly of him, for he
+had made me smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is nothing fine about him, nothing romantic; nothing in his actions to
+cause a single thrill to the nerves of the most unsophisticated reader.
+Therefore, I apologize in that I have not held him up to a just obloquy because
+of his crimes, and I ask indulgence for his turpitudes because of the laughter
+which they provoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+EMMUSKA ORCZY. <i>Paris, 1921</i>.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_4_0002"></a>
+CASTLES IN THE AIR</h2>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0001"></a>
+CHAPTER I. &mdash; A ROLAND FOR HIS OLIVER</h2>
+
+<h3>1.</h3>
+
+<p>
+My name is Ratichon&mdash;Hector Ratichon, at your service, and I make so bold
+as to say that not even my worst enemy would think of minimizing the value of
+my services to the State. For twenty years now have I placed my powers at the
+disposal of my country: I have served the Republic, and was confidential agent
+to Citizen Robespierre; I have served the Empire, and was secret factotum to
+our great Napoléon; I have served King Louis&mdash;with a brief interval of one
+hundred days&mdash; for the past two years, and I can only repeat that no one,
+in the whole of France, has been so useful or so zealous in tracking criminals,
+nosing out conspiracies, or denouncing traitors as I have been.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And yet you see me a poor man to this day: there has been a persistently
+malignant Fate which has worked against me all these years, and would&mdash;but
+for a happy circumstance of which I hope anon to tell you&mdash;have left me
+just as I was, in the matter of fortune, when I first came to Paris and set up
+in business as a volunteer police agent at No. 96 Rue Daunou.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My apartment in those days consisted of an antechamber, an outer office where,
+if need be, a dozen clients might sit, waiting their turn to place their
+troubles, difficulties, anxieties before the acutest brain in France, and an
+inner room wherein that same acute brain&mdash;mine, my dear Sir&mdash;was wont
+to ponder and scheme. That apartment was not luxuriously
+furnished&mdash;furniture being very dear in those days&mdash;but there were a
+couple of chairs and a table in the outer office, and a cupboard wherein I kept
+the frugal repast which served me during the course of a long and laborious
+day. In the inner office there were more chairs and another table, littered
+with papers: letters and packets all tied up with pink tape (which cost three
+sous the metre), and bundles of letters from hundreds of clients, from the
+highest and the lowest in the land, you understand, people who wrote to me and
+confided in me to-day as kings and emperors had done in the past. In the
+antechamber there was a chair-bedstead for Theodore to sleep on when I required
+him to remain in town, and a chair on which he could sit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, of course, there was Theodore!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah! my dear Sir, of him I can hardly speak without feeling choked with the
+magnitude of my emotion. A noble indignation makes me dumb. Theodore, sir, has
+ever been the cruel thorn that times out of number hath wounded my
+over-sensitive heart. Think of it! I had picked him out of the gutter! No! no!
+I do not mean this figuratively! I mean that, actually and in the flesh, I took
+him up by the collar of his tattered coat and dragged him out of the gutter in
+the Rue Blanche, where he was grubbing for trifles out of the slime and mud. He
+was frozen, Sir, and starved&mdash;yes, starved! In the intervals of picking
+filth up out of the mud he held out a hand blue with cold to the passers-by and
+occasionally picked up a sou. When I found him in that pitiable condition he
+had exactly twenty centimes between him and absolute starvation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I, Sir Hector Ratichon, the confidant of two kings, three autocrats and an
+emperor, took that man to my bosom&mdash;fed him, clothed him, housed him, gave
+him the post of secretary in my intricate, delicate, immensely important
+business&mdash;and I did this, Sir, at a salary which, in comparison with his
+twenty centimes, must have seemed a princely one to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His duties were light. He was under no obligation to serve me or to be at his
+post before seven o’clock in the morning, and all that he had to do then was to
+sweep out the three rooms, fetch water from the well in the courtyard below,
+light the fire in the iron stove which stood in my inner office, shell the
+haricots for his own mess of pottage, and put them to boil. During the day his
+duties were lighter still. He had to run errands for me, open the door to
+prospective clients, show them into the outer office, explain to them that his
+master was engaged on affairs relating to the kingdom of France, and generally
+prove himself efficient, useful and loyal&mdash;all of which qualities he
+assured me, my dear Sir, he possessed to the fullest degree. And I believed
+him, Sir; I nurtured the scorpion in my over-sensitive bosom! I promised him
+ten per cent. on all the profits of my business, and all the remnants from my
+own humble repasts&mdash;bread, the skins of luscious sausages, the bones from
+savoury cutlets, the gravy from the tasty carrots and onions. You would have
+thought that his gratitude would become boundless, that he would almost worship
+the benefactor who had poured at his feet the full cornucopia of comfort and
+luxury. Not so! That man, Sir, was a snake in the grass&mdash;a serpent&mdash;a
+crocodile! Even now that I have entirely severed my connexion with that
+ingrate, I seem to feel the wounds, like dagger-thrusts, which he dealt me with
+so callous a hand. But I have done with him&mdash;done, I tell you! How could I
+do otherwise than to send him back to the gutter from whence I should never
+have dragged him? My goodness, he repaid with an ingratitude so black that you,
+Sir, when you hear the full story of his treachery, will exclaim aghast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah, you shall judge! His perfidy commenced less than a week after I had given
+him my third best pantaloons and three sous to get his hair cut, thus making a
+man of him. And yet, you would scarcely believe it, in the matter of the secret
+documents he behaved toward me like a veritable Judas!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Listen, my dear Sir.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I told you, I believe, that I had my office in the Rue Daunou. You understand
+that I had to receive my clients&mdash;many of whom were of exalted
+rank&mdash;-in a fashionable quarter of Paris. But I actually lodged in
+Passy&mdash;being fond of country pursuits and addicted to fresh air&mdash;in a
+humble hostelry under the sign of the “Grey Cat”; and here, too, Theodore had a
+bed. He would walk to the office a couple of hours before I myself started on
+the way, and I was wont to arrive as soon after ten o’clock of a morning as I
+could do conveniently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On this memorable occasion of which I am about to tell you&mdash;it was during
+the autumn of 1815&mdash;I had come to the office unusually early, and had just
+hung my hat and coat in the outer room, and taken my seat at my desk in the
+inner office, there to collect my thoughts in preparation for the grave events
+which the day might bring forth, when, suddenly, an ill-dressed, dour-looking
+individual entered the room without so much as saying, “By your leave,” and
+after having pushed Theodore&mdash;who stood by like a lout&mdash;most
+unceremoniously to one side. Before I had time to recover from my surprise at
+this unseemly intrusion, the uncouth individual thrust Theodore roughly out of
+the room, slammed the door in his face, and having satisfied himself that he
+was alone with me and that the door was too solid to allow of successful
+eavesdropping, he dragged the best chair forward&mdash;the one, sir, which I
+reserve for lady visitors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He threw his leg across it, and, sitting astride, he leaned his elbows over the
+back and glowered at me as if he meant to frighten me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My name is Charles Saurez,” he said abruptly, “and I want your assistance in a
+matter which requires discretion, ingenuity and alertness. Can I have it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was about to make a dignified reply when he literally threw the next words at
+me: “Name your price, and I will pay it!” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What could I do, save to raise my shoulders in token that the matter of money
+was one of supreme indifference to me, and my eyebrows in a manner of doubt
+that M. Charles Saurez had the means wherewith to repay my valuable services?
+By way of a rejoinder he took out from the inner pocket of his coat a greasy
+letter-case, and with his exceedingly grimy fingers extracted therefrom some
+twenty banknotes, which a hasty glance on my part revealed as representing a
+couple of hundred francs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will give you this as a retaining fee,” he said, “if you will undertake the
+work I want you to do; and I will double the amount when you have carried the
+work out successfully.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Four hundred francs! It was not lavish, it was perhaps not altogether the price
+I would have named, but it was very good, these hard times. You understand? We
+were all very poor in France in that year 1815 of which I speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I am always quite straightforward when I am dealing with a client who means
+business. I pushed aside the litter of papers in front of me, leaned my elbows
+upon my desk, rested my chin in my hands, and said briefly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“M. Charles Saurez, I listen!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew his chair a little closer and dropped his voice almost to a whisper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know the Chancellerie of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perfectly,” I replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know M. de Marsan’s private office? He is chief secretary to M. de
+Talleyrand.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” I said, “but I can find out.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is on the first floor, immediately facing the service staircase, and at the
+end of the long passage which leads to the main staircase.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Easy to find, then,” I remarked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Quite. At this hour and until twelve o’clock, M. de Marsan will be occupied in
+copying a document which I desire to possess. At eleven o’clock precisely there
+will be a noisy disturbance in the corridor which leads to the main staircase.
+M. de Marsan, in all probability, will come out of his room to see what the
+disturbance is about. Will you undertake to be ready at that precise moment to
+make a dash from the service staircase into the room to seize the document,
+which no doubt will be lying on the top of the desk, and bring it to an address
+which I am about to give you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is risky,” I mused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very,” he retorted drily, “or I’d do it myself, and not pay you four hundred
+francs for your trouble.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Trouble!” I exclaimed, with withering sarcasm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Trouble, you call it? If I am caught, it means penal servitude&mdash;New
+Caledonia, perhaps&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Exactly,” he said, with the same irritating calmness; “and if you succeed it
+means four hundred francs. Take it or leave it, as you please, but be quick
+about it. I have no time to waste; it is past nine o’clock already, and if you
+won’t do the work, someone else will.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a few seconds longer I hesitated. Schemes, both varied and wild, rushed
+through my active brain: refuse to take this risk, and denounce the plot to the
+police; refuse it, and run to warn M. de Marsan; refuse it, and&mdash; I had
+little time for reflection. My uncouth client was standing, as it were, with a
+pistol to my throat&mdash;with a pistol and four hundred francs! The police
+might perhaps give me half a louis for my pains, or they might possibly
+remember an unpleasant little incident in connexion with the forgery of some
+Treasury bonds which they have never succeeded in bringing home to me&mdash;one
+never knows! M. de Marsan might throw me a franc, and think himself generous at
+that!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All things considered, then, when M. Charles Saurez suddenly said, “Well?” with
+marked impatience, I replied, “Agreed,” and within five minutes I had two
+hundred francs in my pocket, with the prospect of two hundred more during the
+next four and twenty hours. I was to have a free hand in conducting my own
+share of the business, and M. Charles Saurez was to call for the document at my
+lodgings at Passy on the following morning at nine o’clock.
+</p>
+
+<h3>2.</h3>
+
+<p>
+I flatter myself that I conducted the business with remarkable skill. At
+precisely ten minutes to eleven I rang at the Chancellerie of the Ministry for
+Foreign Affairs. I was dressed as a respectable commissionnaire, and I carried
+a letter and a small parcel addressed to M. de Marsan. “First floor,” said the
+concierge curtly, as soon as he had glanced at the superscription on the
+letter. “Door faces top of the service stairs.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I mounted and took my stand some ten steps below the landing, keeping the door
+of M. de Marsan’s room well in sight. Just as the bells of Notre Dame boomed
+the hour I heard what sounded like a furious altercation somewhere in the
+corridor just above me. There was much shouting, then one or two cries of
+“Murder!” followed by others of “What is it?” and “What in the name of
+&mdash;&mdash;&mdash; is all this infernal row about?” Doors were opened and
+banged, there was a general running and rushing along that corridor, and the
+next minute the door in front of me was opened also, and a young man came out,
+pen in hand, and shouting just like everybody else:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What the &mdash;&mdash;&mdash; is all this infernal row about?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Murder, help!” came from the distant end of the corridor, and M. de
+Marsan&mdash;undoubtedly it was he&mdash;did what any other young man under the
+like circumstances would have done: he ran to see what was happening and to
+lend a hand in it, if need be. I saw his slim figure disappearing down the
+corridor at the very moment that I slipped into his room. One glance upon the
+desk sufficed: there lay the large official-looking document, with the royal
+signature affixed thereto, and close beside it the copy which M. de Marsan had
+only half finished&mdash;the ink on it was still wet. Hesitation, Sir, would
+have been fatal. I did not hesitate; not one instant. Three seconds had
+scarcely elapsed before I picked up the document, together with M. de Marsan’s
+half-finished copy of the same, and a few loose sheets of Chancellerie paper
+which I thought might be useful. Then I slipped the lot inside my blouse. The
+bogus letter and parcel I left behind me, and within two minutes of my entry
+into the room I was descending the service staircase quite unconcernedly, and
+had gone past the concierge’s lodge without being challenged. How thankful I
+was to breathe once more the pure air of heaven. I had spent an exceedingly
+agitated five minutes, and even now my anxiety was not altogether at rest. I
+dared not walk too fast lest I attracted attention, and yet I wanted to put the
+river, the Pont Neuf, and a half dozen streets between me and the Chancellerie
+of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. No one who has not gone through such an
+exciting adventure as I have just recorded can conceive what were my feelings
+of relief and of satisfaction when I at last found myself quietly mounting the
+stairs which led to my office on the top floor of No. 96 Rue Daunou.
+</p>
+
+<h3>3.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Now, I had not said anything to Theodore about this affair. It was certainly
+arranged between us when he entered my service as confidential clerk and
+doorkeeper that in lieu of wages, which I could not afford to pay him, he would
+share my meals with me and have a bed at my expense in the same house at Passy
+where I lodged; moreover, I would always give him a fair percentage on the
+profits which I derived from my business. The arrangement suited him very well.
+I told you that I picked him out of the gutter, and I heard subsequently that
+he had gone through many an unpleasant skirmish with the police in his day, and
+if I did not employ him no one else would.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After all, he did earn a more or less honest living by serving me. But in this
+instance, since I had not even asked for his assistance, I felt that,
+considering the risks of New Caledonia and a convict ship which I had taken, a
+paltry four hundred francs could not by any stretch of the imagination rank as
+a “profit” in a business&mdash;and Theodore was not really entitled to a
+percentage, was he?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So when I returned I crossed the ante-chamber and walked past him with my
+accustomed dignity; nor did he offer any comment on my get-up. I often affected
+a disguise in those days, even when I was not engaged in business, and the
+dress and get-up of a respectable commissionnaire was a favourite one with me.
+As soon as I had changed I sent him out to make purchases for our
+luncheon&mdash;five sous’ worth of stale bread, and ten sous’ worth of liver
+sausage, of which he was inordinately fond. He would take the opportunity on
+the way of getting moderately drunk on as many glasses of absinthe as he could
+afford. I saw him go out of the outer door, and then I set to work to examine
+the precious document.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, one glance was sufficient for me to realize its incalculable value!
+Nothing more or less than a Treaty of Alliance between King Louis XVIII of
+France and the King of Prussia in connexion with certain schemes of naval
+construction. I did not understand the whole diplomatic verbiage, but it was
+pretty clear to my unsophisticated mind that this treaty had been entered into
+in secret by the two monarchs, and that it was intended to prejudice the
+interests both of Denmark and of Russia in the Baltic Sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I also realized that both the Governments of Denmark and Russia would no doubt
+pay a very considerable sum for the merest glance at this document, and that my
+client of this morning was certainly a secret service agent&mdash;otherwise a
+spy&mdash;of one of those two countries, who did not choose to take the very
+severe risks which I had taken this morning, but who would, on the other hand,
+reap the full reward of the daring coup, whilst I was to be content with four
+hundred francs!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, I am a man of deliberation as well as of action, and at this
+juncture&mdash;feeling that Theodore was still safely out of the way&mdash;I
+thought the whole matter over quietly, and then took what precautions I thought
+fit for the furthering of my own interests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To begin with, I set to work to make a copy of the treaty on my own account. I
+have brought the study of calligraphy to a magnificent degree of perfection,
+and the writing on the document was easy enough to imitate, as was also the
+signature of our gracious King Louis and of M. de Talleyrand, who had
+countersigned it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If you remember, I had picked up two or three loose sheets of paper off M. de
+Marsan’s desk; these bore the arms of the Chancellerie of Foreign Affairs
+stamped upon them, and were in every way identical with that on which the
+original document had been drafted. When I had finished my work I flattered
+myself that not the greatest calligraphic expert could have detected the
+slightest difference between the original and the copy which I had made.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The work took me a long time. When at last I folded up the papers and slipped
+them once more inside my blouse it was close upon two. I wondered why Theodore
+had not returned with our luncheon, but on going to the little anteroom which
+divides my office from the outer door, great was my astonishment to see him
+lolling there on the rickety chair which he affectioned, and half asleep. I had
+some difficulty in rousing him. Apparently he had got rather drunk while he was
+out, and had then returned and slept some of his booze off, without thinking
+that I might be hungry and needing my luncheon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why didn’t you let me know you had come back?” I asked curtly, for indeed I
+was very cross with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I thought you were busy,” he replied, with what I thought looked like a leer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have never really cared for Theodore, you understand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, I partook of our modest luncheon with him in perfect amity and
+brotherly love, but my mind was busy all the time. I began to wonder if
+Theodore suspected something; if so, I knew that I could not trust him. He
+would try and ferret things out, and then demand a share in my hard-earned
+emoluments to which he was really not entitled. I did not feel safe with that
+bulky packet of papers on me, and I felt that Theodore’s bleary eyes were
+perpetually fixed upon the bulge in the left-hand side of my coat. At one
+moment he looked so strange that I thought he meant to knock me down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So my mind was quickly made up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After luncheon I would go down to my lodgings at Passy, and I knew of a snug
+little hiding-place in my room there where the precious documents would be
+quite safe until such time as I was to hand them&mdash;or one of them&mdash;to
+M. Charles Saurez.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This plan I put into execution, and with remarkable ingenuity too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While Theodore was busy clearing up the debris of our luncheon, I not only gave
+him the slip, but as I went out I took the precaution of locking the outer door
+after me, and taking the key away in my pocket. I thus made sure that Theodore
+could not follow me. I then walked to Passy&mdash;a matter of two
+kilometres&mdash;and by four o’clock I had the satisfaction of stowing the
+papers safely away under one of the tiles in the flooring of my room, and then
+pulling the strip of carpet in front of my bed snugly over the hiding-place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Theodore’s attic, where he slept, was at the top of the house, whilst my room
+was on the ground floor, and so I felt that I could now go back quite
+comfortably to my office in the hope that more remunerative work and more
+lavish clients would come my way before nightfall.
+</p>
+
+<h3>4.</h3>
+
+<p>
+It was a little after five o’clock when I once more turned the key in the outer
+door of my rooms in the Rue Daunou.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Theodore did not seem in the least to resent having been locked in for two
+hours. I think he must have been asleep most of the time. Certainly I heard a
+good deal of shuffling when first I reached the landing outside the door; but
+when I actually walked into the apartment with an air of quiet unconcern
+Theodore was sprawling on the chair-bedstead, with eyes closed, a nose the
+colour of beetroot, and emitting sounds through his thin, cracked lips which I
+could not, Sir, describe graphically in your presence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I took no notice of him, however, even though, as I walked past him, I saw that
+he opened one bleary eye and watched my every movement. I went straight into my
+private room and shut the door after me. And here, I assure you, my dear Sir, I
+literally fell into my favourite chair, overcome with emotion and excitement.
+Think what I had gone through! The events of the last few hours would have
+turned any brain less keen, less daring than that of Hector Ratichon. And here
+was I, alone at last, face to face with the future. What a future, my dear Sir!
+Fate was smiling on me at last. At last I was destined to reap a rich reward
+for all the skill, the energy, the devotion, which up to this hour I had placed
+at the service of my country and my King&mdash;or my Emperor, as the case might
+be&mdash;without thought of my own advantage. Here was I now in possession of a
+document&mdash;two documents&mdash;each one of which was worth at least a
+thousand francs to persons whom I could easily approach. One thousand francs!
+Was I dreaming? Five thousand would certainly be paid by the Government whose
+agent M. Charles Saurez admittedly was for one glance at that secret treaty
+which would be so prejudicial to their political interests; whilst M. de Marsan
+himself would gladly pay another five thousand for the satisfaction of placing
+the precious document intact before his powerful and irascible uncle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ten thousand francs! How few were possessed of such a sum in these days! How
+much could be done with it! I would not give up business altogether, of course,
+but with my new capital I would extend it and, there was a certain little
+house, close to Chantilly, a house with a few acres of kitchen garden and some
+fruit trees, the possession of which would render me happier than any king. . .
+. I would marry! Oh, yes! I would certainly marry&mdash;found a family. I was
+still young, my dear Sir, and passably good looking. In fact there was a
+certain young widow, comely and amiable, who lived not far from Passy, who had
+on more than one occasion given me to understand that I was more than passably
+good looking. I had always been susceptible where the fair sex was concerned,
+and now . . . oh, now! I could pick and choose! The comely widow had a small
+fortune of her own, and there were others! . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus I dreamed on for the better part of an hour, until, soon after six
+o’clock, there was a knock at the outer door and I heard Theodore’s shuffling
+footsteps crossing the small anteroom. There was some muttered conversation,
+and presently my door was opened and Theodore’s ugly face was thrust into the
+room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A lady to see you,” he said curtly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, he dropped his voice, smacked his lips, and winked with one eye. “Very
+pretty,” he whispered, “but has a young man with her whom she calls Arthur.
+Shall I send them in?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I then and there made up my mind that I would get rid of Theodore now that I
+could afford to get a proper servant. My business would in future be greatly
+extended; it would become very important, and I was beginning to detest
+Theodore. But I said “Show the lady in!” with becoming dignity, and a few
+moments later a beautiful woman entered my room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was vaguely conscious that a creature of my own sex walked in behind her, but
+of him I took no notice. I rose to greet the lady and invited her to sit down,
+but I had the annoyance of seeing the personage whom deliberately she called
+“Arthur” coming familiarly forward and leaning over the back of her chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I hated him. He was short and stout and florid, with an impertinent-looking
+moustache, and hair that was very smooth and oily save for two tight curls,
+which looked like the horns of a young goat, on each side of the centre
+parting. I hated him cordially, and had to control my feelings not to show him
+the contempt which I felt for his fatuousness and his air of self-complacency.
+Fortunately the beautiful being was the first to address me, and thus I was
+able to ignore the very presence of the detestable man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are M. Ratichon, I believe,” she said in a voice that was dulcet and
+adorably tremulous, like the voice of some sweet, shy young thing in the
+presence of genius and power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hector Ratichon,” I replied calmly. “Entirely at your service, Mademoiselle.”
+Then I added, with gentle, encouraging kindliness, “Mademoiselle...?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My name is Geoffroy,” she replied, “Madeleine Geoffroy.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She raised her eyes&mdash;such eyes, my dear Sir!&mdash;of a tender, luscious
+grey, fringed with lashes and dewy with tears. I met her glance. Something in
+my own eyes must have spoken with mute eloquence of my distress, for she went
+on quickly and with a sweet smile. “And this,” she said, pointing to her
+companion, “is my brother, Arthur Geoffroy.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An exclamation of joyful surprise broke from my lips, and I beamed and smiled
+on M. Arthur, begged him to be seated, which he refused, and finally I myself
+sat down behind my desk. I now looked with unmixed benevolence on both my
+clients, and then perceived that the lady’s exquisite face bore unmistakable
+signs of recent sorrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And now, Mademoiselle,” I said, as soon as I had taken up a position
+indicative of attention and of encouragement, “will you deign to tell me how I
+can have the honour to serve you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Monsieur,” she began in a voice that trembled with emotion, “I have come to
+you in the midst of the greatest distress that any human being has ever been
+called upon to bear. It was by the merest accident that I heard of you. I have
+been to the police; they cannot&mdash;will not&mdash;act without I furnish them
+with certain information which it is not in my power to give them. Then when I
+was half distraught with despair, a kindly agent there spoke to me of you. He
+said that you were attached to the police as a voluntary agent, and that they
+sometimes put work in your way which did not happen to be within their own
+scope. He also said that sometimes you were successful.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nearly always, Mademoiselle,” I broke in firmly and with much dignity. “Once
+more I beg of you to tell me in what way I may have the honour to serve you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is not for herself, Monsieur,” here interposed M. Arthur, whilst a blush
+suffused Mlle. Geoffroy’s lovely face, “that my sister desires to consult you,
+but for her fiancé M. de Marsan, who is very ill indeed, hovering, in fact,
+between life and death. He could not come in person. The matter is one that
+demands the most profound secrecy.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You may rely on my discretion, Monsieur,” I murmured, without showing, I
+flatter myself, the slightest trace of that astonishment which, at mention of
+M. de Marsan’s name, had nearly rendered me speechless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“M. de Marsan came to see me in utmost distress, Monsieur,” resumed the lovely
+creature. “He had no one in whom he could&mdash;or rather dared&mdash;confide.
+He is in the Chancellerie for Foreign Affairs. His uncle M. de Talleyrand
+thinks a great deal of him and often entrusts him with very delicate work. This
+morning he gave M. de Marsan a valuable paper to copy&mdash;a paper, Monsieur,
+the importance of which it were impossible to overestimate. The very safety of
+this country, the honour of our King, are involved in it. I cannot tell you its
+exact contents, and it is because I would not tell more about it to the police
+that they would not help me in any way, and referred me to you. How could they,
+said the chief Commissary to me, run after a document the contents of which
+they did not even know? But you will be satisfied with what I have told you,
+will you not, my dear M. Ratichon?” she continued, with a pathetic quiver in
+her voice and a look of appeal in her eyes which St. Anthony himself could not
+have resisted, “and help me to regain possession of that paper, the final loss
+of which would cost M. de Marsan his life.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To say that my feeling of elation of a while ago had turned to one of supreme
+beatitude would be to put it very mildly indeed. To think that here was this
+lovely being in tears before me, and that it lay in my power to dry those tears
+with a word and to bring a smile round those perfect lips, literally made my
+mouth water in anticipation&mdash;for I am sure that you will have guessed,
+just as I did in a moment, that the valuable document of which this adorable
+being was speaking, was snugly hidden away under the flooring of my room in
+Passy. I hated that unknown de Marsan. I hated this Arthur who leaned so
+familiarly over her chair, but I had the power to render her a service beside
+which their lesser claims on her regard would pale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, I am not the man to act on impulse, even at a moment like this. I
+wanted to think the whole matter over first, and . . . well . . . I had made up
+my mind to demand five thousand francs when I handed the document over to my
+first client to-morrow morning. At any rate, for the moment I acted&mdash;if I
+may say so&mdash;with great circumspection and dignity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I must presume, Mademoiselle,” I said in my most business-like manner, “that
+the document you speak of has been stolen.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Stolen, Monsieur,” she assented whilst the tears once more gathered in her
+eyes, “and M. de Marsan now lies at death’s door with a terrible attack of
+brain fever, brought on by shock when he discovered the loss.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How and when was it stolen?” I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Some time during the morning,” she replied. “M. de Talleyrand gave the
+document to M. de Marsan at nine o’clock, telling him that he wanted the copy
+by midday. M. de Marsan set to work at once, laboured uninterruptedly until
+about eleven o’clock, when a loud altercation, followed by cries of ‘Murder!’
+and of ‘Help!’ and proceeding from the corridor outside his door, caused him to
+run out of the room in order to see what was happening. The altercation turned
+out to be between two men who had pushed their way into the building by the
+main staircase, and who became very abusive to the gendarme who ordered them
+out. The men were not hurt; nevertheless they screamed as if they were being
+murdered. They took to their heels quickly enough, and I don’t know what has
+become of them, but . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But,” I concluded blandly, “whilst M. de Marsan was out of the room the
+precious document was stolen.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It was, Monsieur,” exclaimed Mlle. Geoffroy piteously. “You will find it for
+us . . . will you not?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then she added more calmly: “My brother and I are offering ten thousand francs
+reward for the recovery of the document.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I did not fall off my chair, but I closed my eyes. The vision which the lovely
+lady’s words had conjured up dazzled me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mademoiselle,” I said with solemn dignity, “I pledge you my word of honour
+that I will find the document for you and lay it at your feet or die in your
+service. Give me twenty hours, during which I will move heaven and earth to
+discover the thief. I will go at once to the Chancellerie and collect what
+evidence I can. I have worked under M. de Robespierre, Mademoiselle, under the
+great Napoléon, and under the illustrious Fouché! I have never been known to
+fail, once I have set my mind upon a task.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In that case you will earn your ten thousand francs, my friend,” said the
+odious Arthur drily, “and my sister and M. de Marsan will still be your
+debtors. Are there any questions you would like to ask before we go?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“None,” I said loftily, choosing to ignore his sneering manner. “If
+Mademoiselle deigns to present herself here to-morrow at two o’clock I will
+have news to communicate to her.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You will admit that I carried off the situation in a becoming manner. Both
+Mademoiselle and Arthur Geoffroy gave me a few more details in connexion with
+the affair. To these details I listened with well simulated interest. Of
+course, they did not know that there were no details in connexion with this
+affair that I did not know already. My heart was actually dancing within my
+bosom. The future was so entrancing that the present appeared like a dream; the
+lovely being before me seemed like an angel, an emissary from above come to
+tell me of the happiness which was in store for me. The house near
+Chantilly&mdash;the little widow&mdash;the kitchen garden&mdash;the magic words
+went on hammering in my brain. I longed now to be rid of my visitors, to be
+alone once more, so as to think out the epilogue of this glorious adventure.
+Ten thousand francs was the reward offered me by this adorable creature! Well,
+then, why should not M. Charles Saurez, on his side, pay me another ten
+thousand for the same document, which was absolutely undistinguishable from the
+first?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ten thousand, instead of two hundred which he had the audacity to offer me!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seven o’clock had struck before I finally bowed my clients out of the room.
+Theodore had gone. The lazy lout would never stay as much as five minutes after
+his appointed time, so I had to show the adorable creature and her fat brother
+out of the premises myself. But I did not mind that. I flatter myself that I
+can always carry off an awkward situation in a dignified manner. A brief
+allusion to the inefficiency of present-day servants, a jocose comment on my
+own simplicity of habits, and the deed was done. M. Arthur Geoffroy and
+Mademoiselle Madeleine his sister were half-way down the stairs. A quarter of
+an hour later I was once more out in the streets of Paris. It was a beautiful,
+balmy night. I had two hundred francs in my pocket and there was a magnificent
+prospect of twenty thousand francs before me! I could afford some slight
+extravagance. I had dinner at one of the fashionable restaurants on the quay,
+and I remained some time out on the terrace sipping my coffee and liqueur,
+dreaming dreams such as I had never dreamed before. At ten o’clock I was once
+more on my way to Passy.
+</p>
+
+<h3>5.</h3>
+
+<p>
+When I turned the corner of the street and came is sight of the squalid house
+where I lodged, I felt like a being from another world. Twenty thousand
+francs&mdash;a fortune!&mdash;was waiting for me inside those dingy walls. Yes,
+twenty thousand, for by now I had fully made up my mind. I had two documents
+concealed beneath the floor of my bedroom&mdash;one so like the other that none
+could tell them apart. One of these I would restore to the lovely being who had
+offered me ten thousand francs for it, and the other I would sell to my first
+and uncouth client for another ten thousand francs!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Four hundred! Bah! Ten thousand shall you pay for the treaty, my friend of the
+Danish or Russian Secret Service! Ten thousand!&mdash;it is worth that to you!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In that happy frame of mind I reached the front door of my dingy abode. Imagine
+my surprise on being confronted with two agents of police, each with fixed
+bayonet, who refused to let me pass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I lodge here,” I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Your name?” queried one of the men. “Hector Ratichon,” I replied. Whereupon
+they gave me leave to enter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was very mysterious. My heart beat furiously. Fear for the safety of my
+precious papers held me in a death-like grip. I ran straight to my room, locked
+the door after me, and pulled the curtains together in front of the window.
+Then, with hands that trembled as if with ague, I pulled aside the strip of
+carpet which concealed the hiding-place of what meant a fortune to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I nearly fainted with joy; the papers were there&mdash;quite safely. I took
+them out and replaced them inside my coat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I ran up to see if Theodore was in. I found him in bed. He told me that he
+had left the office whilst my visitors were still with me, as he felt terribly
+sick. He had been greatly upset when, about an hour ago, the maid-of-all-work
+had informed him that the police were in the house, that they would allow no
+one&mdash;except the persons lodging in the house&mdash;to enter it, and no
+one, once in, would be allowed to leave. How long these orders would hold good
+Theodore did not know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I left him moaning and groaning and declaring that he felt very ill, and I went
+in quest of information. The corporal in command of the gendarmes was
+exceedingly curt with me at first, but after a time he unbent and condescended
+to tell me that my landlord had been denounced for permitting a Bonapartiste
+club to hold its sittings in his house. So far so good. Such denunciations were
+very frequent these days, and often ended unpleasantly for those concerned, but
+the affair had obviously nothing to do with me. I felt that I could breathe
+again. But there was still the matter of the consigne. If no one, save the
+persons who lodged in the house, would be allowed to enter it, how would M.
+Charles Saurez contrive to call for the stolen document and, incidentally, to
+hand me over the ten thousand francs I was hoping for? And if no one, once
+inside the house, would be allowed to leave it, how could I meet Mlle. Geoffroy
+to-morrow at two o’clock in my office and receive ten thousand francs from her
+in exchange for the precious paper?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Moreover the longer the police stayed in this house and poked their noses about
+in affairs that concerned hardworking citizens like myself&mdash;why&mdash;the
+greater the risk would be of the matter of the stolen document coming to light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was positively maddening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I never undressed that night, but just lay down on my bed, thinking. The house
+was very still at times, but at others I could hear the tramp of the police
+agents up and down the stairs and also outside my window. The latter gave on a
+small, dilapidated back garden which had a wooden fence at the end of it.
+Beyond it were some market gardens belonging to a M. Lorraine. It did not take
+me very long to realize that that way lay my fortune of twenty thousand francs.
+But for the moment I remained very still. My plan was already made. At about
+midnight I went to the window and opened it cautiously. I had heard no noise
+from that direction for some time, and I bent my ear to listen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not a sound! Either the sentry was asleep, or he had gone on his round, and for
+a few moments the way was free. Without a moment’s hesitation I swung my leg
+over the sill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still no sound. My heart beat so fast that I could almost hear it. The night
+was very dark. A thin mist-like drizzle was falling; in fact the weather
+conditions were absolutely perfect for my purpose. With utmost wariness I
+allowed myself to drop from the window-ledge on to the soft ground below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If I was caught by the sentry I had my answer ready: I was going to meet my
+sweetheart at the end of the garden. It is an excuse which always meets with
+the sympathy of every true-hearted Frenchman. The sentry would, of course,
+order me back to my room, but I doubt if he would ill-use me; the denunciation
+was against the landlord, not against me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still not a sound. I could have danced with joy. Five minutes more and I would
+be across the garden and over that wooden fence, and once more on my way to
+fortune. My fall from the window had been light, as my room was on the ground
+floor; but I had fallen on my knees, and now, as I picked myself up, I looked
+up, and it seemed to me as if I saw Theodore’s ugly face at his attic window.
+Certainly there was a light there, and I may have been mistaken as to
+Theodore’s face being visible. The very next second the light was extinguished
+and I was left in doubt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I did not pause to think. In a moment I was across the garden, my hands
+gripped the top of the wooden fence, I hoisted myself up&mdash;with some
+difficulty, I confess&mdash;but at last I succeeded. I threw my leg over and
+gently dropped down on the other side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then suddenly two rough arms encircled my waist, and before I could attempt to
+free myself a cloth was thrown over my head, and I was lifted up and carried
+away, half suffocated and like an insentient bundle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the cloth was removed from my face I was half sitting, half lying, in an
+arm-chair in a strange room which was lighted by an oil lamp that hung from the
+ceiling above. In front of me stood M. Arthur Geoffroy and that beast Theodore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Arthur Geoffroy was coolly folding up the two valuable papers for the
+possession of which I had risked a convict ship and New Caledonia, and which
+would have meant affluence for me for many days to come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Theodore who had removed the cloth from my face. As soon as I had
+recovered my breath I made a rush for him, for I wanted to strangle him. But M.
+Arthur Geoffroy was too quick and too strong for me. He pushed me back into the
+chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Easy, easy, M. Ratichon,” he said pleasantly; “do not vent your wrath upon
+this good fellow. Believe me, though his actions may have deprived you of a few
+thousand francs, they have also saved you from lasting and biting remorse. This
+document, which you stole from M. de Marsan and so ingeniously duplicated,
+involved the honour of our King and our country, as well as the life of an
+innocent man. My sister’s fiancé would never have survived the loss of the
+document which had been entrusted to his honour.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I would have returned it to Mademoiselle to-morrow,” I murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Only one copy of it, I think,” he retorted; “the other you would have sold to
+whichever spy of the Danish or Russian Governments happened to have employed
+you in this discreditable business.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How did you know?” I said involuntarily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Through a very simple process of reasoning, my good M. Ratichon,” he replied
+blandly. “You are a very clever man, no doubt, but the cleverest of us is at
+times apt to make a mistake. You made two, and I profited by them. Firstly,
+after my sister and I left you this afternoon, you never made the slightest
+pretence of making inquiries or collecting information about the mysterious
+theft of the document. I kept an eye on you throughout the evening. You left
+your office and strolled for a while on the quays; you had an excellent dinner
+at the Restaurant des Anglais; then you settled down to your coffee and
+liqueur. Well, my good M. Ratichon, obviously you would have been more active
+in the matter if you had not known exactly where and when and how to lay your
+hands upon the document, for the recovery of which my sister had offered you
+ten thousand francs.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I groaned. I had not been quite so circumspect as I ought to have been, but who
+would have thought&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I have had something to do with police work in my day,” continued M. Geoffroy
+blandly, “though not of late years; but my knowledge of their methods is not
+altogether rusty and my powers of observation are not yet dulled. During my
+sister’s visit to you this afternoon I noticed the blouse and cap of a
+commissionnaire lying in a bundle in a corner of your room. Now, though M. de
+Marsan has been in a burning fever since he discovered his loss, he kept just
+sufficient presence of mind at the moment to say nothing about that loss to any
+of the Chancellerie officials, but to go straight home to his apartments in the
+Rue Royale and to send for my sister and for me. When we came to him he was
+already partly delirious, but he pointed to a parcel and a letter which he had
+brought away from his office. The parcel proved to be an empty box and the
+letter a blank sheet of paper; but the most casual inquiry of the concierge at
+the Chancellerie elicited the fact that a commissionaire had brought these
+things in the course of the morning. That was your second mistake, my good M.
+Ratichon; not a very grave one, perhaps, but I have been in the police, and
+somehow, the moment I caught sight of that blouse and cap in your office, I
+could not help connecting it with the commissionnaire who had brought a bogus
+parcel and letter to my future brother-in-law a few minutes before that
+mysterious and unexplained altercation took place in the corridor.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again I groaned. I felt as a child in the hands of that horrid creature who
+seemed to be dissecting all the thoughts which had run riot through my mind
+these past twenty hours.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It was all very simple, my good M. Ratichon,” now concluded my tormentor still
+quite amiably. “Another time you will have to be more careful, will you not?
+You will also have to bestow more confidence upon your partner or servant.
+Directly I had seen that commissionnaire’s blouse and cap, I set to work to
+make friends with M. Theodore. When my sister and I left your office in the Rue
+Daunou, we found him waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs. Five francs
+loosened his tongue: he suspected that you were up to some game in which you
+did not mean him to have a share; he also told us that you had spent two hours
+in laborious writing, and that you and he both lodged at a dilapidated little
+inn, called the ‘Grey Cat,’ in Passy. I think he was rather disappointed that
+we did not shower more questions, and therefore more emoluments, upon him.
+Well, after I had denounced this house to the police as a Bonapartiste club,
+and saw it put under the usual consigne, I bribed the corporal of the
+gendarmerie in charge of it to let me have Theodore’s company for the little
+job I had in hand, and also to clear the back garden of sentries so as to give
+you a chance and the desire to escape. All the rest you know. Money will do
+many things, my good M. Ratichon, and you see how simple it all was. It would
+have been still more simple if the stolen document had not been such an
+important one that the very existence of it must be kept a secret even from the
+police. So I could not have you shadowed and arrested as a thief in the usual
+manner! However, I have the document and its ingenious copy, which is all that
+matters. Would to God,” he added with a suppressed curse, “that I could get
+hold equally easily of the Secret Service agent to whom you, a Frenchman, were
+going to sell the honour of your country!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then it was that&mdash;though broken in spirit and burning with thoughts of the
+punishment I would mete out to Theodore&mdash;my full faculties returned to me,
+and I queried abruptly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What would you give to get him?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Five hundred francs,” he replied without hesitation. “Can you find him?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Make it a thousand,” I retorted, “and you shall have him.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will you give me five hundred francs now,” I insisted, “and another five
+hundred when you have the man, and I will tell you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Agreed,” he said impatiently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I was not to be played with by him again. I waited in silence until he had
+taken a pocket-book from the inside of his coat and counted out five hundred
+francs, which he kept in his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now&mdash;” he commanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The man,” I then announced calmly, “will call on me for the document at my
+lodgings at the hostelry of the ‘Grey Cat’ to-morrow morning at nine o’clock.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good,” rejoined M. Geoffroy. “We shall be there.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made no demur about giving me the five hundred francs, but half my pleasure
+in receiving them vanished when I saw Theodore’s bleary eyes fixed ravenously
+upon them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Another five hundred francs,” M. Geoffroy went on quietly, “will be yours as
+soon as the spy is in our hands.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I did get that further five hundred of course, for M. Charles Saurez was
+punctual to the minute, and M. Geoffroy was there with the police to apprehend
+him. But to think that I might have had twenty thousand&mdash;!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I had to give Theodore fifty francs on the transaction, as he threatened me
+with the police when I talked of giving him the sack.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But we were quite good friends again after that until&mdash; But you shall
+judge.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0002"></a>
+CHAPTER II. &mdash; A FOOL’S PARADISE</h2>
+
+<h3>1.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Ah! my dear Sir, I cannot tell you how poor we all were in France in that year
+of grace 1816&mdash;so poor, indeed, that a dish of roast pork was looked upon
+as a feast, and a new gown for the wife an unheard-of luxury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The war had ruined everyone. Twenty-two years! and hopeless humiliation and
+defeat at the end of it. The Emperor handed over to the English; a Bourbon
+sitting on the throne of France; crowds of foreign soldiers still lording it
+all over the country&mdash;until the country had paid its debts to her foreign
+invaders, and thousands of our own men still straggling home through Germany
+and Belgium&mdash;the remnants of Napoléon’s Grand Army&mdash;ex-prisoners of
+war, or scattered units who had found their weary way home at last, shoeless,
+coatless, half starved and perished from cold and privations, unfit for
+housework, for agriculture, or for industry, fit only to follow their fallen
+hero, as they had done through a quarter of a century, to victory and to death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With me, Sir, business in Paris was almost at a standstill. I, who had been the
+confidential agent of two kings, three democrats and one emperor; I, who had
+held diplomatic threads in my hands which had caused thrones to totter and
+tyrants to quake, and who had brought more criminals and intriguers to book
+than any other man alive&mdash;I now sat in my office in the Rue Daunou day
+after day with never a client to darken my doors, even whilst crime and
+political intrigue were more rife in Paris than they had been in the most
+corrupt days of the Revolution and the Consulate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I told you, I think, that I had forgiven Theodore his abominable treachery in
+connexion with the secret naval treaty, and we were the best of
+friends&mdash;that is, outwardly, of course. Within my inmost heart I felt,
+Sir, that I could never again trust that shameless traitor&mdash;that I had in
+very truth nurtured a serpent in my bosom. But I am proverbially
+tender-hearted. You will believe me or not, I simply could not turn that vermin
+out into the street. He deserved it! Oh, even he would have admitted when he
+was quite sober, which was not often, that I had every right to give him the
+sack, to send him back to the gutter whence he had come, there to grub once
+more for scraps of filth and to stretch a half-frozen hand to the charity of
+the passers by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I did not do it, Sir. No, I did not do it. I kept him on at the office as
+my confidential servant; I gave him all the crumbs that fell from mine own
+table, and he helped himself to the rest. I made as little difference as I
+could in my intercourse with him. I continued to treat him almost as an equal.
+The only difference I did make in our mode of life was that I no longer gave
+him bed and board at the hostelry where I lodged in Passy, but placed the
+chair-bedstead in the anteroom of the office permanently at his disposal, and
+allowed him five sous a day for his breakfast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But owing to the scarcity of business that now came my way, Theodore had little
+or nothing to do, and he was in very truth eating his head off, and with that,
+grumble, grumble all the time, threatening to leave me, if you please, to leave
+my service for more remunerative occupation. As if anyone else would dream of
+employing such an out-at-elbows mudlark&mdash;a jail-bird, Sir, if you’ll
+believe me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus the Spring of 1816 came along. Spring, Sir, with its beauty and its
+promises, and the thoughts of love which come eternally in the minds of those
+who have not yet wholly done with youth. Love, Sir! I dreamed of it on those
+long, weary afternoons in April, after I had consumed my scanty repast, and
+whilst Theodore in the anteroom was snoring like a hog. At even, when tired out
+and thirsty, I would sit for a while outside a humble café on the outer
+boulevards, I watched the amorous couples wander past me on their way to
+happiness. At night I could not sleep, and bitter were my thoughts, my
+revilings against a cruel fate that had condemned me&mdash;a man with so
+sensitive a heart and so generous a nature&mdash;to the sorrows of perpetual
+solitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That, Sir, was my mood, when on a never-to-be-forgotten afternoon toward the
+end of April, I sat mooning disconsolately in my private room and a timid
+rat-tat at the outer door of the apartment roused Theodore from his brutish
+slumbers. I heard him shuffling up to the door, and I hurriedly put my necktie
+straight and smoothed my hair, which had become disordered despite the fact
+that I had only indulged in a very abstemious déjeuner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I said that the knock at my door was in the nature of a timid rat-rat I
+did not perhaps describe it quite accurately. It was timid, if you will
+understand me, and yet bold, as coming from one who might hesitate to enter and
+nevertheless feels assured of welcome. Obviously a client, I thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Effectively, Sir, the next moment my eyes were gladdened by the sight of a
+lovely woman, beautifully dressed, young, charming, smiling but to hide her
+anxiety, trustful, and certainly wealthy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The moment she stepped into the room I knew that she was wealthy; there was an
+air of assurance about her which only those are able to assume who are not
+pestered with creditors. She wore two beautiful diamond rings upon her hands
+outside her perfectly fitting glove, and her bonnet was adorned with flowers so
+exquisitely fashioned that a butterfly would have been deceived and would have
+perched on it with delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her shoes were of the finest kid, shiny at the toes like tiny mirrors, whilst
+her dainty ankles were framed in the filmy lace frills of her pantalets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Within the wide brim of her bonnet her exquisite face appeared like a rosebud
+nestling in a basket. She smiled when I rose to greet her, gave me a look that
+sent my susceptible heart a-flutter and caused me to wish that I had not taken
+that bottle-green coat of mine to the Mont de Piété only last week. I offered
+her a seat, which she took, arranging her skirts about her with inimitable
+grace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“One moment,” I added, as soon as she was seated, “and I am entirely at your
+service.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I took up pen and paper&mdash;an unfinished letter which I always keep handy
+for the purpose&mdash;and wrote rapidly. It always looks well for a lawyer or
+an <i>agent confidentiel</i> to keep a client waiting for a moment or two while
+he attends to the enormous pressure of correspondence which, if allowed to
+accumulate for five minutes, would immediately overwhelm him. I signed and
+folded the letter, threw it with a nonchalant air into a basket filled to the
+brim with others of equal importance, buried my face in my hands for a few
+seconds as if to collect my thoughts, and finally said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And now, Mademoiselle, will you deign to tell me what procures me the honour
+of your visit?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lovely creature had watched my movements with obvious impatience, a frown
+upon her exquisite brow. But now she plunged straightway into her story.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Monsieur,” she said with that pretty, determined air which became her so well,
+“my name is Estelle Bachelier. I am an orphan, an heiress, and have need of
+help and advice. I did not know to whom to apply. Until three months ago I was
+poor and had to earn my living by working in a milliner’s shop in the Rue St.
+Honoré. The concierge in the house where I used to lodge is my only friend, but
+she cannot help me for reasons which will presently be made clear to you. She
+told me, however, that she had a nephew named Theodore, who was clerk to M.
+Ratichon, advocate and confidential agent. She gave me your address; and as I
+knew no one else I determined to come and consult you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I flatter myself, that though my countenance is exceptionally mobile, I possess
+marvellous powers for keeping it impassive when necessity arises. In this
+instance, at mention of Theodore’s name, I showed neither surprise nor
+indignation. Yet you will readily understand that I felt both. Here was that
+man, once more revealed as a traitor. Theodore had an aunt of whom he had never
+as much as breathed a word. He had an aunt, and that aunt a
+concierge&mdash;<i>ipso facto</i>, if I may so express it, a woman of some
+substance, who, no doubt, would often have been only too pleased to extend
+hospitality to the man who had so signally befriended her nephew; a woman, Sir,
+who was undoubtedly possessed of savings which both reason and gratitude would
+cause her to invest in an old-established and substantial business run by a
+trustworthy and capable man, such, for instance, as the bureau of a
+confidential agent in a good quarter of Paris, which, with the help of a little
+capital, could be rendered highly lucrative and beneficial to all those,
+concerned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I determined then and there to give Theodore a piece of my mind and to insist
+upon an introduction to his aunt. After which I begged the beautiful creature
+to proceed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My father, Monsieur,” she continued, “died three months ago, in England,
+whither he had emigrated when I was a mere child, leaving my poor mother to
+struggle along for a livelihood as best she could. My mother died last year,
+Monsieur, and I have had a hard life; and now it seems that my father made a
+fortune in England and left it all to me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was greatly interested in her story.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The first intimation I had of it, Monsieur, was three months ago, when I had a
+letter from an English lawyer in London telling me that my father, Jean Paul
+Bachelier&mdash;that was his name, Monsieur&mdash;had died out there and made a
+will leaving all his money, about one hundred thousand francs, to me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, yes!” I murmured, for my throat felt parched and my eyes dim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hundred thousand francs! Ye gods!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It seems,” she proceeded demurely, “that my father put it in his will that the
+English lawyers were to pay me the interest on the money until I married or
+reached the age of twenty-one. Then the whole of the money was to be handed
+over to me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had to steady myself against the table or I would have fallen over backwards!
+This godlike creature, to whom the sum of one hundred thousand francs was to be
+paid over when she married, had come to me for help and advice! The thought
+sent my brain reeling! I am so imaginative!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Proceed, Mademoiselle, I pray you,” I contrived to say with dignified calm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, Monsieur, as I don’t know a word of English, I took the letter to Mr.
+Farewell, who is the English traveller for Madame Cécile, the milliner for whom
+I worked. He is a kind, affable gentleman and was most helpful to me. He was,
+as a matter of fact, just going over to England the very next day. He offered
+to go and see the English lawyers for me, and to bring me back all particulars
+of my dear father’s death and of my unexpected fortune.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And,” said I, for she had paused a moment, “did Mr. Farewell go to England on
+your behalf?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, Monsieur. He went and returned about a fortnight later. He had seen the
+English lawyers, who confirmed all the good news which was contained in their
+letter. They took, it seems, a great fancy to Mr. Farewell, and told him that
+since I was obviously too young to live alone and needed a guardian to look
+after my interests, they would appoint him my guardian, and suggested that I
+should make my home with him until I was married or had attained the age of
+twenty-one. Mr. Farewell told me that though this arrangement might be somewhat
+inconvenient in his bachelor establishment, he had been unable to resist the
+entreaties of the English lawyers, who felt that no one was more fitted for
+such onerous duties than himself, seeing that he was English and so obviously
+my friend.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The scoundrel! The blackguard!” I exclaimed in an unguarded outburst of fury.
+. . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Your pardon, Mademoiselle,” I added more calmly, seeing that the lovely
+creature was gazing at me with eyes full of astonishment not unmixed with
+distrust, “I am anticipating. Am I to understand, then, that you have made your
+home with this Mr. Farewell?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, Monsieur, at number sixty-five Rue des Pyramides.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is he a married man?” I asked casually.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He is a widower, Monsieur.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Middle-aged?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Quite elderly, Monsieur.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could have screamed with joy. I was not yet forty myself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why!” she added gaily, “he is thinking of retiring from business&mdash;he is,
+as I said, a commercial traveller&mdash;in favour of his nephew, M. Adrien
+Cazalès.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once more I had to steady myself against the table. The room swam round me. One
+hundred thousand francs!&mdash;a lovely creature!&mdash;an unscrupulous
+widower!&mdash;an equally dangerous young nephew. I rose and tottered to the
+window. I flung it wide open&mdash;a thing I never do save at moments of acute
+crises.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The breath of fresh air did me good. I returned to my desk, and was able once
+more to assume my habitual dignity and presence of mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In all this, Mademoiselle,” I said in my best professional manner, “I do not
+gather how I can be of service to you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am coming to that, Monsieur,” she resumed after a slight moment of
+hesitation, even as an exquisite blush suffused her damask cheeks. “You must
+know that at first I was very happy in the house of my new guardian. He was
+exceedingly kind to me, though there were times already when I fancied . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hesitated&mdash;more markedly this time&mdash;and the blush became deeper
+on her cheeks. I groaned aloud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Surely he is too old,” I suggested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Much too old,” she assented emphatically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once more I would have screamed with joy had not a sharp pang, like a
+dagger-thrust, shot through my heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But the nephew, eh?” I said as jocosely, as indifferently as I could. “Young
+M. Cazalès? What?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh!” she replied with perfect indifference. “I hardly ever see him.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Unfortunately it were not seemly for an avocat and the <i>agent
+confidentiel</i> of half the Courts of Europe to execute the measures of a
+polka in the presence of a client, or I would indeed have jumped up and danced
+with glee. The happy thoughts were hammering away in my mind: “The old one is
+much too old&mdash;the young one she never sees!” and I could have knelt down
+and kissed the hem of her gown for the exquisite indifference with which she
+had uttered those magic words: “Oh! I hardly ever see him!”&mdash;words which
+converted my brightest hopes into glowing possibilities.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, as it was, I held my emotions marvellously in check, and with perfect
+sang-froid once more asked the beauteous creature how I could be of service to
+her in her need.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of late, Monsieur,” she said, as she raised a pair of limpid, candid blue eyes
+to mine, “my position in Mr. Farewell’s house has become intolerable. He
+pursues me with his attentions, and he has become insanely jealous. He will not
+allow me to speak to anyone, and has even forbidden M. Cazalès, his own nephew,
+the house. Not that I care about that,” she added with an expressive shrug of
+the shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He has forbidden M. Cazalès the house,” rang like a paean in my ear. “Not that
+she cares about that! Tra la, la, la, la, la!” What I actually contrived to say
+with a measured and judicial air was:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you deign to entrust me with the conduct of your affairs, I would at once
+communicate with the English lawyers in your name and suggest to them the
+advisability of appointing another guardian. . . . I would suggest, for
+instance . . . er . . . that I . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How can you do that, Monsieur?” she broke in somewhat impatiently, “seeing
+that I cannot possibly tell you who these lawyers are?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eh?” I queried, gasping.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I neither know their names nor their residence in England.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once more I gasped. “Will you explain?” I murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It seems, Monsieur, that while my dear mother lived she always refused to take
+a single sou from my father, who had so basely deserted her. Of course, she did
+not know that he was making a fortune over in England, nor that he was making
+diligent inquiries as to her whereabouts when he felt that he was going to die.
+Thus, he discovered that she had died the previous year and that I was working
+in the atelier of Madame Cécile, the well-known milliner. When the English
+lawyers wrote to me at that address they, of course, said that they would
+require all my papers of identification before they paid any money over to me,
+and so, when Mr. Farewell went over to England, he took all my papers with him
+and . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She burst into tears and exclaimed piteously:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh! I have nothing now, Monsieur&mdash;nothing to prove who I am! Mr. Farewell
+took everything, even the original letter which the English lawyers wrote to
+me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Farewell,” I urged, “can be forced by the law to give all your papers up to
+you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh! I have nothing now, Monsieur&mdash;he threatened to destroy all my papers
+unless I promised to become his wife! And I haven’t the least idea how and
+where to find the English lawyers. I don’t remember either their name or their
+address; and if I did, how could I prove my identity to their satisfaction? I
+don’t know a soul in Paris save a few irresponsible millinery apprentices and
+Madame Cécile, who, no doubt, is hand in glove with Mr. Farewell. I am all
+alone in the world and friendless. . . . I have come to you, Monsieur, in my
+distress . . . and you will help me, will you not?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked more adorable in grief than she had ever done before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To tell you that at this moment visions floated in my mind, before which
+Dante’s visions of Paradise would seem pale and tame, were but to put it
+mildly. I was literally soaring in heaven. For you see I am a man of intellect
+and of action. No sooner do I see possibilities before me than my brain soars
+in an empyrean whilst conceiving daring plans for my body’s permanent abode in
+elysium. At this present moment, for instance&mdash;to name but a few of the
+beatific visions which literally dazzled me with their radiance&mdash;I could
+see my fair client as a lovely and blushing bride by my side, even whilst
+Messieurs X. and X., the two still unknown English lawyers, handed me a heavy
+bag which bore the legend “One hundred thousand francs.” I could see . . . But
+I had not the time now to dwell on these ravishing dreams. The beauteous
+creature was waiting for my decision. She had placed her fate in my hands; I
+placed my hand on my heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mademoiselle,” I said solemnly, “I will be your adviser and your friend. Give
+me but a few days’ grace, every hour, every minute of which I will spend in
+your service. At the end of that time I will not only have learned the name and
+address of the English lawyers, but I will have communicated with them on your
+behalf, and all your papers proving your identity will be in your hands. Then
+we can come to a decision with regard to a happier and more comfortable home
+for you. In the meanwhile I entreat you to do nothing that may precipitate Mr.
+Farewell’s actions. Do not encourage his advances, but do not repulse them, and
+above all keep me well informed of everything that goes on in his house.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She spoke a few words of touching gratitude, then she rose, and with a gesture
+of exquisite grace she extracted a hundred-franc note from her reticule and
+placed it upon my desk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mademoiselle,” I protested with splendid dignity, “I have done nothing as
+yet.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah! but you will, Monsieur,” she entreated in accents that completed my
+subjugation to her charms. “Besides, you do not know me! How could I expect you
+to work for me and not to know if, in the end, I should repay you for all your
+trouble? I pray you to take this small sum without demur. Mr. Farewell keeps me
+well supplied with pocket money. There will be another hundred for you when you
+place the papers in my hands.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I bowed to her, and, having once more assured her of my unswerving loyalty to
+her interests, I accompanied her to the door, and anon saw her graceful figure
+slowly descend the stairs and then disappear along the corridor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I went back to my room, and was only just in time to catch Theodore calmly
+pocketing the hundred-franc note which my fair client had left on the table. I
+secured the note and I didn’t give him a black eye, for it was no use putting
+him in a bad temper when there was so much to do.
+</p>
+
+<h3>2.</h3>
+
+<p>
+That very same evening I interviewed the concierge at No. 65 Rue des Pyramides.
+From him I learned that Mr. Farewell lived on a very small income on the top
+floor of the house, that his household consisted of a housekeeper who cooked
+and did the work of the apartment for him, and an odd-job man who came every
+morning to clean boots, knives, draw water and carry up fuel from below. I also
+learned that there was a good deal of gossip in the house anent the presence in
+Mr. Farewell’s bachelor establishment of a young and beautiful girl, whom he
+tried to keep a virtual prisoner under his eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning, dressed in a shabby blouse, alpaca cap, and trousers frayed
+out round the ankles, I&mdash;Hector Ratichon, the confidant of kings&mdash;was
+lounging under the porte-cochere of No. 65 Rue des Pyramides. I was watching
+the movements of a man, similarly attired to myself, as he crossed and
+recrossed the courtyard to draw water from the well or to fetch wood from one
+of the sheds, and then disappeared up the main staircase.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A casual, tactful inquiry of the concierge assured me that that man was indeed
+in the employ of Mr. Farewell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I waited as patiently and inconspicuously as I could, and at ten o’clock I saw
+that my man had obviously finished his work for the morning and had finally
+come down the stairs ready to go home. I followed him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I will not speak of the long halt in the cabaret du Chien Noir, where he spent
+an hour and a half in the company of his friends, playing dominoes and drinking
+eau-de-vie whilst I had perforce to cool my heels outside. Suffice it to say
+that I did follow him to his house just behind the fish-market, and that half
+an hour later, tired out but triumphant, having knocked at his door, I was
+admitted into the squalid room which he occupied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He surveyed me with obvious mistrust, but I soon reassured him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My friend Mr. Farewell has recommended you to me,” I said with my usual
+affability. “I was telling him just awhile ago that I needed a man to look
+after my office in the Rue Daunou of a morning, and he told me that in you I
+would find just the man I wanted.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hm!” grunted the fellow, very sullenly I thought. “I work for Farewell in the
+mornings. Why should he recommend me to you? Am I not giving satisfaction?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perfect satisfaction,” I rejoined urbanely; “that is just the point. Mr.
+Farewell desires to do you a good turn seeing that I offered to pay you twenty
+sous for your morning’s work instead of the ten which you are getting from
+him.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw his eyes glisten at mention of the twenty sous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’d best go and tell him then that I am taking on your work,” he said; and his
+tone was no longer sullen now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Quite unnecessary,” I rejoined. “I arranged everything with Mr. Farewell
+before I came to you. He has already found someone else to do his work, and I
+shall want you to be at my office by seven o’clock to-morrow morning. And,” I
+added, for I am always cautious and judicious, and I now placed a piece of
+silver in his hand, “here are the first twenty sous on account.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took the money and promptly became very civil, even obsequious. He not only
+accompanied me to the door, but all the way down the stairs, and assured me all
+the time that he would do his best to give me entire satisfaction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I left my address with him, and sure enough, he turned up at the office the
+next morning at seven o’clock precisely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Theodore had had my orders to direct him in his work, and I was left free to
+enact the second scene of the moving drama in which I was determined to play
+the hero and to ring down the curtain to the sound of the wedding bells.
+</p>
+
+<h3>3.</h3>
+
+<p>
+I took on the work of odd-job man at 65 Rue des Pyramides. Yes, I! Even I, who
+had sat in the private room of an emperor discussing the destinies of Europe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But with a beautiful bride and one hundred thousand francs as my goal I would
+have worked in a coal mine or on the galleys for such a guerdon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The task, I must tell you, was terribly irksome to a man of my sensibilities,
+endowed with an active mind and a vivid imagination. The dreary monotony of
+fetching water and fuel from below and polishing the boots of that
+arch-scoundrel Farewell would have made a less stout spirit quail. I had, of
+course, seen through the scoundrel’s game at once. He had rendered Estelle
+quite helpless by keeping all her papers of identification and by withholding
+from her all the letters which, no doubt, the English lawyers wrote to her from
+time to time. Thus she was entirely in his power. But, thank heaven! only
+momentarily, for I, Hector Ratichon, argus-eyed, was on the watch. Now and then
+the monotony of my existence and the hardship of my task were relieved by a
+brief glimpse of Estelle or a smile of understanding from her lips; now and
+then she would contrive to murmur as she brushed past me while I was polishing
+the scoundrel’s study floor, “Any luck yet?” And this quiet understanding
+between us gave me courage to go on with my task.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After three days I had conclusively made up my mind that Mr. Farewell kept his
+valuable papers in the drawer of the bureau in the study. After that I always
+kept a lump of wax ready for use in my pocket. On the fifth day I was very
+nearly caught trying to take an impression of the lock of the bureau drawer. On
+the seventh I succeeded, and took the impression over to a locksmith I knew of,
+and gave him an order to have a key made to fit it immediately. On the ninth
+day I had the key.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then commenced a series of disappointments and of unprofitable days which would
+have daunted one less bold and less determined. I don’t think that Farewell
+ever suspected me, but it is a fact that never once did he leave me alone in
+his study whilst I was at work there polishing the oak floor. And in the
+meanwhile I could see how he was pursuing my beautiful Estelle with his
+unwelcome attentions. At times I feared that he meant to abduct her; his was a
+powerful personality and she seemed like a little bird fighting against the
+fascination of a serpent. Latterly, too, an air of discouragement seemed to
+dwell upon her lovely face. I was half distraught with anxiety, and once or
+twice, whilst I knelt upon the hard floor, scrubbing and polishing as if my
+life depended on it, whilst he&mdash;the unscrupulous scoundrel&mdash;sat
+calmly at his desk, reading or writing, I used to feel as if the next moment I
+must attack him with my scrubbing-brush and knock him down senseless whilst I
+ransacked his drawers. My horror of anything approaching violence saved me from
+so foolish a step.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then it was that in the hour of my blackest despair a flash of genius pierced
+through the darkness of my misery. For some days now Madame Dupont, Farewell’s
+housekeeper, had been exceedingly affable to me. Every morning now, when I came
+to work, there was a cup of hot coffee waiting for me, and, when I left, a
+small parcel of something appetizing for me to take away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hallo!” I said to myself one day, when, over a cup of coffee, I caught sight
+of her small, piggy eyes leering at me with an unmistakable expression of
+admiration. “Does salvation lie where I least expected it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the moment I did nothing more than wink at the fat old thing, but the next
+morning I had my arm round her waist&mdash;a metre and a quarter, Sir, where it
+was tied in the middle&mdash;and had imprinted a kiss upon her glossy cheek.
+What that love-making cost me I cannot attempt to describe. Once Estelle came
+into the kitchen when I was staggering under a load of a hundred kilos sitting
+on my knee. The reproachful glance which she cast at me filled my soul with
+unspeakable sorrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I was working for her dear sake; working that I might win her in the end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A week later Mr. Farewell was absent from home for the evening. Estelle had
+retired to her room, and I was a welcome visitor in the kitchen, where Madame
+Dupont had laid out a regular feast for me. I had brought a couple of bottles
+of champagne with me and, what with the unaccustomed drink and the ogling and
+love-making to which I treated her, a hundred kilos of foolish womanhood was
+soon hopelessly addled and incapable. I managed to drag her to the sofa, where
+she remained quite still, with a beatific smile upon her podgy face, her eyes
+swimming in happy tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had not a moment to lose. The very next minute I was in the study and with a
+steady hand was opening the drawers of the bureau and turning over the letters
+and papers which I found therein.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly an exclamation of triumph escaped my lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I held a packet in my hand on which was written in a clear hand: “The papers of
+Mlle. Estelle Bachelier.” A brief examination of the packet sufficed. It
+consisted of a number of letters written in English, which language I only
+partially understand, but they all bore the same signature, “John Pike and
+Sons, solicitors,” and the address was at the top, “168 Cornhill, London.” It
+also contained my Estelle’s birth certificate, her mother’s marriage
+certificate, and her police registration card.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was rapt in the contemplation of my own ingenuity in having thus brilliantly
+attained my goal, when a stealthy noise in the next room roused me from my
+trance and brought up vividly to my mind the awful risks which I was running at
+this moment. I turned like an animal at bay to see Estelle’s beautiful face
+peeping at me through the half-open door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hist!” she whispered. “Have you got the papers?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I waved the packet triumphantly. She, excited and adorable, stepped briskly
+into the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let me see,” she murmured excitedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I, emboldened by success, cried gaily:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not till I have received compensation for all that I have done and endured.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Compensation?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In the shape of a kiss.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh! I won’t say that she threw herself in my arms then and there. No, no! She
+demurred. All young girls, it seems, demur under the circumstances; but she was
+adorable, coy and tender in turns, pouting and coaxing, and playing like a
+kitten till she had taken the papers from me and, with a woman’s natural
+curiosity, had turned the English letters over and over, even though she could
+not read a word of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, Sir, in the midst of her innocent frolic and at the very moment when I
+was on the point of snatching the kiss which she had so tantalizingly denied
+me, we heard the opening and closing of the front door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Farewell had come home, and there was no other egress from the study save
+the sitting-room, which in its turn had no other egress but the door leading
+into the very passage where even now Mr. Farewell was standing, hanging up his
+hat and cloak on the rack.
+</p>
+
+<h3>4.</h3>
+
+<p>
+We stood hand in hand&mdash;Estelle and I&mdash;fronting the door through which
+Mr. Farewell would presently appear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To-night we fly together,” I declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where to?” she whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Can you go to the woman at your former lodgings?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then I will take you there to-night. To-morrow we will be married before the
+Procureur du Roi; in the evening we leave for England.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, yes!” she murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“When he comes in I’ll engage him in conversation,” I continued hurriedly. “You
+make a dash for the door and run downstairs as fast as you can. I’ll follow as
+quickly as may be and meet you under the porte-cochere.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had only just time to nod assent when the door which gave on the
+sitting-room was pushed open, and Farewell, unconscious at first of our
+presence, stepped quietly into the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Estelle,” he cried, more puzzled than angry when he suddenly caught sight of
+us both, “what are you doing here with that lout?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was trembling with excitement&mdash;not fear, of course, though Farewell was
+a powerful-looking man, a head taller than I was. I stepped boldly forward,
+covering the adored one with my body.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The lout,” I said with calm dignity, “has frustrated the machinations of a
+knave. To-morrow I go to England in order to place Mademoiselle Estelle
+Bachelier under the protection of her legal guardians, Messieurs Pike and Sons,
+solicitors, of London.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave a cry of rage, and before I could retire to some safe entrenchment
+behind the table or the sofa, he was upon me like a mad dog. He had me by the
+throat, and I had rolled backwards down on to the floor, with him on the top of
+me, squeezing the breath out of me till I verily thought that my last hour had
+come. Estelle had run out of the room like a startled hare. This, of course,
+was in accordance with my instructions to her, but I could not help wishing
+then that she had been less obedient and somewhat more helpful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As it was, I was beginning to feel a mere worm in the grip of that savage
+scoundrel, whose face I could perceive just above me, distorted with passion,
+whilst hoarse ejaculations escaped his trembling lips:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You meddlesome fool! You oaf! You toad! This for your interference!” he added
+as he gave me a vigorous punch on the head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I felt my senses reeling. My head was swimming, my eyes no longer could see
+distinctly. It seemed as if an unbearable pressure upon my chest would finally
+squeeze the last breath out of my body.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was trying to remember the prayers I used to murmur at my mother’s knee, for
+verily I thought that I was dying, when suddenly, through my fading senses,
+came the sound of a long, hoarse cry, whilst the floor was shaken as with an
+earthquake. The next moment the pressure on my chest seemed to relax. I could
+hear Farewell’s voice uttering language such as it would be impossible for me
+to put on record; and through it all hoarse and convulsive cries of: “You
+shan’t hurt him&mdash;you limb of Satan, you!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gradually strength returned to me. I could see as well as hear, and what I saw
+filled me with wonder and with pride. Wonder at Ma’ame Dupont’s pluck! Pride in
+that her love for me had given such power to her mighty arms! Aroused from her
+slumbers by the sound of the scuffle, she had run to the study, only to find me
+in deadly peril of my life. Without a second’s hesitation she had rushed on
+Farewell, seized him by the collar, pulled him away from me, and then thrown
+the whole weight of her hundred kilos upon him, rendering him helpless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah, woman! lovely, selfless woman! My heart a prey to remorse, in that I could
+not remain in order to thank my plucky deliverer, I nevertheless finally
+struggled to my feet and fled from the apartment and down the stairs, never
+drawing breath till I felt Estelle’s hand resting confidingly upon my arm.
+</p>
+
+<h3>5.</h3>
+
+<p>
+I took her to the house where she used to lodge, and placed her under the care
+of the kind concierge who was Theodore’s aunt. Then I, too, went home,
+determined to get a good night’s rest. The morning would be a busy one for me.
+There would be the special licence to get, the cure of St. Jacques to
+interview, the religious ceremony to arrange for, and the places to book on the
+stagecoach for Boulogne <i>en route</i> for England&mdash;and fortune.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was supremely happy and slept the sleep of the just. I was up betimes and
+started on my round of business at eight o’clock the next morning. I was a
+little troubled about money, because when I had paid for the licence and given
+to the cure the required fee for the religious service and ceremony, I had only
+five francs left out of the hundred which the adored one had given me. However,
+I booked the seats on the stage-coach and determined to trust to luck. Once
+Estelle was my wife, all money care would be at an end, since no power on earth
+could stand between me and the hundred thousand francs, the happy goal for
+which I had so ably striven.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marriage ceremony was fixed for eleven o’clock, and it was just upon ten
+when, at last, with a light heart and springy step, I ran up the dingy
+staircase which led to the adored one’s apartments. I knocked at the door. It
+was opened by a young man, who with a smile courteously bade me enter. I felt a
+little bewildered&mdash;and slightly annoyed. My Estelle should not receive
+visits from young men at this hour. I pushed past the intruder in the passage
+and walked boldly into the room beyond.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Estelle was sitting upon the sofa, her eyes bright, her mouth smiling, a dimple
+in each cheek. I approached her with outstretched arms, but she paid no heed to
+me, and turned to the young man, who had followed me into the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Adrien,” she said, “this is kind M. Ratichon, who at risk of his life obtained
+for us all my papers of identification and also the valuable name and address
+of the English lawyers.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Monsieur,” added the young man as he extended his hand to me, “Estelle and I
+will remain eternally your debtors.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I struck at the hand which he had so impudently held out to me and turned to
+Estelle with my usual dignified calm, but with wrath expressed in every line of
+my face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Estelle,” I said, “what is the meaning of this?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh,” she retorted with one of her provoking smiles, “you must not call me
+Estelle, you know, or Adrien will smack your face. We are indeed grateful to
+you, my good M. Ratichon,” she continued more seriously, “and though I only
+promised you another hundred francs when your work for me was completed, my
+husband and I have decided to give you a thousand francs in view of the risks
+which you ran on our behalf.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Your husband!” I stammered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I was married to M. Adrien Cazalès a month ago,” she said, “but we had
+perforce to keep our marriage a secret, because Mr. Farewell once vowed to me
+that unless I became his wife he would destroy all my papers of identification,
+and then&mdash;even if I ever succeeded in discovering who were the English
+lawyers who had charge of my father’s money&mdash;I could never prove it to
+them that I and no one else was entitled to it. But for you, dear M. Ratichon,”
+added the cruel and shameless one, “I should indeed never have succeeded.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the midst of this overwhelming cataclysm I am proud to say that I retained
+mastery over my rage and contrived to say with perfect calm:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But why have deceived me, Mademoiselle? Why have kept your marriage a secret
+from me? Was I not toiling and working and risking my life for you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And would you have worked quite so enthusiastically for me,” queried the false
+one archly, “if I had told you everything?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I groaned. Perhaps she was right. I don’t know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I took the thousand francs and never saw M. and Mme. Cazalès again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I met Ma’ame Dupont by accident soon after. She has left Mr. Farewell’s
+service.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She still weighs one hundred kilos.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I often call on her of an evening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah, well!
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0003"></a>
+CHAPTER III. &mdash; ON THE BRINK</h2>
+
+<h3>1.</h3>
+
+<p>
+You would have thought that after the shameful way in which Theodore treated me
+in the matter of the secret treaty that I would then and there have turned him
+out of doors, sent him back to grub for scraps out of the gutter, and hardened
+my heart once and for all against that snake in the grass whom I had nurtured
+in my bosom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, as no doubt you have remarked ere this, I have been burdened by Nature
+with an over-sensitive heart. It is a burden, my dear Sir, and though I have
+suffered inexpressibly under it, I nevertheless agree with the English poet,
+George Crabbe, whose works I have read with a great deal of pleasure and profit
+in the original tongue, and who avers in one of his inimitable “Tales” that it
+is “better to love amiss than nothing to have loved.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not that I loved Theodore, you understand? But he and I had shared so many ups
+and downs together of late that I was loath to think of him as reduced to
+begging his bread in the streets. Then I kept him by me, for I thought that he
+might at times be useful to me in my business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I kept him to my hurt, as you will presently see.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In those days&mdash;I am now speaking of the time immediately following the
+Restoration of our beloved King Louis XVIII to the throne of his
+forbears&mdash;Parisian society was, as it were, divided into two distinct
+categories: those who had become impoverished by the revolution and the wars of
+the Empire, and those who had made their fortunes thereby. Among the former was
+M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, a handsome young officer of cavalry; and among
+the latter was one Mauruss Mosenstein, a usurer of the Jewish persuasion, whose
+wealth was reputed in millions, and who had a handsome daughter biblically
+named Rachel, who a year ago had become Madame la Marquise de Firmin-Latour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the first moment that this brilliant young couple appeared upon the
+firmament of Parisian society I took a keen interest in all their doings. In
+those days, you understand, it was in the essence of my business to know as
+much as possible of the private affairs of people in their position, and
+instinct had at once told me that in the case of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour
+such knowledge might prove very remunerative.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus I very soon found out that M. le Marquis had not a single louis of his own
+to bless himself with, and that it was Papa Mosenstein’s millions that kept up
+the young people’s magnificent establishment in the Rue de Grammont.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I also found out that Mme. la Marquise was some dozen years older than
+Monsieur, and that she had been a widow when she married him. There were
+rumours that her first marriage had not been a happy one. The husband, M. le
+Compte de Naquet, had been a gambler and a spendthrift, and had dissipated as
+much of his wife’s fortune as he could lay his hands on, until one day he went
+off on a voyage to America, or goodness knows where, and was never heard of
+again. Mme. la Comtesse, as she then was, did not grieve over her loss; indeed,
+she returned to the bosom of her family, and her father&mdash;a shrewd usurer,
+who had amassed an enormous fortune during the wars&mdash;succeeded, with the
+aid of his apparently bottomless moneybags, in having his first son-in-law
+declared deceased by Royal decree, so as to enable the beautiful Rachel to
+contract another, yet more brilliant alliance, as far as name and lineage were
+concerned, with the Marquis de Firmin-Latour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indeed, I learned that the worthy Israelite’s one passion was the social
+advancement of his daughter, whom he worshipped. So, as soon as the marriage
+was consummated and the young people were home from their honeymoon, he fitted
+up for their use the most extravagantly sumptuous apartment Paris had ever
+seen. Nothing seemed too good or too luxurious for Mme. la Marquise de
+Firmin-Latour. He desired her to cut a brilliant figure in Paris
+society&mdash;nay, to be the Ville Lumiere’s brightest and most particular
+star. After the town house he bought a chateau in the country, horses and
+carriages, which he placed at the disposal of the young couple; he kept up an
+army of servants for them, and replenished their cellars with the choicest
+wines. He threw money about for diamonds and pearls which his daughter wore,
+and paid all his son-in-law’s tailors’ and shirt-makers’ bills. But always the
+money was his, you understand? The house in Paris was his, so was the chateau
+on the Loire; he lent them to his daughter. He lent her the diamonds, and the
+carriages, and the boxes at the opera and the Français. But here his generosity
+ended. He had been deceived in his daughter’s first husband; some of the money
+which he had given her had gone to pay the gambling debts of an unscrupulous
+spendthrift. He was determined that this should not occur again. A man might
+spend his wife’s money&mdash;indeed, the law placed most of it at his disposal
+in those days&mdash;but he could not touch or mortgage one sou that belonged to
+his father-in-law. And, strangely enough, Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour
+acquiesced and aided her father in his determination. Whether it was the Jewish
+blood in her, or merely obedience to old Mosenstein’s whim, it were impossible
+to say. Certain it is that out of the lavish pin-money which her father gave
+her as a free gift from time to time, she only doled out a meagre allowance to
+her husband, and although she had everything she wanted, M. le Marquis on his
+side had often less than twenty francs in his pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A very humiliating position, you will admit, Sir, for a dashing young cavalry
+officer. Often have I seen him gnawing his finger-nails with rage when, at the
+end of a copious dinner in one of the fashionable restaurants&mdash;where I
+myself was engaged in a business capacity to keep an eye on possibly
+light-fingered customers&mdash;it would be Mme. la Marquise who paid the bill,
+even gave the pourboire to the waiter. At such times my heart would be filled
+with pity for his misfortunes, and, in my own proud and lofty independence, I
+felt that I did not envy him his wife’s millions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course, he borrowed from every usurer in the city for as long as they would
+lend him any money; but now he was up to his eyes in debt, and there was not a
+Jew inside France who would have lent him one hundred francs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You see, his precarious position was as well known as were his extravagant
+tastes and the obstinate parsimoniousness of M. Mosenstein.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But such men as M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, you understand, Sir, are
+destined by Nature first and by fortuitous circumstances afterwards to become
+the clients of men of ability like myself. I knew that sooner or later the
+elegant young soldier would be forced to seek the advice of someone wiser than
+himself, for indeed his present situation could not last much longer. It would
+soon be “sink” with him, for he could no longer “swim.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I was determined that when that time came he should turn to me as the
+drowning man turns to the straw.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So where M. le Marquis went in public I went, when possible. I was biding my
+time, and wisely too, as you will judge.
+</p>
+
+<h3>2.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Then one day our eyes met: not in a fashionable restaurant, I may tell you, but
+in a discreet one situated on the slopes of Montmartre. I was there alone,
+sipping a cup of coffee after a frugal dinner. I had drifted in there chiefly
+because I had quite accidentally caught sight of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour
+walking arm-in-arm up the Rue Lepic with a lady who was both youthful and
+charming&mdash;a well-known dancer at the opera. Presently I saw him turn into
+that discreet little restaurant, where, in very truth, it was not likely that
+Mme. la Marquise would follow him. But I did. What made me do it, I cannot say;
+but for some time now it had been my wish to make the personal acquaintance of
+M. de Firmin-Latour, and I lost no opportunity which might help me to attain
+this desire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Somehow the man interested me. His social and financial position was peculiar,
+you will admit, and here, methought, was the beginning of an adventure which
+might prove the turning-point in his career and . . . my opportunity. I was not
+wrong, as you will presently see. Whilst silently eating my simple dinner, I
+watched M. de Firmin-Latour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had started the evening by being very gay; he had ordered champagne and a
+succulent meal, and chatted light-heartedly with his companion, until presently
+three young women, flashily dressed, made noisy irruption into the restaurant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Firmin-Latour’s friend hailed them, introduced them to him, and soon he
+was host, not to one lady, but to four, and instead of two dinners he had to
+order five, and more champagne, and then dessert&mdash;peaches, strawberries,
+bonbons, liqueurs, flowers, and what not, until I could see that the bill which
+presently he would be called upon to pay would amount to far more than his
+quarterly allowance from Mme. la Marquise, far more, presumably, than he had in
+his pocket at the present moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My brain works with marvellous rapidity, as you know. Already I had made up my
+mind to see the little comedy through to the end, and I watched with a good
+deal of interest and some pity the clouds of anxiety gathering over M. de
+Firmin-Latour’s brow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dinner party lasted some considerable time; then the inevitable cataclysm
+occurred. The ladies were busy chattering and rouging their lips when the bill
+was presented. They affected to see and hear nothing: it is a way ladies have
+when dinner has to be paid for; but I saw and heard everything. The waiter
+stood by, silent and obsequious at first, whilst M. le Marquis hunted through
+all his pockets. Then there was some whispered colloquy, and the waiter’s
+attitude lost something of its correct dignity. After that the proprietor was
+called, and the whispered colloquy degenerated into altercation, whilst the
+ladies&mdash;not at all unaware of the situation&mdash;giggled amongst
+themselves. Finally, M. le Marquis offered a promissory note, which was
+refused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then it was that our eyes met. M. de Firmin-Latour had flushed to the roots of
+his hair. His situation was indeed desperate, and my opportunity had come. With
+consummate sang-froid, I advanced towards the agitated group composed of M. le
+Marquis, the proprietor, and the head waiter. I glanced at the bill, the cause
+of all this turmoil, which reposed on a metal salver in the head waiter’s hand,
+and with a brief:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If M. le Marquis will allow me . . .” I produced my pocket-book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bill was for nine hundred francs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first M. le Marquis thought that I was about to pay it&mdash;and so did the
+proprietor of the establishment, who made a movement as if he would lie down on
+the floor and lick my boots. But not so. To begin with, I did not happen to
+possess nine hundred francs, and if I did, I should not have been fool enough
+to lend them to this young scapegrace. No! What I did was to extract from my
+notebook a card, one of a series which I always keep by me in case of an
+emergency like the present one. It bore the legend: “Comte Hercule de Montjoie,
+secrétaire particulier de M. le Duc d’Otrante,” and below it the address,
+“Palais du Commissariat de Police, 12 Quai d’Orsay.” This card I presented with
+a graceful flourish of the arm to the proprietor of the establishment, whilst I
+said with that lofty self-assurance which is one of my finest attributes and
+which I have never seen equalled:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“M. le Marquis is my friend. I will be guarantee for this trifling amount.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The proprietor and head waiter stammered excuses. Private secretary of M. le
+Duc d’Otrante! Think of it! It is not often that such personages deign to
+frequent the restaurants of Montmartre. M. le Marquis, on the other hand,
+looked completely bewildered, whilst I, taking advantage of the situation,
+seized him familiarly by the arm, and leading him toward the door, I said with
+condescending urbanity:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“One word with you, my dear Marquis. It is so long since we have met.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I bowed to the ladies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mesdames,” I said, and was gratified to see that they followed my dramatic
+exit with eyes of appreciation and of wonder. The proprietor himself offered me
+my hat, and a moment or two later M. de Firmin-Latour and I were out together
+in the Rue Lepic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dear Comte,” he said as soon as he had recovered his breath, “how can I
+think you? . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not now, Monsieur, not now,” I replied. “You have only just time to make your
+way as quickly as you can back to your palace in the Rue de Grammont before our
+friend the proprietor discovers the several mistakes which he has made in the
+past few minutes and vents his wrath upon your fair guests.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are right,” he rejoined lightly. “But I will have the pleasure to call on
+you to-morrow at the Palais du Commissariat.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do no such thing, Monsieur le Marquis,” I retorted with a pleasant laugh. “You
+would not find me there.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But&mdash;” he stammered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But,” I broke in with my wonted business-like and persuasive manner, “if you
+think that I have conducted this delicate affair for you with tact and
+discretion, then, in your own interest I should advise you to call on me at my
+private office, No. 96 Rue Daunou. Hector Ratichon, at your service.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He appeared more bewildered than ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Rue Daunou,” he murmured. “Ratichon!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Private inquiry and confidential agent,” I rejoined. “My brains are at your
+service should you desire to extricate yourself from the humiliating financial
+position in which it has been my good luck to find you, and yours to meet with
+me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With that I left him, Sir, to walk away or stay as he pleased. As for me, I
+went quickly down the street. I felt that the situation was absolutely perfect;
+to have spoken another word might have spoilt it. Moreover, there was no
+knowing how soon the proprietor of that humble hostelry would begin to have
+doubts as to the identity of the private secretary of M. le Duc d’Otrante. So I
+was best out of the way.
+</p>
+
+<h3>3.</h3>
+
+<p>
+The very next day M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour called upon me at my office in
+the Rue Daunou. Theodore let him in, and the first thing that struck me about
+him was his curt, haughty manner and the look of disdain wherewith he regarded
+the humble appointments of my business premises. He himself was magnificently
+dressed, I may tell you. His bottle-green coat was of the finest cloth and the
+most perfect cut I had ever seen. His kerseymere pantaloons fitted him without
+a wrinkle. He wore gloves, he carried a muff of priceless zibeline, and in his
+cravat there was a diamond the size of a broad bean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He also carried a malacca cane, which he deposited upon my desk, and a
+gold-rimmed spy-glass which, with a gesture of supreme affectation, he raised
+to his eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now, M. Hector Ratichon,” he said abruptly, “perhaps you will be good enough
+to explain.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had risen when he entered. But now I sat down again and coolly pointed to the
+best chair in the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will you give yourself the trouble to sit down, M. le Marquis?” I riposted
+blandly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He called me names&mdash;rude names! but I took no notice of that . . . and he
+sat down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now!” he said once more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is it you desire to know, M. le Marquis?” I queried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why you interfered in my affairs last night?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you complain?” I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” he admitted reluctantly, “but I don’t understand your object.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My object was to serve you then,” I rejoined quietly, “and later.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What do you mean by ‘later’?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To-day,” I replied, “to-morrow; whenever your present position becomes
+absolutely unendurable.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is that now,” he said with a savage oath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I thought as much,” was my curt comment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And do you mean to assert,” he went on more earnestly, “that you can find a
+way out of it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you desire it&mdash;yes!” I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew his chair nearer to my desk, and I leaned forward, with my elbows on
+the table, the finger-tips of one hand in contact with those of the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let us begin by reviewing the situation, shall we, Monsieur?” I began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you wish,” he said curtly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are a gentleman of refined, not to say luxurious tastes, who finds himself
+absolutely without means to gratify them. Is that so?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You have a wife and a father-in-law who, whilst lavishing costly treasures
+upon you, leave you in a humiliating dependence on them for actual money.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again he nodded approvingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Human nature,” I continued with gentle indulgence, “being what it is, you pine
+after what you do not possess&mdash;namely, money. Houses, equipages, servants,
+even good food and wine, are nothing to you beside that earnest desire for
+money that you can call your own, and which, if only you had it, you could
+spend at your pleasure.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To the point, man, to the point!” he broke in impatiently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“One moment, M. le Marquis, and I have done. But first of all, with your
+permission, shall we also review the assets in your life which we will have to
+use in order to arrive at the gratification of your earnest wish?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Assets? What do you mean?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The means to our end. You want money; we must find the means to get it for
+you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I begin to understand,” he said, and drew his chair another inch or two closer
+to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Firstly, M. le Marquis,” I resumed, and now my voice had become earnest and
+incisive, “firstly you have a wife, then you have a father-in-law whose wealth
+is beyond the dreams of humble people like myself, and whose one great passion
+in life is the social position of the daughter whom he worships. Now,” I added,
+and with the tip of my little finger I touched the sleeve of my aristocratic
+client, “here at once is your first asset. Get at the money-bags of papa by
+threatening the social position of his daughter.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whereupon my young gentleman jumped to his feet and swore and abused me for a
+mudlark and a muckworm and I don’t know what. He seized his malacca cane and
+threatened me with it, and asked me how the devil I dared thus to speak of Mme.
+la Marquise de Firmin-Latour. He cursed, and he stormed and he raved of his
+sixteen quarterings and of my loutishness. He did everything in fact except
+walk out of the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I let him go on quite quietly. It was part of his programme, and we had to go
+through the performance. As soon as he gave me the chance of putting in a word
+edgeways I rejoined quietly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We are not going to hurt Madame la Marquise, Monsieur; and if you do not want
+the money, let us say no more about it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whereupon he calmed down; after a while he sat down again, this time with his
+cane between his knees and its ivory knob between his teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go on,” he said curtly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nor did he interrupt me again whilst I expounded my scheme to him&mdash;one
+that, mind you, I had evolved during the night, knowing well that I should
+receive his visit during the day; and I flatter myself that no finer scheme for
+the bleeding of a parsimonious usurer was ever devised by any man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If it succeeded&mdash;and there was no reason why it should not&mdash;M. de
+Firmin-Latour would pocket a cool half-million, whilst I, sir, the brain that
+had devised the whole scheme, pronounced myself satisfied with the paltry
+emolument of one hundred thousand francs, out of which, remember, I should have
+to give Theodore a considerable sum.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We talked it all over, M. le Marquis and I, the whole afternoon. I may tell you
+at once that he was positively delighted with the plan, and then and there gave
+me one hundred francs out of his own meagre purse for my preliminary expenses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning we began work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had begged M. le Marquis to find the means of bringing me a few scraps of the
+late M. le Comte de Naquet’s&mdash;Madame la Marquise’s first
+husband&mdash;handwriting. This, fortunately, he was able to do. They were a
+few valueless notes penned at different times by the deceased gentleman and
+which, luckily for us all, Madame had not thought it worth while to keep under
+lock and key.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I think I told you before, did I not? what a marvellous expert I am in every
+kind of calligraphy, and soon I had a letter ready which was to represent the
+first fire in the exciting war which we were about to wage against an obstinate
+lady and a parsimonious usurer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My identity securely hidden under the disguise of a commissionnaire, I took
+that letter to Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour’s sumptuous abode in the Rue
+de Grammont.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. le Marquis, you understand, had in the meanwhile been thoroughly primed in
+the rôle which he was to play; as for Theodore, I thought it best for the
+moment to dispense with his aid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The success of our first skirmish surpassed our expectations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ten minutes after the letter had been taken upstairs to Mme. la Marquise, one
+of the maids, on going past her mistress’s door, was startled to hear cries and
+moans proceeding from Madame’s room. She entered and found Madame lying on the
+sofa, her face buried in the cushions, and sobbing and screaming in a truly
+terrifying manner. The maid applied the usual restoratives, and after a while
+Madame became more calm and at once very curtly ordered the maid out of the
+room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. le Marquis, on being apprised of this mysterious happening, was much
+distressed; he hurried to his wife’s apartments, and was as gentle and loving
+with her as he had been in the early days of their honeymoon. But throughout
+the whole of that evening, and, indeed, for the next two days, all the
+explanation that he could get from Madame herself was that she had a headache
+and that the letter which she had received that afternoon was of no consequence
+and had nothing to do with her migraine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But clearly the beautiful Rachel was extraordinarily agitated. At night she did
+not sleep, but would pace up and down her apartments in a state bordering on
+frenzy, which of course caused M. le Marquis a great deal of anxiety and of
+sorrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally, on the Friday morning it seemed as if Madame could contain herself no
+longer. She threw herself into her husband’s arms and blurted out the whole
+truth. M. le Comte de Naquet, her first husband, who had been declared drowned
+at sea, and therefore officially deceased by Royal decree, was not dead at all.
+Madame had received a letter from him wherein he told her that he had indeed
+suffered shipwreck, then untold misery on a desert island for three years,
+until he had been rescued by a passing vessel, and finally been able, since he
+was destitute, to work his way back to France and to Paris. Here he had lived
+for the past few months as best he could, trying to collect together a little
+money so as to render himself presentable before his wife, whom he had never
+ceased to love.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Inquiries discreetly conducted had revealed the terrible truth, that Madame had
+been faithless to him, had light-heartedly assumed the death of her husband,
+and had contracted what was nothing less than a bigamous marriage. Now he, M.
+de Naquet, standing on his rights as Rachel Mosenstein’s only lawful husband,
+demanded that she should return to him, and as a prelude to a permanent and
+amicable understanding, she was to call at three o’clock precisely on the
+following Friday at No. 96 Rue Daunou, where their reconciliation and reunion
+was to take place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The letter announcing this terrible news and making this preposterous demand
+she now placed in the hands of M. le Marquis, who at first was horrified and
+thunderstruck, and appeared quite unable to deal with the situation or to
+tender advice. For Madame it meant complete social ruin, of course, and she
+herself declared that she would never survive such a scandal. Her tears and her
+misery made the loving heart of M. le Marquis bleed in sympathy. He did all he
+could to console and comfort the lady, whom, alas! he could no longer look upon
+as his wife. Then, gradually, both he and she became more composed. It was
+necessary above all things to make sure that Madame was not being victimized by
+an impostor, and for this purpose M. le Marquis generously offered himself as a
+disinterested friend and adviser. He offered to go himself to the Rue Daunou at
+the hour appointed and to do his best to induce M. le Comte de Naquet&mdash;if
+indeed he existed&mdash;to forgo his rights on the lady who had so innocently
+taken on the name and hand of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour. Somewhat more
+calm, but still unconsoled, the beautiful Rachel accepted this generous offer.
+I believe that she even found five thousand francs in her privy purse which was
+to be offered to M. de Naquet in exchange for a promise never to worry Mme. la
+Marquise again with his presence. But this I have never been able to ascertain
+with any finality. Certain it is that when at three o’clock on that same
+afternoon M. de Firmin-Latour presented himself at my office, he did not offer
+me a share in any five thousand francs, though he spoke to me about the money,
+adding that he thought it would look well if he were to give it back to Madame,
+and to tell her that M. de Naquet had rejected so paltry a sum with disdain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I thought such a move unnecessary, and we argued about it rather warmly, and in
+the end he went away, as I say, without offering me any share in the emolument.
+Whether he did put his project into execution or not I never knew. He told me
+that he did. After that there followed for me, Sir, many days, nay, weeks, of
+anxiety and of strenuous work. Mme. la Marquise received several more letters
+from the supposititious M. de Naquet, any one of which would have landed me,
+Sir, in a vessel bound for New Caledonia. The discarded husband became more and
+more insistent as time went on, and finally sent an ultimatum to Madame saying
+that he was tired of perpetual interviews with M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour,
+whose right to interfere in the matter he now wholly denied, and that he was
+quite determined to claim his lawful wife before the whole world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame la Marquise, in the meanwhile, had passed from one fit of hysterics into
+another. She denied her door to everyone and lived in the strictest seclusion
+in her beautiful apartment of the Rue de Grammont. Fortunately this all
+occurred in the early autumn, when the absence of such a society star from
+fashionable gatherings was not as noticeable as it otherwise would have been.
+But clearly we were working up for the climax, which occurred in the way I am
+about to relate.
+</p>
+
+<h3>4.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Ah, my dear Sir, when after all these years I think of my adventure with that
+abominable Marquis, righteous and noble indignation almost strikes me dumb. To
+think that with my own hands and brains I literally put half a million into
+that man’s pocket, and that he repaid me with the basest ingratitude, almost
+makes me lose my faith in human nature. Theodore, of course, I could punish,
+and did so adequately; and where my chastisement failed, Fate herself put the
+finishing touch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But M. de Firmin-Latour . . .!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, you shall judge for yourself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I told you, we now made ready for the climax; and that climax, Sir, I can
+only describe as positively gorgeous. We began by presuming that Mme. la
+Marquise had now grown tired of incessant demands for interviews and small
+doles of money, and that she would be willing to offer a considerable sum to
+her first and only lawful husband in exchange for a firm guarantee that he
+would never trouble her again as long as she lived.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We fixed the sum at half a million francs, and the guarantee was to take the
+form of a deed duly executed by a notary of repute and signed by the
+supposititious Comte de Naquet. A letter embodying the demand and offering the
+guarantee was thereupon duly sent to Mme. la Marquise, and she, after the usual
+attack of hysterics, duly confided the matter to M. de Firmin-Latour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The consultation between husband and wife on the deplorable subject was
+touching in the extreme; and I will give that abominable Marquis credit for
+playing his rôle in a masterly manner. At first he declared to his dear Rachel
+that he did not know what to suggest, for in truth she had nothing like half a
+million on which she could lay her hands. To speak of this awful pending
+scandal to Papa Mosenstein was not to be thought of. He was capable of
+repudiating the daughter altogether who was bringing such obloquy upon herself
+and would henceforth be of no use to him as a society star.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for himself in this terrible emergency, he, of course, had less than
+nothing, or his entire fortune would be placed&mdash;if he had one&mdash;at the
+feet of his beloved Rachel. To think that he was on the point of losing her was
+more than he could bear, and the idea that she would soon become the talk of
+every gossip-monger in society, and mayhap be put in prison for bigamy,
+wellnigh drove him crazy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What could be done in this awful perplexity he for one could not think, unless
+indeed his dear Rachel were willing to part with some of her jewellery; but no!
+he could not think of allowing her to make such a sacrifice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whereupon Madame, like a drowning man, or rather woman, catching at a straw,
+bethought her of her emeralds. They were historic gems, once the property of
+the Empress Marie-Thérèse, and had been given to her on her second marriage by
+her adoring father. No, no! she would never miss them; she seldom wore them,
+for they were heavy and more valuable than elegant, and she was quite sure that
+at the Mont de Piété they would lend her five hundred thousand francs on them.
+Then gradually they could be redeemed before papa had become aware of their
+temporary disappearance. Madame would save the money out of the liberal
+allowance she received from him for pin-money. Anything, anything was
+preferable to this awful doom which hung over her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But even so M. le Marquis demurred. The thought of his proud and fashionable
+Rachel going to the Mont de Piété to pawn her own jewels was not to be thought
+of. She would be seen, recognized, and the scandal would be as bad and worse
+than anything that loomed on the black horizon of her fate at this hour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What was to be done? What was to be done?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then M. le Marquis had a brilliant idea. He knew of a man, a very reliable,
+trustworthy man, attorney-at-law by profession, and therefore a man of repute,
+who was often obliged in the exercise of his profession to don various
+disguises when tracking criminals in the outlying quarters of Paris. M. le
+Marquis, putting all pride and dignity nobly aside in the interests of his
+adored Rachel, would borrow one of these disguises and himself go to the Mont
+de Piété with the emeralds, obtain the five hundred thousand francs, and remit
+them to the man whom he hated most in all the world, in exchange for the
+aforementioned guarantee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame la Marquise, overcome with gratitude, threw herself, in the midst of a
+flood of tears, into the arms of the man whom she no longer dared to call her
+husband, and so the matter was settled for the moment. M. le Marquis undertook
+to have the deed of guarantee drafted by the same notary of repute whom he
+knew, and, if Madame approved of it, the emeralds would then be converted into
+money, and the interview with M. le Comte de Naquet fixed for Wednesday,
+October 10th, at some convenient place, subsequently to be determined
+on&mdash;in all probability at the bureau of that same ubiquitous
+attorney-at-law, M. Hector Ratichon, at 96 Rue Daunon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All was going on excellently well, as you observe. I duly drafted the deed, and
+M. de Firmin-Latour showed it to Madame for her approval. It was so simply and
+so comprehensively worded that she expressed herself thoroughly satisfied with
+it, whereupon M. le Marquis asked her to write to her shameful persecutor in
+order to fix the date and hour for the exchange of the money against the deed
+duly signed and witnessed. M. le Marquis had always been the intermediary for
+her letters, you understand, and for the small sums of money which she had sent
+from time to time to the factitious M. de Naquet; now he was to be entrusted
+with the final negotiations which, though at a heavy cost, would bring security
+and happiness once more in the sumptuous palace of the Rue de Grammont.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then it was that the first little hitch occurred. Mme. la
+Marquise&mdash;whether prompted thereto by a faint breath of suspicion, or
+merely by natural curiosity&mdash;altered her mind about the appointment. She
+decided that M. le Marquis, having pledged the emeralds, should bring the money
+to her, and she herself would go to the bureau of M. Hector Ratichon in the Rue
+Daunou, there to meet M. de Naquet, whom she had not seen for seven years, but
+who had once been very dear to her, and herself fling in his face the five
+hundred thousand francs, the price of his silence and of her peace of mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At once, as you perceive, the situation became delicate. To have demurred, or
+uttered more than a casual word of objection, would in the case of M. le
+Marquis have been highly impolitic. He felt that at once, the moment he raised
+his voice in protest: and when Madame declared herself determined he
+immediately gave up arguing the point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The trouble was that we had so very little time wherein to formulate new plans.
+Monsieur was to go the very next morning to the Mont de Piété to negotiate the
+emeralds, and the interview with the fabulous M. de Naquet was to take place a
+couple of hours later; and it was now three o’clock in the afternoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as M. de Firmin-Latour was able to leave his wife, he came round to my
+office. He appeared completely at his wits’ end, not knowing what to do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If my wife,” he said, “insists on a personal interview with de Naquet, who
+does not exist, our entire scheme falls to the ground. Nay, worse! for I shall
+be driven to concoct some impossible explanation for the non-appearance of that
+worthy, and heaven only knows if I shall succeed in wholly allaying my wife’s
+suspicions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah!” he added with a sigh, “it is doubly hard to have seen fortune so near
+one’s reach and then to see it dashed away at one fell swoop by the relentless
+hand of Fate.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not one word, you observe, of gratitude to me or of recognition of the subtle
+mind that had planned and devised the whole scheme.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, Sir, it is at the hour of supreme crises like the present one that Hector
+Ratichon’s genius soars up to the empyrean. It became great, Sir; nothing short
+of great; and even the marvellous schemes of the Italian Macchiavelli paled
+before the ingenuity which I now displayed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Half an hour’s reflection had sufficed. I had made my plans, and I had measured
+the full length of the terrible risks which I ran. Among these New Caledonia
+was the least. But I chose to take the risks, Sir; my genius could not stoop to
+measuring the costs of its flight. While M. de Firmin-Latour alternately raved
+and lamented I had already planned and contrived. As I say, we had very little
+time: a few hours wherein to render ourselves worthy of Fortune’s smiles. And
+this is what I planned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You tell me that you were not in Paris during the year 1816 of which I speak.
+If you had been, you would surely recollect the sensation caused throughout the
+entire city by the disappearance of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, one of the
+most dashing young officers in society and one of its acknowledged leaders. It
+was the 10th day of October. M. le Marquis had breakfasted in the company of
+Madame at nine o’clock. A couple of hours later he went out, saying he would be
+home for déjeuner. Madame clearly expected him, for his place was laid, and she
+ordered the déjeuner to be kept back over an hour in anticipation of his
+return. But he did not come. The afternoon wore on and he did not come. Madame
+sat down at two o’clock to déjeuner alone. She told the major-domo that M. le
+Marquis was detained in town and might not be home for some time. But the
+major-domo declared that Madame’s voice, as she told him this, sounded tearful
+and forced, and that she ate practically nothing, refusing one succulent dish
+after another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The staff of servants was thus kept on tenterhooks all day, and when the
+shadows of evening began to draw in, the theory was started in the kitchen that
+M. le Marquis had either met with an accident or been foully murdered. No one,
+however, dared speak of this to Madame la Marquise, who had locked herself up
+in her room in the early part of the afternoon, and since then had refused to
+see anyone. The major-domo was now at his wits’ end. He felt that in a measure
+the responsibility of the household rested upon his shoulders. Indeed he would
+have taken it upon himself to apprise M. Mauruss Mosenstein of the terrible
+happenings, only that the worthy gentleman was absent from Paris just then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mme. la Marquise remained shut up in her room until past eight o’clock. Then
+she ordered dinner to be served and made pretence of sitting down to it; but
+again the major-domo declared that she ate nothing, whilst subsequently the
+confidential maid who had undressed her vowed that Madame had spent the whole
+night walking up and down the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus two agonizing days went by; agonizing they were to everybody. Madame la
+Marquise became more and more agitated, more and more hysterical as time went
+on, and the servants could not help but notice this, even though she made light
+of the whole affair, and desperate efforts to control herself. The heads of her
+household, the major-domo, the confidential maid, the chef de cuisine, did
+venture to drop a hint or two as to the possibility of an accident or of foul
+play, and the desirability of consulting the police; but Madame would not hear
+a word of it; she became very angry at the suggestion, and declared that she
+was perfectly well aware of M. le Marquis’s whereabouts, that he was well and
+would return home almost immediately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As was only natural, tongues presently began to wag. Soon it was common talk in
+Paris that M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour had disappeared from his home and
+that Madame was trying to put a bold face upon the occurrence. There were
+surmises and there was gossip&mdash; oh! interminable and long-winded gossip!
+Minute circumstances in connexion with M. le Marquis’s private life and Mme. la
+Marquise’s affairs were freely discussed in the cafés, the clubs and
+restaurants, and as no one knew the facts of the case, surmises soon became
+very wild.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the third day of M. le Marquis’s disappearance Papa Mosenstein returned to
+Paris from Vichy, where he had just completed his annual cure. He arrived at
+Rue de Grammont at three o’clock in the afternoon, demanded to see Mme. la
+Marquise at once, and then remained closeted with her in her apartment for over
+an hour. After which he sent for the inspector of police of the section, with
+the result that that very same evening M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour was found
+locked up in an humble apartment on the top floor of a house in the Rue Daunou,
+not ten minutes’ walk from his own house. When the police&mdash;acting on
+information supplied to them by M. Mauruss Mosenstein&mdash;forced their way
+into that apartment, they were horrified to find M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour
+there, tied hand and foot with cords to a chair, his likely calls for help
+smothered by a woollen shawl wound loosely round the lower part of his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was half dead with inanition, and was conveyed speechless and helpless to
+his home in the Rue de Grammont, there, presumably, to be nursed back to health
+by Madame his wife.
+</p>
+
+<h3>5.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Now in all this matter, I ask you, Sir, who ran the greatest risk? Why,
+I&mdash;Hector Ratichon, of course&mdash;Hector Ratichon, in whose apartment M.
+de Firmin-Latour was discovered in a position bordering on absolute inanition.
+And the proof of this is, that that selfsame night I was arrested at my
+lodgings at Passy, and charged with robbery and attempted murder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a terrible predicament for a respectable citizen, a man of integrity and
+reputation, in which to find himself; but Papa Mosenstein was both tenacious
+and vindictive. His daughter, driven to desperation at last, and terrified that
+M. le Marquis had indeed been foully murdered by M. de Naquet, had made a clean
+breast of the whole affair to her father, and he in his turn had put the
+minions of the law in full possession of all the facts; and since M. le Comte
+de Naquet had vanished, leaving no manner of trace or clue of his person behind
+him, the police, needing a victim, fell back on an innocent man. Fortunately,
+Sir, that innocence clear as crystal soon shines through every calumny. But
+this was not before I had suffered terrible indignities and all the tortures
+which base ingratitude can inflict upon a sensitive heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such ingratitude as I am about to relate to you has never been equalled on this
+earth, and even after all these years, Sir, you see me overcome with emotion at
+the remembrance of it all. I was under arrest, remember, on a terribly serious
+charge, but, conscious of mine own innocence and of my unanswerable system of
+defence, I bore the preliminary examination by the juge d’instruction with
+exemplary dignity and patience. I knew, you see, that at my very first
+confrontation with my supposed victim the latter would at once say:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah! but no! This is not the man who assaulted me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our plan, which so far had been overwhelmingly successful, had been this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the morning of the tenth, M. de Firmin-Latour having pawned the emeralds,
+and obtained the money for them, was to deposit that money in his own name at
+the bank of Raynal Frères and then at once go to the office in the Rue Daunou.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There he would be met by Theodore, who would bind him comfortably but securely
+to a chair, put a shawl around his mouth and finally lock the door on him.
+Theodore would then go to his mother’s and there remain quietly until I needed
+his services again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It had been thought inadvisable for me to be seen that morning anywhere in the
+neighbourhood of the Rue Daunou, but that perfidious reptile Theodore ran no
+risks in doing what he was told. To begin with he is a past master in the art
+of worming himself in and out of a house without being seen, and in this case
+it was his business to exercise a double measure of caution. And secondly, if
+by some unlucky chance the police did subsequently connect him with the crime,
+there was I, his employer, a man of integrity and repute, prepared to swear
+that the man had been in my company at the other end of Paris all the while
+that M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour was, by special arrangement, making use of
+my office in the Rue Daunou, which I had lent him for purposes of business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally it was agreed between us that when M. le Marquis would presently be
+questioned by the police as to the appearance of the man who had assaulted and
+robbed him, he would describe him as tall and blond, almost like an Angliche in
+countenance. Now I possess&mdash;as you see, Sir&mdash;all the finest
+characteristics of the Latin race, whilst Theodore looks like nothing on earth,
+save perhaps a cross between a rat and a monkey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wish you to realize, therefore, that no one ran any risks in this affair
+excepting myself. I, as the proprietor of the apartment where the assault was
+actually supposed to have taken place, did run a very grave risk, because I
+could never have proved an alibi. Theodore was such a disreputable mudlark that
+his testimony on my behalf would have been valueless. But with sublime
+sacrifice I accepted these risks, and you will presently see, Sir, how I was
+repaid for my selflessness. I pined in a lonely prison-cell while these two
+limbs of Satan concocted a plot to rob me of my share in our mutual
+undertaking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, Sir, the day came when I was taken from my prison-cell for the purpose of
+being confronted with the man whom I was accused of having assaulted. As you
+will imagine, I was perfectly calm. According to our plan the confrontation
+would be the means of setting me free at once. I was conveyed to the house in
+the Rue de Grammont, and here I was kept waiting for some little time while the
+juge d’instruction went in to prepare M. le Marquis, who was still far from
+well. Then I was introduced into the sick-room. I looked about me with the
+perfect composure of an innocent man about to be vindicated, and calmly gazed
+on the face of the sick man who was sitting up in his magnificent bed, propped
+up with pillows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I met his glance firmly whilst M. le Juge d’instruction placed the question to
+him in a solemn and earnest tone:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, will you look at the prisoner before you and
+tell us whether you recognize in him the man who assaulted you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And that perfidious Marquis, Sir, raised his eyes and looked me
+squarely&mdash;yes! squarely&mdash;in the face and said with incredible
+assurance:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, Monsieur le Juge, that is the man! I recognize him.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To me it seemed then as if a thunderbolt had crashed through the ceiling and
+exploded at my feet. I was like one stunned and dazed; the black ingratitude,
+the abominable treachery, completely deprived me of speech. I felt choked, as
+if some poisonous effluvia&mdash;the poison, Sir, of that man’s
+infamy&mdash;had got into my throat. That state of inertia lasted, I believe,
+less than a second; the next I had uttered a hoarse cry of noble indignation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You vampire, you!” I exclaimed. “You viper! You . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I would have thrown myself on him and strangled him with glee, but that the
+minions of the law had me by the arms and dragged me away out of the hateful
+presence of that traitor, despite my objurgations and my protestations of
+innocence. Imagine my feelings when I found myself once more in a prison-cell,
+my heart filled with unspeakable bitterness against that perfidious Judas. Can
+you wonder that it took me some time before I could collect my thoughts
+sufficiently to review my situation, which no doubt to the villain himself who
+had just played me this abominable trick must have seemed desperate indeed? Ah!
+I could see it all, of course! He wanted to see me sent to New Caledonia,
+whilst he enjoyed the fruits of his unpardonable backsliding. In order to
+retain the miserable hundred thousand francs which he had promised me he did
+not hesitate to plunge up to the neck in this heinous conspiracy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, conspiracy! for the very next day, when I was once more hailed before the
+juge d’instruction, another confrontation awaited me: this time with that
+scurvy rogue Theodore. He had been suborned by M. le Marquis to turn against
+the hand that fed him. What price he was paid for this Judas trick I shall
+never know, and all that I do know is that he actually swore before the juge
+d’instruction that M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour called at my office in the
+late forenoon of the tenth of October; that I then ordered
+him&mdash;Theodore&mdash;to go out to get his dinner first, and then to go all
+the way over to Neuilly with a message to someone who turned out to be
+non-existent. He went on to assert that when he returned at six o’clock in the
+afternoon he found the office door locked, and I&mdash;his
+employer&mdash;presumably gone. This at first greatly upset him, because he was
+supposed to sleep on the premises, but seeing that there was nothing for it but
+to accept the inevitable, he went round to his mother’s rooms at the back of
+the fish-market and remained there ever since, waiting to hear from me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That, Sir, was the tissue of lies which that jailbird had concocted for my
+undoing, knowing well that I could not disprove them because it had been my
+task on that eventful morning to keep an eye on M. le Marquis whilst he went to
+the Mont de Piété first, and then to MM. Raynal Frères, the bankers where he
+deposited the money. For this purpose I had been obliged to don a disguise,
+which I had not discarded till later in the day, and thus was unable to
+disprove satisfactorily the monstrous lies told by that perjurer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah! I can see that sympathy for my unmerited misfortunes has filled your eyes
+with tears. No doubt in your heart you feel that my situation at that hour was
+indeed desperate, and that I&mdash;Hector Ratichon, the confidant of kings, the
+benefactor of the oppressed&mdash;did spend the next few years of my life in a
+penal settlement, where those arch-malefactors themselves should have been. But
+no, Sir! Fate may be a fickle jade, rogues may appear triumphant, but not for
+long, Sir, not for long! It is brains that conquer in the end . . . brains
+backed by righteousness and by justice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whether I had actually foreseen the treachery of those two rattlesnakes, or
+whether my habitual caution and acumen alone prompted me to take those measures
+of precaution of which I am about to tell you, I cannot truthfully remember.
+Certain it is that I did take those precautions which ultimately proved to be
+the means of compensating me for most that I had suffered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It had been a part of the original plan that, on the day immediately following
+the tenth of October, I, in my own capacity as Hector Ratichon, who had been
+absent from my office for twenty-four hours, would arrive there in the morning,
+find the place locked, force an entrance into the apartment, and there find M.
+le Marquis in his pitiable plight. After which I would, of course, immediately
+notify the police of the mysterious occurrence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That had been the rôle which I had intended to play. M. le Marquis approved of
+it and had professed himself quite willing to endure a twenty-four-hours’
+martyrdom for the sake of half a million francs. But, as I have just had the
+honour to tell you, something which I will not attempt to explain prompted me
+at the last moment to modify my plan in one little respect. I thought it too
+soon to go back to the Rue Daunou within twenty-four hours of our
+well-contrived coup, and I did not altogether care for the idea of going myself
+to the police in order to explain to them that I had found a man gagged and
+bound in my office. The less one has to do with these minions of the law the
+better. Mind you, I had envisaged the possibility of being accused of assault
+and robbery, but I did not wish to take, as it were, the very first steps
+myself in that direction. You might call this a matter of sentiment or of
+prudence, as you wish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I waited until the evening of the second day before I got the key from
+Theodore. Then before the concierge at 96 Rue Daunou had closed the
+porte-cochere for the night, I slipped into the house unobserved, ran up the
+stairs to my office and entered the apartment. I struck a light and made my way
+to the inner room where the wretched Marquis hung in the chair like a bundle of
+rags. I called to him, but he made no movement. As I had anticipated, he had
+fainted for want of food. Of course, I was very sorry for him, for his plight
+was pitiable, but he was playing for high stakes, and a little starvation does
+no man any harm. In his case there was half a million at the end of his brief
+martyrdom, which could, at worst, only last another twenty-four hours. I
+reckoned that Mme. la Marquise could not keep the secret of her husband’s
+possible whereabouts longer than that, and in any event I was determined that,
+despite all risks, I would go myself to the police on the following day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the meanwhile, since I was here and since M. le Marquis was unconscious, I
+proceeded then and there to take the precaution which prudence had dictated,
+and without which, seeing this man’s treachery and Theodore’s villainy, I
+should undoubtedly have ended my days as a convict. What I did was to search M.
+le Marquis’s pockets for anything that might subsequently prove useful to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had no definite idea in the matter, you understand; but I had vague notions
+of finding the bankers’ receipt for the half-million francs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, I did not find that, but I did find the receipt from the Mont de Piété
+for a parure of emeralds on which half a million francs had been lent. This I
+carefully put away in my waistcoat pocket, but as there was nothing else I
+wished to do just then I extinguished the light and made my way cautiously out
+of the apartment and out of the house. No one had seen me enter or go out, and
+M. le Marquis had not stirred while I went through his pockets.
+</p>
+
+<h3>6.</h3>
+
+<p>
+That, Sir, was the precaution which I had taken in order to safeguard myself
+against the machinations of traitors. And see how right I was; see how hopeless
+would have been my plight at this hour when Theodore, too, turned against me
+like the veritable viper that he was. I never really knew when and under what
+conditions the infamous bargain was struck which was intended to deprive me of
+my honour and of my liberty, nor do I know what emolument Theodore was to
+receive for his treachery. Presumably the two miscreants arranged it all some
+time during that memorable morning of the tenth even whilst I was risking my
+life in their service.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for M. de Firmin-Latour, that worker of iniquity who, in order to save a
+paltry hundred thousand francs from the hoard which I had helped him to
+acquire, did not hesitate to commit such an abominable crime, he did not long
+remain in the enjoyment of his wealth or of his peace of mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The very next day I made certain statements before M. le Juge d’instruction
+with regard to M. Mauruss Mosenstein, which caused the former to summon the
+worthy Israelite to his bureau, there to be confronted with me. I had nothing
+more to lose, since those execrable rogues had already, as it were, tightened
+the rope about my neck, but I had a great deal to gain&mdash;revenge above all,
+and perhaps the gratitude of M. Mosenstein for opening his eyes to the
+rascality of his son-in-law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a stream of eloquent words which could not fail to carry conviction, I gave
+then and there in the bureau of the juge d’instruction my version of the events
+of the past few weeks, from the moment when M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour came
+to consult me on the subject of his wife’s first husband, until the hour when
+he tried to fasten an abominable crime upon me. I told how I had been deceived
+by my own employé, Theodore, a man whom I had rescued out of the gutter and
+loaded with gifts, how by dint of a clever disguise which would have deceived
+his own mother he had assumed the appearance and personality of M. le Comte de
+Naquet, first and only lawful lord of the beautiful Rachel Mosenstein. I told
+of the interviews in my office, my earnest desire to put an end to this
+abominable blackmailing by informing the police of the whole affair. I told of
+the false M. de Naquet’s threats to create a gigantic scandal which would
+forever ruin the social position of the so-called Marquis de Firmin-Latour. I
+told of M. le Marquis’s agonized entreaties, his prayers, supplications, that I
+would do nothing in the matter for the sake of an innocent lady who had already
+grievously suffered. I spoke of my doubts, my scruples, my desire to do what
+was just and what was right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A noble expose of the situation, Sir, you will admit. It left me hot and
+breathless. I mopped my head with a handkerchief and sank back, gasping, in the
+arms of the minions of the law. The juge d’instruction ordered my removal, not
+back to my prison-cell but into his own ante-room, where I presently collapsed
+upon a very uncomfortable bench and endured the additional humiliation of
+having a glass of water held to my lips. Water! when I had asked for a drink of
+wine as my throat felt parched after that lengthy effort at oratory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, there I sat and waited patiently whilst, no doubt, M. le Juge
+d’Instruction and the noble Israelite were comparing notes as to their
+impression of my marvellous speech. I had not long to wait. Less than ten
+minutes later I was once more summoned into the presence of M. le Juge; and
+this time the minions of the law were ordered to remain in the antechamber. I
+thought this was of good augury; and I waited to hear M. le Juge give forth the
+order that would at once set me free. But it was M. Mosenstein who first
+addressed me, and in very truth surprise rendered me momentarily dumb when he
+did it thus:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now then, you consummate rascal, when you have given up the receipt of the
+Mont de Piété which you stole out of M. le Marquis’s pocket you may go and
+carry on your rogueries elsewhere and call yourself mightily lucky to have
+escaped so lightly.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I assure you, Sir, that a feather would have knocked me down. The coarse
+insult, the wanton injustice, had deprived me of the use of my limbs and of my
+speech. Then the juge d’instruction proceeded dryly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now then, Ratichon, you have heard what M. Mauruss Mosenstein has been good
+enough to say to you. He did it with my approval and consent. I am prepared to
+give an <i>ordonnance de non-lieu</i> in your favour which will have the effect
+of at once setting you free if you will restore to this gentleman here the Mont
+de Piété receipt which you appear to have stolen.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sir,” I said with consummate dignity in the face of this reiterated taunt, “I
+have stolen nothing&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. le Juge’s hand was already on the bell-pull.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then,” he said coolly, “I can ring for the gendarmes to take you back to the
+cells, and you will stand your trial for blackmail, theft, assault and
+robbery.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I put up my hand with an elegant and perfectly calm gesture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Your pardon, M. le Juge,” I said with the gentle resignation of undeserved
+martyrdom, “I was about to say that when I re-visited my rooms in the Rue
+Daunou after a three days’ absence, and found the police in possession, I
+picked up on the floor of my private room a white paper which on subsequent
+examination proved to be a receipt from the Mont de Piété for some valuable
+gems, and made out in the name of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What have you done with it, you abominable knave?” the irascible old usurer
+rejoined roughly, and I regret to say that he grasped his malacca cane with
+ominous violence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I was not to be thus easily intimidated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah! voilà, M. le Juge,” I said with a shrug of the shoulders. “I have mislaid
+it. I do not know where it is.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you do not find it,” Mosenstein went on savagely, “you will find yourself
+on a convict ship before long.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In which case, no doubt,” I retorted with suave urbanity, “the police will
+search my rooms where I lodge, and they will find the receipt from the Mont de
+Piété, which I had mislaid. And then the gossip will be all over Paris that
+Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour had to pawn her jewels in order to satisfy
+the exigencies of her first and only lawful husband who has since mysteriously
+disappeared; and some people will vow that he never came back from the
+Antipodes, whilst others&mdash;by far the most numerous&mdash;will shrug their
+shoulders and sigh: ‘One never knows!’ which will be exceedingly unpleasant for
+Mme. la Marquise.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Both M. Mauruss Mosenstein and the juge d’instruction said a great deal more
+that afternoon. I may say that their attitude towards me and the language that
+they used were positively scandalous. But I had become now the master of the
+situation and I could afford to ignore their insults. In the end everything was
+settled quite amicably. I agreed to dispose of the receipt from the Mont de
+Piété to M. Mauruss Mosenstein for the sum of two hundred francs, and for
+another hundred I would indicate to him the banking house where his precious
+son-in-law had deposited the half-million francs obtained for the emeralds.
+This latter information I would indeed have offered him gratuitously had he but
+known with what immense pleasure I thus put a spoke in that knavish Marquis’s
+wheel of fortune.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The worthy Israelite further agreed to pay me an annuity of two hundred francs
+so long as I kept silent upon the entire subject of Mme. la Marquise’s first
+husband and of M. le Marquis’s rôle in the mysterious affair of the Rue Daunou.
+For thus was the affair classed amongst the police records. No one outside the
+chief actors of the drama and M. le Juge d’Instruction ever knew the true
+history of how a dashing young cavalry officer came to be assaulted and left to
+starve for three days in the humble apartment of an attorney-at-law of
+undisputed repute. And no one outside the private bureau of M. le Juge
+d’Instruction ever knew what it cost the wealthy M. Mosenstein to have the
+whole affair “classed” and hushed up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for me, I had three hundred francs as payment for work which I had risked my
+neck and my reputation to accomplish. Three hundred instead of the hundred
+thousand which I had so richly deserved: that, and a paltry two hundred francs
+a year, which was to cease the moment that as much as a rumour of the whole
+affair was breathed in public. As if I could help people talking!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But M. le Marquis did not enjoy the fruits of his villainy, and I had again the
+satisfaction of seeing him gnaw his finger-nails with rage whenever the lovely
+Rachel paid for his dinner at fashionable restaurants. Indeed Papa Mosenstein
+tightened the strings of his money-bags even more securely than he had done in
+the past. Under threats of prosecution for theft and I know not what, he forced
+his son-in-law to disgorge that half-million which he had so pleasantly tucked
+away in the banking house of Raynal Frères, and I was indeed thankful that
+prudence had, on that memorable morning, suggested to me the advisability of
+dogging the Marquis’s footsteps. I doubt not but what he knew whence had come
+the thunderbolt which had crushed his last hopes of an independent fortune, and
+no doubt too he does not cherish feelings of good will towards me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this eventuality leaves me cold. He has only himself to thank for his
+misfortune. Everything would have gone well but for his treachery. We would
+have become affluent, he and I and Theodore. Theodore has gone to live with his
+mother, who has a fish-stall in the Halles; she gives him three sous a day for
+washing down the stall and selling the fish when it has become too odorous for
+the ordinary customers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he might have had five hundred francs for himself and remained my
+confidential clerk.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0004"></a>
+CHAPTER IV. &mdash; CARISSIMO</h2>
+
+<h3>1.</h3>
+
+<p>
+You must not think for a moment, my dear Sir, that I was ever actually deceived
+in Theodore. Was it likely that I, who am by temperament and habit accustomed
+to read human visages like a book, was it likely, I say, that I would fail to
+see craftiness in those pale, shifty eyes, deceit in the weak, slobbering
+mouth, intemperance in the whole aspect of the shrunken, slouchy figure which I
+had, for my subsequent sorrow, so generously rescued from starvation?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Generous? I was more than generous to him. They say that the poor are the
+friends of the poor, and I told you how poor we were in those days! Ah! but
+poor! my dear Sir, you have no conception! Meat in Paris in the autumn of 1816
+was 24 francs the kilo, and milk 1 franc the quarter litre, not to mention eggs
+and butter, which were delicacies far beyond the reach of cultured, well-born
+people like myself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And yet throughout that trying year I fed Theodore&mdash;yes, I fed him. He
+used to share onion pie with me whenever I partook of it, and he had haricot
+soup every day, into which I allowed him to boil the skins of all the sausages
+and the luscious bones of all the cutlets of which I happened to partake. Then
+think what he cost me in drink! Never could I leave a half or quarter bottle of
+wine but he would finish it; his impudent fingers made light of every lock and
+key. I dared not allow as much as a sou to rest in the pocket of my coat but he
+would ferret it out the moment I hung the coat up in the outer room and my back
+was turned for a few seconds. After a while I was forced&mdash;yes, I, Sir, who
+have spoken on terms of equality with kings&mdash;I was forced to go out and
+make my own purchases in the neighbouring provision shops. And why? Because if
+I sent Theodore and gave him a few sous wherewith to make these purchases, he
+would spend the money at the nearest cabaret in getting drunk on absinthe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He robbed me, Sir, shamefully, despite the fact that he had ten per cent,
+commission on all the profits of the firm. I gave him twenty francs out of the
+money which I had earned at the sweat of my brow in the service of Estelle
+Bachelier. Twenty francs, Sir! Reckoning two hundred francs as business profit
+on the affair, a generous provision you will admit! And yet he taunted me with
+having received a thousand. This was mere guesswork, of course, and I took no
+notice of his taunts: did the brains that conceived the business deserve no
+payment? Was my labour to be counted as dross?&mdash;the humiliation, the blows
+which I had to endure while he sat in hoggish content, eating and sleeping
+without thought for the morrow? After which he calmly pocketed the twenty
+francs to earn which he had not raised one finger, and then demanded more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No, no, my dear Sir, you will believe me or not, that man could not go
+straight. Times out of count he would try and deceive me, despite the fact
+that, once or twice, he very nearly came hopelessly to grief in the attempt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, just to give you an instance. About this time Paris was in the grip of a
+gang of dog-thieves as unscrupulous and heartless as they were daring. Can you
+wonder at it? with that awful penury about and a number of expensive “tou-tous”
+running about the streets under the very noses of the indigent proletariat? The
+ladies of the aristocracy and of the wealthy bourgeoisie had imbibed this craze
+for lap-dogs during their sojourn in England at the time of the emigration, and
+being women of the Latin race and of undisciplined temperament, they were just
+then carrying their craze to excess.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I was saying, this indulgence led to wholesale thieving. Tou-tous were
+abstracted from their adoring mistresses with marvellous adroitness; whereupon
+two or three days would elapse while the adoring mistress wept buckets full of
+tears and set the police of M. Fouché, Duc d’Otrante, by the ears in search of
+her pet. The next act in the tragi-comedy would be an anonymous demand for
+money&mdash;varying in amount in accordance with the known or supposed wealth
+of the lady&mdash;and an equally anonymous threat of dire vengeance upon the
+tou-tou if the police were put upon the track of the thieves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You will ask me, no doubt, what all this had to do with Theodore. Well! I will
+tell you.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You must know that of late he had become extraordinarily haughty and
+independent. I could not keep him to his work. His duties were to sweep the
+office&mdash;he did not do it; to light the fires&mdash;I had to light them
+myself every morning; to remain in the anteroom and show clients in&mdash;he
+was never at his post. In fact he was never there when I did want him: morning,
+noon and night he was out&mdash;gadding about and coming home, Sir, only to eat
+and sleep. I was seriously thinking of giving him the sack. And then one day he
+disappeared! Yes, Sir, disappeared completely as if the earth had swallowed him
+up. One morning&mdash;it was in the beginning of December and the cold was
+biting&mdash;I arrived at the office and found that his chair-bed which stood
+in the antechamber had not been slept in; in fact that it had not been made up
+overnight. In the cupboard I found the remnants of an onion pie, half a
+sausage, and a quarter of a litre of wine, which proved conclusively that he
+had not been in to supper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first I was not greatly disturbed in my mind. I had found out quite recently
+that Theodore had some sort of a squalid home of his own somewhere behind the
+fish-market, together with an old and wholly disreputable mother who plied him
+with drink whenever he spent an evening with her and either he or she had a
+franc in their pocket. Still, after these bouts spent in the bosom of his
+family he usually returned to sleep them off at my expense in my office.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had unfortunately very little to do that day, so in the late afternoon, not
+having seen anything of Theodore all day, I turned my steps toward the house
+behind the fish-market where lived the mother of that ungrateful wretch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The woman’s surprise when I inquired after her precious son was undoubtedly
+genuine. Her lamentations and crocodile tears certainly were not. She reeked of
+alcohol, and the one room which she inhabited was indescribably filthy. I
+offered her half a franc if she gave me authentic news of Theodore, knowing
+well that for that sum she would have sold him to the devil. But very obviously
+she knew nothing of his whereabouts, and I soon made haste to shake the dirt of
+her abode from my heels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had become vaguely anxious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wondered if he had been murdered somewhere down a back street, and if I
+should miss him very much.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I did not think that I would.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Moreover, no one could have any object in murdering Theodore. In his own stupid
+way he was harmless enough, and he certainly was not possessed of anything
+worth stealing. I myself was not over-fond of the man&mdash;but I should not
+have bothered to murder him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still, I was undoubtedly anxious, and slept but little that night thinking of
+the wretch. When the following morning I arrived at my office and still could
+see no trace of him, I had serious thoughts of putting the law in motion on his
+behalf.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just then, however, an incident occurred which drove all thoughts of such an
+insignificant personage as Theodore from my mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had just finished tidying up the office when there came a peremptory ring at
+the outer door, repeated at intervals of twenty seconds or so. It meant giving
+a hasty glance all round to see that no fragments of onion pie or of cheap
+claret lingered in unsuspected places, and it meant my going, myself, to open
+the door to my impatient visitor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I did it, Sir, and then at the door I stood transfixed. I had seen many
+beautiful women in my day&mdash;great ladies of the Court, brilliant ladies of
+the Consulate, the Directorate and the Empire&mdash;but never in my life had I
+seen such an exquisite and resplendent apparition as the one which now sailed
+through the antechamber of my humble abode.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir, Hector Ratichon’s heart has ever been susceptible to the charms of beauty
+in distress. This lovely being, Sir, who now at my invitation entered my office
+and sank with perfect grace into the arm-chair, was in obvious distress. Tears
+hung on the fringe of her dark lashes, and the gossamer-like handkerchief which
+she held in her dainty hand was nothing but a wet rag. She gave herself exactly
+two minutes wherein to compose herself, after which she dried her eyes and
+turned the full artillery of her bewitching glance upon me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Monsieur Ratichon,” she began, even before I had taken my accustomed place at
+my desk and assumed that engaging smile which inspires confidence even in the
+most timorous; “Monsieur Ratichon, they tell me that you are so clever,
+and&mdash;oh! I am in such trouble.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Madame,” I rejoined with noble simplicity, “you may trust me to do the
+impossible in order to be of service to you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Admirably put, you will admit. I have always been counted a master of
+appropriate diction, and I had been quick enough to note the plain band of gold
+which encircled the third finger of her dainty left hand, flanked though it was
+by a multiplicity of diamond, pearl and other jewelled rings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are kind, Monsieur Ratichon,” resumed the beauteous creature more calmly.
+“But indeed you will require all the ingenuity of your resourceful brain in
+order to help me in this matter. I am struggling in the grip of a relentless
+fate which, if you do not help me, will leave me broken-hearted.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Command me, Madame,” I riposted quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From out the daintiest of reticules the fair lady now extracted a very greasy
+and very dirty bit of paper, and handed it to me with the brief request: “Read
+this, I pray you, my good M. Ratichon.” I took the paper. It was a clumsily
+worded, ill-written, ill-spelt demand for five thousand francs, failing which
+sum the thing which Madame had lost would forthwith be destroyed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked up, puzzled, at my fair client.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My darling Carissimo, my dear M. Ratichon,” she said in reply to my mute
+query.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Carissimo?” I stammered, yet further intrigued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My darling pet, a valuable creature, the companion of my lonely hours,” she
+rejoined, once more bursting into tears. “If I lose him, my heart will
+inevitably break.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I understood at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Madame has lost her dog?” I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It has been stolen by one of those expert dog thieves, who then levy blackmail
+on the unfortunate owner?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again she nodded in assent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I read the dirty, almost illegible scrawl through more carefully this time. It
+was a clumsy notification addressed to Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé de St. Pris to
+the effect that her tou-tou was for the moment safe, and would be restored to
+the arms of his fond mistress provided the sum of five thousand francs was
+deposited in the hands of the bearer of the missive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Minute directions were then given as to where and how the money was to be
+deposited. Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé was, on the third day from this at six
+o’clock in the evening precisely, to go in person and alone to the angle of the
+Rue Guénégaud and the Rue Mazarine, at the rear of the Institut.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There two men would meet her, one of whom would have Carissimo in his arms; to
+the other she must hand over the money, whereupon the pet would at once be
+handed back to her. But if she failed to keep this appointment, or if in the
+meanwhile she made the slightest attempt to trace the writer of the missive or
+to lay a trap for his capture by the police, Carissimo would at once meet with
+a summary death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These were the usual tactics of experienced dog thieves, only that in this case
+the demand was certainly exorbitant. Five thousand francs! But even so . . . I
+cast a rapid and comprehensive glance on the brilliant apparition before
+me&mdash;the jewelled rings, the diamonds in the shell-like ears, the priceless
+fur coat&mdash;and with an expressive shrug of the shoulders I handed the dirty
+scrap of paper back to its fair recipient.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Alas, Madame,” I said, taking care that she should not guess how much it cost
+me to give her such advice, “I am afraid that in such cases there is nothing to
+be done. If you wish to save your pet you will have to pay. . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah! but, Monsieur,” she exclaimed tearfully, “you don’t understand. Carissimo
+is all the world to me, and this is not the first time, nor yet the second,
+that he has been stolen from me. Three times, my good M. Ratichon, three times
+has he been stolen, and three times have I received such peremptory demands for
+money for his safe return; and every time the demand has been more and more
+exorbitant. Less than a month ago M. le Comte paid three thousand francs for
+his recovery.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Monsieur le Comte?” I queried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My husband, Sir,” she replied, with an exquisite air of hauteur. “M. le Comte
+de Nolé de St. Pris.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, then,” I continued calmly, “I fear me that Monsieur de Nolé de St. Pris
+will have to pay again.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But he won’t!” she now cried out in a voice broken with sobs, and
+incontinently once more saturated her gossamer handkerchief with her tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then I see nothing for it, Madame,” I rejoined, much against my will with a
+slight touch of impatience, “I see nothing for it but that yourself . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah! but, Monsieur,” she retorted, with a sigh that would have melted a heart
+of stone, “that is just my difficulty. I cannot pay . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Madame,” I protested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh! if I had money of my own,” she continued, with an adorable gesture of
+impatience, “I would not worry. Mais voilà: I have not a silver franc of my own
+to bless myself with. M. le Comte is over generous. He pays all my bills
+without a murmur&mdash;he pays my dressmaker, my furrier; he loads me with
+gifts and dispenses charity on a lavish scale in my name. I have horses,
+carriages, servants&mdash;everything I can possibly want and more, but I never
+have more than a few hundred francs to dispose of. Up to now I have never for a
+moment felt the want of money. To-day, when Carissimo is being lost to me, I
+feel the entire horror of my position.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But surely, Madame,” I urged, “M. le Comte . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, Monsieur,” she replied. “M. le Comte has flatly refused this time to pay
+these abominable thieves for the recovery of Carissimo. He upbraids himself for
+having yielded to their demands on the three previous occasions. He calls these
+demands blackmailing, and vows that to give them money again is to encourage
+them in their nefarious practices. Oh! he has been cruel to me,
+cruel!&mdash;for the first time in my life, Monsieur, my husband has made me
+unhappy, and if I lose my darling now I shall indeed be broken-hearted.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was silent for a moment or two. I was beginning to wonder what part I should
+be expected to play in the tragedy which was being unfolded before me by this
+lovely and impecunious creature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Madame la Comtesse,” I suggested tentatively, after a while, “your jewellery .
+. . you must have a vast number which you seldom wear . . . five thousand
+francs is soon made up. . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You see, Sir, my hopes of a really good remunerative business had by now
+dwindled down to vanishing point. All that was left of them was a vague idea
+that the beautiful Comtesse would perhaps employ me as an intermediary for the
+sale of some of her jewellery, in which case . . . But already her next words
+disillusioned me even on that point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, Monsieur,” she said; “what would be the use? Through one of the usual
+perverse tricks of fate, M. le Comte would be sure to inquire after the very
+piece of jewellery of which I had so disposed, and moreover . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Moreover&mdash;yes, Mme. la Comtesse?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Moreover, my husband is right,” she concluded decisively. “If I give in to
+those thieves to-day and pay them five thousand francs, they would only set to
+work to steal Carissimo again and demand ten thousand francs from me another
+time.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was silent. What could I say? Her argument was indeed unanswerable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, my good M. Ratichon,” she said very determinedly after a while. “I have
+quite decided that you must confound those thieves. They have given me three
+days’ grace, as you see in their abominable letter. If after three days the
+money is not forthcoming, and if in the meanwhile I dare to set a trap for them
+or in any way communicate with the police, my darling Carissimo will be killed
+and my heart be broken.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Madame la Comtesse,” I entreated, for of a truth I could not bear to see her
+cry again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You must bring Carissimo back to me, M. Ratichon,” she continued peremptorily,
+“before those awful three days have elapsed.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I swear that I will,” I rejoined solemnly; but I must admit that I did it
+entirely on the spur of the moment, for of a truth I saw no prospect whatever
+of being able to accomplish what she desired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Without my paying a single louis to those execrable thieves,” the exquisite
+creature went on peremptorily,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It shall be done, Madame la Comtesse.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And let me tell you,” she now added, with the sweetest and archest of smiles,
+“that if you succeed in this, M. le Comte de Nolé de St. Pris will gladly pay
+you the five thousand francs which he refuses to give to those miscreants.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Five thousand francs! A mist swam before my eyes,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mais, Madame la Comtesse . . .” I stammered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh!” she added, with an adorable uptilting of her little chin, “I am not
+promising what I cannot fulfil. M. le Comte de Nolé only said this morning,
+apropos of dog thieves, that he would gladly give ten thousand francs to anyone
+who succeeded in ridding society of such pests.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could have knelt down on the hard floor, Sir, and . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well then, Madame,” was my ready rejoinder, “why not ten thousand francs to
+me?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She bit her coral lips . . . but she also smiled. I could see that my
+personality and my manners had greatly impressed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will only be responsible for the first five thousand,” she said lightly.
+“But, for the rest, I can confidently assure you that you will not find a miser
+in M. le Comte de Nolé de St. Pris.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could have knelt down on the hard floor, Sir, and kissed her exquisitely shod
+feet. Five thousand francs certain! Perhaps ten! A fortune, Sir, in those days!
+One that would keep me in comfort&mdash;nay, affluence, until something else
+turned up. I was swimming in the empyrean and only came rudely to earth when I
+recollected that I should have to give Theodore something for his share of the
+business. Ah! fortunately that for the moment he was comfortably out of the
+way! Thoughts that perhaps he had been murdered after all once more coursed
+through my brain: not unpleasantly, I’ll admit. I would not have raised a
+finger to hurt the fellow, even though he had treated me with the basest
+ingratitude and treachery; but if someone else took the trouble to remove him,
+why indeed should I quarrel with fate?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Back I came swiftly to the happy present. The lovely creature was showing me a
+beautifully painted miniature of Carissimo, a King Charles spaniel of no common
+type. This she suggested that I should keep by me for the present for purposes
+of identification. After this we had to go into the details of the
+circumstances under which she had lost her pet. She had been for a walk with
+him, it seems, along the Quai Voltaire, and was returning home by the side of
+the river, when suddenly a number of workmen in blouses and peaked caps came
+trooping out of a side street and obstructed her progress. She had Carissimo on
+the lead, and she at once admitted to me that at first she never thought of
+connecting this pushing and jostling rabble with any possible theft. She held
+her ground for awhile, facing the crowd: for a few moments she was right in the
+midst of it, and just then she felt the dog straining at the lead. She turned
+round at once with the intention of picking him up, when to her horror she saw
+that there was only a bundle of something weighty at the end of the lead, and
+that the dog had disappeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The whole incident occurred, the lovely creature declared, within the space of
+thirty seconds; the next instant the crowd had scattered in several directions,
+the men running and laughing as they went. Mme. la Comtesse was left standing
+alone on the quay. Not a passer-by in sight, and the only gendarme visible, a
+long way down the Quai, had his back turned toward her. Nevertheless she ran
+and hied him, and presently he turned and, realizing that something was amiss,
+he too ran to meet her. He listened to her story, swore lustily, but shrugged
+his shoulders in token that the tale did not surprise him and that but little
+could be done. Nevertheless he at once summoned those of his colleagues who
+were on duty in the neighbourhood, and one of them went off immediately to
+notify the theft at the nearest commissariat of police. After which they all
+proceeded to a comprehensive scouring of the many tortuous sidestreets of the
+quartier; but, needless to say, there was no sign of Carissimo or of his
+abductors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That night my lovely client went home distracted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The following evening, when, broken-hearted, she wandered down the quays living
+over again the agonizing moments during which she lost her pet, a workman in a
+blue blouse, with a peaked cap pulled well over his eyes, lurched up against
+her and thrust into her hand the missive which she had just shown me. He then
+disappeared into the night, and she had only the vaguest possible recollection
+of his appearance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That, Sir, was the substance of the story which the lovely creature told me in
+a voice oft choked with tears. I questioned her very closely and in my most
+impressive professional manner as to the identity of any one man among the
+crowd who might have attracted her attention, but all that she could tell me
+was that she had a vague impression of a wizened hunchback with evil face,
+shaggy red beard and hair, and a black patch covering the left eye.
+</p>
+
+<h3>2.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Not much data to go on, you will, I think, admit, and I can assure you, Sir,
+that had I not possessed that unbounded belief in myself which is the true
+hall-mark of genius, I would at the outset have felt profoundly discouraged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As it was, I found just the right words of consolation and of hope wherewith to
+bow my brilliant client out of my humble apartments, and then to settle down to
+deep and considered meditation. Nothing, Sir, is so conducive to thought as a
+long, brisk walk through the crowded streets of Paris. So I brushed my coat,
+put on my hat at a becoming angle, and started on my way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I walked as far as Suresnes, and I thought. After that, feeling fatigued, I sat
+on the terrace of the Café Bourbon, overlooking the river. There I sipped my
+coffee and thought. I walked back into Paris in the evening, and still thought,
+and thought, and thought. After that I had some dinner, washed down by an
+agreeable bottle of wine&mdash;did I mention that the lovely creature had given
+me a hundred francs on account?&mdash;then I went for a stroll along the Quai
+Voltaire, and I may safely say that there is not a single side and tortuous
+street in its vicinity that I did not explore from end to end during the course
+of that never to be forgotten evening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But still my mind remained in a chaotic condition. I had not succeeded in
+forming any plan. What a quandary, Sir! Oh! what a quandary! Here was I, Hector
+Ratichon, the confidant of kings, the right hand of two emperors, set to the
+task of stealing a dog&mdash;for that is what I should have to do&mdash;from an
+unscrupulous gang of thieves whose identity, abode and methods were alike
+unknown to me. Truly, Sir, you will own that this was a herculean task.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Vaguely my thoughts reverted to Theodore. He might have been of good counsel,
+for he knew more about thieves than I did, but the ungrateful wretch was out of
+the way on the one occasion when he might have been of use to me who had done
+so much for him. Indeed, my reason told me that I need not trouble my head
+about Theodore. He had vanished; that he would come back presently was, of
+course, an indubitable fact; people like Theodore never vanish completely. He
+would come back and demand I know not what, his share, perhaps, in a business
+which was so promising even if it was still so vague.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Five thousand francs! A round sum! If I gave Theodore five hundred the sum
+would at once appear meagre, unimportant. Four thousand five hundred
+francs!&mdash;it did not even <i>sound</i> well to my mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I took care that Theodore vanished from my mental vision as completely as he
+had done for the last two days from my ken, and as there was nothing more that
+could be done that evening, I turned my weary footsteps toward my lodgings at
+Passy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All that night, Sir, I lay wakeful and tossing in my bed, alternately fuming
+and rejecting plans for the attainment of that golden goal&mdash;the recovery
+of Mme. de Nolé’s pet dog. And the whole of the next day I spent in vain quest.
+I visited every haunt of ill-fame known to me within the city. I walked about
+with a pistol in my belt, a hunk of bread and cheese in my pocket, and slowly
+growing despair in my heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the evening Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé called for news of Carissimo, and I
+could give her none. She cried, Sir, and implored, and her tears and entreaties
+got on to my nerves until I felt ready to fall into hysterics. One more day and
+all my chances of a bright and wealthy future would have vanished. Unless the
+money was forthcoming on the morrow, the dog would be destroyed, and with him
+my every hope of that five thousand francs. And though she still irradiated
+charm and luxury from her entire lovely person, I begged her not to come to the
+office again, and promised that as soon as I had any news to impart I would at
+once present myself at her house in the Faubourg St. Germain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That night I never slept one wink. Think of it, Sir! The next few hours were
+destined to see me either a prosperous man for many days to come, or a
+miserable, helpless, disappointed wretch. At eight o’clock I was at my office.
+Still no news of Theodore. I could now no longer dismiss him from my mind.
+Something had happened to him, I could have no doubt. This anxiety, added to
+the other more serious one, drove me to a state bordering on frenzy. I hardly
+knew what I was doing. I wandered all day up and down the Quai Voltaire, and
+the Quai des Grands Augustins, and in and around the tortuous streets till I
+was dog-tired, distracted, half crazy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went to the Morgue, thinking to find there Theodore’s dead body, and found
+myself vaguely looking for the mutilated corpse of Carissimo. Indeed, after a
+while Theodore and Carissimo became so inextricably mixed up in my mind that I
+could not have told you if I was seeking for the one or for the other and if
+Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé was now waiting to clasp her pet dog or my
+man-of-all-work to her exquisite bosom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She in the meanwhile had received a second, yet more peremptory, missive
+through the same channel as the previous one. A grimy deformed man, with
+ginger-coloured hair, and wearing a black patch over one eye, had been seen by
+one of the servants lolling down the street where Madame lived, and
+subsequently the concierge discovered that an exceedingly dirty scrap of paper
+had been thrust under the door of his lodge. The writer of the epistle demanded
+that Mme. la Comtesse should stand in person at six o’clock that same evening
+at the corner of the Rue Guénégaud, behind the Institut de France. Two men,
+each wearing a blue blouse and peaked cap, would meet her there. She must hand
+over the money to one of them, whilst the other would have Carissimo in his
+arms. The missive closed with the usual threats that if the police were mixed
+up in the affair, or the money not forthcoming, Carissimo would be destroyed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Six o’clock was the hour fixed by these abominable thieves for the final doom
+of Carissimo. It was now close on five. In a little more than an hour my last
+hope of five or ten thousand francs and a smile of gratitude from a pair of
+lovely lips would have gone, never again to return. A great access of righteous
+rage seized upon me. I determined that those miserable thieves, whoever they
+were, should suffer for the disappointment which I was now enduring. If I was
+to lose five thousand francs, they at least should not be left free to pursue
+their evil ways. I would communicate with the police; the police should meet
+the miscreants at the corner of the Rue Guénégaud. Carissimo would die; his
+lovely mistress would be brokenhearted. I would be left to mourn yet another
+illusion of a possible fortune, but they would suffer in gaol or in New
+Caledonia the consequences of all their misdeeds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fortified by this resolution, I turned my weary footsteps in the direction of
+the gendarmerie where I intended to lodge my denunciation of those abominable
+thieves and blackmailers. The night was dark, the streets ill-lighted, the air
+bitterly cold. A thin drizzle, half rain, half snow, was descending, chilling
+me to the bone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was walking rapidly along the river bank with my coat collar pulled up to my
+ears, and still instinctively peering up every narrow street which debouches on
+the quay. Then suddenly I spied Theodore. He was coming down the Rue Beaune,
+slouching along with head bent in his usual way. He appeared to be carrying
+something, not exactly heavy, but cumbersome, under his left arm. Within the
+next few minutes he would have been face to face with me, for I had come to a
+halt at the angle of the street, determined to have it out with the rascal then
+and there in spite of the cold and in spite of my anxiety about Carissimo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All of a sudden he raised his head and saw me, and in a second he turned on his
+heel and began to run up the street in the direction whence he had come. At
+once I gave chase. I ran after him&mdash;and then, Sir, he came for a second
+within the circle of light projected by a street lanthorn. But in that one
+second I had seen that which turned my frozen blood into liquid lava&mdash;a
+tail, Sir!&mdash;a dog’s tail, fluffy and curly, projecting from beneath that
+recreant’s left arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A dog, Sir! a dog! Carissimo! the darling of Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé’s heart!
+Carissimo, the recovery of whom would mean five thousand francs into my pocket!
+Carissimo! I knew it! For me there existed but one dog in all the world; one
+dog and one spawn of the devil, one arch-traitor, one limb of Satan! Theodore!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How he had come by Carissimo I had not time to conjecture. I called to him.
+I called his accursed name, using appellations which fell far short of those
+which he deserved. But the louder I called the faster he ran, and I,
+breathless, panting, ran after him, determined to run him to earth, fearful
+lest I should lose him in the darkness of the night. All down the Rue Beaune we
+ran, and already I could hear behind me the heavy and more leisured tramp of a
+couple of gendarmes who in their turn had started to give chase.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I tell you, Sir, the sound lent wings to my feet. A chance&mdash;a last
+chance&mdash;was being offered me by a benevolent Fate to earn that five
+thousand francs, the keystone to my future fortune. If I had the strength to
+seize and hold Theodore until the gendarmes came up, and before he had time to
+do away with the dog, the five thousand francs could still be mine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I ran, Sir, as I had never run before; the beads of perspiration poured down
+from my forehead; the breath came stertorous and hot from my heaving breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then suddenly Theodore disappeared!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Disappeared, Sir, as if the earth had swallowed him up! A second ago I had seen
+him dimly, yet distinctly through the veil of snow and rain ahead of me,
+running with that unmistakable shuffling gait of his, hugging the dog closely
+under his arm. I had seen him&mdash;another effort and I might have touched
+him!&mdash;now the long and deserted street lay dark and mysterious before me,
+and behind me I could hear the measured tramp of the gendarmes and their
+peremptory call of “Halt, in the name of the King!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But not in vain, Sir, am I called Hector Ratichon; not in vain have kings and
+emperors reposed confidence in my valour and my presence of mind. In less time
+than it takes to relate I had already marked with my eye the very
+spot&mdash;down the street&mdash;where I had last seen Theodore. I hurried
+forward and saw at once that my surmise had been correct. At that very spot,
+Sir, there was a low doorway which gave on a dark and dank passage. The door
+itself was open. I did not hesitate. My life stood in the balance but I did not
+falter. I might be affronting within the next second or two a gang of desperate
+thieves, but I did not quake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I turned into that doorway, Sir; the next moment I felt a stunning blow between
+my eyes. I just remember calling out with all the strength of my lungs:
+“Police! Gendarmes! A moi!” Then nothing more.
+</p>
+
+<h3>3.</h3>
+
+<p>
+I woke with the consciousness of violent wordy warfare carried on around me. I
+was lying on the ground, and the first things I saw were three or four pairs of
+feet standing close together. Gradually out of the confused hubbub a few
+sentences struck my reawakened senses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The man is drunk.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I won’t have him inside the house.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I tell you this is a respectable house.” This from a shrill feminine voice.
+“We’ve never had the law inside our doors before.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time I had succeeded in raising myself on my elbow, and, by the dim
+light of a hanging lamp somewhere down the passage, I was pretty well able to
+take stock of my surroundings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The half-dozen bedroom candlesticks on a table up against the wall, the row of
+keys hanging on hooks fixed to a board above, the glass partition with the
+words “Concierge” and “Réception” painted across it, all told me that this was
+one of those small, mostly squalid and disreputable lodging houses or hotels in
+which this quarter of Paris still abounds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two gendarmes who had been running after me were arguing the matter of my
+presence here with the proprietor of the place and with the concierge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I struggled to my feet. Whereupon for the space of a solid two minutes I had to
+bear as calmly as I could the abuse and vituperation which the feminine
+proprietor of this “respectable house” chose to hurl at my unfortunate head.
+After which I obtained a hearing from the bewildered minions of the law. To
+them I gave as brief and succinct a narrative as I could of the events of the
+past three days. The theft of Carissimo&mdash;the disappearance of
+Theodore&mdash;my meeting him a while ago, with the dog under his arm&mdash;his
+second disappearance, this time within the doorway of this “respectable abode,”
+and finally the blow which alone had prevented me from running the abominable
+thief to earth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The gendarmes at first were incredulous. I could see that they were still under
+the belief that my excitement was due to over-indulgence in alcoholic liquor,
+whilst Madame the proprietress called me an abominable liar for daring to
+suggest that she harboured thieves within her doors. Then suddenly, as if in
+vindication of my character, there came from a floor above the sound of a loud,
+shrill bark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Carissimo!” I cried triumphantly. Then I added in a rapid whisper, “Mme. la
+Comtesse de Nolé is rich. She spoke of a big reward for the recovery of her
+pet.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These happy words had the effect of stimulating the zeal of the gendarmes.
+Madame the proprietress grew somewhat confused and incoherent, and finally
+blurted it out that one of her lodgers&mdash;a highly respectable
+gentleman&mdash;did keep a dog, but that there was no crime in that surely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“One of your lodgers?” queried the representative of the law. “When did he
+come?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“About three days ago,” she replied sullenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What room does he occupy?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Number twenty-five on the third floor.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He came with his dog?” I interposed quickly, “a spaniel?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And your lodger, is he an ugly, slouchy creature&mdash;with hooked nose,
+bleary eyes and shaggy yellow hair?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But to this she vouchsafed no reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Already the matter had passed out of my hands. One of the gendarmes prepared to
+go upstairs and bade me follow him, whilst he ordered his comrade to remain
+below and on no account to allow anyone to enter or leave the house. The
+proprietress and concierge were warned that if they interfered with the due
+execution of the law they would be severely dealt with; after which we went
+upstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a while, as we ascended, we could hear the dog barking furiously, then,
+presently, just as we reached the upper landing, we heard a loud curse, a
+scramble, and then a piteous whine quickly smothered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My very heart stood still. The next moment, however, the gendarme had kicked
+open the door of No. 25, and I followed him into the room. The place looked
+dirty and squalid in the extreme&mdash;just the sort of place I should have
+expected Theodore to haunt. It was almost bare save for a table in the centre,
+a couple of rickety chairs, a broken-down bedstead and an iron stove in the
+corner. On the table a tallow candle was spluttering and throwing a very feeble
+circle of light around.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first glance I thought that the room was empty, then suddenly I heard
+another violent expletive and became aware of a man sitting close beside the
+iron stove. He turned to stare at us as we entered, but to my surprise it was
+not Theodore’s ugly face which confronted us. The man sitting there alone in
+the room where I had expected to see Theodore and Carissimo had a shaggy beard
+of an undoubted ginger hue. He had on a blue blouse and a peaked cap; beneath
+his cap his lank hair protruded more decided in colour even than his beard. His
+head was sunk between his shoulders, and right across his face, from the left
+eyebrow over the cheek and as far as his ear, he had a hideous crimson scar,
+which told up vividly against the ghastly pallor of his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But there was no sign of Theodore!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first my friend the gendarme was quite urbane. He asked very politely to see
+Monsieur’s pet dog. Monsieur denied all knowledge of a dog, which denial only
+tended to establish his own guilt and the veracity of mine own narrative. The
+gendarme thereupon became more peremptory and the man promptly lost his temper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I, in the meanwhile, was glancing round the room and soon spied a wall cupboard
+which had obviously been deliberately screened by the bedstead. While my
+companion was bringing the whole majesty of the law to bear upon the
+miscreant’s denegations I calmly dragged the bedstead aside and opened the
+cupboard door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An ejaculation from my quivering throat brought the gendarme to my side.
+Crouching in the dark recess of the wall cupboard was Carissimo&mdash;not dead,
+thank goodness! but literally shaking with terror. I pulled him out as gently
+as I could, for he was so frightened that he growled and snapped viciously at
+me. I handed him to the gendarme, for by the side of Carissimo I had seen
+something which literally froze my blood within my veins. It was Theodore’s hat
+and coat, which he had been wearing when I chased him to this house of mystery
+and of ill-fame, and wrapped together with it was a rag all smeared with blood,
+whilst the same hideous stains were now distinctly visible on the door of the
+cupboard itself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I turned to the gendarme, who at once confronted the abominable malefactor with
+the obvious proofs of a horrible crime. But the depraved wretch stood by, Sir,
+perfectly calm and with a cynicism in his whole bearing which I had never
+before seen equalled!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know nothing about that coat,” he asserted with a shrug of the shoulders,
+“nor about the dog.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The gendarme by this time was purple with fury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not know anything about the dog?” he exclaimed in a voice choked with
+righteous indignation. “Why, he . . . he barked!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this indisputable fact in no way disconcerted the miscreant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I heard a dog yapping,” he said with consummate impudence, “but I thought he
+was in the next room. No wonder,” he added coolly, “since he was in a wall
+cupboard.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A wall cupboard,” the gendarme rejoined triumphantly, “situated in the very
+room which you occupy at this moment.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is a mistake, my friend,” the cynical wretch retorted, undaunted. “I do
+not occupy this room. I do not lodge in this hotel at all.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then how came you to be here?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I came on a visit to a friend who happened to be out when I arrived. I found a
+pleasant fire here, and I sat down to warm myself. Your noisy and unwarranted
+irruption into this room has so bewildered me that I no longer know whether I
+am standing on my head or on my heels.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We’ll show you soon enough what you are standing on, my fine fellow,” the
+gendarme riposted with breezy, cheerfulness. “Allons!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I must say that the pampered minion of the law arose splendidly to the
+occasion. He seized the miscreant by the arm and took him downstairs, there to
+confront him with the proprietress of the establishment, while I&mdash;with
+marvellous presence of mind&mdash;took possession of Carissimo and hid him as
+best I could beneath my coat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the hall below a surprise and a disappointment were in store for me. I had
+reached the bottom of the stairs when the shrill feminine accents of Mme. the
+proprietress struck unpleasantly on my ear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No! no! I tell you!” she was saying. “This man is not my lodger. He never came
+here with a dog. There,” she added volubly, and pointing an unwashed finger at
+Carissimo who was struggling and growling in my arms, “there is the dog. A
+gentleman brought him with him last Wednesday, when he inquired if he could
+have a room here for a few nights. Number twenty-five happened to be vacant,
+and I have no objection to dogs. I let the gentleman have the room, and he paid
+me twenty sous in advance when he took possession and told me he would keep the
+room three nights.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The gentleman? What gentleman?” the gendarme queried, rather inanely I
+thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My lodger,” the woman replied. “He is out for the moment, but he will be back
+presently I make no doubt. The dog is his. . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is he like?” the minion of the law queried abruptly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who? the dog?” she retorted impudently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, no! Your lodger.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once more the unwashed finger went up and pointed straight at me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He described him well enough just now; thin and slouchy in his ways. He has
+lank, yellow hair, a nose perpetually crimson&mdash;with the cold no
+doubt&mdash;and pale, watery eyes. . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Theodore,” I exclaimed mentally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bewildered, the gendarme pointed to his prisoner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But this man . . . ?” he queried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why,” the proprietress replied. “I have seen Monsieur twice, or was it three
+times? He would visit number twenty-five now and then.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I will not weary you with further accounts of the close examination to which
+the representative of the law subjected the personnel of the squalid hotel. The
+concierge and the man of all work did indeed confirm what the proprietress
+said, and whilst my friend the gendarme &mdash;puzzled and
+floundering&mdash;was scratching his head in complete bewilderment, I thought
+that the opportunity had come for me to slip quietly out by the still open door
+and make my way as fast as I could to the sumptuous abode in the Faubourg St.
+Germain, where the gratitude of Mme. de Nolé, together with five thousand
+francs, were even now awaiting me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After Madame the proprietress had identified Carissimo, I had once more
+carefully concealed him under my coat. I was ready to seize my opportunity,
+after which I would be free to deal with the matter of Theodore’s amazing
+disappearance. Unfortunately just at this moment the little brute gave a yap,
+and the minion of the law at once interposed and took possession of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The dog belongs to the police now, Sir,” he said sternly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fatuous jobbernowl wanted his share of the reward, you see.
+</p>
+
+<h3>4.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Having been forced thus to give up Carissimo, and with him all my hopes of a
+really substantial fortune, I was determined to make the red-polled miscreant
+suffer for my disappointment, and the minions of the law sweat in the exercise
+of their duty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I demanded Theodore! My friend, my comrade, my right hand! I had seen him not
+ten minutes ago, carrying in his arms this very dog, whom I had subsequently
+found inside a wall cupboard beside a blood-stained coat. Where was Theodore?
+Pointing an avenging finger at the red-headed reprobate, I boldly accused him
+of having murdered my friend with a view to robbing him of the reward offered
+for the recovery of the dog.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This brought a new train of thought into the wooden pates of the gendarmes. A
+quartet of them had by this time assembled within the respectable precincts of
+the Hôtel des Cadets. One of them&mdash;senior to the others&mdash;at once
+dispatched a younger comrade to the nearest commissary of police for advice and
+assistance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he ordered us all into the room pompously labelled “Réception,” and there
+proceeded once more to interrogate us all, making copious notes in his
+leather-bound book all the time, whilst I, moaning and lamenting the loss of my
+faithful friend and man of all work, loudly demanded the punishment of his
+assassin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Theodore’s coat, his hat, the blood-stained rag, had all been brought down from
+No. 25 and laid out upon the table ready for the inspection of M. the
+Commissary of Police.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That gentleman arrived with two private agents, armed with full powers and
+wrapped in the magnificent imperturbability of the law. The gendarme had
+already put him <i>au fait</i> of the events, and as soon as he was seated
+behind the table upon which reposed the “pièces de conviction,” he in his turn
+proceeded to interrogate the ginger-pated miscreant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But strive how he might, M. the Commissary elicited no further information from
+him than that which we all already possessed. The man gave his name as Aristide
+Nicolet. He had no fixed abode. He had come to visit his friend who lodged in
+No. 25 in the Hôtel des Cadets. Not finding him at home he had sat by the fire
+and had waited for him. He knew absolutely nothing of the dog and absolutely
+nothing of the whereabouts of Theodore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We’ll soon see about that!” asserted M. the Commissary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He ordered a perquisition of every room and every corner of the hotel, Madame
+the proprietress loudly lamenting that she and her respectable house would
+henceforth be disgraced for ever. But the thieves&mdash;whoever they
+were&mdash;were clever. Not a trace of any illicit practice was found on the
+premises&mdash;and not a trace of Theodore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had he indeed been murdered? The thought now had taken root in my mind. For the
+moment I had even forgotten Carissimo and my vanished five thousand francs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, Sir! Aristide Nicolet was marched off to the depot&mdash;still protesting
+his innocence. The next day he was confronted with Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé,
+who could not say more than that he might have formed part of the gang who had
+jostled her on the Quai Voltaire, whilst the servant who had taken the missive
+from him failed to recognize him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carissimo was restored to the arms of his loving mistress, but the reward for
+his recovery had to be shared between the police and myself: three thousand
+francs going to the police who apprehended the thief, and two thousand to me
+who had put them on the track.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not a fortune, Sir, but I had to be satisfied. But in the meanwhile the
+disappearance of Theodore had remained an unfathomable mystery. No amount of
+questionings and cross-questionings, no amount of confrontations and
+perquisitions, had brought any new matter to light. Aristide Nicolet persisted
+in his statements, as did the proprietress and the concierge of the Hôtel des
+Cadets in theirs. Theodore had undoubtedly occupied room No. 25 in the hotel
+during the three days while I was racking my brain as to what had become of
+him. I equally undoubtedly saw him for a few moments running up the Rue Beaune
+with Carissimo’s tail projecting beneath his coat. Then he entered the open
+doorway of the hotel, and henceforth his whereabouts remained a baffling
+mystery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beyond his coat and hat, the stained rag and the dog himself, there was not the
+faintest indication of what became of him after that. The concierge vowed that
+he did not enter the hotel&mdash;Aristide Nicolet vowed that he did not enter
+No. 25. But then the dog was in the cupboard, and so were the hat and coat; and
+even the police were bound to admit that in the short space of time between my
+last glimpse of Theodore and the gendarme’s entry into room 25 it would be
+impossible for the most experienced criminal on earth to murder a man, conceal
+every trace of the crime, and so to dispose of the body as to baffle the most
+minute inquiry and the most exhaustive search.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes when I thought the whole matter out I felt that I was growing crazy.
+</p>
+
+<h3>5.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Thus about a week or ten days went by and I had just come reluctantly to the
+conclusion that there must be some truth in the old mediaeval legends which
+tell us that the devil runs away with his elect from time to time, when I
+received a summons from M. the Commissary of Police to present myself at his
+bureau.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was pleasant and urbane as usual, but to my anxious query after Theodore he
+only gave me the old reply: “No trace of him can be found.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he added: “We must therefore take it for granted, my good M. Ratichon,
+that your man of all work is&mdash;of his own free will&mdash;keeping out of
+the way. The murder theory is untenable; we have had to abandon it. The total
+disappearance of the body is an unanswerable argument against it. Would you
+care to offer a reward for information leading to the recovery of your missing
+friend?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I hesitated. I certainly was not prepared to pay anyone for finding Theodore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Think it over, my good M. Ratichon,” rejoined M. le Commissaire pleasantly.
+“But in the meanwhile I must tell you that we have decided to set Aristide
+Nicolet free. There is not a particle of evidence against him either in the
+matter of the dog or of that of your friend. Mme. de Nolé’s servants cannot
+swear to his identity, whilst you have sworn that you last saw the dog in your
+man’s arms. That being so, I feel that we have no right to detain an innocent
+man.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, Sir, what could I say? I knew well enough that there was not a tittle of
+solid evidence against the man Nicolet, nor had I the power to move the police
+of His Majesty the King from their decision. In my heart of hearts I had the
+firm conviction that the ginger-polled ruffian knew all about Carissimo and all
+about the present whereabouts of that rascal Theodore. But what could I say,
+Sir? What could I do?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went home that night to my lodgings at Passy more perplexed than ever I had
+been in my life before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning I arrived at my office soon after nine. The problem had
+presented itself to me during the night of finding a new man of all work who
+would serve me on the same terms as that ungrateful wretch Theodore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I mounted the stairs with a heavy step and opened the outer door of my
+apartment with my private key; and then, Sir, I assure you that for one brief
+moment I felt that my knees were giving way under me and that I should
+presently measure my full length on the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There, sitting at the table in my private room, was Theodore. He had donned one
+of the many suits of clothes which I always kept at the office for purposes of
+my business, and he was calmly consuming a luscious sausage which was to have
+been part of my dinner today, and finishing a half-bottle of my best Bordeaux.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He appeared wholly unconscious of his enormities, and when I taxed him with his
+villainies and plied him with peremptory questions he met me with a dogged
+silence and a sulky attitude which I have never seen equalled in all my life.
+He flatly denied that he had ever walked the streets of Paris with a dog under
+his arm, or that I had ever chased him up the Rue Beaune. He denied ever having
+lodged in the Hôtel des Cadets, or been acquainted with its proprietress, or
+with a red-polled, hunchback miscreant named Aristide Nicolet. He denied that
+the coat and hat found in room No. 25 were his; in fact, he denied everything,
+and with an impudence, Sir, which was past belief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he put the crown to his insolence when he finally demanded two hundred
+francs from me: his share in the sum paid to me by Mme. de Nolé for the
+recovery of her dog. He demanded this, Sir, in the name of justice and of
+equity, and even brandished our partnership contract in my face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was so irate at his audacity, so disgusted that presently I felt that I could
+not bear the sight of him any longer. I turned my back on him and walked out of
+my own private room, leaving him there still munching my sausage and drinking
+my Bordeaux.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was going through the antechamber with a view to going out into the street
+for a little fresh air when something in the aspect of the chair-bedstead on
+which that abominable brute Theodore had apparently spent the night attracted
+my attention. I turned over one of the cushions, and with a cry of rage which I
+took no pains to suppress I seized upon what I found lying beneath: a blue
+linen blouse, Sir, a peaked cap, a ginger-coloured wig and beard!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The villain! The abominable mountebank! The wretch! The . . . I was wellnigh
+choking with wrath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the damning pieces of conviction in my hand, I rushed back into the inner
+room. Already my cry of indignation had aroused the vampire from his orgy. He
+stood before me sheepish, grinning, and taunted me, Sir&mdash;taunted me for my
+blindness in not recognizing him under the disguise of the so-called Aristide
+Nicolet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a disguise which he had kept by him in case of an emergency when first
+he decided to start business as a dog thief. Carissimo had been his first
+serious venture and but for my interference it would have been a wholly
+successful one. He had worked the whole thing out with marvellous cleverness,
+being greatly assisted by Madame Sand, the proprietress of the Hôtel des
+Cadets, who was a friend of his mother’s. The lady, it seems, carried on a
+lucrative business of the same sort herself, and she undertook to furnish him
+with the necessary confederates for the carrying out of his plan. The proceeds
+of the affair were to be shared equally between himself and Madame; the
+confederates, who helped to jostle Mme. de Nolé whilst her dog was being
+stolen, were to receive five francs each for their trouble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he met me at the corner of the Rue Beaune he was on his way to the Rue
+Guénégaud, hoping to exchange Carissimo for five thousand francs. When he met
+me, however, he felt that the best thing to do for the moment was to seek
+safety in flight. He had only just time to run back to the hotel to warn Mme.
+Sand of my approach and beg her to detain me at any cost. Then he flew up the
+stairs, changed into his disguise, Carissimo barking all the time furiously.
+Whilst he was trying to pacify the dog, the latter bit him severely in the arm,
+drawing a good deal of blood&mdash;the crimson scar across his face was a last
+happy inspiration which put the finishing touch to his disguise and to the
+hoodwinking of the police and of me. He had only just time to staunch the blood
+from his arm and to thrust his own clothes and Carissimo into the wall cupboard
+when the gendarme and I burst in upon him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could only gasp. For one brief moment the thought rushed through my mind that
+I would denounce him to the police for . . . for . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But that was just the trouble. Of what could I accuse him? Of murdering himself
+or of stealing Mme. de Nolé’s dog? The commissary would hardly listen to such a
+tale . . . and it would make me seem ridiculous. . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I gave Theodore the soundest thrashing he ever had in his life, and fifty
+francs to keep his mouth shut.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But did I not tell you that he was a monster of ingratitude?
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0005"></a>
+CHAPTER V. &mdash; THE TOYS</h2>
+
+<h3>1.</h3>
+
+<p>
+You are right, Sir, I very seldom speak of my halcyon days&mdash;those days
+when the greatest monarch the world has ever known honoured me with his
+intimacy and confidence. I had my office in the Rue St. Roch then, at the top
+of a house just by the church, and not a stone’s throw from the palace, and I
+can tell you, Sir, that in those days ministers of state, foreign ambassadors,
+aye! and members of His Majesty’s household, were up and down my staircase at
+all hours of the day. I had not yet met Theodore then, and fate was wont to
+smile on me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for M. le Duc d’Otrante, Minister of Police, he would send to me or for me
+whenever an intricate case required special acumen, resourcefulness and
+secrecy. Thus in the matter of the English files&mdash;have I told you of it
+before? No? Well, then, you shall hear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Those were the days, Sir, when the Emperor’s Berlin Decrees were going to sweep
+the world clear of English commerce and of English enterprise. It was not a
+case of paying heavy duty on English goods, or a still heavier fine if you
+smuggled; it was total prohibition, and hanging if you were caught bringing so
+much as a metre of Bradford cloth or half a dozen Sheffield files into the
+country. But you know how it is, Sir: the more strict the law the more ready
+are certain lawless human creatures to break it. Never was smuggling so rife as
+it was in those days&mdash;I am speaking now of 1810 or 11&mdash;never was it
+so daring or smugglers so reckless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. le Duc d’Otrante had his hands full, I can tell you. It had become a matter
+for the secret police; the coastguard or customs officials were no longer able
+to deal with it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then one day Hypolite Leroux came to see me. I knew the man well&mdash;a keen
+sleuthhound if ever there was one&mdash;and well did he deserve his name, for
+he was as red as a fox.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ratichon,” he said to me, without preamble, as soon as he had seated himself
+opposite to me, and I had placed half a bottle of good Bordeaux and a couple of
+glasses on the table. “I want your help in the matter of these English files.
+We have done all that we can in our department. M. le Duc has doubled the
+customs personnel on the Swiss frontier, the coastguard is both keen and
+efficient, and yet we know that at the present moment there are thousands of
+English files used in this country, even inside His Majesty’s own armament
+works. M. le Duc d’Otrante is determined to put an end to the scandal. He has
+offered a big reward for information which will lead to the conviction of one
+or more of the chief culprits, and I am determined to get that
+reward&mdash;with your help, if you will give it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is the reward?” I asked simply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Five thousand francs,” he replied. “Your knowledge of English and Italian is
+what caused me to offer you a share in this splendid enterprise&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s no good lying to me, Leroux,” I broke in quietly, “if we are going to
+work amicably together.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He swore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The reward is ten thousand francs.” I made the shot at a venture, knowing my
+man well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I swear that it is not,” he asserted hotly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Swear again,” I retorted, “for I’ll not deal with you for less than five
+thousand.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did swear again and protested loudly. But I was firm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have another glass of wine,” I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After which he gave in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The affair was bound to be risky. Smugglers of English goods were determined
+and desperate men who were playing for high stakes and risking their necks on
+the board. In all matters of smuggling a knowledge of foreign languages was an
+invaluable asset. I spoke Italian well and knew some English. I knew my worth.
+We both drank a glass of cognac and sealed our bond then and there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After which Leroux drew his chair closer to my desk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Listen, then,” he said. “You know the firm of Fournier Frères, in the Rue
+Colbert?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“By name, of course. Cutlers and surgical instrument makers by appointment to
+His Majesty. What about them?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“M. le Duc has had his eyes on them for some time.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fournier Frères!” I ejaculated. “Impossible! A more reputable firm does not
+exist in France.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know, I know,” he rejoined impatiently. “And yet it is a curious fact that
+M. Aristide Fournier, the junior partner, has lately bought for himself a house
+at St. Claude.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At St. Claude?” I ejaculated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” he responded dryly. “Very near to Gex, what?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I shrugged my shoulders, for indeed the circumstances did appear somewhat
+strange.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Do you know Gex, my dear Sir? Ah, it is a curious and romantic spot. It has
+possibilities, both natural and political, which appear to have been expressly
+devised for the benefit of the smuggling fraternity. Nestling in the midst of
+the Jura mountains, it is outside the customs zone of the Empire. So you see
+the possibilities, do you not? Gex soon became the picturesque warehouse of
+every conceivable kind of contraband goods. On one side of it there was the
+Swiss frontier, and the Swiss Government was always willing to close one eye in
+the matter of customs provided its palm was sufficiently greased by the
+light-fingered gentry. No difficulty, therefore, as you see, in getting
+contraband goods&mdash;even English ones&mdash;as far as Gex.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here they could be kept hidden until a fitting opportunity occurred for
+smuggling them into France, opportunities for which the Jura, with their narrow
+defiles and difficult mountain paths, afforded magnificent scope. St. Claude,
+of which Leroux had just spoken as the place where M. Aristide Fournier had
+recently bought himself a house, is in France, only a few kilometres from the
+neutral zone of Gex. It seemed a strange spot to choose for a wealthy and
+fashionable member of Parisian bourgeois society, I was bound to admit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But,” I mused, “one cannot go to Gex without a permit from the police.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not by road,” Leroux assented. “But you will own that there are means
+available to men who are young and vigorous like M. Fournier, who moreover, I
+understand, is an accomplished mountaineer. You know Gex, of course?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had crossed the Jura once, in my youth, but was not very intimately familiar
+with the district. Leroux had a carefully drawn-out map of it in his pocket;
+this he laid out before me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“These two roads,” he began, tracing the windings of a couple of thin red lines
+on the map with the point of his finger, “are the only two made ones that lead
+in and out of the district. Here is the Valserine,” he went on, pointing to a
+blue line, “which flows from north to south, and both the roads wind over
+bridges that span the river close to our frontier. The French customs stations
+are on our side of those bridges. But, besides those two roads, the frontier
+can, of course, be crossed by one or other of the innumerable mountain tracks
+which are only accessible to pedestrians or mules. That is where our customs
+officials are powerless, for the tracks are precipitous and offer unlimited
+cover to those who know every inch of the ground. Several of them lead directly
+into St. Claude, at some considerable distance from the customs stations, and
+it is these tracks which are being used by M. Aristide Fournier for the
+felonious purpose of trading with the enemy&mdash;on this I would stake my
+life. But I mean to be even with him, and if I get the help which I require
+from you, I am convinced that I can lay him by the heels.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am your man,” I concluded simply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very well,” he resumed. “Are you prepared to journey with me to Gex?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“When do you start?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To-day.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall be ready.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave a deep sigh of satisfaction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then listen to my plan,” he said. “We’ll journey together as far as St.
+Claude; from there you will push on to Gex, and take up your abode in the city,
+styling yourself an interpreter. This will give you the opportunity of mixing
+with some of the smuggling fraternity, and it will be your duty to keep both
+your eyes and ears open. I, on the other hand, will take up my quarters at
+Mijoux, the French customs station, which is on the frontier, about half a
+dozen kilometres from Gex. Every day I’ll arrange to meet you, either at the
+latter place or somewhere half-way, and hear what news you may have to tell me.
+And mind, Ratichon,” he added sternly, “it means running straight, or the
+reward will slip through our fingers.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I chose to ignore the coarse insinuation, and only riposted quietly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I must have money on account. I am a poor man, and will be out of pocket by
+the transaction from the hour I start for Gex to that when you pay me my fair
+share of the reward.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By way of a reply he took out a case from his pocket. I saw that it was bulging
+over with banknotes, which confirmed me in my conviction both that he was
+actually an emissary of the Minister of Police and that I could have demanded
+an additional thousand francs without fear of losing the business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll give you five hundred on account,” he said as he licked his ugly thumb
+preparatory to counting out the money before me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Make it a thousand,” I retorted; “and call it ‘additional,’ not ‘on account.’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He tried to argue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am not keen on the business,” I said with calm dignity, “so if you think
+that I am asking too much&mdash;there are others, no doubt, who would do the
+work for less.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a bold move. But it succeeded. Leroux laughed and shrugged his
+shoulders. Then he counted out ten hundred-franc notes and laid them out upon
+the desk. But before I could touch them he laid his large bony hands over the
+lot and, looking me straight between the eyes, he said with earnest
+significance:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“English files are worth as much as twenty francs apiece in the market.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fournier Frères would not take the risks which they are doing for a
+consignment of less than ten thousand.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I doubt if they would,” I rejoined blandly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It will be your business to find out how and when the smugglers propose to get
+their next consignment over the frontier.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Exactly.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And to communicate any information you may have obtained to me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And to keep an eye on the valuable cargo, of course?” I concluded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” he said roughly, “an eye. But hands off, understand, my good Ratichon,
+or there’ll be trouble.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not wait to hear my indignant protest. He had risen to his feet, and had
+already turned to go. Now he stretched his great coarse hand out to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All in good part, eh?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I took his hand. He meant no harm, did old Leroux. He was just a common, vulgar
+fellow who did not know a gentleman when he saw one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And we parted the best of friends.
+</p>
+
+<h3>2.</h3>
+
+<p>
+A week later I was at Gex. At St. Claude I had parted from Leroux, and then
+hired a chaise to take me to my destination. It was a matter of fifteen
+kilometres by road over the frontier of the customs zone and through the most
+superb scenery I had ever seen in my life. We drove through narrow gorges, on
+each side of which the mountain heights rose rugged and precipitous to
+incalculable altitudes above. From time to time only did I get peeps of almost
+imperceptible tracks along the declivities, tracks on which it seemed as if
+goats alone could obtain a footing. Once&mdash;hundreds of feet above
+me&mdash;I spied a couple of mules descending what seemed like a sheer
+perpendicular path down the mountain side. The animals appeared to be heavily
+laden, and I marvelled what forbidden goods lay hidden within their packs and
+whether in the days that were to come I too should be called upon to risk my
+life on those declivities following in the footsteps of the reckless and
+desperate criminals whom it was my duty to pursue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I confess that at the thought, and with those pictures of grim nature before
+me, I felt an unpleasant shiver coursing down my spine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing of importance occurred during the first fortnight of my sojourn at Gex.
+I was installed in moderately comfortable, furnished rooms in the heart of the
+city, close to the church and market square. In one of my front windows,
+situated on the ground floor, I had placed a card bearing the inscription:
+“Aristide Barrot, Interpreter,” and below, “Anglais, Allemand, Italien.” I had
+even had a few clients&mdash;conversations between the local police and some
+poor wretches caught in the act of smuggling a few yards of Swiss silk or a
+couple of cream cheeses over the French frontier, and sent back to Gex to be
+dealt with by the local authorities.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Leroux had found lodgings at Mijoux, and twice daily he walked over to Gex to
+consult with me. We met, mornings and evenings, at the café restaurant of the
+Crâne Chauve, an obscure little tavern situated on the outskirts of the city.
+He was waxing impatient at what he called my supineness, for indeed so far I
+had had nothing to report.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no sign of M. Aristide Fournier. No one in Gex appeared to know
+anything about him, though the proprietor of the principal hotel in the town
+did recollect having had a visitor of that name once or twice during the past
+year. But, of course, during this early stage of my stay in the town it was
+impossible for me to believe anything that I was told. I had not yet succeeded
+in winning the confidence of the inhabitants, and it was soon pretty evident to
+me that the whole countryside was engaged in the perilous industry of
+smuggling. Everyone from the mayor downwards did a bit of a deal now and again
+in contraband goods. In ordinary cases it only meant fines if one was caught,
+or perhaps imprisonment for repeated offenses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But four or five days after my arrival at Gex I saw three fellows handed over
+to the police of the department. They had been caught in the act of trying to
+ford the Valserine with half a dozen pack-mules laden with English cloth. They
+were hanged at St. Claude two days later.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I can assure you, Sir, that the news of this summary administration of justice
+sent another cold shiver down my spine, and I marvelled if indeed Leroux’s
+surmises were correct and if a respectable tradesman like Aristide Fournier
+would take such terrible risks even for the sake of heavy gains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had been in Gex just a fortnight when the weather, which hitherto had been
+splendid, turned to squalls and storms. We were then in the second week of
+September. A torrential rain had fallen the whole of one day, during which I
+had only been out in order to meet Leroux, as usual, at the Café du Crâne
+Chauve. I had just come home from our evening meeting&mdash;it was then ten
+o’clock&mdash;and I was preparing to go comfortably to bed, when I was startled
+by a violent ring at the front-door bell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had only just time to wonder if this belated visitor desired to see me or my
+worthy landlady, Mme. Bournon, when her heavy footsteps resounded along the
+passage. The next moment I heard my name spoken peremptorily by a harsh voice,
+and Mme. Bournon’s reply that M. Aristide Barrot was indeed within. A few
+seconds later she ushered my nocturnal visitor into my room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was wrapped in a dark mantle from head to foot, and he wore a wide-brimmed
+hat pulled right over his eyes. He did not remove either as he addressed me
+without further preamble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are an interpreter, Sir?” he queried, speaking very rapidly and in sharp
+commanding tones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At your service,” I replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My name is Ernest Berty. I want you to come with me at once to my house. I
+require your services as intermediary between myself and some men who have come
+to see me on business. These men whom I wish you to see are Russians,” he
+added, I fancied as an afterthought, “but they speak English fluently.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I suppose that I looked just as I felt&mdash;somewhat dubious owing to the
+lateness of the hour and the darkness of the night, not to speak of the
+abominable weather, for he continued with marked impatience:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is imperative that you should come at once. Though my house is at some
+little distance from here, I have a chaise outside which will also bring you
+back, and,” he added significantly, “I will pay you whatever you demand.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is very late,” I demurred, “the weather&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Your fee, man!” he broke in roughly, “and let’s get on!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Five hundred francs,” I said at a venture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come!” was his curt reply. “I will give you the money as we drive along.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wished I had made it a thousand; apparently my services were worth a great
+deal to him. However, I picked up my mantle and my hat, and within a few
+seconds was ready to go. I shouted up to Mme. Bournon that I would not be home
+for a couple of hours, but that as I had my key I need not disturb her when I
+returned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once outside the door I almost regretted my ready acquiescence in this
+nocturnal adventure. The rain was beating down unmercifully, and at first I saw
+no sign of a vehicle; but in answer to my visitor’s sharp command I followed
+him down the street as far as the market square, at the corner of which I spied
+the dim outline of a carriage and a couple of horses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without wasting too many words, M. Ernest Berty bundled me into the carriage,
+and very soon we were on the way. The night was impenetrably dark and the
+chaise more than ordinarily rickety. I had but little opportunity to ascertain
+which way we were going. A small lanthorn fixed opposite to me in the interior
+of the carriage, and flickering incessantly before my eyes, made it still more
+impossible for me to see anything outside the narrow window. My companion sat
+beside me, silent and absorbed. After a while I ventured to ask him which way
+we were driving.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Through the town,” he replied curtly. “My house is just outside Divonne.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, Divonne is, as I knew, quite close to the Swiss frontier. It is a matter
+of seven or eight kilometres&mdash;an hour’s drive at the very least in this
+supremely uncomfortable vehicle. I tried to induce further conversation, but
+made no headway against my companion’s taciturnity. However, I had little cause
+for complaint in another direction. After the first quarter of an hour, and
+when we had left the cobblestones of the city behind us, he drew a bundle of
+notes from his pocket, and by the flickering light of the lanthorn he counted
+out ten fifty-franc notes and handed them without another word to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The drive was unspeakably wearisome; but after a while I suppose that the
+monotonous rumbling of the wheels and the incessant patter of the rain against
+the window-panes lulled me into a kind of torpor. Certain it is that
+presently&mdash;much sooner than I had anticipated&mdash;the chaise drew up
+with a jerk, and I was roused to full consciousness by hearing M. Berty’s voice
+saying curtly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Here we are! Come with me!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was stiff, Sir, and I was shivering&mdash;not so much with cold as with
+excitement. You will readily understand that all my faculties were now on the
+qui vive. Somehow or other during the wearisome drive by the side of my
+close-tongued companion my mind had fastened on the certitude that my adventure
+of this night bore a close connexion to the firm of Fournier Frères and to the
+English files which were causing so many sleepless nights to M. le Duc
+d’Otrante, Minister of Police.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But nothing in my manner, as I stepped out of the carriage under the porch of
+the house which loomed dark and massive out of the surrounding gloom, betrayed
+anything of what I felt. Outwardly I was just a worthy bourgeois, an
+interpreter by profession, and delighted at the remunerative work so
+opportunely put in my way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The house itself appeared lonely as well as dark. M. Berty led the way across a
+narrow passage, at the end of which there was a door which he pushed open,
+saying in his usual abrupt manner: “Go in there and wait. I’ll send for you
+directly.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he closed the door on me, and I heard his footsteps recrossing the
+corridor and presently ascending some stairs. I was left alone in a small,
+sparsely furnished room, dimly lighted by an oil lamp which hung down from the
+ceiling. There was a table in the middle of the room, a square of carpet on the
+floor, and a couple of chairs beside a small iron stove. I noticed that the
+single window was closely shuttered and barred. I sat down and waited. At first
+the silence around me was only broken by the pattering of the rain against the
+shutters and the soughing of the wind down the iron chimney pipe, but after a
+little while my senses, which by this time had become super-acute, were
+conscious of various noises within the house itself: footsteps overhead, a
+confused murmur of voices, and anon the unmistakable sound of a female voice
+raised as if in entreaty or in complaint.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Somehow a vague feeling of alarm possessed itself of my nervous system. I began
+to realise my position&mdash;alone, a stranger in a house as to whose situation
+I had not the remotest idea, and among a set of men who, if my surmises were
+correct, were nothing less than a gang of determined and dangerous criminals.
+The voices, especially the female one, were now sounding more clear. I tiptoed
+to the door, and very gently opened it. There was indeed no mistaking the tone
+of desperate pleading which came from some room above and through &amp; woman’s
+lips. I even caught the words: “Oh, don’t! Oh, don’t! Not again!” repeated at
+intervals with pitiable insistence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mastering my not unnatural anxiety, I opened the door a little farther and
+slipped out into the passage, all my instincts of chivalry towards beauty in
+distress aroused by those piteous cries. Forgetful of every possible danger and
+of all prudence, I had already darted down the corridor, determined to do my
+duty as a gentleman as soon as I had ascertained whence had come those cries of
+anguish, when I heard the frou-frou of skirts and a rapid patter of small feet
+down the stairs. The next moment a radiant vision, all white muslin, fair curls
+and the scent of violets, descended on me from above, a soft hand closed over
+mine and drew me, unresisting, back into the room from whence I had just come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bewildered, I gazed on the winsome apparition before me, and beheld a young
+girl, slender as a lily, dressed in a soft, clinging gown which made her appear
+more slender still, her fair hair arranged in a tangle of unruly curls round
+the dainty oval of her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was exquisite, Sir! And the slenderness of her! You cannot imagine it! She
+looked like a young sapling bending to the gale. But what cut me to the heart
+was the look of terror and of misery in her face. She clasped her hands
+together and the tears gathered in her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go, Sir, go at once!” she murmured under her breath, speaking very rapidly.
+“Do not waste a minute, I beg of you! As you value your life, go before it is
+too late!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But, Mademoiselle,” I stammered; for indeed her words and appearance had
+roused all my worst fears, but also all my instincts of the sleuth-hound
+scenting his quarry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t argue, I beg of you,” continued the lovely creature, who indeed seemed
+the prey of overwhelming emotions&mdash;fear, horror, pity. “When he comes back
+do not let him find you here. I’ll explain, I’ll know what to say, only I
+entreat you&mdash;go!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir, I have many faults, but cowardice does not happen to be one of them, and
+the more the angel pleaded the more determined was I to see this business
+through. I was, of course, quite convinced by now that I was on the track of M.
+Aristide Fournier and the English files, and I was not going to let five
+thousand francs and the gratitude of the Minister of Police slip through my
+fingers so easily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mademoiselle,” I rejoined as calmly as I could, “let me assure you that though
+your anxiety for me is like manna to a starving man, I have no fears for my own
+safety. I have come here in the capacity of a humble interpreter; I certainly
+am not worth putting out of the way. Moreover, I have been paid for my
+services, and these I will render to my employer to the best of my
+capabilities.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, but you don’t know,” she retorted, not departing one jot from her attitude
+of terror and of entreaty, “you don’t understand. This house, Monsieur,” she
+added in a hoarse whisper, “is nothing but a den of criminals wherein no honest
+man or woman is safe.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pardon, Mademoiselle,” I riposted as lightly and as gallantly as I could, “I
+see before me the living proof that angels, at any rate, dwell therein.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Alas! Sir,” she rejoined, with a heart-rending sigh, “if you mean me, I am
+only to be pitied. My dear mother and I are naught but slaves to the will of my
+brother, who uses us as tools for his nefarious ends.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But . . .” I stammered, horrified beyond speech at the vista of villainy which
+her words had opened up before me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My mother, Sir,” she said simply, “is old and ailing; she is dying of anguish
+at sight of her son’s misdeeds. I would not, could not leave her, yet I would
+give my life to see her free from that miscreant’s clutches!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My whole soul was stirred to its depths by the intensity of passion which rang
+through this delicate creature’s words. What weird and awesome mystery of
+iniquity and of crime lay hid, I wondered, between these walls? In what tragedy
+had I thus accidentally become involved while fulfilling my prosaic duty in the
+interest of His Majesty’s exchequer? As in a flash it suddenly came to me that
+perhaps I could serve both this lovely creature and the Emperor better by going
+out of the house now, and lying hidden all the night through somewhere in its
+vicinity until in daylight I could locate its exact situation. Then I could
+communicate with Leroux at once and procure the apprehension of this
+Berty&mdash;or Fournier&mdash;who apparently was a desperate criminal. Already
+a bold plan was taking shape in my brain, and with my mind’s eye I had measured
+the distance which separated me from the front door and safety when, in the
+distance, I heard heavy footsteps slowly descending the stairs. I looked at my
+lovely companion, and saw her eyes gradually dilating with increased horror.
+She gave a smothered cry, pressed her handkerchief to her lips, then she
+murmured hoarsely, “Too late!” and fled precipitately from the room, leaving me
+a prey to mingled emotions such as I had never experienced before.
+</p>
+
+<h3>3.</h3>
+
+<p>
+A moment or two later M. Ernest Berty, or whatever his real name may have been,
+entered the room. Whether he had encountered his exquisite sister on the
+corridor or the stairs, I could not tell; his face, in the dim light of the
+hanging lamp, looked impenetrable and sinister.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This way, M. Barrot,” he said curtly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just for one brief moment the thought occurred to me to throw myself upon him
+with my whole weight&mdash;which was considerable&mdash;and make a wild dash
+for the front door. But it was more than probable that I should be intercepted
+and brought back, after which no doubt I would be an object of suspicion to
+these rascals and my life would not be worth an hour’s purchase. With the young
+girl’s warnings ringing in my ears, I felt that my one chance of safety and of
+circumventing these criminals lay in my seeming ingenuousness and complete
+guileless-ness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I assumed a perfect professional manner and followed my companion up the
+stairs. He ushered me into a room just above the one where I had been waiting
+up to now. Three men dressed in rough clothes were sitting at a table on which
+stood a couple of tankards and four empty pewter mugs. My employer offered me a
+glass of ale, which I declined. Then we got to work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the first words which M. Berty uttered I knew that all my surmises had been
+correct. Whether he himself was M. Aristide Fournier, or another partner of
+that firm, or some other rascal engaged in nefarious doings, I could not know;
+certain it was that through the medium of cipher words and phrases which he
+thought were unintelligible to me, and which he ordered me to interpret into
+English, he was giving directions to the three men with regard to the convoying
+of contraband cargo over the frontier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was much talk of “toys” and “babies”&mdash;the latter were to take a walk
+in the mountains and to avoid the “thorns”; the “toys” were to be securely
+fastened and well protected against water. It was obviously a case of mules and
+of the goods, the “thorns” being the customs officials. By the time that we had
+finished I was absolutely convinced in my mind that the cargo was one of
+English files or razors, for it was evidently extraordinarily valuable and not
+at all bulky, seeing that two “babies” were to carry all the “toys” for a
+considerable distance. The men, too, were obviously English. I tried the few
+words of Russian that I knew on them, and their faces remained perfectly blank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, indeed, I was on the track of M. Aristide Fournier, and of one of the most
+important hauls of enemy goods which had ever been made in France. Not only
+that. I had also before me one of the most brutish criminals it had ever been
+my misfortune to come across. A bully, a fiend of cruelty. In very truth my
+fertile brain was seething with plans for eventually laying that abominable
+ruffian by the heels: hanging would be a merciful punishment for such a
+miscreant. Yes, indeed, five thousand francs&mdash;a goodly sum in those days,
+Sir&mdash;was practically assured me. But over and above mere lucre there was
+the certainty that in a few days’ time I should see the light of gratitude
+shining out of a pair of lustrous blue eyes, and a winning smile chasing away
+the look of fear and of sorrow from the sweetest face I had seen for many a
+day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Despite the turmoil that was raging in my brain, however, I flatter myself that
+my manner with the rascals remained consistently calm, businesslike,
+indifferent to all save to the work in hand. The soi-disant Ernest Berty spoke
+invariably in French, either dictating his orders or seeking information, and I
+made verbal translation into English of all that he said. The séance lasted
+close upon an hour, and presently I gathered that the affair was terminated and
+that I could consider myself dismissed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was about to take my leave, having apparently completed my work, when M.
+Ernest Berty called me back with a curt command.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“One moment, M. Barrot,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At Monsieur’s service,” I responded blandly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“As you see,” he continued, “these fellows do not know a word of French. All
+along the way which they will have to traverse they will meet friendly
+outposts, who will report to them on the condition of the roads and warn them
+of any danger that might be ahead. Their ignorance of our language may be a
+source of infinite peril to them. They need an interpreter to accompany them
+over the mountains.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He paused for a moment or two, then added abruptly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Would you care to go? The matter is important,” he went on quietly, “and I am
+willing to pay you. It means a couple of nights’ journey&mdash;a halt in the
+mountains during the day&mdash;and there will be ten thousand francs for you if
+the ‘toys’ reach St. Claude safely.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I suppose that something in my face betrayed the eagerness which I felt. Here
+was indeed the finger of Providence pointing to the best means of undoing this
+abominable criminal. Not that I intended to risk my neck for any ten thousand
+francs he chose to offer me, but as the trusted guide of his ingenuous “babies”
+I could convoy them&mdash;not to St. Claude, as he blandly believed, but
+straight into the arms of Leroux and the customs officials.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then that is understood,” he said in his usual dictatorial manner, taking my
+consent for granted. “Ten thousand francs. And you will accompany these
+gentlemen and their ‘babies’ as far as St. Claude?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am a poor man, Sir,” I responded meekly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course you are,” he broke in roughly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then from a number of papers which lay upon the table, he selected one which he
+held out to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you know St. Cergues?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” I replied. “It is a short walk from Gex.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This,” he added, pointing to a paper which I had taken from him, “is a plan of
+the village and of the Pass of Cergues close by. Study it carefully. At some
+point some way up the pass, which I have marked with a cross, I and my men with
+the ‘babies’ will be waiting for you to-morrow evening at eight o’clock. You
+cannot possibly fail to find the spot, for the plan is very accurate and very
+minute, and it is less than five hundred metres from the last house at the
+entrance of the pass. I shall escort the men until then, and hand them over
+into your charge for the mountain journey. Is that clear?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perfectly.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very well, then; you may go. The carriage is outside the door. You know your
+way.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dismissed me with a curt nod, and the next two minutes saw me outside this
+house of mystery and installed inside the ramshackle vehicle on my way back to
+my lodgings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was worn out with fatigue and excitement, and I imagine that I slept most of
+the way. Certain it is that the journey home was not nearly so long as the
+outward one had been. The rain was still coming down heavily, but I cared
+nothing about the weather, nothing about fatigue. My path to fame and fortune
+had been made easier for me than in my wildest dreams I would have dared to
+hope. In the morning I would see Leroux and make final arrangements for the
+capture of those impudent smugglers, and I thought the best way would be for
+him to meet me and the “babies” and the “toys” at the very outset of our
+journey, as I did not greatly relish the idea of crossing lonely and dangerous
+mountain paths in the company of these ruffians.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I reached home without adventure. The vehicle drew up just outside my lodgings,
+and I was about to alight when my eyes were attracted by something white which
+lay on the front seat of the carriage, conspicuously placed so that the light
+from the inside lanthorn fell full upon it. I had been too tired and too dazed,
+I suppose, to notice the thing before, but now, on closer inspection, I saw
+that it was a note, and that it was addressed to me: “M. Aristide Barrot,
+Interpreter,” and below my name were the words: “Very urgent.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I took the note feeling a thrill of excitement running through my veins at its
+touch. I alighted, and the vehicle immediately disappeared into the night. I
+had only caught one glimpse of the horses, and none at all of the coachman.
+Then I went straight into my room, and by the light of the table lamp I
+unfolded and read the mysterious note. It bore no signature, but at the first
+words I knew that the writer was none other than the lovely young creature who
+had appeared to me like an angel of innocence in the midst of that den of
+thieves.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+“Monsieur,” she had written in a hand which had clearly been trembling with
+agitation, “you are good, you are kind; I entreat you to be merciful. My dear
+mother, whom I worship, is sick with terror and misery. She will die if she
+remains any longer under the sway of that inhuman monster who, alas! is my own
+brother. And if I lose her I shall die, too, for I should no longer have anyone
+to stand between me and his cruelties.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dear mother has some relations living at St. Claude. She would have gone to
+them before now, but my brother keeps us both virtual prisoners here, and we
+have no means of arranging for such a perilous journey for ourselves. Now, by
+the most extraordinary stroke of good fortune, my brother will be absent all
+day to-morrow and the following night. My dear mother and I feel that God
+Himself is showing us the way to our release.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will you, can you help us, dear M. Barrot? Mother and I will be at Gex
+to-morrow at one hour after sundown. We will lie perdu in the little Taverne du
+Roi de Rome, where, if you come to us, you will find us waiting anxiously. If
+you can do nothing to help us, we must return broken-hearted to our hated
+prison; but something in my heart tells me that you can help us. All that we
+want is a vehicle of some sort and the escort of a brave man like yourself as
+far as St. Claude, where our relatives will thank you on their knees for your
+kindness and generosity to two helpless, miserable, unprotected women, and I
+will kiss your hands in unbounded gratitude and devotion.”
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+It were impossible, Monsieur, to tell you of the varied emotions which filled
+my heart when I had perused that heart-rending appeal. All my instincts of
+chivalry were aroused. I was determined to do my duty to these helpless ladies
+as a man and as a gallant knight. Even before I finally went to bed I had
+settled in my mind what I meant to do. Fortunately it was quite possible for me
+to reconcile my duties to my Emperor and those which I owed to myself in the
+matter of the reward for the apprehension of the smugglers, with my burning
+desire to be the saviour and protector of the lovely creature whose beauty had
+inflamed my impressionable heart, and to have my hands kissed by her in
+gratitude and devotion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning Leroux and I were deep in our plans, whilst we sipped our
+coffee outside the Crâne Chauve. He was beside himself with joy and excitement
+at the prospective haul, which would, of course, redound enormously to his
+credit, even though the success of the whole undertaking would be due to my
+acumen, my resourcefulness and my pluck. Fortunately I found him not only ready
+but eager to render me what assistance he could in the matter of the two ladies
+who had thrown themselves so entirely on my protection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We might get valuable information out of them,” he remarked. “In the excess of
+their gratitude they may betray many more secrets and nefarious doings of the
+firm of Fournier Frères.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Which further proves,” I remarked, “how deeply you and Monsieur le Ministre of
+Police are indebted to me over this affair.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not argue the point. Indeed, we were both of us far too much excited to
+waste words in useless bickerings. Our plans for the evening were fairly
+simple. We both pored over the map which Fournier-Berty had given me, until we
+felt that we could reach blindfolded the spot which had been marked with a
+cross. We then arranged that Leroux should betake himself thither with a strong
+posse of gendarmes during the day, and lie hidden in the vicinity until such
+time as I myself appeared upon the scene, identified my friends of the night
+before, parleyed with them for a minute or two, and finally retired, leaving
+the law in all its majesty, as represented by Leroux, to deal with the rascals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the meantime I also mapped out for myself my own share in this night’s
+adventurous work. I had hired a vehicle to take me as far as St. Cergues; here
+I intended to leave it at the local inn, and then proceed on foot up the
+mountain pass to the appointed spot. As soon as I had seen the smugglers safely
+in the hands of Leroux and the gendarmes, I would make my way back to St.
+Cergues as rapidly as I could, step into my vehicle, drive like the wind back
+to Gex, and place myself at the disposal of my fair angel and her afflicted
+mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Leroux promised me that at the customs station on the French frontier the
+officials would look after me and the ladies, and that a pair of fresh horses
+would be ready to take us straight on to St. Claude, which, if all was well, we
+could then reach by daybreak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having settled all these matters we parted company, he to arrange his own
+affairs with the Commissary of Police and the customs officials, and I to await
+with as much patience as I could the hour when I could start for St. Cergues.
+</p>
+
+<h3>4.</h3>
+
+<p>
+The night&mdash;just as I anticipated&mdash;promised to be very dark. A thin
+drizzle, which wetted the unfortunate pedestrian to the marrow, had replaced
+the torrential rain of the previous day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Twilight was closing in very fast. In the late autumn afternoon I drove to St.
+Cergues, after which I left the chaise in the village and boldly started to
+walk up the mountain pass. I had studied the map so carefully that I was quite
+sure of my way, but though my appointment with the rascals was for eight
+o’clock, I wished to reach the appointed spot before the last flicker of grey
+light had disappeared from the sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon I had left the last house well behind me. Boldly I plunged into the narrow
+path. The loneliness of the place was indescribable. Every step which I took on
+the stony track seemed to rouse the echoes of the grim heights which rose
+precipitously on either side of me, and in my mind I felt aghast at the
+extraordinary courage of those men who&mdash;like Aristide Fournier and his
+gang&mdash;chose to affront such obvious and manifold dangers as these frowning
+mountain regions held for them for the sake of paltry lucre.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had walked, according to my reckoning, just upon five hundred metres through
+the gorge, when on ahead I perceived the flicker of lights which appeared to be
+moving to and fro. The silence and loneliness no longer seemed to be absolute.
+A few metres from where I was men were living and breathing, plotting and
+planning, unconscious of the net which the unerring hand of a skilful fowler
+had drawn round them and their misdeeds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next moment I was challenged by a peremptory “Halt!” Recognition followed.
+M. Ernest Berty, or Aristide Fournier, whichever he was, acknowledged with a
+few words my punctuality, whilst through the gloom I took rapid stock of his
+little party. I saw the vague outline of three men and a couple of mules which
+appeared to be heavily laden. They were assembled on a flat piece of ground
+which appeared like a roofless cavern carved out of the mountain side. The
+walls of rock around them afforded them both cover and refuge. They seemed in
+no hurry to start. They had the long night before them, so one of them remarked
+in English.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, presently M. Fournier-Berty gave the signal for the start to be made,
+he himself preparing to take leave of his men. Just at that moment my ears
+caught the welcome sound of the tramping of feet, and before any of the rascals
+there could realise what was happening, their way was barred by Leroux and his
+gendarmes, who loudly gave the order, “Hands up, in the name of the Emperor!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was only conscious of a confused murmur of voices, of the click of firearms,
+of words of command passing to and fro, and of several violent oaths uttered in
+the not unfamiliar voice of M. Aristide Fournier. But already I had spied
+Leroux. I only exchanged a few words with him, for indeed my share of the
+evening’s work was done as far as he was concerned, and I made haste to retrace
+my steps through the darkness and the rain along the lonely mountain path
+toward the goal where chivalry and manly ardour beckoned to me from afar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I found my vehicle waiting for me at St. Cergues, and by the promise of an
+additional pourboire, I succeeded in making the driver whip up his horses to
+some purpose. Less than an hour later we drew up at Gex outside the little inn,
+pretentiously called Le Roi de Rome. On alighting I was met by the proprietress
+who, in answer to my inquiry after two ladies who had arrived that afternoon,
+at once conducted me upstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Already my mind was busy conjuring up visions of the fair lady of yester-eve.
+The landlady threw open a door and ushered me into a small room which reeked of
+stale food and damp clothes. I stepped in and found myself face to face with a
+large and exceedingly ugly old woman who rose with difficulty from the sofa as
+I entered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“M. Aristide Barrot,” she said as soon as the landlady had closed the door
+behind me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At your service, Madame,” I stammered. “But&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was indeed almost aghast. Never in my life had I seen anything so grotesque
+as this woman. To begin with she was more than ordinarily stout and
+unwieldy&mdash;indeed, she appeared like a veritable mountain of flesh; but
+what was so disturbing to my mind was that she was nothing but a hideous
+caricature of her lovely daughter, whose dainty features she grotesquely
+recalled. Her face was seamed and wrinkled, her white hair was plastered down
+above her yellow forehead. She wore an old-fashioned bonnet tied under her
+chin, and her huge bulk was draped in a large-patterned cashmere shawl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You expected to see my dear daughter beside me, my good M. Barrot,” she said
+after a while speaking with remarkable gentleness and dignity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I confess, Madame&mdash;” I murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah! the darling has sacrificed herself for my sake. We found to-day that
+though my son was out of the way, he had set his abominable servants to watch
+over us. Soon we realized that we could not both get away. It meant one of us
+staying behind to act the part of unconcern and to throw dust in the eyes of
+our jailers. My daughter&mdash;ah! she is an angel, Monsieur&mdash;feared that
+the disappointment and my son’s cruelty, when he returned on the morrow and
+found that he had been tricked, would seriously endanger my life. She decided
+that I must go and that she would remain.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But, Madame&mdash;” I protested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know, Monsieur,” she rejoined with the same calm dignity which already had
+commanded my respect, “I know that you think me a selfish old woman; but my
+Angèle&mdash;she is an angel, of a truth!&mdash;made all the arrangements, and
+I could not help but obey her. But have no fears for her safety, Monsieur. My
+son would not dare lay hands on her as often as he has done on me. Angèle will
+be brave, and our relations at St. Claude will, directly we arrive, make
+arrangements to go and fetch her and bring her back to me. My brother is an
+influential man; he would never have allowed my son to martyrize me and Angèle
+had he known what we have had to endure.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course I could not then tell her that all her fears for herself and the
+lovely Angèle could now be laid to rest. Her ruffianly son was even now being
+conveyed by Leroux and his gendarmes to the frontier, where the law would take
+its course. I was indeed not sorry for him. I was not sorry to think that he
+would end his evil life upon the guillotine or the gallows. I was only grieved
+for Angèle who would spend a night and a day, perhaps more, in agonized
+suspense, knowing nothing of the events which at one great swoop would free her
+and her beloved mother from the tyranny of a hated brother and send him to
+expiate his crimes. Not only did I grieve, Sir, for the tender victim of that
+man’s brutality, but I trembled for her safety. I did not know what minions or
+confederates Fournier-Berty had left in the lonely house yonder, or under what
+orders they were in case he did not return from his nocturnal expedition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indeed for the moment I felt so agitated at thought of that beautiful angel’s
+peril that I looked down with anger and scorn at the fat old woman who ought to
+have remained beside her daughter to comfort and to shield her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was on the point of telling her everything, and dragging her back to her post
+of duty which she should never have relinquished. Fortunately my sense of what
+I owed to my own professional dignity prevented my taking such a step. It was
+clearly not for me to argue. My first duty was to stand by this helpless woman
+in distress, who had been committed to my charge, and to convey her safely to
+St. Claude. After which I could see to it that Mademoiselle Angèle was brought
+along too as quickly as influential relatives could contrive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the meanwhile I derived some consolation from the thought that at any rate
+for the next four and twenty hours the lovely creature would be safe. No news
+of the arrest of Aristide Fournier could possibly reach the lonely house until
+I myself could return thither and take her under my protection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I said nothing; but with perfect gallantry, just as if fat Mme. Fournier had
+been a young and beautiful woman, I begged her to give herself the trouble of
+mounting into the carriage which was waiting for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It took time and trouble, Sir, to hoist that mass of solid flesh into the
+vehicle, and the driver grumbled not a little at the unexpected weight.
+However, his horses were powerful, wiry, mountain ponies, and we made headway
+through the darkness and along the smooth, departmental road at moderate speed.
+I may say that it was a miserably uncomfortable journey for me, sitting, as I
+was forced to do, on the narrow front seat of the carriage, without support for
+my head or room for my legs. But Madame’s bulk filled the whole of the back
+seat, and it never seemed to enter her head that I too might like the use of a
+cushion. However, even the worst moments and the weariest journeys must come to
+an end, and we reached the frontier in the small hours of the morning. Here we
+found the customs officials ready to render us any service we might require.
+Leroux had not failed to order the fresh relay of horses, and whilst these were
+being put to, the polite officers of the station gave Madame and myself some
+excellent coffee. Beyond the formal: “Madame has nothing to declare for His
+Majesty’s customs?” and my companion’s equally formal: “Nothing, Monsieur,
+except my personal belongings,” they did not ply us with questions, and after
+half an hour’s halt we again proceeded on our way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We reached St. Claude at daybreak, and following Madame’s directions, the
+driver pulled up in front of a large house in the Avenue du Jura. Again there
+was the same difficulty in hoisting the unwieldy lady out of the vehicle, but
+this time, in response to my vigorous pull at the outside bell, the concierge
+and another man came out of the house, and very respectfully they approached
+Madame and conveyed her into the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While they did so she apparently gave them some directions about myself, for
+anon the concierge returned, and with extreme politeness told me that Madame
+Fournier greatly hoped that I would stay in St. Claude a day or two as she had
+the desire to see me again very soon. She also honoured me with an invitation
+to dine with her that same evening at seven of the clock. This was the first
+time, I noticed, that the name Fournier was actually used in connexion with any
+of the people with whom I had become so dramatically involved. Not that I had
+ever doubted the identity of the ruffianly Ernest Berty; still it was very
+satisfactory to have my surmises confirmed. I concluded that the fine house in
+the Avenue du Jura belonged to Mme. Fournier’s brother, and I vaguely wondered
+who he was. The invitation to dinner had certainly been given in her name, and
+the servants had received her with a show of respect which suggested that she
+was more than a guest in her brother’s house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Be that as it may, I betook myself for the nonce to the Hôtel des Moines in the
+centre of the town and killed time for the rest of the day as best I could. For
+one thing I needed rest after the emotions and the fatigue of the past
+forty-eight hours. Remember, Sir, I had not slept for two nights and had spent
+the last eight hours on the narrow front seat of a jolting chaise. So I had a
+good rest in the afternoon, and at seven o’clock I presented myself once more
+at the house in the Avenue du Jura.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My intention was to retire early to bed after spending an agreeable evening
+with the family, who would no doubt overwhelm me with their gratitude, and at
+daybreak I would drive back to Gex after I had heard all the latest news from
+Leroux.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I confess that it was with a pardonable feeling of agitation that I tugged at
+the wrought-iron bell-pull on the perron of the magnificent mansion in the
+Avenue du Jura. To begin with I felt somewhat rueful at having to appear before
+ladies at this hour in my travelling clothes, and then, you will admit, Sir,
+that it was a somewhat awkward predicament for a man of highly sensitive
+temperament to meet on terms of equality a refined if stout lady whose son he
+had just helped to send to the gallows. Fortunately there was no likelihood of
+Mme. Fournier being as yet aware of this unpleasant fact: even if she did know
+at this hour that her son’s illicit adventure had come to grief, she could not
+possibly in her mind connect me with his ill-fortune. So I allowed the
+sumptuous valet to take my hat and coat and I followed him with as calm a
+demeanour as I could assume up the richly carpeted stairs. Obviously the
+relatives of Mme. Fournier were more than well to do. Everything in the house
+showed evidences of luxury, not to say wealth. I was ushered into an elegant
+salon wherein every corner showed traces of dainty feminine hands. There were
+embroidered silk cushions upon the sofa, lace covers upon the tables, whilst a
+work basket, filled with a riot of many coloured silks, stood invitingly open.
+And through the apartment, Sir, a scent of violets lingered and caressed my
+nostrils, reminding me of a beauteous creature in distress whom it had been my
+good fortune to succour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had waited less than five minutes when I heard a swift, elastic step
+approaching through the next room, and a second or so later, before I had time
+to take up an appropriate posture, the door was thrown open and the exquisite
+vision of my waking dreams&mdash;the beautiful Angèle&mdash; stood smiling
+before me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mademoiselle,” I stammered somewhat clumsily, for of a truth I was hardly able
+to recover my breath, and surprise had well nigh robbed me of speech, “how
+comes it that you are here?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She only smiled in reply, the most adorable smile I had ever seen on any human
+face, so full of joy, of mischief&mdash;aye, of triumph, was it. I asked after
+Madame. Again she smiled, and said Madame was in her room, resting from the
+fatigues of her journey. I had scarce recovered from my initial surprise when
+another&mdash;more complete still&mdash;confronted me. This was the appearance
+of Monsieur Aristide Fournier, whom I had fondly imagined already expiating his
+crimes in a frontier prison, but who now entered, also smiling, also extremely
+pleasant, who greeted me as if we were lifelong friends, and who then&mdash;I
+scarce could believe my eyes&mdash;placed his arm affectionately round his
+sister’s waist, while she turned her sweet face up to his and gave him a
+fond&mdash;nay, a loving look. A loving look to him who was a brute and a bully
+and a miscreant amenable to the gallows! True his appearance was completely
+changed: his eyes were bright and kindly, his mouth continued to smile, his
+manner was urbane in the extreme when he finally introduced himself to me as:
+“Aristide Fournier, my dear Monsieur Ratichon, at your service.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knew my name, he knew who I was! whilst I . . . I had to pass my hand once
+or twice over my forehead and to close and reopen my eyes several times, for,
+of a truth, it all seemed like a dream. I tried to stammer out a question or
+two, but I could only gasp, and the lovely Angèle appeared highly amused at my
+distress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let us dine,” she said gaily, “after which you may ask as many questions as
+you like.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In very truth I was in no mood for dinner. Puzzlement and anxiety appeared to
+grip me by the throat and to choke me. It was all very well for the beautiful
+creature to laugh and to make merry. She had cruelly deceived me, played upon
+the chords of my sensitive heart for purposes which no doubt would presently be
+made clear, but in the meanwhile since the smuggling of the English files had
+been successful&mdash;as it apparently was&mdash;what had become of Leroux and
+his gendarmes?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What tragedy had been enacted in the narrow gorge of St. Cergues, and what, oh!
+what had become of my hopes of that five thousand francs for the apprehension
+of the smugglers, promised me by Leroux? Can you wonder that for the moment the
+very thought of dinner was abhorrent to me? But only for the moment. The next a
+sumptuous valet had thrown open the folding-doors, and down the vista of the
+stately apartment I perceived a table richly laden with china and glass and
+silver, whilst a distinctly savoury odour was wafted to my nostrils.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We will not answer a single question,” the fair Angèle reiterated with
+adorable determination, “until after we have dined.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What, Sir, would you have done in my place? I believe that never until this
+hour had Hector Ratichon reached to such a sublimity of manner. I bowed with
+perfect dignity in token of obedience to the fair creature, Sir; then without a
+word I offered her my arm. She placed her hand upon it, and I conducted her to
+the dining-room, whilst Aristide Fournier, who at this hour should have been on
+a fair way to being hanged, followed in our wake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah! it seemed indeed a lovely dream: one that lasted through an excellent and
+copious dinner, and which turned to delightful reality when, over a final glass
+of succulent Madeira, Monsieur Aristide Fournier slowly counted out one hundred
+notes, worth one hundred francs each, and presented these to me with a gracious
+nod.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Your fee, Monsieur,” he said, “and allow me to say that never have I paid out
+so large a sum with such a willing hand.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I have done nothing,” I murmured from out the depths of my bewilderment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mademoiselle Angèle and Monsieur Fournier looked at one another, and, no doubt,
+I presented a very comical spectacle; for both of them burst into an
+uncontrollable fit of laughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Indeed, Monsieur,” quoth Monsieur Fournier as soon as he could speak
+coherently, “you have done everything that you set out to do and done it with
+perfect chivalry. You conveyed ‘the toys’ safely over the frontier as far as
+St. Claude.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But how?” I stammered, “how?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again Mademoiselle Angèle laughed, and through the ripples of her laughter came
+her merry words:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Maman was very fat, was she not, my good Monsieur Ratichon? Did you not think
+she was extraordinarily like me?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I caught the glance in her eyes, and they were literally glowing with mischief.
+Then all of a sudden I understood. She had impersonated a fat mother, covered
+her lovely face with lines, worn a disfiguring wig and an antiquated bonnet,
+and round her slender figure she had tucked away thousands of packages of
+English files. I could only gasp. Astonishment, not to say admiration, at her
+pluck literally took my breath away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But, Monsieur Berty?” I murmured, my mind in a turmoil, my thoughts running
+riot through my brain. “The Englishmen, the mules, the packs?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Monsieur Berty, as you see, stands before you now in the person of Monsieur
+Fournier,” she replied. “The Englishmen were three faithful servants who threw
+dust not only in your eyes, my dear M. Ratichon, but in those of the customs
+officials, while the packs contained harmless personal luggage which was taken
+by your friend and his gendarmes to the customs station at Mijoux, and there,
+after much swearing, equally solemnly released with many apologies to M.
+Fournier, who was allowed to proceed unmolested on his way, and who arrived
+here safely this afternoon, whilst Maman divested herself of her fat and once
+more became the slender Mme. Aristide Fournier, at your service.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She bobbed me a dainty curtsy, and I could only try and hide the pain which
+this last cruel stab had inflicted on my heart. So she was not “Mademoiselle”
+after all, and henceforth it would even be wrong to indulge in dreams of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the ten thousand francs crackled pleasantly in my breast pocket, and when I
+finally took leave of Monsieur Aristide Fournier and his charming wife, I was
+an exceedingly happy man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Leroux never forgave me. Of what he suspected me I do not know, or if he
+suspected me at all. He certainly must have known about fat Maman from the
+customs officials who had given us coffee at Mijoux.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he never mentioned the subject to me at all, nor has he spoken to me since
+that memorable night. To one of his colleagues he once said that no words in
+his vocabulary could possibly be adequate to express his feelings.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0006"></a>
+CHAPTER VI. &mdash; HONOUR AMONG &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</h2>
+
+<h3>1.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Ah, my dear Sir, it is easy enough to despise our profession, but believe me
+that all the finer qualities&mdash;those of loyalty and of truth&mdash;are
+essential, not only to us, but to our subordinates, if we are to succeed in
+making even a small competence out of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now let me give you an instance. Here was I, Hector Ratichon, settled in Paris
+in that eventful year 1816 which saw the new order of things finally swept
+aside and the old order resume its triumphant sway, which saw us all, including
+our God-given King Louis XVIII, as poor as the proverbial church mice and as
+eager for a bit of comfort and luxury as a hungry dog is for a bone; the year
+which saw the army disbanded and hordes of unemployed and unemployable men
+wandering disconsolate and half starved through the country seeking in vain for
+some means of livelihood, while the Allied troops, well fed and well clothed,
+stalked about as if the sacred soil of France was so much dirt under their
+feet; the year, my dear Sir, during which more intrigues were hatched and more
+plots concocted than in any previous century in the whole history of France. We
+were all trying to make money, since there was so precious little of it about.
+Those of us who had brains succeeded, and then not always.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, I had brains&mdash;I do not boast of them; they are a gift from
+Heaven&mdash;but I had them, and good looks, too, and a general air of
+strength, coupled with refinement, which was bound to appeal to anyone needing
+help and advice, and willing to pay for both, and yet&mdash;but you shall
+judge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You know my office in the Rue Daunou, you have been in it&mdash;plainly
+furnished; but, as I said, these were not days of luxury. There was an
+antechamber, too, where that traitor, blackmailer and thief, Theodore, my
+confidential clerk in those days, lodged at my expense and kept importunate
+clients at bay for what was undoubtedly a liberal salary&mdash;ten per cent, on
+all the profits of the business&mdash;and yet he was always complaining, the
+ungrateful, avaricious brute!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, Sir, on that day in September&mdash;it was the tenth, I
+remember&mdash;1816, I must confess that I was feeling exceedingly dejected.
+Not one client for the last three weeks, half a franc in my pocket, and nothing
+but a small quarter of Strasburg patty in the larder. Theodore had eaten most
+of it, and I had just sent him out to buy two sous’ worth of stale bread
+wherewith to finish the remainder. But after that? You will admit, Sir, that a
+less buoyant spirit would not have remained so long undaunted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was just cursing that lout Theodore inwardly, for he had been gone half an
+hour, and I strongly suspected him of having spent my two sous on a glass of
+absinthe, when there was a ring at the door, and I, Hector Ratichon, the
+confidant of kings and intimate counsellor of half the aristocracy in the
+kingdom, was forced to go and open the door just like a common lackey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But here the sight which greeted my eyes fully compensated me for the temporary
+humiliation, for on the threshold stood a gentleman who had wealth written
+plainly upon his fine clothes, upon the dainty linen at his throat and wrists,
+upon the quality of his rich satin necktie and the perfect set of his fine
+cloth pantaloons, which were of an exquisite shade of dove-grey. When, then,
+the apparition spoke, inquiring with just a sufficiency of aristocratic hauteur
+whether M. Hector Ratichon were in, you cannot be surprised, my dear Sir, that
+my dejection fell from me like a cast-off mantle and that all my usual urbanity
+of manner returned to me as I informed the elegant gentleman that M. Ratichon
+was even now standing before him, and begged him to take the trouble to pass
+through into my office.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This he did, and I placed a chair in position for him. He sat down, having
+previously dusted the chair with a graceful sweep of his lace-edged
+handkerchief. Then he raised a gold-rimmed eyeglass to his right eye with a
+superlatively elegant gesture, and surveyed me critically for a moment or two
+ere he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am told, my good M. Ratichon, that you are a trustworthy fellow, and one who
+is willing to undertake a delicate piece of business for a moderate
+honorarium.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Except for the fact that I did not like the word “moderate,” I was enchanted
+with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Rumour for once has not lied, Monsieur,” I replied in my most attractive
+manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” he rejoined&mdash;I won’t say curtly, but with businesslike brevity,
+“for all purposes connected with the affair which I desire to treat with you my
+name, as far as you are concerned, shall be Jean Duval. Understand?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perfectly, Monsieur le Marquis,” I replied with a bland smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a wild guess, but I don’t think that I underestimated my new client’s
+rank, for he did not wince.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know Mlle. Mars?” he queried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The actress?” I replied. “Perfectly.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She is playing in <i>Le Rêve</i> at the Theatre Royal just now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She is.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In the first and third acts of the play she wears a gold bracelet set with
+large green stones.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I noticed it the other night. I had a seat in the parterre, I may say.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I want that bracelet,” broke in the soi-disant Jean Duval unceremoniously.
+“The stones are false, the gold strass. I admire Mlle. Mars immensely. I
+dislike seeing her wearing false jewellery. I wish to have the bracelet copied
+in real stones, and to present it to her as a surprise on the occasion of the
+twenty-fifth performance of <i>Le Rêve</i>. It will cost me a king’s ransom,
+and her, for the time being, an infinite amount of anxiety. She sets great
+store by the valueless trinket solely because of the merit of its design, and I
+want its disappearance to have every semblance of a theft. All the greater will
+be the lovely creature’s pleasure when, at my hands, she will receive an
+infinitely precious jewel the exact counterpart in all save its intrinsic value
+of the trifle which she had thought lost.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It all sounded deliciously romantic. A flavour of the past century&mdash;before
+the endless war and abysmal poverty had killed all chivalry in us&mdash;clung
+to this proposed transaction. There was nothing of the roturier, nothing of a
+Jean Duval, in this polished man of the world who had thought out this subtle
+scheme for ingratiating himself in the eyes of his lady fair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I murmured an appropriate phrase, placing my services entirely at M. le
+Marquis’s disposal, and once more he broke in on my polished diction with that
+brusquerie which betrayed the man accustomed to be silently obeyed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mlle. Mars wears the bracelet,” he said, “during the third act of <i>Le
+Rêve</i>. At the end of the act she enters her dressing-room, and her maid
+helps her to change her dress. During this entr’acte Mademoiselle with her own
+hands puts by all the jewellery which she has to wear during the more gorgeous
+scenes of the play. In the last act&mdash;the finale of the tragedy&mdash;she
+appears in a plain stuff gown, whilst all her jewellery reposes in the small
+iron safe in her dressing-room. It is while Mademoiselle is on the stage during
+the last act that I want you to enter her dressing-room and to extract the
+bracelet out of the safe for me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I, M. le Marquis?” I stammered. “I, to steal a&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Firstly, M.&mdash;er&mdash;er&mdash;Ratichon, or whatever your confounded name
+may be,” interposed my client with inimitable hauteur, “understand that my name
+is Jean Duval, and if you forget this again I shall be under the necessity of
+laying my cane across your shoulders and incidentally to take my business
+elsewhere. Secondly, let me tell you that your affectations of outraged probity
+are lost on me, seeing that I know all about the stolen treaty which&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Enough, M. Jean Duval,” I said with a dignity equal, if not greater, than his
+own; “do not, I pray you, misunderstand me. I am ready to do you service. But
+if you will deign to explain how I am to break open an iron safe inside a
+crowded building and extract therefrom a trinket, without being caught in the
+act and locked up for house-breaking and theft, I shall be eternally your
+debtor.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The extracting of the trinket is your affair,” he rejoined dryly. “I will give
+you five hundred francs if you bring the bracelet to me within fourteen days.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But&mdash;” I stammered again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Your task will not be such a difficult one after all. I will give you the
+duplicate key of the safe.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dived into the breast pocket of his coat, and drew from it a somewhat large
+and clumsy key, which he placed upon my desk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I managed to get that easily enough,” he said nonchalantly, “a couple of
+nights ago, when I had the honour of visiting Mademoiselle in her
+dressing-room. A piece of wax in my hand, Mademoiselle’s momentary absorption
+in her reflection while her maid was doing her hair, and the impression of the
+original key was in my possession. But between taking a model of the key and
+the actual theft of the bracelet out of the safe there is a wide gulf which a
+gentleman cannot bridge over. Therefore, I choose to employ you,
+M.&mdash;er&mdash;er&mdash;Ratichon, to complete the transaction for me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“For five hundred francs?” I queried blandly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is a fair sum,” he argued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Make it a thousand,” I rejoined firmly, “and you shall have the bracelet
+within fourteen days.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He paused a moment in order to reflect; his steel-grey eyes, cool and
+disdainful, were fixed searchingly on my face. I pride myself on the way that I
+bear that kind of scrutiny, so even now I looked bland and withal purposeful
+and capable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very well,” he said, after a few moments, and he rose from his chair as he
+spoke; “it shall be a thousand francs, M.&mdash;er&mdash;er&mdash;Ratichon, and
+I will hand over the money to you in exchange for the bracelet&mdash;but it
+must be done within fourteen days, remember.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I tried to induce him to give me a small sum on account. I was about to take
+terrible risks, remember; housebreaking, larceny, theft&mdash;call it what you
+will, it meant the <i>police correctionelle</i> and a couple of years in New
+Orleans for sure. He finally gave me fifty francs, and once more threatened to
+take his business elsewhere, so I had to accept and to look as urbane and
+dignified as I could.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was out of the office and about to descend the stairs when a thought struck
+me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where and how can I communicate with M. Jean Duval,” I asked, “when my work is
+done?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will call here,” he replied, “at ten o’clock of every morning that follows a
+performance of <i>Le Rêve</i>. We can complete our transaction then across your
+office desk.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next moment he was gone. Theodore passed him on the stairs and asked me,
+with one of his impertinent leers, whether we had a new client and what we
+might expect from him. I shrugged my shoulders. “A new client!” I said
+disdainfully. “Bah! Vague promises of a couple of louis for finding out if
+Madame his wife sees more of a certain captain of the guards than Monsieur the
+husband cares about.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Theodore sniffed. He always sniffs when financial matters are on the tapis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Anything on account?” he queried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A paltry ten francs,” I replied, “and I may as well give you your share of it
+now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I tossed a franc to him across the desk. By the terms of my contract with him,
+you understand, he was entitled to ten per cent, of every profit accruing from
+the business in lieu of wages, but in this instance do you not think that I was
+justified in looking on one franc now, and perhaps twenty when the transaction
+was completed, as a more than just honorarium for his share in it? Was I not
+taking all the risks in this delicate business? Would it be fair for me to give
+him a hundred francs for sitting quietly in the office or sipping absinthe at a
+neighbouring bar whilst I risked New Orleans&mdash;not to speak of the gallows?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave me a strange look as he picked up the silver franc, spat on it for
+luck, bit it with his great yellow teeth to ascertain if it were counterfeit or
+genuine, and finally slipped it into his pocket, and shuffled out of the office
+whistling through his teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An abominably low, deceitful creature, that Theodore, you will see anon. But I
+won’t anticipate.
+</p>
+
+<h3>2.</h3>
+
+<p>
+The next performance of <i>Le Rêve</i> was announced for the following evening,
+and I started on my campaign. As you may imagine, it did not prove an easy
+matter. To obtain access through the stage-door to the back of the theatre was
+one thing&mdash;a franc to the doorkeeper had done the trick&mdash;to mingle
+with the scene-shifters, to talk with the supers, to take off my hat with every
+form of deep respect to the principals had been equally simple.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had even succeeded in placing a bouquet on the dressing-table of the great
+tragedienne on my second visit to the theatre. Her dressing-room door had been
+left ajar during that memorable fourth act which was to see the consummation of
+my labours. I had the bouquet in my hand, having brought it expressly for that
+purpose. I pushed open the door, and found myself face to face with a young
+though somewhat forbidding damsel, who peremptorily demanded what my business
+might be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In order to minimise the risk of subsequent trouble, I had assumed the disguise
+of a middle-aged Angliche&mdash;red side-whiskers, florid complexion, a
+ginger-coloured wig plastered rigidly over the ears towards the temples, high
+stock collar, nankeen pantaloons, a patch over one eye and an eyeglass fixed in
+the other. My own sainted mother would never have known me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With becoming diffidence I explained in broken French that my deep though
+respectful admiration of Mlle. Mars had prompted me to lay a floral tribute at
+her feet. I desired nothing more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The damsel eyed me coldly, though at the moment I was looking quite my best,
+diffident yet courteous, a perfect gentleman of the old regime. Then she took
+the bouquet from me and put it down on the dressing-table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I fancied that she smiled, not unkindly, and I ventured to pass the time of
+day. She replied not altogether disapprovingly. She sat down by the
+dressing-table and took up some needlework which she had obviously thrown aside
+on my arrival. Close by, on the floor, was a solid iron chest with huge
+ornamental hinges and a large escutcheon over the lock. It stood about a foot
+high and perhaps a couple of feet long.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was nothing else in the room that suggested a receptacle for jewellery;
+this, therefore, was obviously the safe which contained the bracelet. At the
+self-same second my eyes alighted on a large and clumsy-looking key which lay
+upon the dressing-table, and my hand at once wandered instinctively to the
+pocket of my coat and closed convulsively on the duplicate one which the
+soi-disant Jean Duval had given me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I talked eloquently for a while. The damsel answered in monosyllables, but she
+sat unmoved at needlework, and after ten minutes or so I was forced to beat a
+retreat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I returned to the charge at the next performance of <i>Le Rêve</i>, this time
+with a box of bonbons for the maid instead of the bouquet for the mistress. The
+damsel was quite amenable to a little conversation, quite willing that I should
+dally in her company. She munched the bonbons and coquetted a little with me.
+But she went on stolidly with her needlework, and I could see that nothing
+would move her out of that room, where she had obviously been left in charge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I bethought me of Theodore. I realised that I could not carry this affair
+through successfully without his help. So I gave him a further five
+francs&mdash;as I said to him it was out of my own savings&mdash;and I assured
+him that a certain M. Jean Duval had promised me a couple of hundred francs
+when the business which he had entrusted to me was satisfactorily concluded. It
+was for this business&mdash;so I explained&mdash;that I required his help, and
+he seemed quite satisfied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His task was, of course, a very easy one. What a contrast to the risk I was
+about to run! Twenty-five francs, my dear Sir, just for knocking at the door of
+Mlle. Mars’ dressing-room during the fourth act, whilst I was engaged in
+conversation with the attractive guardian of the iron safe, and to say in
+well-assumed, breathless tones:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mademoiselle Mars has been taken suddenly unwell on the stage. Will her maid
+go to her at once?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was some little distance from the dressing-room to the wings&mdash;down a
+flight of ill-lighted stone stairs which demanded cautious ascent and descent.
+Theodore had orders to obstruct the maid during her progress as much as he
+could without rousing her suspicions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I reckoned that she would be fully three minutes going, questioning, finding
+out that the whole thing was a hoax, and running back to the
+dressing-room&mdash;three minutes in which to open the chest, extract the
+bracelet and, incidentally, anything else of value there might be close to my
+hand. Well, I had thought of that eventuality, too; one must think of
+everything, you know&mdash;that is where genius comes in. Then, if possible,
+relock the safe, so that the maid, on her return, would find everything
+apparently in order and would not, perhaps, raise the alarm until I was safely
+out of the theatre.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It could be done&mdash;oh, yes, it could be done&mdash;with a minute to spare!
+And to-morrow at ten o’clock M. Jean Duval would appear, and I would not part
+with the bracelet until a thousand francs had passed from his pocket into mine.
+I must get Theodore out of the house, by the way, before the arrival of M.
+Duval.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A thousand francs! I had not seen a thousand francs all at once for years. What
+a dinner I would have tomorrow! There was a certain little restaurant in the
+Rue des Pipots where they concocted a cassolette of goose liver and pork chops
+with haricot beans which . . . ! I only tell you that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How I got through the rest of that day I cannot tell you. The evening found
+me&mdash;quite an habitué now&mdash;behind the stage of the Theatre Royal,
+nodding to one or two acquaintances, most of the people looking on me with
+grave respect and talking of me as the eccentric milor. I was supposed to be
+pining for an introduction to the great tragedienne, who, very exclusive as
+usual, had so far given me the cold shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ten minutes after the rise of the curtain on the fourth act I was in the
+dressing-room, presenting the maid with a gold locket which I had bought from a
+cheapjack’s barrow for five and twenty francs&mdash;almost the last of the
+fifty which I had received from M. Duval on account. The damsel was eyeing the
+locket somewhat disdainfully and giving me grudging thanks for it when there
+came a hurried knock at the door. The next moment Theodore poked his ugly face
+into the room. He, too, had taken the precaution of assuming an excellent
+disguise&mdash;peaked cap set aslant over one eye, grimy face, the blouse of a
+scene-shifter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mlle. Mars,” he gasped breathlessly; “she has been taken ill&mdash;on the
+stage&mdash;very suddenly. She is in the wings&mdash;asking for her maid. They
+think she will faint.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The damsel rose, visibly frightened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll come at once,” she said, and without the slightest flurry she picked up
+the key of the safe and slipped it into her pocket. I fancied that she gave me
+a look as she did this. Oh, she was a pearl among Abigails! Then she pointed
+unceremoniously to the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Milor!” was all she said, but of course I understood. I had no idea that
+English milors could be thus treated by pert maidens. But what cared I for
+social amenities just then? My hand had closed over the duplicate key of the
+safe, and I walked out of the room in the wake of the damsel. Theodore had
+disappeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once in the passage, the girl started to run. A second or two later I heard the
+patter of her high-heeled shoes down the stone stairs. I had not a moment to
+lose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To slip back into the dressing-room was but an instant’s work. The next I was
+kneeling in front of the chest. The key fitted the lock accurately; one turn,
+and the lid flew open.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chest was filled with a miscellaneous collection of theatrical properties
+all lying loose&mdash;showy necklaces, chains, pendants, all of them obviously
+false; but lying beneath them, and partially hidden by the meretricious
+ornaments, were one or two boxes covered with velvet such as jewellers use. My
+keen eyes noted these at once. I was indeed in luck! For the moment, however,
+my hand fastened on a leather case which reposed on the top in one corner, and
+which very obviously, from its shape, contained a bracelet. My hands did not
+tremble, though I was quivering with excitement. I opened the case. There,
+indeed, was the bracelet&mdash;the large green stones, the magnificent gold
+setting, the whole jewel dazzlingly beautiful. If it were real&mdash;the
+thought flashed through my mind&mdash;it would be indeed priceless. I closed
+the case and put it on the dressing-table beside me. I had at least another
+minute to spare&mdash;sixty seconds wherein to dive for those velvet-covered
+boxes which&mdash; My hand was on one of them when a slight noise caused me
+suddenly to turn and to look behind me. It all happened as quickly as a flash
+of lightning. I just saw a man disappearing through the door. One glance at the
+dressing-table showed me the whole extent of my misfortune. The case containing
+the bracelet had gone, and at that precise moment I heard a commotion from the
+direction of the stairs and a woman screaming at the top of her voice: “Thief!
+Stop thief!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, Sir, I brought upon the perilous situation that presence of mind for
+which the name of Hector Ratichon will for ever remain famous. Without a single
+flurried movement, I slipped one of the velvet-covered cases which I still had
+in my hand into the breast pocket of my coat, I closed down the lid of the iron
+chest and locked it with the duplicate key, and I went out of the room, closing
+the door behind me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The passage was dark. The damsel was running up the stairs with a couple of
+stage hands behind her. She was explaining to them volubly, and to the
+accompaniment of sundry half-hysterical little cries, the infamous hoax to
+which she had fallen a victim. You might think, Sir, that here was I caught
+like a rat in a trap, and with that velvet-covered case in my breast pocket by
+way of damning evidence against me!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not at all, Sir! Not at all! Not so is Hector Ratichon, the keenest secret
+agent France has ever known, the confidant of kings, brought to earth by an
+untoward move of fate. Even before the damsel and the stage hands had reached
+the top of the stairs and turned into the corridor, which was on my left, I had
+slipped round noiselessly to my right and found shelter in a narrow doorway,
+where I was screened by the surrounding darkness and by a projection of the
+frame. While the three of them made straight for Mademoiselle’s dressing-room,
+and spent some considerable time there in uttering varied ejaculations when
+they found the place and the chest to all appearances untouched, I slipped out
+of my hiding-place, sped rapidly along the corridor, and was soon half-way down
+the stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here my habitual composure in the face of danger stood me in good stead. It
+enabled me to walk composedly and not too hurriedly through the crowd behind
+the scenes&mdash;supers, scene-shifters, principals, none of whom seemed to be
+aware as yet of the hoax practised on Mademoiselle Mars’ maid; and I reckon
+that I was out of the stage door exactly five minutes after Theodore had called
+the damsel away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I was minus the bracelet, and in my mind there was the firm conviction that
+that traitor Theodore had played me one of his abominable tricks. As I said,
+the whole thing had occurred as quickly as a flash of lightning, but even so my
+keen, experienced eyes had retained the impression of a peaked cap and the
+corner of a blue blouse as they disappeared through the dressing-room door.
+</p>
+
+<h3>3.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Tact, wariness and strength were all required, you must admit, in order to deal
+with the present delicate situation. I was speeding along the Rue de Richelieu
+on my way to my office. My intention was to spend the night there, where I had
+a chair-bedstead on which I had oft before slept soundly after a day’s hard
+work, and anyhow it was too late to go to my lodgings at Passy at this hour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Moreover, Theodore slept in the antechamber of the office, and I was more
+firmly convinced than ever that it was he who had stolen the bracelet.
+“Blackleg! Thief! Traitor!” I mused. “But thou hast not done with Hector
+Ratichon yet.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the meanwhile I bethought me of the velvet-covered box in my breast pocket,
+and of the ginger-coloured hair and whiskers that I was still wearing, and
+which might prove an unpleasant “piece de conviction” in case the police were
+after the stolen bracelet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a view to examining the one and getting rid of the other, I turned into
+the Square Louvois, which, as usual, was very dark and wholly deserted. Here I
+took off my wig and whiskers and threw them over the railings into the garden.
+Then I drew the velvet-covered box from my pocket, opened it, and groped for
+its contents. Imagine my feelings, my dear Sir, when I realised that the case
+was empty! Fate was indeed against me that night. I had been fooled and cheated
+by a traitor, and had risked New Orleans and worse for an empty box.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment I must confess that I lost that imperturbable sang-froid which is
+the admiration of all my friends, and with a genuine oath I flung the case over
+the railings in the wake of the milor’s hair and whiskers. Then I hurried home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Theodore had not returned. He did not come in until the small hours of the
+morning, and then he was in a state that I can only describe, with your
+permission, as hoggish. He could hardly speak. I had him at my mercy. Neither
+tact nor wariness was required for the moment. I stripped him to his skin; he
+only laughed like an imbecile. His eyes had a horrid squint in them; he was
+hideous. I found five francs in one of his pockets, but neither in his clothes
+nor on his person did I find the bracelet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What have you done with it?” I cried, for by this time I was maddened with
+rage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know what you are talking about!” he stammered thickly, as he tottered
+towards his bed. “Give me back my five francs, you thief!” the brutish creature
+finally blurted out ere he fell into a hog-like sleep.
+</p>
+
+<h3>4.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Desperate evils need desperate remedies. I spent the rest of the night thinking
+hard. By the time that dawn was breaking my mind was made up. Theodore’s
+stertorous breathing assured me that he was still insentient. I was muscular in
+those days, and he a meagre, attenuated, drink-sodden creature. I lifted him
+out of his bed in the antechamber and carried him into mine in the office. I
+found a coil of rope, and strapped him tightly in the chair-bedstead so that he
+could not move. I tied a scarf round his mouth so that he could not scream.
+Then, at six o’clock, when the humbler eating-houses begin to take down their
+shutters, I went out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had Theodore’s five francs in my pocket, and I was desperately hungry. I
+spent ten sous on a cup of coffee and a plate of fried onions and haricot
+beans, and three francs on a savoury pie, highly flavoured with garlic, and a
+quarter-bottle of excellent cognac. I drank the coffee and ate the onions and
+the beans, and I took the pie and cognac home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I placed a table close to the chair-bedstead and on it I disposed the pie and
+the cognac in such a manner that the moment Theodore woke his eyes were bound
+to alight on them. Then I waited. I absolutely ached to have a taste of that
+pie myself, it smelt so good, but I waited.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Theodore woke at nine o’clock. He struggled like a fool, but he still appeared
+half dazed. No doubt he thought that he was dreaming. Then I sat down on the
+edge of the bed and cut myself off a large piece of the pie. I ate it with
+marked relish in front of Theodore, whose eyes nearly started out of their
+sockets. Then I brewed myself a cup of coffee. The mingled odour of coffee and
+garlic filled the room. It was delicious. I thought that Theodore would have a
+fit. The veins stood out on his forehead and a kind of gurgle came from behind
+the scarf round his mouth. Then I told him he could partake of the pie and
+coffee if he told me what he had done with the bracelet. He shook his head
+furiously, and I left the pie, the cognac and the coffee on the table before
+him and went into the antechamber, closing the office door behind me, and
+leaving him to meditate on his treachery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What I wanted to avoid above everything was the traitor meeting M. Jean Duval.
+He had the bracelet&mdash;of that I was as convinced as that I was alive. But
+what could he do with a piece of false jewellery? He could not dispose of it,
+save to a vendor of theatrical properties, who no doubt was well acquainted
+with the trinket and would not give more than a couple of francs for what was
+obviously stolen property. After all, I had promised Theodore twenty francs; he
+would not be such a fool as to sell that birthright for a mess of pottage and
+the sole pleasure of doing me a bad turn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no doubt in my mind that he had put the thing away somewhere in what
+he considered a safe place pending a reward being offered by Mlle. Mars for the
+recovery of the bracelet. The more I thought of this the more convinced I was
+that that was, indeed, his proposed plan of action&mdash;oh, how I loathed the
+blackleg!&mdash;and mine henceforth would be to dog his every footstep and
+never let him out of my sight until I forced him to disgorge his ill-gotten
+booty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At ten o’clock M. Jean Duval arrived, as was his wont, supercilious and brusque
+as usual. I was just explaining to him that I hoped to have excellent news for
+him after the next performance of <i>Le Rêve</i> when there was a peremptory
+ring at the bell. I went to open the door, and there stood a police inspector
+in uniform with a sheaf of papers in his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, I am not over-fond of our Paris police; they poke their noses in where
+they are least wanted. Their incompetence favours the machinations of rogues
+and frustrates the innocent ambitions of the just. However, in this instance
+the inspector looked amiable enough, though his manner, I must say, was, as
+usual, unpleasantly curt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Here, Ratichon,” he said, “there has been an impudent theft of a valuable
+bracelet out of Mademoiselle Mars’ dressing-room at the Theatre Royal last
+night. You and your mate frequent all sorts of places of ill-fame; you may hear
+something of the affair.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I chose to ignore the insult, and the inspector detached a paper from the sheaf
+which he held and threw it across the table to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There is a reward of two thousand five hundred francs,” he said, “for the
+recovery of the bracelet. You will find on that paper an accurate description
+of the jewel. It contains the celebrated Maroni emerald, presented to the
+ex-Emperor by the Sultan, and given by him to Mlle. Mars.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whereupon he turned unceremoniously on his heel and went, leaving me face to
+face with the man who had so shamefully tried to swindle me. I turned, and
+resting my elbow on the table and my chin in my hand, I looked mutely on the
+soi-disant Jean Duval and equally mutely pointed with an accusing finger to the
+description of the famous bracelet which he had declared to me was merely
+strass and base metal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he had the impudence to turn on me before I could utter a syllable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where is the bracelet?” he demanded. “You consummate liar, you! Where is it?
+You stole it last night! What have you done with it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I extracted, at your request,” I replied with as much dignity as I could
+command, “a piece of theatrical jewellery, which you stated to me to be
+worthless, out of an iron chest, the key of which you placed in my hands. I . .
+.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Enough of this rubbish!” he broke in roughly. “You have the bracelet. Give it
+me now, or . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He broke off and looked somewhat alarmed in the direction of the office door,
+from the other side of which there had just come a loud crash, followed by
+loud, if unintelligible, vituperation. What had happened I could not guess; all
+that I could do was to carry off the situation as boldly as I dared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You shall have the bracelet, Sir,” I said in my most suave manner. “You shall
+have it, but not unless you will pay me three thousand francs for it. I can get
+two thousand five hundred by taking it straight to Mlle. Mars.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And be taken up by the police for stealing it,” he retorted. “How will you
+explain its being in your possession?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I did not blanch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is my affair,” I replied. “Will you give me three thousand francs for it?
+It is worth sixty thousand francs to a clever thief like you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You hound!” he cried, livid with rage, and raised his cane as if he would
+strike me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Aye, it was cleverly done, M. Jean Duval, whoever you may be. I know that the
+gentleman-thief is a modern product of the old regime, but I did not know that
+the fraternity could show such a fine specimen as yourself. Pay Hector Ratichon
+a thousand francs for stealing a bracelet for you worth sixty! Indeed, M. Jean
+Duval, you deserved to succeed!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again he shook his cane at me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you touch me,” I declared boldly, “I shall take the bracelet at once to
+Mlle. Mars.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He bit his lip and made a great effort to pull himself together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I haven’t three thousand francs by me,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go, fetch the money,” I retorted, “and I’ll fetch the bracelet.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He demurred for a while, but I was firm, and after he had threatened to thrash
+me, to knock me down, and to denounce me to the police, he gave in and went to
+fetch the money.
+</p>
+
+<h3>5.</h3>
+
+<p>
+When I remembered Theodore&mdash;Theodore, whom only a thin partition wall had
+separated from the full knowledge of the value of his ill-gotten
+treasure!&mdash;I could have torn my hair out by the roots with the magnitude
+of my rage. He, the traitor, the blackleg, was about to triumph, where I,
+Hector Ratichon, had failed! He had but to take the bracelet to Mlle. Mars
+himself and obtain the munificent reward whilst I, after I had taken so many
+risks and used all the brains and tact wherewith Nature had endowed me, would
+be left with the meagre remnants of the fifty francs which M. Jean Duval had so
+grudgingly thrown to me. Twenty-five francs for a gold locket, ten francs for a
+bouquet, another ten for bonbons, and five for gratuities to the
+stage-doorkeeper! Make the calculation, my good Sir, and see what I had left.
+If it had not been for the five francs which I had found in Theodore’s pocket
+last night, I would at this moment not only have been breakfastless, but also
+absolutely penniless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As it was, my final hope&mdash;and that a meagre one&mdash;was to arouse one
+spark of honesty in the breast of the arch-traitor, and either by cajolery or
+threats, to induce him to share his ill-gotten spoils with me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had left him snoring and strapped to the chair-bedstead, and when I opened
+the office door I was marvelling in my mind whether I could really bear to see
+him dying slowly of starvation with that savoury pie tantalizingly under his
+nose. The crash which I had heard a few minutes ago prepared me for a change of
+scene. Even so, I confess that the sight which I beheld glued me to the
+threshold. There sat Theodore at the table, finishing the last morsel of pie,
+whilst the chair-bedstead lay in a tangled heap upon the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I cannot tell you how nasty he was to me about the whole thing, although I
+showed myself at once ready to forgive him all his lies and his treachery, and
+was at great pains to explain to him how I had given up my own bed and strapped
+him into it solely for the benefit of his health, seeing that at the moment he
+was threatened with delirium tremens.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He would not listen to reason or to the most elementary dictates of friendship.
+Having poured the vials of his bilious temper over my devoted head, he became
+as perverse and as obstinate as a mule. With the most consummate impudence I
+ever beheld in any human being, he flatly denied all knowledge of the bracelet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whilst I talked he stalked past me into the ante-chamber, where he at once
+busied himself in collecting all his goods and chattels. These he stuffed into
+his pockets until he appeared to be bulging all over his ugly-body; then he
+went to the door ready to go out. On the threshold he turned and gave me a
+supercilious glance over his shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Take note, my good Ratichon,” he said, “that our partnership is dissolved as
+from to-morrow, the twentieth day of September.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“As from this moment, you infernal scoundrel!” I cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he did not pause to listen, and slammed the door in my face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For two or three minutes I remained quite still, whilst I heard the shuffling
+footsteps slowly descending the corridor. Then I followed him, quietly,
+surreptitiously, as a fox will follow its prey. He never turned round once, but
+obviously he knew that he was being followed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I will not weary you, my dear Sir, with the details of the dance which he led
+me in and about Paris during the whole of that memorable day. Never a morsel
+passed my lips from breakfast to long after sundown. He tried every trick known
+to the profession to throw me off the scent. But I stuck to him like a leech.
+When he sauntered I sauntered; when he ran I ran; when he glued his nose to the
+window of an eating house I halted under a doorway close by; when he went to
+sleep on a bench in the Luxembourg Gardens I watched over him as a mother over
+a babe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Towards evening&mdash;it was an hour after sunset and the street-lamps were
+just being lighted&mdash;he must have thought that he had at last got rid of
+me; for, after looking carefully behind him, he suddenly started to walk much
+faster and with an amount of determination which he had lacked hitherto. I
+marvelled if he was not making for the Rue Daunou, where was situated the
+squalid tavern of ill-fame which he was wont to frequent. I was not mistaken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I tracked the traitor to the corner of the street, and saw him disappear
+beneath the doorway of the Taverne des Trois Tigres. I resolved to follow. I
+had money in my pocket&mdash;about twenty-five sous&mdash;and I was mightily
+thirsty. I started to run down the street, when suddenly Theodore came rushing
+back out of the tavern, hatless and breathless, and before I succeeded in
+dodging him he fell into my arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My money!” he said hoarsely. “I must have my money at once! You thief! You . .
+.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once again my presence of mind stood me in good stead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pull yourself together, Theodore,” I said with much dignity, “and do not make
+a scene in the open street.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Theodore was not at all prepared to pull himself together. He was livid
+with rage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I had five francs in my pocket last night!” he cried. “You have stolen them,
+you abominable rascal!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And you stole from me a bracelet worth three thousand francs to the firm,” I
+retorted. “Give me that bracelet and you shall have your money back.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t,” he blurted out desperately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How do you mean, you can’t?” I exclaimed, whilst a horrible fear like an icy
+claw suddenly gripped at my heart. “You haven’t lost it, have you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Worse!” he cried, and fell up against me in semi-unconsciousness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I shook him violently. I bellowed in his ear, and suddenly, after that one
+moment of apparent unconsciousness, he became, not only wide awake, but as
+strong as a lion and as furious as a bull. We closed in on one another. He
+hammered at me with his fists, calling me every kind of injurious name he could
+think of, and I had need of all my strength to ward off his attacks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a few moments no one took much notice of us. Fracas and quarrels outside
+the drinking-houses in the mean streets of Paris were so frequent these days
+that the police did not trouble much about them. But after a while Theodore
+became so violent that I was forced to call vigorously for help. I thought he
+meant to murder me. People came rushing out of the tavern, and someone very
+officiously started whistling for the gendarmes. This had the effect of
+bringing Theodore to his senses. He calmed down visibly, and before the crowd
+had had time to collect round us we had both sauntered off, walking in apparent
+amity side by side down the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But at the first corner Theodore halted, and this time he confined himself to
+gripping me by the arm with one hand whilst with the other he grasped one of
+the buttons of my coat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That five francs,” he said in a hoarse, half-choked voice. “I must have that
+five francs! Can’t you see that I can’t have that bracelet till I have my five
+francs wherewith to redeem it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To redeem it!” I gasped. I was indeed glad then that he held me by the arm,
+for it seemed to me as if I was falling down a yawning abyss which had opened
+at my feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Theodore, and his voice sounded as if it came from a great distance
+and through cotton-wool,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I knew that you would be after that bracelet like a famished hyena after a
+bone, so I tied it securely inside the pocket of the blouse I was wearing, and
+left this with Legros, the landlord of the Trois Tigres. It was a good blouse;
+he lent me five francs on it. Of course, he knew nothing about the bracelet
+then. But he only lends money to clients in this manner on the condition that
+it is repaid within twenty-four hours. I have got to pay him back before eight
+o’clock this evening or he will dispose of the blouse as he thinks best. It is
+close on eight o’clock now. Give me back my five francs, you confounded thief,
+before Legros has time to discover the bracelet! We’ll share the reward, I
+promise you. Faith of an honest man. You liar, you cheat, you&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What was the use of talking? I had not got five francs. I had spent ten sous in
+getting myself some breakfast, and three francs in a savoury pie flavoured with
+garlic and in a quarter of a bottle of cognac. I groaned aloud. I had exactly
+twenty-five sous left.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We went back to the tavern hoping against hope that Legros had not yet turned
+out the pockets of the blouse, and that we might induce him, by threat or
+cajolery or the usurious interest of twenty-five sous, to grant his client a
+further twenty-four hours wherein to redeem the pledge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One glance at the interior of the tavern, however, told us that all our hopes
+were in vain. Legros, the landlord, was even then turning the blouse over and
+over, whilst his hideous hag of a wife was talking to the police inspector, who
+was showing her the paper that announced the offer of two thousand five hundred
+francs for the recovery of a valuable bracelet, the property of Mlle. Mars, the
+distinguished tragedienne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We only waited one minute with our noses glued against the windows of the Trois
+Tigres, just long enough to see Legros extracting the leather case from the
+pocket of the blouse, just long enough to hear the police inspector saying
+peremptorily:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You, Legros, ought to be able to let the police know who stole the bracelet.
+You must know who left that blouse with you last night.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then we both fled incontinently down the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, Sir, was I not right when I said that honour and loyalty are the essential
+qualities in our profession? If Theodore had not been such a liar and such a
+traitor, he and I, between us, would have been richer by three thousand francs
+that day.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0007"></a>
+CHAPTER VII. &mdash; AN OVER-SENSITIVE HEART</h2>
+
+<h3>1.</h3>
+
+<p>
+No doubt, Sir, that you have noticed during the course of our conversations
+that Nature has endowed me with an over-sensitive heart. I feel keenly, Sir,
+very keenly. Blows dealt me by Fate, or, as has been more often the case, by
+the cruel and treacherous hand of man, touch me on the raw. I suffer acutely. I
+am highly strung. I am one of those rare beings whom Nature pre-ordained for
+love and for happiness. I am an ideal family man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What? You did not know that I was married? Indeed, Sir, I am. And though Madame
+Ratichon does not perhaps fulfil all my ideals of exquisite womanhood,
+nevertheless she has been an able and willing helpmate during these last years
+of comparative prosperity. Yes, you see me fairly prosperous now. My industry,
+my genius&mdash;if I may so express myself&mdash;found their reward at last.
+You will be the first to acknowledge&mdash;you, the confidant of my life’s
+history&mdash;that that reward was fully deserved. I worked for it, toiled and
+thought and struggled, up to the last; and had Fate been just, rather than
+grudging, I should have attained that ideal which would have filled my cup of
+happiness to the brim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, anyway, the episode connected with my marriage did mark the close of my
+professional career, and is therefore worthy of record. Since that day,
+Sir&mdash;a happy one for me, a blissful one for Mme. Ratichon&mdash;I have
+been able, thanks to the foresight of an all-wise Providence, to gratify my
+bucolic tastes. I live now, Sir, amidst my flowers, with my dog and my canary
+and Mme. Ratichon, smiling with kindly indulgence on the struggles and the
+blunders of my younger colleagues, oft consulted by them in matters that
+require special tact and discretion. I sit and dream now beneath the shade of a
+vine-clad arbour of those glorious days of long ago, when kings and emperors
+placed the destiny of their inheritance in my hands, when autocrats and
+dictators came to me for assistance and advice, and the name of Hector Ratichon
+stood for everything that was most astute and most discreet. And if at times a
+gentle sigh of regret escapes my lips, Mme. Ratichon&mdash;whose thinness is
+ever my despair, for I admire comeliness, Sir, as being more womanly&mdash;Mme.
+Ratichon, I say, comes to me with the gladsome news that dinner is served; and
+though she is not all that I could wish in the matter of the culinary arts, yet
+she can fry a cutlet passably, and one of her brothers is a wholesale wine
+merchant of excellent reputation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was soon after my connexion with that abominable Marquis de Firmin-Latour
+that I first made the acquaintance of the present Mme. Ratichon, under somewhat
+peculiar circumstances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I remember it was on the first day of April in the year 1817 that M.
+Rochez&mdash;Fernand Rochez was his exact name&mdash;came to see me at my
+office in the Rue Daunou, and the date proved propitious, as you will presently
+see. How M. Rochez came to know of my gifts and powers, I cannot tell you. He
+never would say. He had heard of me through a friend, was all that he
+vouchsafed to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Theodore had shown him in. Ah! have I not mentioned the fact that I had
+forgiven Theodore his lies and his treachery, and taken him back to my bosom
+and to my board? My sensitive heart had again got the better of my prudence,
+and Theodore was installed once more in the antechamber of my apartments in the
+Rue Daunou, and was, as heretofore, sharing with me all the good things that I
+could afford. So there he was on duty on that fateful first of April which was
+destined to be the turning-point of my destiny. And he showed M. de Rochez in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At once I knew my man&mdash;the type, I mean. Immaculately dressed, scented and
+befrilled, haughty of manner and nonchalant of speech, M. Rochez had the word
+“adventurer” writ all over his well-groomed person. He was young, good-looking,
+his nails were beautifully polished, his pantaloons fitted him without a
+wrinkle. These were of a soft putty shade; his coat was bottle-green, and his
+hat of the latest modish shape. A perfect exquisite, in fact.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he came to the point without much preamble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“M.&mdash;er&mdash;Ratichon,” he said, “I have heard of you through a friend,
+who tells me that you are the most unscrupulous scoundrel he has ever come
+across.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sir&mdash;!” I began, rising from my seat in indignant protest at the coarse
+insult. But with an authoritative gesture he checked the flow of my
+indignation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No comedy, I pray you, Sir,” he said. “We are not at the Theatre Molière, but,
+I presume, in an office where business is transacted both briefly and with
+discretion.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At your service, Monsieur,” I replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then listen, will you?” he went on curtly, “and pray do not interrupt. Only
+speak in answer to a question from me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I bowed my head in silence. Thus must the proud suffer when they happen to be
+sparsely endowed with riches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You have no doubt heard of Mlle. Goldberg,” M. Rochez continued after a
+moment’s pause, “the lovely daughter of the rich usurer in the Rue des
+Médecins.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had heard of Mlle. Goldberg. Her beauty and her father’s wealth were reported
+to be fabulous. I indicated my knowledge of the beautiful lady by a mute
+inclination of the head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I love Mlle. Goldberg,” my client resumed, “and I have reason for the belief
+that I am not altogether indifferent to her. Glances, you understand, from eyes
+as expressive as those of the exquisite Jewess speak more eloquently than
+words.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had forbidden me to speak, so I could only express concurrence in the
+sentiments which he expressed by a slight elevation of my left eyebrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am determined to win the affections of Mlle. Goldberg,” M. Rochez went on
+glibly, “and equally am I determined to make her my wife.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A very natural determination,” I remarked involuntarily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My only trouble with regard to pressing my court is the fact that my lovely
+Leah is never allowed outside her father’s house, save in his company or that
+of his sister&mdash;an old maid of dour mien and sour disposition, who acts the
+part of a duenna with dog-like tenacity. Over and over again have I tried to
+approach the lady of my heart, only to be repelled or roughly rebuked for my
+insolence by her irascible old aunt.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are not the first lover, Sir,” I remarked drily, “who hath seen obstacles
+thus thrown in his way, and&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“One moment, M.&mdash;er&mdash;Ratichon,” he broke in sharply. “I have not
+finished. I will not attempt to describe my feelings to you. I have been
+writhing&mdash;yes, writhing!&mdash;in face of those obstacles of which you
+speak so lightly, and for a long time I have been cudgelling my brains as to
+the possible means whereby I might approach my divinity unchecked. Then one day
+I bethought me of you&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of me, Sir?” I ejaculated, sorely puzzled. “Why of me?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“None of my friends,” he replied nonchalantly, “would care to undertake so
+scrubby a task as I would assign to you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I pray you to be more explicit,” I retorted with unimpaired dignity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once more he paused. Obviously he was a born mountebank, and he calculated all
+his effects to a nicety.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You, M.&mdash;er&mdash;Ratichon,” he said curtly at last, “will have to take
+the duenna off my hands.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was beginning to understand. So I let him prattle on the while my busy brain
+was already at work evolving the means to render this man service, which in its
+turn I expected to be amply repaid. Thus I cannot repeat exactly all that he
+said, for I was only listening with half an ear. But the substance of it all
+was this: I was to pose as the friend of M. Fernand Rochez, and engage the
+attention of Mlle. Goldberg senior the while he paid his court to the lovely
+Leah. It was not a repellent task altogether, because M. Rochez’s suggestion
+opened a vista of pleasant parties at open-air cafés, with foaming tankards of
+beer, on warm afternoons the while the young people sipped sirops and fed on
+love. My newly found friend was pleased to admit that my personality and
+appearance would render my courtship of the elderly duenna a comparatively easy
+one. She would soon, he declared, fall a victim to my charms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After which the question of remuneration came in, and over this we did not
+altogether agree. Ultimately I decided to accept an advance of two hundred
+francs and a new suit of clothes, which I at once declared was indispensable
+under the circumstances, seeing that in my well-worn coat I might have the
+appearance of a fortune-hunter in the eyes of the suspicious old dame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Within my mind I envisaged the possibility of touching M. Rochez for a further
+two hundred francs if and when opportunity arose.
+</p>
+
+<h3>2.</h3>
+
+<p>
+The formal introduction took place on the boulevards one fine afternoon shortly
+after that. Mlle. Leah was walking under the trees with her duenna when
+we&mdash;M. Rochez and I&mdash;came face to face with them. My friend raised
+his hat, and I did likewise. Mademoiselle Leah blushed and the ogre frowned.
+Sir, she was an ogre!&mdash;bony and angular and hook-nosed, with thin lips
+that closed with a snap, and cold grey eyes that sent a shiver down your spine!
+Rochez introduced me to her, and I made myself exceedingly agreeable to her,
+while my friend succeeded in exchanging two or three whispered words with his
+inamorata.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But we did not get very far that day. Mlle. Goldberg senior soon marched her
+lovely charge away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah, Sir, she was lovely indeed! And in my heart I not only envied Rochez his
+good fortune but I also felt how entirely unworthy he was of it. Nor did the
+beautiful Leah give me the impression of being quite so deeply struck with his
+charms as he would have had me believe. Indeed, it struck me during those few
+minutes that I stood dutifully talking to her duenna that the fair young Jewess
+cast more than one approving glance in my direction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Be that as it may, the progress of our respective courtships, now that the ice
+was broken, took on a more decided turn. At first it only amounted to meetings
+on the boulevards and a cursory greeting, but soon Mlle. Goldberg senior,
+delighted with my conversation, would deliberately turn to walk with me under
+the trees the while Fernand Rochez followed by the side of his adored. A week
+later the ladies accepted my friend’s offer to sit under the awning of the Café
+Bourbon and to sip sirops, whilst we indulged in tankards of foaming “blondes.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Within a fortnight, Sir&mdash;I may say it without boasting&mdash;I had Mlle.
+Goldberg senior in the hollow of my hand. On the boulevards, as soon as she
+caught sight of me, her dour face would be wreathed in smiles, a row of large
+yellow teeth would appear between her thin lips, and her cold, grey eyes would
+soften with a glance of welcome which more than ever sent a cold shudder down
+my spine. While we four were together, either promenading or sitting at
+open-air cafés in the cool of the evening, the old duenna had eyes and ears
+only for me, and if my friend Rochez did not get on with his own courtship as
+fast as he would have wished the fault rested entirely with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For he did <i>not</i> get on with his courtship, and that was a fact. The fair
+Leah was very sweet, very coy, greatly amused, I fancy, at her aunt’s obvious
+infatuation for me, and not a little flattered at the handsome M. Rochez’s
+attentions to herself. But there it all ended. And whenever I questioned Rochez
+on the subject, he flew into a temper and consigned all middle-aged Jewesses to
+perdition, and all the lovely and young ones to a comfortable kind of Hades to
+which he alone amongst the male sex would have access. From which I gathered
+that I was not wrong in my surmises, that the fair Leah had been smitten by my
+personality and my appearance rather than by those of my friend, and that he
+was suffering the pangs of an insane jealousy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This, of course, he never would admit. All that he told me one day was that
+Leah, with the characteristic timidity of her race, refused to marry him unless
+she could obtain her father’s consent to the union. Old Goldberg, duly
+approached on the matter, flatly forbade his daughter to have anything further
+to do with that fortune-hunter, that parasite, that beggarly
+pick-thank&mdash;such, Sir, were but a few complimentary epithets which he
+hurled with great volubility at his daughter’s absent suitor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was from Mlle. Goldberg, senior, that my friend and I had the details of
+that stormy interview between father and daughter; after which, she declared
+that interviews between the lovers would necessarily become very difficult of
+arrangement. From which you will gather that the worthy soul, though she was as
+ugly as sin, was by this time on the side of the angels. Indeed, she was more
+than that. She professed herself willing to aid and abet them in every way she
+could. This Rochez confided to me, together with his assurance that he was
+determined to take his Fate into his own hands and, since the beautiful Leah
+would not come to him of her own accord, to carry her off by force.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah, my dear Sir, those were romantic days, you must remember! Days when men
+placed the possession of the woman they loved above every treasure, every
+consideration upon earth. Ah, romance! Romance, Sir, was the breath of our
+nostrils, the blood in our veins! Imagine how readily we all fell in with my
+friend’s plans. I, of course, was the moving spirit in it all; mine was the
+genius which was destined to turn gilded romance into grim reality. Yes, grim!
+For you shall see! . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mlle. Goldberg, senior, who appropriately enough was named Sarah, gave us the
+clue how to proceed, after which my genius worked alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You must know that old Goldberg’s house in the Rue des Médecins&mdash;a large
+apartment house in which he occupied a few rooms on the ground floor behind his
+shop&mdash;backed on to a small uncultivated garden which ended in a tall brick
+wall, the meeting-place of all the felines in the neighbourhood, and in which
+there was a small postern gate, now disused. This gate gave on a narrow
+cul-de-sac&mdash;grandiloquently named Passage Corneille&mdash;which was
+flanked on the opposite side by the tall boundary wall of an adjacent convent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That cul-de-sac was marked out from the very first in my mind as our objective.
+Around and about it, as it were, did I build the edifice of my schemes, aided
+by the ever-willing Sarah. The old maid threw herself into the affair with
+zest, planning and contriving like a veritable strategist; and I must admit
+that she was full of resource and invention. We were now in mid-May and
+enjoying a spell of hot summer weather. This gave the inventive Sarah the
+excuse for using the back garden as a place wherein to sit in the cool of the
+evening in the company of her niece.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah, you see the whole thing now at a glance, do you not? The postern gate, the
+murky night, the daring lover, the struggling maiden, the willing accomplices.
+The actors were all there, ready for the curtain to be rung up on the
+palpitating drama.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then it was that a brilliant idea came into my brain. It was born on the very
+day that I realized with indisputable certainty that the lovely Leah was not in
+reality in love with Rochez. He fatuously believed that she was ready to fall
+into his arms, that only maidenly timidity held her back, and that the moment
+she had been snatched from her father’s house and found herself in the arms of
+her adoring lover, she would turn to him in the very fullness of love and
+confidence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I knew better. I had caught a look now and again&mdash;an undefinable
+glance, which told me the whole pitiable tale. She did not love Rochez; and in
+the drama which we were preparing to enact the curtain would fall on his
+rapture and her unhappiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah, Sir! imagine what my feelings were when I realized this! This fair girl,
+against whom we were all conspiring like so many traitors, was still ignorant
+of the fatal brink on which she stood. She chatted and coquetted and smiled,
+little dreaming that in a very few days her happiness would be wrecked and she
+would be linked for life to a man whom she could never love. Rochez’s idea, of
+course, was primarily to get hold of her fortune. I had already ascertained for
+him, through the ever-willing Sarah, that this fortune came from Leah’s
+grandfather, who had left a sum of two hundred thousand francs on trust for her
+children, she to enjoy the income for her life. There certainly was a clause in
+the will whereby the girl would forfeit that fortune if she married without her
+father’s consent; but according to Rochez’s plans this could scarcely be
+withheld once she had been taken forcibly away from home, held in durance, and
+with her reputation hopelessly compromised. She could then pose as an injured
+victim, throw herself at her father’s feet, and beg him to give that consent
+without which she would for ever remain an outcast of society, a pariah amongst
+her kind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A pretty piece of villainous combination, you will own! And I, Sir, was to lend
+a hand in this abomination!&mdash;nay, I was to be the chief villain in the
+drama! It was I who, even now, was spending the hours of the night, when I
+might have been dreaming sentimental dreams, in oiling the lock of the postern
+gate which was to give us access into papa Goldberg’s garden. It was I who,
+under cover of darkness and guided by that old jade Sarah, was to sneak into
+that garden on the appointed night and forcibly seize the unsuspecting maiden
+and carry her to the carriage which Rochez would have in readiness for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You see what a coward he was! It was a criminal offence in those days,
+punishable with deportation to New Caledonia, to abduct a young lady from her
+parents’ house; and Rochez left me the dirty work to do in case the girl
+screamed and attracted the police. Now you will tell me if I was not justified
+in doing what I did, and I will abide by your judgment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was to take all the risks, remember!&mdash;New Caledonia, the police, the
+odium attached to so foul a deed; and do you know for what? For a paltry
+thousand francs, which with much difficulty I had induced Rochez&mdash;nay,
+forced him!&mdash;to hand over to me in anticipation of what I was about to
+accomplish for his sake. A thousand francs! Did this miserliness not
+characterize the man? Was it to such a scrubby knave that I, at risk of my life
+and of my honour, would hand over that jewel amongst women, that pearl above
+price?&mdash;a lady with a personal fortune amounting to two hundred thousand
+francs?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No, Sir; I would not! Then and there I vowed that I would not! Mine were to be
+all the risks; then mine should be the reward! What Rochez meant to do, that I
+could too, and with far greater reason. The lovely Leah did at times frown on
+Fernand; but she invariably smiled on me. She would fall into my arms far more
+readily than into his, and papa Goldberg would be equally forced to give his
+consent to her marriage with me as with that self-seeking carpet-knight whom he
+abhorred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Needless to say, I kept my own counsel, and did not speak of my project even to
+Sarah. To all appearances I was to be the mere tool in this affair, the
+unfortunate cat employed to snatch the roast chestnuts out of the fire for the
+gratification of a mealy-mouthed monkey.
+</p>
+
+<h3>3.</h3>
+
+<p>
+The appointed day and hour were at hand. Fernand Rochez had engaged a barouche
+which was to take him and his lovely victim to a little house at Auteuil, which
+he had rented for the purpose. There the lovers were to lie perdu until such
+time as papa Goldberg had relented and the marriage could be duly solemnized in
+the synagogue of the Rue des Halles. Sarah had offered in the meanwhile to do
+all that in her power lay to soften the old man’s heart and to bring about the
+happy conclusion of the romantic adventure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the latter we had chosen the night of May 23rd. It was a moonless night,
+and the Passage Corneille, from whence I was to operate, was most usefully
+dark. Sarah Goldberg had, according to convention, left the postern gate on the
+latch, and at ten o’clock precisely I made my way up the cul-de-sac and
+cautiously turned the handle of the door. I confess that my heart beat somewhat
+uncomfortably in my bosom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had left Rochez and his barouche in the Rue des Pipots, about a hundred
+metres from the angle of the Passage Corneille, and it was along those hundred
+metres of a not altogether unfrequented street that he expected me presently to
+carry a possibly screaming and struggling burden in the very teeth of a
+gendarmerie always on the look-out for exciting captures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No, Sir; that was not to be! And it was with a resolute if beating heart that I
+presently felt the postern gate yielding to the pressure of my hand. The
+neighbouring church clock of St. Sulpice had just finished striking ten. I
+pushed open the gate and tip-toed across the threshold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the garden the boughs of a dilapidated old ash tree were soughing in the
+wind above my head, whilst from the top of the boundary wall the yarring and
+yowling of beasts of the feline species grated unpleasantly on my ear. I could
+not see my hand before my eyes, and had just stretched it out in order to guide
+my footsteps when it was seized with a kindly yet firm pressure, whilst a voice
+murmured softly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hush!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who is it?” I whispered in response.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is I&mdash;Sarah!” the voice replied. “Everything is all right, but Leah is
+unsuspecting. I am sure that if she suspected anything she would not set foot
+outside the door.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What shall we do?” I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wait here a moment quietly,” Sarah rejoined, speaking in a rapid whisper,
+“under cover of this wall. Within the next few minutes Leah will come out of
+the house. I have left my knitting upon a garden chair, and I will ask her to
+run out and fetch it. That will be your opportunity. The chair is in the angle
+of the wall, there,” she added, pointing to her right, “not three paces from
+where you are standing now. Leah has a white dress on. She will have to stoop
+in order to pick up the knitting. I have taken the precaution to entangle the
+wool in the leg of the chair, so she will be some few seconds entirely at your
+mercy. Have you a shawl?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had, of course, provided myself with one. A shawl is always a necessary
+adjunct to such adventures. Breathlessly, silently, I intimated to my kind
+accomplice that I would obey her behests and that I was prepared for every
+eventuality. The next moment her hold upon my hand relaxed, she gave another
+quickly-whispered “Hush!” and disappeared into the night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a second or two after that my ear caught the soft sound of her retreating
+footsteps, then nothing more. To say that I felt anxious and ill at ease was
+but to put it mildly. I was face to face with an adventure which might cost me
+at least five years’ acute discomfort in New Caledonia, but which might also
+bring me as rich a reward as could befall any man of modest ambitions: a lovely
+wife and a comfortable fortune. My whole life seemed to be hanging on a thread,
+and my overwrought senses seemed almost to catch the sound of the
+spinning-wheel of Fate weaving the web of my destiny.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A moment or two later I again caught the distinct sound of a gentle footfall
+upon the soft earth. My eyes by now were somewhat accustomed to the gloom. It
+was very dark, you understand; but through the darkness I saw something white
+moving slowly toward me. Then my heart thumped more furiously than ever before.
+I dared not breathe. I saw the lovely Leah approaching, or, rather, I felt her
+approach, for it was too dark to see. She moved in the direction which Sarah
+had indicated to me as being the place where stood the garden chair with the
+knitting upon it. I grasped the shawl. I was ready.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another few seconds of agonising suspense went by. The fair Leah had ceased to
+move. Undoubtedly she was engaged in disentangling the wool from the leg of the
+chair. That was my opportunity. More stealthy than any cat, I tiptoed toward
+the chair&mdash;and, indeed, at that moment I blessed the sudden yowl set up by
+some feline in its wrath which rent the still night air and effectually drowned
+any sound which I might make.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There, not three paces away from me, was the dim outline of the young girl’s
+form vaguely discernible in the gloom&mdash;a white mass, almost motionless,
+against a background of inky blackness. With a quick intaking of my breath I
+sprang forward, the shawl outspread in my hand, and with a quick dexterous
+gesture I threw it over her head, and the next second had her, faintly
+struggling, in my arms. She was as light as a feather, and I was as strong as a
+giant. Think of it, Sir! There was I, alone in the darkness, holding in my
+arms, together with a lovely form, a fortune of two hundred thousand francs!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of that fool Fernand Rochez I did not trouble to think. He had a barouche
+waiting <i>up</i> the Rue des Pipots, a hundred metres from the corner of the
+Passage Corneille, but I had a chaise and pair of horses waiting <i>down</i>
+that same street, and that now was my objective. Yes, Sir! I had arranged the
+whole thing! But I had done it for mine own advantage, not for that of the
+miserly friend who had been too great a coward to risk his own skin for the
+sake of his beloved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The guerdon was mine, and I was determined this time that no traitor or ingrate
+should filch from me the reward of my labours. With the thousand francs which
+Rochez had given me for my services I had engaged the chaise and horses, paid
+the coachman lavishly, and secured a cosy little apartment for my future wife
+in a pleasant hostelry I knew of at Suresnes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had taken the precaution to leave the wicket-gate on the latch. With my foot
+I pushed it open, and, keeping well under the cover of the tall convent wall, I
+ran swiftly to the corner of the Rue des Pipots. Here I paused a moment.
+Through the silence of the night my ear caught the faint sound of horses
+snorting and harness jingling in the distance, both sides from where I stood;
+but of gendarmes or passers-by there was no sign. Gathering up the full measure
+of my courage and holding my precious burden closer to my heart, I ran quickly
+down the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Within the next few seconds I had the seemingly inanimate maiden safely
+deposited in the inside of the barouche and myself sitting by her side. The
+driver cracked his whip, and whilst I, happy but exhausted, was mopping my
+streaming forehead the chaise rattled gaily along the uneven pavements of the
+great city in the direction of Suresnes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What that fool Rochez was doing I could not definitely ascertain. I looked
+through the vasistas of the coach, but could see nothing in pursuit of us. Then
+I turned my full attention to my lovely companion. It was pitch dark inside the
+carriage, you understand; only from time to time, as we drove past an
+overhanging street lanthorn, I caught a glimpse of that priceless bundle beside
+me, which lay there so still and so snug, still wrapped up in the shawl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With cautious, loving fingers I undid its folds. Under cover of the darkness
+the sweet and modest creature, released of her bonds, turned for an instant to
+me, and for a few, very few, happy seconds I held her in my arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have no fear, fair one,” I murmured in her ear. “It is I, Hector Ratichon, who
+adores you and who cannot live without you! Forgive me for this seeming
+violence, which was prompted by an undying passion, and remember that to me you
+are as sacred as a divinity until the happy hour when I can proclaim you to the
+world as my beloved wife!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I pressed her against my heart, and my lips imprinted a delicate kiss upon her
+forehead. After which, with chaste decorum, she once more turned away from me,
+covered her face and head with the shawl, and drew back into the remote corner
+of the carriage, where she remained, silent and absorbed, no doubt, in the
+contemplation of her happiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I respected her silence, and I, too, fell to meditating upon my good fortune.
+Here was I, Sir, within sight of a haven wherein I could live through the
+twilight of my days in comfort and in peace, a beautiful young wife, a modest
+fortune! I had never in my wildest dreams envisaged a Fate more fair. The
+little house at Chantilly which I coveted, the plot of garden, the espalier
+peaches&mdash;all, all would be mine now! It seemed indeed too good to be true!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The very next moment I was rudely awakened from those golden dreams by a loud
+clatter, and stern voices shouting the ominous word, “Halt!” The carriage drew
+up with such a jerk that I was flung off my seat against the front window and
+my nose seriously bruised. A faint cry of terror came from the precious bundle
+beside me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have no fear, my beloved,” I whispered hurriedly. “Your own Hector will
+protect you!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Already the door of the carriage had been violently torn open; the next moment
+a gruff voice called out peremptorily:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“By order of the Chief Commissary of Police!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was dumbfounded. In what manner had the Chief Commissary of Police been
+already apprised of this affair? The whole thing was, of course, a swift and
+vengeful blow dealt to me by that cowardly Rochez. But how, in the name of
+thunder, had he got to work so quickly? But, of course, there was no time now
+for reflection. The gruff voice was going on more peremptorily and more
+insistently:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is Hector Ratichon here?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was dumb. My throat had closed up, and I could not have uttered a sound to
+save my life. The police had even got my name quite straight!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now then, Ratichon,” that same irascible voice continued, “get out of there!
+In the name of the law I charge you with the abduction of a defenceless female,
+and my orders are to bring you forthwith before the Chief Commissary of
+Police.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then it was, Sir, that bliss once more re-entered my soul. I had just felt a
+small hand pressing something crisp into mine, whilst a soft voice whispered in
+my ear:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Give him this, and tell him to let you go in peace. Say that I am Mademoiselle
+Goldberg, your promised wife.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The feel of that crackling note in my hand at once restored my courage.
+Covering the lovely creature beside me with a protecting arm, I replied boldly
+to the minion of the law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This lady,” I said, “is my affianced wife. You, Sir Gendarme, are overstepping
+your powers. I demand that you let us proceed in peace.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My orders are&mdash;” the gendarme resumed; but already my sensitive ear had
+detected a faint wavering in the gruffness of his voice. The hectoring tone had
+gone out of it. I could not see him, of course, but somehow I felt that his
+attitude had become less arrogant and his glance more shifty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This gentleman has spoken the truth,” now came in soft, dulcet tones from
+under the shawl that wrapped the head of my beloved. “I am Mlle. Goldberg, M.
+le Gendarme, and I am travelling with M. Hector Ratichon entirely of my own
+free will, since I have promised him that I would be his wife.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah!” the gendarme ejaculated, obviously mollified.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If Mademoiselle is the fiancée of Monsieur, and is acting of her own free
+will&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is not for you to interfere, eh, my friend?” I broke in jocosely. “You will
+now let us proceed in peace, and for your trouble you will no doubt accept this
+token of my consideration.” And, groping in the darkness, I found the rough
+hand of the gendarme, and speedily pressed into it the crisp note which my
+adored one had given to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah!” he said, with very obvious gratification. “If Monsieur Ratichon will
+assure me that Mademoiselle here is indeed his affianced wife, then indeed it
+is not a case of abduction, and&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Abduction!” I retorted, flaring up in righteous indignation. “Who dares to use
+the word in connexion with this lovely lady? Mademoiselle Goldberg, I swear,
+will be Madame Ratichon within the next four and twenty hours. And the sooner
+you, Sir Gendarme, allow us to proceed on our way the less pain will you cause
+to this distressed and virtuous damsel.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This settled the whole affair quite comfortably. The gendarme shut the carriage
+door with a bang, and at my request gave the order to the driver to proceed.
+The latter once again cracked his whip, and once again the cumbrous vehicle,
+after an awkward lurch, rattled on its way along the cobblestones of the
+sleeping city.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once more I was alone with the priceless treasure by my side&mdash;alone and
+happy&mdash;more happy, I might say, than I had been before. Had not my adored
+one openly acknowledged her love for me and her desire to stand with me at the
+hymeneal altar? To put it vulgarly&mdash;though vulgarity in every form is
+repellent to me&mdash;she had burnt her boats. She had allowed her name to be
+coupled with mine in the presence of the minions of the law. What, after that,
+could her father do but give his consent to a union which alone would save his
+only child’s reputation from the cruelty of waggish tongues?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No doubt, Sir, that I was happy. True, that when the uncouth gendarme finally
+slammed to the door of our carriage and we restarted on our way, my ears had
+been unpleasantly tickled by the sound of prolonged and ribald
+laughter&mdash;laughter which sounded strangely and unpleasantly familiar. But
+after a few seconds’ serious reflection I dismissed the matter from my
+thoughts. If, as indeed I gravely suspected, it was Fernand Rochez who had
+striven thus to put a spoke in the wheel of my good fortune, he would certainly
+not have laughed when I drove triumphantly away with my conquered bride by my
+side. And, of course, my ears <i>must</i> have deceived me when they caught the
+sound of a girl’s merry laugh mingling with the more ribald one of the man.
+</p>
+
+<h3>4.</h3>
+
+<p>
+I have paused purposely, Sir, ere I embark upon the narration of the final
+stage of this, my life’s adventure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chaise was bowling along the banks of the river toward Suresnes. Presently
+the driver struck to his right and plunged into the fastnesses of the Bois de
+Boulogne. For a while, therefore, we were in utter darkness. My lovely
+companion neither moved nor spoke. Somewhere in the far distance a church clock
+struck eleven. One whole hour had gone by since first I had embarked on this
+great undertaking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was excited, feverish. The beautiful Leah’s silence and tranquillity grated
+upon my nerves. I could not understand how she could remain there so placid
+when her whole life’s happiness had so suddenly, so unexpectedly, been assured.
+I became more and more fidgety as time went on. Soon I felt that I could no
+longer hold myself in proper control. Being of an impulsive disposition, this
+tranquil acceptance of so great a joy became presently intolerable, and, unable
+to restrain my ardour any longer, I seized that passive bundle of loveliness in
+my arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have no fear,” I murmured once again, as I pressed her to my heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But my admonition was obviously unnecessary. The beautiful Leah showed not the
+slightest sign of fear. She rested her head against my shoulder and put one arm
+around my neck. I was in raptures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just then the vehicle swung out of the Bois and once more rattled upon the
+cobblestones. This time we were nearing Suresnes. A vague light, emanating from
+the lanthorns at the bridge-head, was already faintly visible ahead of us. Soon
+it grew brighter. The next moment we passed immediately beneath the lanthorns.
+The interior of the carriage was flooded with light . . . and, Sir, I gave a
+gasp of unadulterated dismay! The being whom I held in my arms, whose face was
+even at that moment raised up to my own, was not the lovely Leah! It was Sarah,
+Sir! Sarah Goldberg, the dour, angular aunt, whose yellow teeth gleamed for one
+brief moment through her thin lips as she threw me one of those glances of
+amorous welcome which invariably sent a cold shiver down my spine. Sarah
+Goldberg! I scarce could believe my eyes, and for a moment did indeed think
+that the elusive, swiftly-vanished light of the bridge-head lanthorns had
+played my excited senses a weird and cruel trick. But no! The very next second
+proved my disillusionment. Sarah spoke to me!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She spoke to me and laughed! Ah, she was happy, Sir! Happy in that she had
+completely and irrevocably tricked me! That traitor Fernand Rochez was up to
+the neck in the plot which had saddled me for ever with an ugly, elderly wife
+of dour mien and no fortune, while he and the lovely Leah were spinning the
+threads of perfect love at the other end of Paris and laughing their fill at my
+discomfiture. Think, Sir, what I suffered during those few brief minutes while
+the coach lurched through the narrow streets of Suresnes, and I had perforce to
+listen to the protestations of undying love from this unprepossessing female!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That love, she vowed, was her excuse, and everything, she asserted, was fair in
+love and war. She knew that after Rochez had attained his heart’s desire and
+carried off the lady of his choice&mdash;which he had successfully done half an
+hour before I myself made my way up the Passage Corneille&mdash;I would pass
+out of her life for ever. This she could not endure. Life at once would become
+intolerable. And, aided and abetted by Rochez and Leah, she had planned and
+contrived my mystification and won me by foul means, since she could not do so
+by fair; and it seemed as if her volubility then was the forecast of what my
+life with her would be in the future. Talk! Talk! Talk! She never ceased!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She told me the whole story of the abominable conspiracy against my liberty.
+Her brother, M. Goldberg, she explained, had determined upon remarriage. She,
+Sarah, felt that henceforth she would be in the way of everybody; she would
+have no home. Leah married to Rochez; a new and young Mme. Goldberg ruling in
+the old house of the Rue des Médecins! Ah, it was unthinkable!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I, Sir&mdash;I, Hector Ratichon&mdash;had, it appears, by my polite manners
+and prepossessing ways, induced this dour old maid to believe that she was not
+altogether indifferent to me. Ah, how I cursed my own charms, when I realised
+whither they had led me! It seems that it was that fickle jade Leah who first
+imagined the whole execrable plot. Rochez was to entrust me with the task of
+carrying off his beloved, and thus I would be tricked in the darkness into
+abducting Mlle. Goldberg senior from her home. Then some friends of Rochez
+arranged to play the comedy of false gendarmes, and again I was tricked into
+acknowledging Sarah as my affianced wife before independent witnesses. After
+that I could no longer repudiate mine honourable intentions, for if I did, then
+I should be arraigned before the law on a criminal charge of abduction. In this
+comedy of false gendarmes Rochez himself and the heartless Leah had joined with
+zest and laughed over my discomfiture, whilst the friends who played their
+rôles to such perfection had a paltry hundred francs each as the price of this
+infamous trick. Now my doom was sealed, and all that was left for me to do was
+to think disconsolately over my future.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I did bitterly reproach Sarah for her treachery and tried to still her
+protestations of love by pointing out to her that I had absolutely no fortune,
+and could only offer her a life of squalor, not to say of what. But this she
+knew, and vowed that penury by my side would make her happier than luxury
+beside any other man. Ah, Sir, ‘tis given to few men to arouse such selfless
+passion in a woman’s heart, and it hath oft been my dream in the past one day
+thus to be adored for myself alone!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But for the moment I was too deeply angered to listen placidly to Sarah’s vows
+of undying affection. My nerves were irritated by her fulsome adulation;
+indeed, I could not bear the sight of her nor yet the sound of her voice. You
+may imagine how thankful I was when the chaise came at last to a halt outside
+the humble little hostelry where I had engaged the room which I had so fondly
+hoped would have been occupied by the lovely and fickle Leah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I bundled Mlle. Goldberg senior into the house, and here again I had to endure
+galling mortification in the shape of sidelong glances cast at me and my future
+bride by the landlord of the hostelry and his ill-bred daughter. When I engaged
+the room I had very foolishly told them that it would be occupied by a lovely
+lady who had consented to be my wife, and that she would remain here in happy
+seclusion until such time as all arrangements for our wedding were complete.
+The humiliation of these vulgar people’s irony seemed like the last straw which
+overweighed my forbearance. The room and pension I had already paid two days in
+advance, so I had nothing more to say either to the ribald landlord or to Mlle.
+Goldberg senior. I was bitterly angered against her, and refused her the solace
+of a kindly look or of an encouraging pressure from my hand, even though she
+waited for both with the pathetic patience of an old spaniel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I re-entered the coach, which was to take me back to mine own humble lodgings
+in Passy. Here at least I was alone&mdash;alone with my gloomy thoughts. My
+heart was full of wrath against the woman who had so basely tricked me, and I
+viewed with dismay amounting almost to despair the prospect of spending the
+rest of my life in her company. That night I slept but little, nor yet the
+following night, or the night after that. Those days I spent in seclusion,
+thankful for my solitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Twice each day did Mlle. Goldberg come to my lodgings. In the foolish past I
+had somewhat injudiciously acquainted her of where I lived. Now she came and
+asked to be allowed to see me, but invariably did I refuse thus to gratify her.
+I felt that time alone would perhaps soften my feelings a little towards her.
+In the meanwhile I must commend her discretion and delicacy of procedure. She
+did not in any way attempt to molest me. When she was told by
+Theodore&mdash;whom I employed during the day to guard me against unwelcome
+visitors&mdash;that I refused to see her, she invariably went away without
+demur, nor did she refer in any way, either with adjurations or threats, to the
+impending wedding. Indeed, Sir, she was a lady of vast discretion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the third day, however, I received a visit from M. Goldberg himself. I could
+not refuse to see him. Indeed, he would not be denied, but roughly pushed
+Theodore aside, who tried to hinder him. He had come armed with a riding-whip,
+and nothing but mine own innate dignity saved me from outrage. He came, Sir,
+with a marriage licence for his sister and me in one pocket and with a
+denunciation to the police against me for abduction in another. He gave me the
+choice. What could I do, Sir? I was like a helpless babe in the hands of
+unscrupulous brigands!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marriage licence was for the following day&mdash;at the mairie of the
+eighth arrondissement first, and in the synagogue of the Rue des Halles
+afterwards. I chose the marriage licence. What could I do, Sir? I was helpless!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of my wedding day I have but a dim recollection. It was all hustle and bustle;
+from the mairie to the synagogue, and thence to the house of M. Goldberg in the
+Rue des Médecins. I must say that the old usurer received me and my bride with
+marked amiability. He was, I gathered, genuinely pleased that his sister had
+found happiness and a home by the side of an honourable man, seeing that he
+himself was on the point of contracting a fresh alliance with a Jewish lady of
+unsurpassed loveliness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of Rochez and Leah we saw nothing that day, and from one or two words which M.
+Goldberg let fall I concluded that he was greatly angered against his daughter
+because of her marriage with a fortune-hunting adventurer, who, he weirdly
+hinted, had already found quick and exemplary punishment for his crime. I was
+sincerely glad to hear this, even though I could not get M. Goldberg to explain
+in what that exemplary punishment consisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The climax came at six o’clock of that eventful afternoon, at the hour when I,
+with the newly-enthroned Mme. Ratichon on my arm, was about to take leave of M.
+Goldberg. I must admit that at that moment my heart was overflowing with
+bitterness. I had been led like a lamb to the slaughter; I had been made to
+look foolish and absurd in the midst of this Israelite community which I
+despised; I was saddled for the rest of my life with an unprepossessing elderly
+wife, who could do naught for me but share the penury, the hard crusts, the
+onion pies with me and Theodore. The only advantage I might ever derive from
+her was that she would darn my stockings, sew the buttons on my vests, and
+goffer the frills of my shirts!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was this not enough to turn any man’s naturally sweet disposition to gall? No
+doubt my mobile face betrayed something of the bitterness of my thoughts, for
+M. Goldberg at one moment slapped me vigorously on the back and bade me be of
+good cheer, as things were not so bad as I imagined. I was on the point of
+asking him what he meant when I saw another gentleman advancing toward me. His
+face, which was sallow and oily, bore a kind of obsequious smile; his clothes
+were of rusty black, and his features were markedly Jewish in character. He had
+some law papers under his arm, and he was perpetually rubbing his thin, bony
+hands together as if he were for ever washing them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Monsieur Hector Ratichon,” he said unctuously, “it is with much gratification
+that I bring you the joyful news.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Joyful news!&mdash;to me! Ah, Sir, the words struck at first with cruel irony
+upon mine ear. But not so a second later, for the Jewish gentleman went on
+speaking, and what he said appeared to my reeling senses like songs of angels
+from paradise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first I could not grasp his full meaning. A moment ago I had been in the
+depths of despair, and now&mdash;now&mdash;a whole vista of beatitude opened
+out before me! What the worthy Israelite said was that, by the terms of
+Grandpapa Goldberg’s will, if Leah married without her father’s consent,
+one-half of the fortune destined for her would revert to her aunt, Sarah
+Goldberg, now Madame Hector Ratichon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Can you wonder that I could scarce believe my ears? One-half that fortune meant
+that a hundred thousand francs would now become mine! M. Goldberg had already
+made it very clear to his daughter and to Rochez that he would never give his
+consent to their marriage, and, as this was now consummated, they had already
+forfeited one-half of the grandfather’s fortune in favour of my Sarah. That was
+the exemplary punishment which they were to suffer for their folly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But their folly&mdash;aye! and their treachery&mdash;had become my joy. In this
+moment of heavenly rapture I was speechless, but I turned to Sarah with loving
+arms outstretched, and the next instant she nestled against my heart like a
+joyful if elderly bird.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What is said of a people, Sir, is also true of the individual. Happy he who
+hath no history. Since that never-to-be-forgotten hour my life has run its
+simple, uneventful course here in this quiet corner of our beautiful France,
+with my pony and my dog and my chickens, and Mme. Ratichon to minister to my
+creature comforts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I bought this little property, Sir, soon after my marriage, and my office in
+the Rue Daunou knows me no more. You like the house, Sir? Ah, yes! And the
+garden? . . . After déjeuner you must see my prize chickens. Theodore will show
+them to you. You did not know Theodore was here? Well, yes! He lives with us.
+Madame Ratichon finds him useful about the house, and, not being used to
+luxuries, he is on the whole pleasantly contented.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah, here comes Madame Ratichon to tell us that the déjeuner is served! This
+way, Sir, under the porch. . . . After you!
+</p>
+
+<h3>THE END</h3>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12461 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #12461 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12461)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Castles in the Air, by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Castles in the Air
+
+Author: Baroness Emmuska Orczy
+
+Release Date: May 28, 2004 [eBook #12461]
+[Most recently updated: October 5, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
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+Produced by: Jim Tinsley and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASTLES IN THE AIR ***
+
+
+
+
+CASTLES IN THE AIR
+
+By Baroness Emmuska Orczy
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ FOREWORD
+ CASTLES IN THE AIR
+ CHAPTER I. — A ROLAND FOR HIS OLIVER
+ CHAPTER II. — A FOOL’S PARADISE
+ CHAPTER III. — ON THE BRINK
+ CHAPTER IV. — CARISSIMO
+ CHAPTER V. — THE TOYS
+ CHAPTER VI. — HONOUR AMONG——
+ CHAPTER VII. — AN OVER-SENSITIVE HEART
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+In presenting this engaging rogue to my readers, I feel that I owe
+them, if not an apology, at least an explanation for this attempt at
+enlisting sympathy in favour of a man who has little to recommend him
+save his own unconscious humour. In very truth my good friend Ratichon
+is an unblushing liar, thief, a forger—anything you will; his vanity is
+past belief, his scruples are non-existent. How he escaped a convict
+settlement it is difficult to imagine, and hard to realize that he
+died—presumably some years after the event recorded in the last chapter
+of his autobiography—a respected member of the community, honoured by
+that same society which should have raised a punitive hand against him.
+Yet this I believe to be the case. At any rate, in spite of close
+research in the police records of the period, I can find no mention of
+Hector Ratichon. “Heureux le peuple qui n’a pas d’histoire” applies,
+therefore, to him, and we must take it that Fate and his own sorely
+troubled country dealt lightly with him.
+
+Which brings me back to my attempt at an explanation. If Fate dealt
+kindly, why not we? Since time immemorial there have been worse
+scoundrels unhung than Hector Ratichon, and he has the saving grace—
+which few possess—of unruffled geniality. Buffeted by Fate, sometimes
+starving, always thirsty, he never complains; and there is all through
+his autobiography what we might call an “Ah, well!” attitude about his
+outlook on life. Because of this, and because his very fatuity makes us
+smile, I feel that he deserves forgiveness and even a certain amount of
+recognition.
+
+The fragmentary notes, which I have only very slightly modified, came
+into my hands by a happy chance one dull post-war November morning in
+Paris, when rain, sleet and the north wind drove me for shelter under
+the arcades of the Odéon, and a kindly vendor of miscellaneous printed
+matter and mouldy MSS. allowed me to rummage amongst a load of old
+papers which he was about to consign to the rubbish heap. I imagine
+that the notes were set down by the actual person to whom the genial
+Hector Ratichon recounted the most conspicuous events of his chequered
+career, and as I turned over the torn and musty pages, which hung
+together by scraps of mouldy thread, I could not help feeling the
+humour—aye! and the pathos—of that drabby side of old Paris which was
+being revealed to me through the medium of this rogue’s adventures. And
+even as, holding the fragments in my hand, I walked home that morning
+through the rain something of that same quaint personality seemed once
+more to haunt the dank and dreary streets of the once dazzling Ville
+Lumière. I seemed to see the shabby bottle-green coat, the nankeen
+pantaloons, the down-at-heel shoes of this “confidant of Kings”; I
+could hear his unctuous, self-satisfied laugh, and sensed his furtive
+footstep whene’er a gendarme came into view. I saw his ruddy, shiny
+face beaming at me through the sleet and the rain as, like a veritable
+squire of dames, he minced his steps upon the boulevard, or, like a
+reckless smuggler, affronted the grave dangers of mountain fastnesses
+upon the Juras; and I was quite glad to think that a life so full of
+unconscious humour had not been cut short upon the gallows. And I
+thought kindly of him, for he had made me smile.
+
+There is nothing fine about him, nothing romantic; nothing in his
+actions to cause a single thrill to the nerves of the most
+unsophisticated reader. Therefore, I apologize in that I have not held
+him up to a just obloquy because of his crimes, and I ask indulgence
+for his turpitudes because of the laughter which they provoke.
+
+EMMUSKA ORCZY. _Paris, 1921_.
+
+
+
+
+CASTLES IN THE AIR
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. — A ROLAND FOR HIS OLIVER
+
+1.
+
+My name is Ratichon—Hector Ratichon, at your service, and I make so
+bold as to say that not even my worst enemy would think of minimizing
+the value of my services to the State. For twenty years now have I
+placed my powers at the disposal of my country: I have served the
+Republic, and was confidential agent to Citizen Robespierre; I have
+served the Empire, and was secret factotum to our great Napoléon; I
+have served King Louis—with a brief interval of one hundred days— for
+the past two years, and I can only repeat that no one, in the whole of
+France, has been so useful or so zealous in tracking criminals, nosing
+out conspiracies, or denouncing traitors as I have been.
+
+And yet you see me a poor man to this day: there has been a
+persistently malignant Fate which has worked against me all these
+years, and would—but for a happy circumstance of which I hope anon to
+tell you—have left me just as I was, in the matter of fortune, when I
+first came to Paris and set up in business as a volunteer police agent
+at No. 96 Rue Daunou.
+
+My apartment in those days consisted of an antechamber, an outer office
+where, if need be, a dozen clients might sit, waiting their turn to
+place their troubles, difficulties, anxieties before the acutest brain
+in France, and an inner room wherein that same acute brain—mine, my
+dear Sir—was wont to ponder and scheme. That apartment was not
+luxuriously furnished—furniture being very dear in those days—but there
+were a couple of chairs and a table in the outer office, and a cupboard
+wherein I kept the frugal repast which served me during the course of a
+long and laborious day. In the inner office there were more chairs and
+another table, littered with papers: letters and packets all tied up
+with pink tape (which cost three sous the metre), and bundles of
+letters from hundreds of clients, from the highest and the lowest in
+the land, you understand, people who wrote to me and confided in me
+to-day as kings and emperors had done in the past. In the antechamber
+there was a chair-bedstead for Theodore to sleep on when I required him
+to remain in town, and a chair on which he could sit.
+
+And, of course, there was Theodore!
+
+Ah! my dear Sir, of him I can hardly speak without feeling choked with
+the magnitude of my emotion. A noble indignation makes me dumb.
+Theodore, sir, has ever been the cruel thorn that times out of number
+hath wounded my over-sensitive heart. Think of it! I had picked him out
+of the gutter! No! no! I do not mean this figuratively! I mean that,
+actually and in the flesh, I took him up by the collar of his tattered
+coat and dragged him out of the gutter in the Rue Blanche, where he was
+grubbing for trifles out of the slime and mud. He was frozen, Sir, and
+starved—yes, starved! In the intervals of picking filth up out of the
+mud he held out a hand blue with cold to the passers-by and
+occasionally picked up a sou. When I found him in that pitiable
+condition he had exactly twenty centimes between him and absolute
+starvation.
+
+And I, Sir Hector Ratichon, the confidant of two kings, three autocrats
+and an emperor, took that man to my bosom—fed him, clothed him, housed
+him, gave him the post of secretary in my intricate, delicate,
+immensely important business—and I did this, Sir, at a salary which, in
+comparison with his twenty centimes, must have seemed a princely one to
+him.
+
+His duties were light. He was under no obligation to serve me or to be
+at his post before seven o’clock in the morning, and all that he had to
+do then was to sweep out the three rooms, fetch water from the well in
+the courtyard below, light the fire in the iron stove which stood in my
+inner office, shell the haricots for his own mess of pottage, and put
+them to boil. During the day his duties were lighter still. He had to
+run errands for me, open the door to prospective clients, show them
+into the outer office, explain to them that his master was engaged on
+affairs relating to the kingdom of France, and generally prove himself
+efficient, useful and loyal—all of which qualities he assured me, my
+dear Sir, he possessed to the fullest degree. And I believed him, Sir;
+I nurtured the scorpion in my over-sensitive bosom! I promised him ten
+per cent. on all the profits of my business, and all the remnants from
+my own humble repasts—bread, the skins of luscious sausages, the bones
+from savoury cutlets, the gravy from the tasty carrots and onions. You
+would have thought that his gratitude would become boundless, that he
+would almost worship the benefactor who had poured at his feet the full
+cornucopia of comfort and luxury. Not so! That man, Sir, was a snake in
+the grass—a serpent—a crocodile! Even now that I have entirely severed
+my connexion with that ingrate, I seem to feel the wounds, like
+dagger-thrusts, which he dealt me with so callous a hand. But I have
+done with him—done, I tell you! How could I do otherwise than to send
+him back to the gutter from whence I should never have dragged him? My
+goodness, he repaid with an ingratitude so black that you, Sir, when
+you hear the full story of his treachery, will exclaim aghast.
+
+Ah, you shall judge! His perfidy commenced less than a week after I had
+given him my third best pantaloons and three sous to get his hair cut,
+thus making a man of him. And yet, you would scarcely believe it, in
+the matter of the secret documents he behaved toward me like a
+veritable Judas!
+
+Listen, my dear Sir.
+
+I told you, I believe, that I had my office in the Rue Daunou. You
+understand that I had to receive my clients—many of whom were of
+exalted rank—-in a fashionable quarter of Paris. But I actually lodged
+in Passy—being fond of country pursuits and addicted to fresh air—in a
+humble hostelry under the sign of the “Grey Cat”; and here, too,
+Theodore had a bed. He would walk to the office a couple of hours
+before I myself started on the way, and I was wont to arrive as soon
+after ten o’clock of a morning as I could do conveniently.
+
+On this memorable occasion of which I am about to tell you—it was
+during the autumn of 1815—I had come to the office unusually early, and
+had just hung my hat and coat in the outer room, and taken my seat at
+my desk in the inner office, there to collect my thoughts in
+preparation for the grave events which the day might bring forth, when,
+suddenly, an ill-dressed, dour-looking individual entered the room
+without so much as saying, “By your leave,” and after having pushed
+Theodore—who stood by like a lout—most unceremoniously to one side.
+Before I had time to recover from my surprise at this unseemly
+intrusion, the uncouth individual thrust Theodore roughly out of the
+room, slammed the door in his face, and having satisfied himself that
+he was alone with me and that the door was too solid to allow of
+successful eavesdropping, he dragged the best chair forward—the one,
+sir, which I reserve for lady visitors.
+
+He threw his leg across it, and, sitting astride, he leaned his elbows
+over the back and glowered at me as if he meant to frighten me.
+
+“My name is Charles Saurez,” he said abruptly, “and I want your
+assistance in a matter which requires discretion, ingenuity and
+alertness. Can I have it?”
+
+I was about to make a dignified reply when he literally threw the next
+words at me: “Name your price, and I will pay it!” he said.
+
+What could I do, save to raise my shoulders in token that the matter of
+money was one of supreme indifference to me, and my eyebrows in a
+manner of doubt that M. Charles Saurez had the means wherewith to repay
+my valuable services? By way of a rejoinder he took out from the inner
+pocket of his coat a greasy letter-case, and with his exceedingly grimy
+fingers extracted therefrom some twenty banknotes, which a hasty glance
+on my part revealed as representing a couple of hundred francs.
+
+“I will give you this as a retaining fee,” he said, “if you will
+undertake the work I want you to do; and I will double the amount when
+you have carried the work out successfully.”
+
+Four hundred francs! It was not lavish, it was perhaps not altogether
+the price I would have named, but it was very good, these hard times.
+You understand? We were all very poor in France in that year 1815 of
+which I speak.
+
+I am always quite straightforward when I am dealing with a client who
+means business. I pushed aside the litter of papers in front of me,
+leaned my elbows upon my desk, rested my chin in my hands, and said
+briefly:
+
+“M. Charles Saurez, I listen!”
+
+He drew his chair a little closer and dropped his voice almost to a
+whisper.
+
+“You know the Chancellerie of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?” he
+asked.
+
+“Perfectly,” I replied.
+
+“You know M. de Marsan’s private office? He is chief secretary to M. de
+Talleyrand.”
+
+“No,” I said, “but I can find out.”
+
+“It is on the first floor, immediately facing the service staircase,
+and at the end of the long passage which leads to the main staircase.”
+
+“Easy to find, then,” I remarked.
+
+“Quite. At this hour and until twelve o’clock, M. de Marsan will be
+occupied in copying a document which I desire to possess. At eleven
+o’clock precisely there will be a noisy disturbance in the corridor
+which leads to the main staircase. M. de Marsan, in all probability,
+will come out of his room to see what the disturbance is about. Will
+you undertake to be ready at that precise moment to make a dash from
+the service staircase into the room to seize the document, which no
+doubt will be lying on the top of the desk, and bring it to an address
+which I am about to give you?”
+
+“It is risky,” I mused.
+
+“Very,” he retorted drily, “or I’d do it myself, and not pay you four
+hundred francs for your trouble.”
+
+“Trouble!” I exclaimed, with withering sarcasm.
+
+“Trouble, you call it? If I am caught, it means penal servitude—New
+Caledonia, perhaps—”
+
+“Exactly,” he said, with the same irritating calmness; “and if you
+succeed it means four hundred francs. Take it or leave it, as you
+please, but be quick about it. I have no time to waste; it is past nine
+o’clock already, and if you won’t do the work, someone else will.”
+
+For a few seconds longer I hesitated. Schemes, both varied and wild,
+rushed through my active brain: refuse to take this risk, and denounce
+the plot to the police; refuse it, and run to warn M. de Marsan; refuse
+it, and— I had little time for reflection. My uncouth client was
+standing, as it were, with a pistol to my throat—with a pistol and four
+hundred francs! The police might perhaps give me half a louis for my
+pains, or they might possibly remember an unpleasant little incident in
+connexion with the forgery of some Treasury bonds which they have never
+succeeded in bringing home to me—one never knows! M. de Marsan might
+throw me a franc, and think himself generous at that!
+
+All things considered, then, when M. Charles Saurez suddenly said,
+“Well?” with marked impatience, I replied, “Agreed,” and within five
+minutes I had two hundred francs in my pocket, with the prospect of two
+hundred more during the next four and twenty hours. I was to have a
+free hand in conducting my own share of the business, and M. Charles
+Saurez was to call for the document at my lodgings at Passy on the
+following morning at nine o’clock.
+
+2.
+
+I flatter myself that I conducted the business with remarkable skill.
+At precisely ten minutes to eleven I rang at the Chancellerie of the
+Ministry for Foreign Affairs. I was dressed as a respectable
+commissionnaire, and I carried a letter and a small parcel addressed to
+M. de Marsan. “First floor,” said the concierge curtly, as soon as he
+had glanced at the superscription on the letter. “Door faces top of the
+service stairs.”
+
+I mounted and took my stand some ten steps below the landing, keeping
+the door of M. de Marsan’s room well in sight. Just as the bells of
+Notre Dame boomed the hour I heard what sounded like a furious
+altercation somewhere in the corridor just above me. There was much
+shouting, then one or two cries of “Murder!” followed by others of
+“What is it?” and “What in the name of ——— is all this infernal row
+about?” Doors were opened and banged, there was a general running and
+rushing along that corridor, and the next minute the door in front of
+me was opened also, and a young man came out, pen in hand, and shouting
+just like everybody else:
+
+“What the ——— is all this infernal row about?”
+
+“Murder, help!” came from the distant end of the corridor, and M. de
+Marsan—undoubtedly it was he—did what any other young man under the
+like circumstances would have done: he ran to see what was happening
+and to lend a hand in it, if need be. I saw his slim figure
+disappearing down the corridor at the very moment that I slipped into
+his room. One glance upon the desk sufficed: there lay the large
+official-looking document, with the royal signature affixed thereto,
+and close beside it the copy which M. de Marsan had only half
+finished—the ink on it was still wet. Hesitation, Sir, would have been
+fatal. I did not hesitate; not one instant. Three seconds had scarcely
+elapsed before I picked up the document, together with M. de Marsan’s
+half-finished copy of the same, and a few loose sheets of Chancellerie
+paper which I thought might be useful. Then I slipped the lot inside my
+blouse. The bogus letter and parcel I left behind me, and within two
+minutes of my entry into the room I was descending the service
+staircase quite unconcernedly, and had gone past the concierge’s lodge
+without being challenged. How thankful I was to breathe once more the
+pure air of heaven. I had spent an exceedingly agitated five minutes,
+and even now my anxiety was not altogether at rest. I dared not walk
+too fast lest I attracted attention, and yet I wanted to put the river,
+the Pont Neuf, and a half dozen streets between me and the Chancellerie
+of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. No one who has not gone through
+such an exciting adventure as I have just recorded can conceive what
+were my feelings of relief and of satisfaction when I at last found
+myself quietly mounting the stairs which led to my office on the top
+floor of No. 96 Rue Daunou.
+
+3.
+
+Now, I had not said anything to Theodore about this affair. It was
+certainly arranged between us when he entered my service as
+confidential clerk and doorkeeper that in lieu of wages, which I could
+not afford to pay him, he would share my meals with me and have a bed
+at my expense in the same house at Passy where I lodged; moreover, I
+would always give him a fair percentage on the profits which I derived
+from my business. The arrangement suited him very well. I told you that
+I picked him out of the gutter, and I heard subsequently that he had
+gone through many an unpleasant skirmish with the police in his day,
+and if I did not employ him no one else would.
+
+After all, he did earn a more or less honest living by serving me. But
+in this instance, since I had not even asked for his assistance, I felt
+that, considering the risks of New Caledonia and a convict ship which I
+had taken, a paltry four hundred francs could not by any stretch of the
+imagination rank as a “profit” in a business—and Theodore was not
+really entitled to a percentage, was he?
+
+So when I returned I crossed the ante-chamber and walked past him with
+my accustomed dignity; nor did he offer any comment on my get-up. I
+often affected a disguise in those days, even when I was not engaged in
+business, and the dress and get-up of a respectable commissionnaire was
+a favourite one with me. As soon as I had changed I sent him out to
+make purchases for our luncheon—five sous’ worth of stale bread, and
+ten sous’ worth of liver sausage, of which he was inordinately fond. He
+would take the opportunity on the way of getting moderately drunk on as
+many glasses of absinthe as he could afford. I saw him go out of the
+outer door, and then I set to work to examine the precious document.
+
+Well, one glance was sufficient for me to realize its incalculable
+value! Nothing more or less than a Treaty of Alliance between King
+Louis XVIII of France and the King of Prussia in connexion with certain
+schemes of naval construction. I did not understand the whole
+diplomatic verbiage, but it was pretty clear to my unsophisticated mind
+that this treaty had been entered into in secret by the two monarchs,
+and that it was intended to prejudice the interests both of Denmark and
+of Russia in the Baltic Sea.
+
+I also realized that both the Governments of Denmark and Russia would
+no doubt pay a very considerable sum for the merest glance at this
+document, and that my client of this morning was certainly a secret
+service agent—otherwise a spy—of one of those two countries, who did
+not choose to take the very severe risks which I had taken this
+morning, but who would, on the other hand, reap the full reward of the
+daring coup, whilst I was to be content with four hundred francs!
+
+Now, I am a man of deliberation as well as of action, and at this
+juncture—feeling that Theodore was still safely out of the way—I
+thought the whole matter over quietly, and then took what precautions I
+thought fit for the furthering of my own interests.
+
+To begin with, I set to work to make a copy of the treaty on my own
+account. I have brought the study of calligraphy to a magnificent
+degree of perfection, and the writing on the document was easy enough
+to imitate, as was also the signature of our gracious King Louis and of
+M. de Talleyrand, who had countersigned it.
+
+If you remember, I had picked up two or three loose sheets of paper off
+M. de Marsan’s desk; these bore the arms of the Chancellerie of Foreign
+Affairs stamped upon them, and were in every way identical with that on
+which the original document had been drafted. When I had finished my
+work I flattered myself that not the greatest calligraphic expert could
+have detected the slightest difference between the original and the
+copy which I had made.
+
+The work took me a long time. When at last I folded up the papers and
+slipped them once more inside my blouse it was close upon two. I
+wondered why Theodore had not returned with our luncheon, but on going
+to the little anteroom which divides my office from the outer door,
+great was my astonishment to see him lolling there on the rickety chair
+which he affectioned, and half asleep. I had some difficulty in rousing
+him. Apparently he had got rather drunk while he was out, and had then
+returned and slept some of his booze off, without thinking that I might
+be hungry and needing my luncheon.
+
+“Why didn’t you let me know you had come back?” I asked curtly, for
+indeed I was very cross with him.
+
+“I thought you were busy,” he replied, with what I thought looked like
+a leer.
+
+I have never really cared for Theodore, you understand.
+
+However, I partook of our modest luncheon with him in perfect amity and
+brotherly love, but my mind was busy all the time. I began to wonder if
+Theodore suspected something; if so, I knew that I could not trust him.
+He would try and ferret things out, and then demand a share in my
+hard-earned emoluments to which he was really not entitled. I did not
+feel safe with that bulky packet of papers on me, and I felt that
+Theodore’s bleary eyes were perpetually fixed upon the bulge in the
+left-hand side of my coat. At one moment he looked so strange that I
+thought he meant to knock me down.
+
+So my mind was quickly made up.
+
+After luncheon I would go down to my lodgings at Passy, and I knew of a
+snug little hiding-place in my room there where the precious documents
+would be quite safe until such time as I was to hand them—or one of
+them—to M. Charles Saurez.
+
+This plan I put into execution, and with remarkable ingenuity too.
+
+While Theodore was busy clearing up the debris of our luncheon, I not
+only gave him the slip, but as I went out I took the precaution of
+locking the outer door after me, and taking the key away in my pocket.
+I thus made sure that Theodore could not follow me. I then walked to
+Passy—a matter of two kilometres—and by four o’clock I had the
+satisfaction of stowing the papers safely away under one of the tiles
+in the flooring of my room, and then pulling the strip of carpet in
+front of my bed snugly over the hiding-place.
+
+Theodore’s attic, where he slept, was at the top of the house, whilst
+my room was on the ground floor, and so I felt that I could now go back
+quite comfortably to my office in the hope that more remunerative work
+and more lavish clients would come my way before nightfall.
+
+4.
+
+It was a little after five o’clock when I once more turned the key in
+the outer door of my rooms in the Rue Daunou.
+
+Theodore did not seem in the least to resent having been locked in for
+two hours. I think he must have been asleep most of the time. Certainly
+I heard a good deal of shuffling when first I reached the landing
+outside the door; but when I actually walked into the apartment with an
+air of quiet unconcern Theodore was sprawling on the chair-bedstead,
+with eyes closed, a nose the colour of beetroot, and emitting sounds
+through his thin, cracked lips which I could not, Sir, describe
+graphically in your presence.
+
+I took no notice of him, however, even though, as I walked past him, I
+saw that he opened one bleary eye and watched my every movement. I went
+straight into my private room and shut the door after me. And here, I
+assure you, my dear Sir, I literally fell into my favourite chair,
+overcome with emotion and excitement. Think what I had gone through!
+The events of the last few hours would have turned any brain less keen,
+less daring than that of Hector Ratichon. And here was I, alone at
+last, face to face with the future. What a future, my dear Sir! Fate
+was smiling on me at last. At last I was destined to reap a rich reward
+for all the skill, the energy, the devotion, which up to this hour I
+had placed at the service of my country and my King—or my Emperor, as
+the case might be—without thought of my own advantage. Here was I now
+in possession of a document—two documents—each one of which was worth
+at least a thousand francs to persons whom I could easily approach. One
+thousand francs! Was I dreaming? Five thousand would certainly be paid
+by the Government whose agent M. Charles Saurez admittedly was for one
+glance at that secret treaty which would be so prejudicial to their
+political interests; whilst M. de Marsan himself would gladly pay
+another five thousand for the satisfaction of placing the precious
+document intact before his powerful and irascible uncle.
+
+Ten thousand francs! How few were possessed of such a sum in these
+days! How much could be done with it! I would not give up business
+altogether, of course, but with my new capital I would extend it and,
+there was a certain little house, close to Chantilly, a house with a
+few acres of kitchen garden and some fruit trees, the possession of
+which would render me happier than any king. . . . I would marry! Oh,
+yes! I would certainly marry—found a family. I was still young, my dear
+Sir, and passably good looking. In fact there was a certain young
+widow, comely and amiable, who lived not far from Passy, who had on
+more than one occasion given me to understand that I was more than
+passably good looking. I had always been susceptible where the fair sex
+was concerned, and now . . . oh, now! I could pick and choose! The
+comely widow had a small fortune of her own, and there were others! . .
+.
+
+Thus I dreamed on for the better part of an hour, until, soon after six
+o’clock, there was a knock at the outer door and I heard Theodore’s
+shuffling footsteps crossing the small anteroom. There was some
+muttered conversation, and presently my door was opened and Theodore’s
+ugly face was thrust into the room.
+
+“A lady to see you,” he said curtly.
+
+Then, he dropped his voice, smacked his lips, and winked with one eye.
+“Very pretty,” he whispered, “but has a young man with her whom she
+calls Arthur. Shall I send them in?”
+
+I then and there made up my mind that I would get rid of Theodore now
+that I could afford to get a proper servant. My business would in
+future be greatly extended; it would become very important, and I was
+beginning to detest Theodore. But I said “Show the lady in!” with
+becoming dignity, and a few moments later a beautiful woman entered my
+room.
+
+I was vaguely conscious that a creature of my own sex walked in behind
+her, but of him I took no notice. I rose to greet the lady and invited
+her to sit down, but I had the annoyance of seeing the personage whom
+deliberately she called “Arthur” coming familiarly forward and leaning
+over the back of her chair.
+
+I hated him. He was short and stout and florid, with an
+impertinent-looking moustache, and hair that was very smooth and oily
+save for two tight curls, which looked like the horns of a young goat,
+on each side of the centre parting. I hated him cordially, and had to
+control my feelings not to show him the contempt which I felt for his
+fatuousness and his air of self-complacency. Fortunately the beautiful
+being was the first to address me, and thus I was able to ignore the
+very presence of the detestable man.
+
+“You are M. Ratichon, I believe,” she said in a voice that was dulcet
+and adorably tremulous, like the voice of some sweet, shy young thing
+in the presence of genius and power.
+
+“Hector Ratichon,” I replied calmly. “Entirely at your service,
+Mademoiselle.” Then I added, with gentle, encouraging kindliness,
+“Mademoiselle...?”
+
+“My name is Geoffroy,” she replied, “Madeleine Geoffroy.”
+
+She raised her eyes—such eyes, my dear Sir!—of a tender, luscious grey,
+fringed with lashes and dewy with tears. I met her glance. Something in
+my own eyes must have spoken with mute eloquence of my distress, for
+she went on quickly and with a sweet smile. “And this,” she said,
+pointing to her companion, “is my brother, Arthur Geoffroy.”
+
+An exclamation of joyful surprise broke from my lips, and I beamed and
+smiled on M. Arthur, begged him to be seated, which he refused, and
+finally I myself sat down behind my desk. I now looked with unmixed
+benevolence on both my clients, and then perceived that the lady’s
+exquisite face bore unmistakable signs of recent sorrow.
+
+“And now, Mademoiselle,” I said, as soon as I had taken up a position
+indicative of attention and of encouragement, “will you deign to tell
+me how I can have the honour to serve you?”
+
+“Monsieur,” she began in a voice that trembled with emotion, “I have
+come to you in the midst of the greatest distress that any human being
+has ever been called upon to bear. It was by the merest accident that I
+heard of you. I have been to the police; they cannot—will not—act
+without I furnish them with certain information which it is not in my
+power to give them. Then when I was half distraught with despair, a
+kindly agent there spoke to me of you. He said that you were attached
+to the police as a voluntary agent, and that they sometimes put work in
+your way which did not happen to be within their own scope. He also
+said that sometimes you were successful.”
+
+“Nearly always, Mademoiselle,” I broke in firmly and with much dignity.
+“Once more I beg of you to tell me in what way I may have the honour to
+serve you.”
+
+“It is not for herself, Monsieur,” here interposed M. Arthur, whilst a
+blush suffused Mlle. Geoffroy’s lovely face, “that my sister desires to
+consult you, but for her fiancé M. de Marsan, who is very ill indeed,
+hovering, in fact, between life and death. He could not come in person.
+The matter is one that demands the most profound secrecy.”
+
+“You may rely on my discretion, Monsieur,” I murmured, without showing,
+I flatter myself, the slightest trace of that astonishment which, at
+mention of M. de Marsan’s name, had nearly rendered me speechless.
+
+“M. de Marsan came to see me in utmost distress, Monsieur,” resumed the
+lovely creature. “He had no one in whom he could—or rather
+dared—confide. He is in the Chancellerie for Foreign Affairs. His uncle
+M. de Talleyrand thinks a great deal of him and often entrusts him with
+very delicate work. This morning he gave M. de Marsan a valuable paper
+to copy—a paper, Monsieur, the importance of which it were impossible
+to overestimate. The very safety of this country, the honour of our
+King, are involved in it. I cannot tell you its exact contents, and it
+is because I would not tell more about it to the police that they would
+not help me in any way, and referred me to you. How could they, said
+the chief Commissary to me, run after a document the contents of which
+they did not even know? But you will be satisfied with what I have told
+you, will you not, my dear M. Ratichon?” she continued, with a pathetic
+quiver in her voice and a look of appeal in her eyes which St. Anthony
+himself could not have resisted, “and help me to regain possession of
+that paper, the final loss of which would cost M. de Marsan his life.”
+
+To say that my feeling of elation of a while ago had turned to one of
+supreme beatitude would be to put it very mildly indeed. To think that
+here was this lovely being in tears before me, and that it lay in my
+power to dry those tears with a word and to bring a smile round those
+perfect lips, literally made my mouth water in anticipation—for I am
+sure that you will have guessed, just as I did in a moment, that the
+valuable document of which this adorable being was speaking, was snugly
+hidden away under the flooring of my room in Passy. I hated that
+unknown de Marsan. I hated this Arthur who leaned so familiarly over
+her chair, but I had the power to render her a service beside which
+their lesser claims on her regard would pale.
+
+However, I am not the man to act on impulse, even at a moment like
+this. I wanted to think the whole matter over first, and . . . well . .
+. I had made up my mind to demand five thousand francs when I handed
+the document over to my first client to-morrow morning. At any rate,
+for the moment I acted—if I may say so—with great circumspection and
+dignity.
+
+“I must presume, Mademoiselle,” I said in my most business-like manner,
+“that the document you speak of has been stolen.”
+
+“Stolen, Monsieur,” she assented whilst the tears once more gathered in
+her eyes, “and M. de Marsan now lies at death’s door with a terrible
+attack of brain fever, brought on by shock when he discovered the
+loss.”
+
+“How and when was it stolen?” I asked.
+
+“Some time during the morning,” she replied. “M. de Talleyrand gave the
+document to M. de Marsan at nine o’clock, telling him that he wanted
+the copy by midday. M. de Marsan set to work at once, laboured
+uninterruptedly until about eleven o’clock, when a loud altercation,
+followed by cries of ‘Murder!’ and of ‘Help!’ and proceeding from the
+corridor outside his door, caused him to run out of the room in order
+to see what was happening. The altercation turned out to be between two
+men who had pushed their way into the building by the main staircase,
+and who became very abusive to the gendarme who ordered them out. The
+men were not hurt; nevertheless they screamed as if they were being
+murdered. They took to their heels quickly enough, and I don’t know
+what has become of them, but . . .”
+
+“But,” I concluded blandly, “whilst M. de Marsan was out of the room
+the precious document was stolen.”
+
+“It was, Monsieur,” exclaimed Mlle. Geoffroy piteously. “You will find
+it for us . . . will you not?”
+
+Then she added more calmly: “My brother and I are offering ten thousand
+francs reward for the recovery of the document.”
+
+I did not fall off my chair, but I closed my eyes. The vision which the
+lovely lady’s words had conjured up dazzled me.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” I said with solemn dignity, “I pledge you my word of
+honour that I will find the document for you and lay it at your feet or
+die in your service. Give me twenty hours, during which I will move
+heaven and earth to discover the thief. I will go at once to the
+Chancellerie and collect what evidence I can. I have worked under M. de
+Robespierre, Mademoiselle, under the great Napoléon, and under the
+illustrious Fouché! I have never been known to fail, once I have set my
+mind upon a task.”
+
+“In that case you will earn your ten thousand francs, my friend,” said
+the odious Arthur drily, “and my sister and M. de Marsan will still be
+your debtors. Are there any questions you would like to ask before we
+go?”
+
+“None,” I said loftily, choosing to ignore his sneering manner. “If
+Mademoiselle deigns to present herself here to-morrow at two o’clock I
+will have news to communicate to her.”
+
+You will admit that I carried off the situation in a becoming manner.
+Both Mademoiselle and Arthur Geoffroy gave me a few more details in
+connexion with the affair. To these details I listened with well
+simulated interest. Of course, they did not know that there were no
+details in connexion with this affair that I did not know already. My
+heart was actually dancing within my bosom. The future was so
+entrancing that the present appeared like a dream; the lovely being
+before me seemed like an angel, an emissary from above come to tell me
+of the happiness which was in store for me. The house near
+Chantilly—the little widow—the kitchen garden—the magic words went on
+hammering in my brain. I longed now to be rid of my visitors, to be
+alone once more, so as to think out the epilogue of this glorious
+adventure. Ten thousand francs was the reward offered me by this
+adorable creature! Well, then, why should not M. Charles Saurez, on his
+side, pay me another ten thousand for the same document, which was
+absolutely undistinguishable from the first?
+
+Ten thousand, instead of two hundred which he had the audacity to offer
+me!
+
+Seven o’clock had struck before I finally bowed my clients out of the
+room. Theodore had gone. The lazy lout would never stay as much as five
+minutes after his appointed time, so I had to show the adorable
+creature and her fat brother out of the premises myself. But I did not
+mind that. I flatter myself that I can always carry off an awkward
+situation in a dignified manner. A brief allusion to the inefficiency
+of present-day servants, a jocose comment on my own simplicity of
+habits, and the deed was done. M. Arthur Geoffroy and Mademoiselle
+Madeleine his sister were half-way down the stairs. A quarter of an
+hour later I was once more out in the streets of Paris. It was a
+beautiful, balmy night. I had two hundred francs in my pocket and there
+was a magnificent prospect of twenty thousand francs before me! I could
+afford some slight extravagance. I had dinner at one of the fashionable
+restaurants on the quay, and I remained some time out on the terrace
+sipping my coffee and liqueur, dreaming dreams such as I had never
+dreamed before. At ten o’clock I was once more on my way to Passy.
+
+5.
+
+When I turned the corner of the street and came is sight of the squalid
+house where I lodged, I felt like a being from another world. Twenty
+thousand francs—a fortune!—was waiting for me inside those dingy walls.
+Yes, twenty thousand, for by now I had fully made up my mind. I had two
+documents concealed beneath the floor of my bedroom—one so like the
+other that none could tell them apart. One of these I would restore to
+the lovely being who had offered me ten thousand francs for it, and the
+other I would sell to my first and uncouth client for another ten
+thousand francs!
+
+Four hundred! Bah! Ten thousand shall you pay for the treaty, my friend
+of the Danish or Russian Secret Service! Ten thousand!—it is worth that
+to you!
+
+In that happy frame of mind I reached the front door of my dingy abode.
+Imagine my surprise on being confronted with two agents of police, each
+with fixed bayonet, who refused to let me pass.
+
+“But I lodge here,” I said.
+
+“Your name?” queried one of the men. “Hector Ratichon,” I replied.
+Whereupon they gave me leave to enter.
+
+It was very mysterious. My heart beat furiously. Fear for the safety of
+my precious papers held me in a death-like grip. I ran straight to my
+room, locked the door after me, and pulled the curtains together in
+front of the window. Then, with hands that trembled as if with ague, I
+pulled aside the strip of carpet which concealed the hiding-place of
+what meant a fortune to me.
+
+I nearly fainted with joy; the papers were there—quite safely. I took
+them out and replaced them inside my coat.
+
+Then I ran up to see if Theodore was in. I found him in bed. He told me
+that he had left the office whilst my visitors were still with me, as
+he felt terribly sick. He had been greatly upset when, about an hour
+ago, the maid-of-all-work had informed him that the police were in the
+house, that they would allow no one—except the persons lodging in the
+house—to enter it, and no one, once in, would be allowed to leave. How
+long these orders would hold good Theodore did not know.
+
+I left him moaning and groaning and declaring that he felt very ill,
+and I went in quest of information. The corporal in command of the
+gendarmes was exceedingly curt with me at first, but after a time he
+unbent and condescended to tell me that my landlord had been denounced
+for permitting a Bonapartiste club to hold its sittings in his house.
+So far so good. Such denunciations were very frequent these days, and
+often ended unpleasantly for those concerned, but the affair had
+obviously nothing to do with me. I felt that I could breathe again. But
+there was still the matter of the consigne. If no one, save the persons
+who lodged in the house, would be allowed to enter it, how would M.
+Charles Saurez contrive to call for the stolen document and,
+incidentally, to hand me over the ten thousand francs I was hoping for?
+And if no one, once inside the house, would be allowed to leave it, how
+could I meet Mlle. Geoffroy to-morrow at two o’clock in my office and
+receive ten thousand francs from her in exchange for the precious
+paper?
+
+Moreover the longer the police stayed in this house and poked their
+noses about in affairs that concerned hardworking citizens like
+myself—why—the greater the risk would be of the matter of the stolen
+document coming to light.
+
+It was positively maddening.
+
+I never undressed that night, but just lay down on my bed, thinking.
+The house was very still at times, but at others I could hear the tramp
+of the police agents up and down the stairs and also outside my window.
+The latter gave on a small, dilapidated back garden which had a wooden
+fence at the end of it. Beyond it were some market gardens belonging to
+a M. Lorraine. It did not take me very long to realize that that way
+lay my fortune of twenty thousand francs. But for the moment I remained
+very still. My plan was already made. At about midnight I went to the
+window and opened it cautiously. I had heard no noise from that
+direction for some time, and I bent my ear to listen.
+
+Not a sound! Either the sentry was asleep, or he had gone on his round,
+and for a few moments the way was free. Without a moment’s hesitation I
+swung my leg over the sill.
+
+Still no sound. My heart beat so fast that I could almost hear it. The
+night was very dark. A thin mist-like drizzle was falling; in fact the
+weather conditions were absolutely perfect for my purpose. With utmost
+wariness I allowed myself to drop from the window-ledge on to the soft
+ground below.
+
+If I was caught by the sentry I had my answer ready: I was going to
+meet my sweetheart at the end of the garden. It is an excuse which
+always meets with the sympathy of every true-hearted Frenchman. The
+sentry would, of course, order me back to my room, but I doubt if he
+would ill-use me; the denunciation was against the landlord, not
+against me.
+
+Still not a sound. I could have danced with joy. Five minutes more and
+I would be across the garden and over that wooden fence, and once more
+on my way to fortune. My fall from the window had been light, as my
+room was on the ground floor; but I had fallen on my knees, and now, as
+I picked myself up, I looked up, and it seemed to me as if I saw
+Theodore’s ugly face at his attic window. Certainly there was a light
+there, and I may have been mistaken as to Theodore’s face being
+visible. The very next second the light was extinguished and I was left
+in doubt.
+
+But I did not pause to think. In a moment I was across the garden, my
+hands gripped the top of the wooden fence, I hoisted myself up—with
+some difficulty, I confess—but at last I succeeded. I threw my leg over
+and gently dropped down on the other side.
+
+Then suddenly two rough arms encircled my waist, and before I could
+attempt to free myself a cloth was thrown over my head, and I was
+lifted up and carried away, half suffocated and like an insentient
+bundle.
+
+When the cloth was removed from my face I was half sitting, half lying,
+in an arm-chair in a strange room which was lighted by an oil lamp that
+hung from the ceiling above. In front of me stood M. Arthur Geoffroy
+and that beast Theodore.
+
+M. Arthur Geoffroy was coolly folding up the two valuable papers for
+the possession of which I had risked a convict ship and New Caledonia,
+and which would have meant affluence for me for many days to come.
+
+It was Theodore who had removed the cloth from my face. As soon as I
+had recovered my breath I made a rush for him, for I wanted to strangle
+him. But M. Arthur Geoffroy was too quick and too strong for me. He
+pushed me back into the chair.
+
+“Easy, easy, M. Ratichon,” he said pleasantly; “do not vent your wrath
+upon this good fellow. Believe me, though his actions may have deprived
+you of a few thousand francs, they have also saved you from lasting and
+biting remorse. This document, which you stole from M. de Marsan and so
+ingeniously duplicated, involved the honour of our King and our
+country, as well as the life of an innocent man. My sister’s fiancé
+would never have survived the loss of the document which had been
+entrusted to his honour.”
+
+“I would have returned it to Mademoiselle to-morrow,” I murmured.
+
+“Only one copy of it, I think,” he retorted; “the other you would have
+sold to whichever spy of the Danish or Russian Governments happened to
+have employed you in this discreditable business.”
+
+“How did you know?” I said involuntarily.
+
+“Through a very simple process of reasoning, my good M. Ratichon,” he
+replied blandly. “You are a very clever man, no doubt, but the
+cleverest of us is at times apt to make a mistake. You made two, and I
+profited by them. Firstly, after my sister and I left you this
+afternoon, you never made the slightest pretence of making inquiries or
+collecting information about the mysterious theft of the document. I
+kept an eye on you throughout the evening. You left your office and
+strolled for a while on the quays; you had an excellent dinner at the
+Restaurant des Anglais; then you settled down to your coffee and
+liqueur. Well, my good M. Ratichon, obviously you would have been more
+active in the matter if you had not known exactly where and when and
+how to lay your hands upon the document, for the recovery of which my
+sister had offered you ten thousand francs.”
+
+I groaned. I had not been quite so circumspect as I ought to have been,
+but who would have thought—
+
+“I have had something to do with police work in my day,” continued M.
+Geoffroy blandly, “though not of late years; but my knowledge of their
+methods is not altogether rusty and my powers of observation are not
+yet dulled. During my sister’s visit to you this afternoon I noticed
+the blouse and cap of a commissionnaire lying in a bundle in a corner
+of your room. Now, though M. de Marsan has been in a burning fever
+since he discovered his loss, he kept just sufficient presence of mind
+at the moment to say nothing about that loss to any of the Chancellerie
+officials, but to go straight home to his apartments in the Rue Royale
+and to send for my sister and for me. When we came to him he was
+already partly delirious, but he pointed to a parcel and a letter which
+he had brought away from his office. The parcel proved to be an empty
+box and the letter a blank sheet of paper; but the most casual inquiry
+of the concierge at the Chancellerie elicited the fact that a
+commissionaire had brought these things in the course of the morning.
+That was your second mistake, my good M. Ratichon; not a very grave
+one, perhaps, but I have been in the police, and somehow, the moment I
+caught sight of that blouse and cap in your office, I could not help
+connecting it with the commissionnaire who had brought a bogus parcel
+and letter to my future brother-in-law a few minutes before that
+mysterious and unexplained altercation took place in the corridor.”
+
+Again I groaned. I felt as a child in the hands of that horrid creature
+who seemed to be dissecting all the thoughts which had run riot through
+my mind these past twenty hours.
+
+“It was all very simple, my good M. Ratichon,” now concluded my
+tormentor still quite amiably. “Another time you will have to be more
+careful, will you not? You will also have to bestow more confidence
+upon your partner or servant. Directly I had seen that
+commissionnaire’s blouse and cap, I set to work to make friends with M.
+Theodore. When my sister and I left your office in the Rue Daunou, we
+found him waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs. Five francs
+loosened his tongue: he suspected that you were up to some game in
+which you did not mean him to have a share; he also told us that you
+had spent two hours in laborious writing, and that you and he both
+lodged at a dilapidated little inn, called the ‘Grey Cat,’ in Passy. I
+think he was rather disappointed that we did not shower more questions,
+and therefore more emoluments, upon him. Well, after I had denounced
+this house to the police as a Bonapartiste club, and saw it put under
+the usual consigne, I bribed the corporal of the gendarmerie in charge
+of it to let me have Theodore’s company for the little job I had in
+hand, and also to clear the back garden of sentries so as to give you a
+chance and the desire to escape. All the rest you know. Money will do
+many things, my good M. Ratichon, and you see how simple it all was. It
+would have been still more simple if the stolen document had not been
+such an important one that the very existence of it must be kept a
+secret even from the police. So I could not have you shadowed and
+arrested as a thief in the usual manner! However, I have the document
+and its ingenious copy, which is all that matters. Would to God,” he
+added with a suppressed curse, “that I could get hold equally easily of
+the Secret Service agent to whom you, a Frenchman, were going to sell
+the honour of your country!”
+
+Then it was that—though broken in spirit and burning with thoughts of
+the punishment I would mete out to Theodore—my full faculties returned
+to me, and I queried abruptly:
+
+“What would you give to get him?”
+
+“Five hundred francs,” he replied without hesitation. “Can you find
+him?”
+
+“Make it a thousand,” I retorted, “and you shall have him.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“Will you give me five hundred francs now,” I insisted, “and another
+five hundred when you have the man, and I will tell you?”
+
+“Agreed,” he said impatiently.
+
+But I was not to be played with by him again. I waited in silence until
+he had taken a pocket-book from the inside of his coat and counted out
+five hundred francs, which he kept in his hand.
+
+“Now—” he commanded.
+
+“The man,” I then announced calmly, “will call on me for the document
+at my lodgings at the hostelry of the ‘Grey Cat’ to-morrow morning at
+nine o’clock.”
+
+“Good,” rejoined M. Geoffroy. “We shall be there.”
+
+He made no demur about giving me the five hundred francs, but half my
+pleasure in receiving them vanished when I saw Theodore’s bleary eyes
+fixed ravenously upon them.
+
+“Another five hundred francs,” M. Geoffroy went on quietly, “will be
+yours as soon as the spy is in our hands.”
+
+I did get that further five hundred of course, for M. Charles Saurez
+was punctual to the minute, and M. Geoffroy was there with the police
+to apprehend him. But to think that I might have had twenty thousand—!
+
+And I had to give Theodore fifty francs on the transaction, as he
+threatened me with the police when I talked of giving him the sack.
+
+But we were quite good friends again after that until— But you shall
+judge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. — A FOOL’S PARADISE
+
+1.
+
+Ah! my dear Sir, I cannot tell you how poor we all were in France in
+that year of grace 1816—so poor, indeed, that a dish of roast pork was
+looked upon as a feast, and a new gown for the wife an unheard-of
+luxury.
+
+The war had ruined everyone. Twenty-two years! and hopeless humiliation
+and defeat at the end of it. The Emperor handed over to the English; a
+Bourbon sitting on the throne of France; crowds of foreign soldiers
+still lording it all over the country—until the country had paid its
+debts to her foreign invaders, and thousands of our own men still
+straggling home through Germany and Belgium—the remnants of Napoléon’s
+Grand Army—ex-prisoners of war, or scattered units who had found their
+weary way home at last, shoeless, coatless, half starved and perished
+from cold and privations, unfit for housework, for agriculture, or for
+industry, fit only to follow their fallen hero, as they had done
+through a quarter of a century, to victory and to death.
+
+With me, Sir, business in Paris was almost at a standstill. I, who had
+been the confidential agent of two kings, three democrats and one
+emperor; I, who had held diplomatic threads in my hands which had
+caused thrones to totter and tyrants to quake, and who had brought more
+criminals and intriguers to book than any other man alive—I now sat in
+my office in the Rue Daunou day after day with never a client to darken
+my doors, even whilst crime and political intrigue were more rife in
+Paris than they had been in the most corrupt days of the Revolution and
+the Consulate.
+
+I told you, I think, that I had forgiven Theodore his abominable
+treachery in connexion with the secret naval treaty, and we were the
+best of friends—that is, outwardly, of course. Within my inmost heart I
+felt, Sir, that I could never again trust that shameless traitor—that I
+had in very truth nurtured a serpent in my bosom. But I am proverbially
+tender-hearted. You will believe me or not, I simply could not turn
+that vermin out into the street. He deserved it! Oh, even he would have
+admitted when he was quite sober, which was not often, that I had every
+right to give him the sack, to send him back to the gutter whence he
+had come, there to grub once more for scraps of filth and to stretch a
+half-frozen hand to the charity of the passers by.
+
+But I did not do it, Sir. No, I did not do it. I kept him on at the
+office as my confidential servant; I gave him all the crumbs that fell
+from mine own table, and he helped himself to the rest. I made as
+little difference as I could in my intercourse with him. I continued to
+treat him almost as an equal. The only difference I did make in our
+mode of life was that I no longer gave him bed and board at the
+hostelry where I lodged in Passy, but placed the chair-bedstead in the
+anteroom of the office permanently at his disposal, and allowed him
+five sous a day for his breakfast.
+
+But owing to the scarcity of business that now came my way, Theodore
+had little or nothing to do, and he was in very truth eating his head
+off, and with that, grumble, grumble all the time, threatening to leave
+me, if you please, to leave my service for more remunerative
+occupation. As if anyone else would dream of employing such an
+out-at-elbows mudlark—a jail-bird, Sir, if you’ll believe me.
+
+Thus the Spring of 1816 came along. Spring, Sir, with its beauty and
+its promises, and the thoughts of love which come eternally in the
+minds of those who have not yet wholly done with youth. Love, Sir! I
+dreamed of it on those long, weary afternoons in April, after I had
+consumed my scanty repast, and whilst Theodore in the anteroom was
+snoring like a hog. At even, when tired out and thirsty, I would sit
+for a while outside a humble café on the outer boulevards, I watched
+the amorous couples wander past me on their way to happiness. At night
+I could not sleep, and bitter were my thoughts, my revilings against a
+cruel fate that had condemned me—a man with so sensitive a heart and so
+generous a nature—to the sorrows of perpetual solitude.
+
+That, Sir, was my mood, when on a never-to-be-forgotten afternoon
+toward the end of April, I sat mooning disconsolately in my private
+room and a timid rat-tat at the outer door of the apartment roused
+Theodore from his brutish slumbers. I heard him shuffling up to the
+door, and I hurriedly put my necktie straight and smoothed my hair,
+which had become disordered despite the fact that I had only indulged
+in a very abstemious déjeuner.
+
+When I said that the knock at my door was in the nature of a timid
+rat-rat I did not perhaps describe it quite accurately. It was timid,
+if you will understand me, and yet bold, as coming from one who might
+hesitate to enter and nevertheless feels assured of welcome. Obviously
+a client, I thought.
+
+Effectively, Sir, the next moment my eyes were gladdened by the sight
+of a lovely woman, beautifully dressed, young, charming, smiling but to
+hide her anxiety, trustful, and certainly wealthy.
+
+The moment she stepped into the room I knew that she was wealthy; there
+was an air of assurance about her which only those are able to assume
+who are not pestered with creditors. She wore two beautiful diamond
+rings upon her hands outside her perfectly fitting glove, and her
+bonnet was adorned with flowers so exquisitely fashioned that a
+butterfly would have been deceived and would have perched on it with
+delight.
+
+Her shoes were of the finest kid, shiny at the toes like tiny mirrors,
+whilst her dainty ankles were framed in the filmy lace frills of her
+pantalets.
+
+Within the wide brim of her bonnet her exquisite face appeared like a
+rosebud nestling in a basket. She smiled when I rose to greet her, gave
+me a look that sent my susceptible heart a-flutter and caused me to
+wish that I had not taken that bottle-green coat of mine to the Mont de
+Piété only last week. I offered her a seat, which she took, arranging
+her skirts about her with inimitable grace.
+
+“One moment,” I added, as soon as she was seated, “and I am entirely at
+your service.”
+
+I took up pen and paper—an unfinished letter which I always keep handy
+for the purpose—and wrote rapidly. It always looks well for a lawyer or
+an _agent confidentiel_ to keep a client waiting for a moment or two
+while he attends to the enormous pressure of correspondence which, if
+allowed to accumulate for five minutes, would immediately overwhelm
+him. I signed and folded the letter, threw it with a nonchalant air
+into a basket filled to the brim with others of equal importance,
+buried my face in my hands for a few seconds as if to collect my
+thoughts, and finally said:
+
+“And now, Mademoiselle, will you deign to tell me what procures me the
+honour of your visit?”
+
+The lovely creature had watched my movements with obvious impatience, a
+frown upon her exquisite brow. But now she plunged straightway into her
+story.
+
+“Monsieur,” she said with that pretty, determined air which became her
+so well, “my name is Estelle Bachelier. I am an orphan, an heiress, and
+have need of help and advice. I did not know to whom to apply. Until
+three months ago I was poor and had to earn my living by working in a
+milliner’s shop in the Rue St. Honoré. The concierge in the house where
+I used to lodge is my only friend, but she cannot help me for reasons
+which will presently be made clear to you. She told me, however, that
+she had a nephew named Theodore, who was clerk to M. Ratichon, advocate
+and confidential agent. She gave me your address; and as I knew no one
+else I determined to come and consult you.”
+
+I flatter myself, that though my countenance is exceptionally mobile, I
+possess marvellous powers for keeping it impassive when necessity
+arises. In this instance, at mention of Theodore’s name, I showed
+neither surprise nor indignation. Yet you will readily understand that
+I felt both. Here was that man, once more revealed as a traitor.
+Theodore had an aunt of whom he had never as much as breathed a word.
+He had an aunt, and that aunt a concierge—_ipso facto_, if I may so
+express it, a woman of some substance, who, no doubt, would often have
+been only too pleased to extend hospitality to the man who had so
+signally befriended her nephew; a woman, Sir, who was undoubtedly
+possessed of savings which both reason and gratitude would cause her to
+invest in an old-established and substantial business run by a
+trustworthy and capable man, such, for instance, as the bureau of a
+confidential agent in a good quarter of Paris, which, with the help of
+a little capital, could be rendered highly lucrative and beneficial to
+all those, concerned.
+
+I determined then and there to give Theodore a piece of my mind and to
+insist upon an introduction to his aunt. After which I begged the
+beautiful creature to proceed.
+
+“My father, Monsieur,” she continued, “died three months ago, in
+England, whither he had emigrated when I was a mere child, leaving my
+poor mother to struggle along for a livelihood as best she could. My
+mother died last year, Monsieur, and I have had a hard life; and now it
+seems that my father made a fortune in England and left it all to me.”
+
+I was greatly interested in her story.
+
+“The first intimation I had of it, Monsieur, was three months ago, when
+I had a letter from an English lawyer in London telling me that my
+father, Jean Paul Bachelier—that was his name, Monsieur—had died out
+there and made a will leaving all his money, about one hundred thousand
+francs, to me.”
+
+“Yes, yes!” I murmured, for my throat felt parched and my eyes dim.
+
+Hundred thousand francs! Ye gods!
+
+“It seems,” she proceeded demurely, “that my father put it in his will
+that the English lawyers were to pay me the interest on the money until
+I married or reached the age of twenty-one. Then the whole of the money
+was to be handed over to me.”
+
+I had to steady myself against the table or I would have fallen over
+backwards! This godlike creature, to whom the sum of one hundred
+thousand francs was to be paid over when she married, had come to me
+for help and advice! The thought sent my brain reeling! I am so
+imaginative!
+
+“Proceed, Mademoiselle, I pray you,” I contrived to say with dignified
+calm.
+
+“Well, Monsieur, as I don’t know a word of English, I took the letter
+to Mr. Farewell, who is the English traveller for Madame Cécile, the
+milliner for whom I worked. He is a kind, affable gentleman and was
+most helpful to me. He was, as a matter of fact, just going over to
+England the very next day. He offered to go and see the English lawyers
+for me, and to bring me back all particulars of my dear father’s death
+and of my unexpected fortune.”
+
+“And,” said I, for she had paused a moment, “did Mr. Farewell go to
+England on your behalf?”
+
+“Yes, Monsieur. He went and returned about a fortnight later. He had
+seen the English lawyers, who confirmed all the good news which was
+contained in their letter. They took, it seems, a great fancy to Mr.
+Farewell, and told him that since I was obviously too young to live
+alone and needed a guardian to look after my interests, they would
+appoint him my guardian, and suggested that I should make my home with
+him until I was married or had attained the age of twenty-one. Mr.
+Farewell told me that though this arrangement might be somewhat
+inconvenient in his bachelor establishment, he had been unable to
+resist the entreaties of the English lawyers, who felt that no one was
+more fitted for such onerous duties than himself, seeing that he was
+English and so obviously my friend.”
+
+“The scoundrel! The blackguard!” I exclaimed in an unguarded outburst
+of fury. . . .
+
+“Your pardon, Mademoiselle,” I added more calmly, seeing that the
+lovely creature was gazing at me with eyes full of astonishment not
+unmixed with distrust, “I am anticipating. Am I to understand, then,
+that you have made your home with this Mr. Farewell?”
+
+“Yes, Monsieur, at number sixty-five Rue des Pyramides.”
+
+“Is he a married man?” I asked casually.
+
+“He is a widower, Monsieur.”
+
+“Middle-aged?”
+
+“Quite elderly, Monsieur.”
+
+I could have screamed with joy. I was not yet forty myself.
+
+“Why!” she added gaily, “he is thinking of retiring from business—he
+is, as I said, a commercial traveller—in favour of his nephew, M.
+Adrien Cazalès.”
+
+Once more I had to steady myself against the table. The room swam round
+me. One hundred thousand francs!—a lovely creature!—an unscrupulous
+widower!—an equally dangerous young nephew. I rose and tottered to the
+window. I flung it wide open—a thing I never do save at moments of
+acute crises.
+
+The breath of fresh air did me good. I returned to my desk, and was
+able once more to assume my habitual dignity and presence of mind.
+
+“In all this, Mademoiselle,” I said in my best professional manner, “I
+do not gather how I can be of service to you.”
+
+“I am coming to that, Monsieur,” she resumed after a slight moment of
+hesitation, even as an exquisite blush suffused her damask cheeks. “You
+must know that at first I was very happy in the house of my new
+guardian. He was exceedingly kind to me, though there were times
+already when I fancied . . .”
+
+She hesitated—more markedly this time—and the blush became deeper on
+her cheeks. I groaned aloud.
+
+“Surely he is too old,” I suggested.
+
+“Much too old,” she assented emphatically.
+
+Once more I would have screamed with joy had not a sharp pang, like a
+dagger-thrust, shot through my heart.
+
+“But the nephew, eh?” I said as jocosely, as indifferently as I could.
+“Young M. Cazalès? What?”
+
+“Oh!” she replied with perfect indifference. “I hardly ever see him.”
+
+Unfortunately it were not seemly for an avocat and the _agent
+confidentiel_ of half the Courts of Europe to execute the measures of a
+polka in the presence of a client, or I would indeed have jumped up and
+danced with glee. The happy thoughts were hammering away in my mind:
+“The old one is much too old—the young one she never sees!” and I could
+have knelt down and kissed the hem of her gown for the exquisite
+indifference with which she had uttered those magic words: “Oh! I
+hardly ever see him!”—words which converted my brightest hopes into
+glowing possibilities.
+
+But, as it was, I held my emotions marvellously in check, and with
+perfect sang-froid once more asked the beauteous creature how I could
+be of service to her in her need.
+
+“Of late, Monsieur,” she said, as she raised a pair of limpid, candid
+blue eyes to mine, “my position in Mr. Farewell’s house has become
+intolerable. He pursues me with his attentions, and he has become
+insanely jealous. He will not allow me to speak to anyone, and has even
+forbidden M. Cazalès, his own nephew, the house. Not that I care about
+that,” she added with an expressive shrug of the shoulders.
+
+“He has forbidden M. Cazalès the house,” rang like a paean in my ear.
+“Not that she cares about that! Tra la, la, la, la, la!” What I
+actually contrived to say with a measured and judicial air was:
+
+“If you deign to entrust me with the conduct of your affairs, I would
+at once communicate with the English lawyers in your name and suggest
+to them the advisability of appointing another guardian. . . . I would
+suggest, for instance . . . er . . . that I . . .”
+
+“How can you do that, Monsieur?” she broke in somewhat impatiently,
+“seeing that I cannot possibly tell you who these lawyers are?”
+
+“Eh?” I queried, gasping.
+
+“I neither know their names nor their residence in England.”
+
+Once more I gasped. “Will you explain?” I murmured.
+
+“It seems, Monsieur, that while my dear mother lived she always refused
+to take a single sou from my father, who had so basely deserted her. Of
+course, she did not know that he was making a fortune over in England,
+nor that he was making diligent inquiries as to her whereabouts when he
+felt that he was going to die. Thus, he discovered that she had died
+the previous year and that I was working in the atelier of Madame
+Cécile, the well-known milliner. When the English lawyers wrote to me
+at that address they, of course, said that they would require all my
+papers of identification before they paid any money over to me, and so,
+when Mr. Farewell went over to England, he took all my papers with him
+and . . .”
+
+She burst into tears and exclaimed piteously:
+
+“Oh! I have nothing now, Monsieur—nothing to prove who I am! Mr.
+Farewell took everything, even the original letter which the English
+lawyers wrote to me.”
+
+“Farewell,” I urged, “can be forced by the law to give all your papers
+up to you.”
+
+“Oh! I have nothing now, Monsieur—he threatened to destroy all my
+papers unless I promised to become his wife! And I haven’t the least
+idea how and where to find the English lawyers. I don’t remember either
+their name or their address; and if I did, how could I prove my
+identity to their satisfaction? I don’t know a soul in Paris save a few
+irresponsible millinery apprentices and Madame Cécile, who, no doubt,
+is hand in glove with Mr. Farewell. I am all alone in the world and
+friendless. . . . I have come to you, Monsieur, in my distress . . .
+and you will help me, will you not?”
+
+She looked more adorable in grief than she had ever done before.
+
+To tell you that at this moment visions floated in my mind, before
+which Dante’s visions of Paradise would seem pale and tame, were but to
+put it mildly. I was literally soaring in heaven. For you see I am a
+man of intellect and of action. No sooner do I see possibilities before
+me than my brain soars in an empyrean whilst conceiving daring plans
+for my body’s permanent abode in elysium. At this present moment, for
+instance—to name but a few of the beatific visions which literally
+dazzled me with their radiance—I could see my fair client as a lovely
+and blushing bride by my side, even whilst Messieurs X. and X., the two
+still unknown English lawyers, handed me a heavy bag which bore the
+legend “One hundred thousand francs.” I could see . . . But I had not
+the time now to dwell on these ravishing dreams. The beauteous creature
+was waiting for my decision. She had placed her fate in my hands; I
+placed my hand on my heart.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” I said solemnly, “I will be your adviser and your
+friend. Give me but a few days’ grace, every hour, every minute of
+which I will spend in your service. At the end of that time I will not
+only have learned the name and address of the English lawyers, but I
+will have communicated with them on your behalf, and all your papers
+proving your identity will be in your hands. Then we can come to a
+decision with regard to a happier and more comfortable home for you. In
+the meanwhile I entreat you to do nothing that may precipitate Mr.
+Farewell’s actions. Do not encourage his advances, but do not repulse
+them, and above all keep me well informed of everything that goes on in
+his house.”
+
+She spoke a few words of touching gratitude, then she rose, and with a
+gesture of exquisite grace she extracted a hundred-franc note from her
+reticule and placed it upon my desk.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” I protested with splendid dignity, “I have done nothing
+as yet.”
+
+“Ah! but you will, Monsieur,” she entreated in accents that completed
+my subjugation to her charms. “Besides, you do not know me! How could I
+expect you to work for me and not to know if, in the end, I should
+repay you for all your trouble? I pray you to take this small sum
+without demur. Mr. Farewell keeps me well supplied with pocket money.
+There will be another hundred for you when you place the papers in my
+hands.”
+
+I bowed to her, and, having once more assured her of my unswerving
+loyalty to her interests, I accompanied her to the door, and anon saw
+her graceful figure slowly descend the stairs and then disappear along
+the corridor.
+
+Then I went back to my room, and was only just in time to catch
+Theodore calmly pocketing the hundred-franc note which my fair client
+had left on the table. I secured the note and I didn’t give him a black
+eye, for it was no use putting him in a bad temper when there was so
+much to do.
+
+2.
+
+That very same evening I interviewed the concierge at No. 65 Rue des
+Pyramides. From him I learned that Mr. Farewell lived on a very small
+income on the top floor of the house, that his household consisted of a
+housekeeper who cooked and did the work of the apartment for him, and
+an odd-job man who came every morning to clean boots, knives, draw
+water and carry up fuel from below. I also learned that there was a
+good deal of gossip in the house anent the presence in Mr. Farewell’s
+bachelor establishment of a young and beautiful girl, whom he tried to
+keep a virtual prisoner under his eye.
+
+The next morning, dressed in a shabby blouse, alpaca cap, and trousers
+frayed out round the ankles, I—Hector Ratichon, the confidant of
+kings—was lounging under the porte-cochere of No. 65 Rue des Pyramides.
+I was watching the movements of a man, similarly attired to myself, as
+he crossed and recrossed the courtyard to draw water from the well or
+to fetch wood from one of the sheds, and then disappeared up the main
+staircase.
+
+A casual, tactful inquiry of the concierge assured me that that man was
+indeed in the employ of Mr. Farewell.
+
+I waited as patiently and inconspicuously as I could, and at ten
+o’clock I saw that my man had obviously finished his work for the
+morning and had finally come down the stairs ready to go home. I
+followed him.
+
+I will not speak of the long halt in the cabaret du Chien Noir, where
+he spent an hour and a half in the company of his friends, playing
+dominoes and drinking eau-de-vie whilst I had perforce to cool my heels
+outside. Suffice it to say that I did follow him to his house just
+behind the fish-market, and that half an hour later, tired out but
+triumphant, having knocked at his door, I was admitted into the squalid
+room which he occupied.
+
+He surveyed me with obvious mistrust, but I soon reassured him.
+
+“My friend Mr. Farewell has recommended you to me,” I said with my
+usual affability. “I was telling him just awhile ago that I needed a
+man to look after my office in the Rue Daunou of a morning, and he told
+me that in you I would find just the man I wanted.”
+
+“Hm!” grunted the fellow, very sullenly I thought. “I work for Farewell
+in the mornings. Why should he recommend me to you? Am I not giving
+satisfaction?”
+
+“Perfect satisfaction,” I rejoined urbanely; “that is just the point.
+Mr. Farewell desires to do you a good turn seeing that I offered to pay
+you twenty sous for your morning’s work instead of the ten which you
+are getting from him.”
+
+I saw his eyes glisten at mention of the twenty sous.
+
+“I’d best go and tell him then that I am taking on your work,” he said;
+and his tone was no longer sullen now.
+
+“Quite unnecessary,” I rejoined. “I arranged everything with Mr.
+Farewell before I came to you. He has already found someone else to do
+his work, and I shall want you to be at my office by seven o’clock
+to-morrow morning. And,” I added, for I am always cautious and
+judicious, and I now placed a piece of silver in his hand, “here are
+the first twenty sous on account.”
+
+He took the money and promptly became very civil, even obsequious. He
+not only accompanied me to the door, but all the way down the stairs,
+and assured me all the time that he would do his best to give me entire
+satisfaction.
+
+I left my address with him, and sure enough, he turned up at the office
+the next morning at seven o’clock precisely.
+
+Theodore had had my orders to direct him in his work, and I was left
+free to enact the second scene of the moving drama in which I was
+determined to play the hero and to ring down the curtain to the sound
+of the wedding bells.
+
+3.
+
+I took on the work of odd-job man at 65 Rue des Pyramides. Yes, I! Even
+I, who had sat in the private room of an emperor discussing the
+destinies of Europe.
+
+But with a beautiful bride and one hundred thousand francs as my goal I
+would have worked in a coal mine or on the galleys for such a guerdon.
+
+The task, I must tell you, was terribly irksome to a man of my
+sensibilities, endowed with an active mind and a vivid imagination. The
+dreary monotony of fetching water and fuel from below and polishing the
+boots of that arch-scoundrel Farewell would have made a less stout
+spirit quail. I had, of course, seen through the scoundrel’s game at
+once. He had rendered Estelle quite helpless by keeping all her papers
+of identification and by withholding from her all the letters which, no
+doubt, the English lawyers wrote to her from time to time. Thus she was
+entirely in his power. But, thank heaven! only momentarily, for I,
+Hector Ratichon, argus-eyed, was on the watch. Now and then the
+monotony of my existence and the hardship of my task were relieved by a
+brief glimpse of Estelle or a smile of understanding from her lips; now
+and then she would contrive to murmur as she brushed past me while I
+was polishing the scoundrel’s study floor, “Any luck yet?” And this
+quiet understanding between us gave me courage to go on with my task.
+
+After three days I had conclusively made up my mind that Mr. Farewell
+kept his valuable papers in the drawer of the bureau in the study.
+After that I always kept a lump of wax ready for use in my pocket. On
+the fifth day I was very nearly caught trying to take an impression of
+the lock of the bureau drawer. On the seventh I succeeded, and took the
+impression over to a locksmith I knew of, and gave him an order to have
+a key made to fit it immediately. On the ninth day I had the key.
+
+Then commenced a series of disappointments and of unprofitable days
+which would have daunted one less bold and less determined. I don’t
+think that Farewell ever suspected me, but it is a fact that never once
+did he leave me alone in his study whilst I was at work there polishing
+the oak floor. And in the meanwhile I could see how he was pursuing my
+beautiful Estelle with his unwelcome attentions. At times I feared that
+he meant to abduct her; his was a powerful personality and she seemed
+like a little bird fighting against the fascination of a serpent.
+Latterly, too, an air of discouragement seemed to dwell upon her lovely
+face. I was half distraught with anxiety, and once or twice, whilst I
+knelt upon the hard floor, scrubbing and polishing as if my life
+depended on it, whilst he—the unscrupulous scoundrel—sat calmly at his
+desk, reading or writing, I used to feel as if the next moment I must
+attack him with my scrubbing-brush and knock him down senseless whilst
+I ransacked his drawers. My horror of anything approaching violence
+saved me from so foolish a step.
+
+Then it was that in the hour of my blackest despair a flash of genius
+pierced through the darkness of my misery. For some days now Madame
+Dupont, Farewell’s housekeeper, had been exceedingly affable to me.
+Every morning now, when I came to work, there was a cup of hot coffee
+waiting for me, and, when I left, a small parcel of something
+appetizing for me to take away.
+
+“Hallo!” I said to myself one day, when, over a cup of coffee, I caught
+sight of her small, piggy eyes leering at me with an unmistakable
+expression of admiration. “Does salvation lie where I least expected
+it?”
+
+For the moment I did nothing more than wink at the fat old thing, but
+the next morning I had my arm round her waist—a metre and a quarter,
+Sir, where it was tied in the middle—and had imprinted a kiss upon her
+glossy cheek. What that love-making cost me I cannot attempt to
+describe. Once Estelle came into the kitchen when I was staggering
+under a load of a hundred kilos sitting on my knee. The reproachful
+glance which she cast at me filled my soul with unspeakable sorrow.
+
+But I was working for her dear sake; working that I might win her in
+the end.
+
+A week later Mr. Farewell was absent from home for the evening. Estelle
+had retired to her room, and I was a welcome visitor in the kitchen,
+where Madame Dupont had laid out a regular feast for me. I had brought
+a couple of bottles of champagne with me and, what with the
+unaccustomed drink and the ogling and love-making to which I treated
+her, a hundred kilos of foolish womanhood was soon hopelessly addled
+and incapable. I managed to drag her to the sofa, where she remained
+quite still, with a beatific smile upon her podgy face, her eyes
+swimming in happy tears.
+
+I had not a moment to lose. The very next minute I was in the study and
+with a steady hand was opening the drawers of the bureau and turning
+over the letters and papers which I found therein.
+
+Suddenly an exclamation of triumph escaped my lips.
+
+I held a packet in my hand on which was written in a clear hand: “The
+papers of Mlle. Estelle Bachelier.” A brief examination of the packet
+sufficed. It consisted of a number of letters written in English, which
+language I only partially understand, but they all bore the same
+signature, “John Pike and Sons, solicitors,” and the address was at the
+top, “168 Cornhill, London.” It also contained my Estelle’s birth
+certificate, her mother’s marriage certificate, and her police
+registration card.
+
+I was rapt in the contemplation of my own ingenuity in having thus
+brilliantly attained my goal, when a stealthy noise in the next room
+roused me from my trance and brought up vividly to my mind the awful
+risks which I was running at this moment. I turned like an animal at
+bay to see Estelle’s beautiful face peeping at me through the half-open
+door.
+
+“Hist!” she whispered. “Have you got the papers?”
+
+I waved the packet triumphantly. She, excited and adorable, stepped
+briskly into the room.
+
+“Let me see,” she murmured excitedly.
+
+But I, emboldened by success, cried gaily:
+
+“Not till I have received compensation for all that I have done and
+endured.”
+
+“Compensation?”
+
+“In the shape of a kiss.”
+
+Oh! I won’t say that she threw herself in my arms then and there. No,
+no! She demurred. All young girls, it seems, demur under the
+circumstances; but she was adorable, coy and tender in turns, pouting
+and coaxing, and playing like a kitten till she had taken the papers
+from me and, with a woman’s natural curiosity, had turned the English
+letters over and over, even though she could not read a word of them.
+
+Then, Sir, in the midst of her innocent frolic and at the very moment
+when I was on the point of snatching the kiss which she had so
+tantalizingly denied me, we heard the opening and closing of the front
+door.
+
+Mr. Farewell had come home, and there was no other egress from the
+study save the sitting-room, which in its turn had no other egress but
+the door leading into the very passage where even now Mr. Farewell was
+standing, hanging up his hat and cloak on the rack.
+
+4.
+
+We stood hand in hand—Estelle and I—fronting the door through which Mr.
+Farewell would presently appear.
+
+“To-night we fly together,” I declared.
+
+“Where to?” she whispered.
+
+“Can you go to the woman at your former lodgings?”
+
+“Yes!”
+
+“Then I will take you there to-night. To-morrow we will be married
+before the Procureur du Roi; in the evening we leave for England.”
+
+“Yes, yes!” she murmured.
+
+“When he comes in I’ll engage him in conversation,” I continued
+hurriedly. “You make a dash for the door and run downstairs as fast as
+you can. I’ll follow as quickly as may be and meet you under the
+porte-cochere.”
+
+She had only just time to nod assent when the door which gave on the
+sitting-room was pushed open, and Farewell, unconscious at first of our
+presence, stepped quietly into the room.
+
+“Estelle,” he cried, more puzzled than angry when he suddenly caught
+sight of us both, “what are you doing here with that lout?”
+
+I was trembling with excitement—not fear, of course, though Farewell
+was a powerful-looking man, a head taller than I was. I stepped boldly
+forward, covering the adored one with my body.
+
+“The lout,” I said with calm dignity, “has frustrated the machinations
+of a knave. To-morrow I go to England in order to place Mademoiselle
+Estelle Bachelier under the protection of her legal guardians,
+Messieurs Pike and Sons, solicitors, of London.”
+
+He gave a cry of rage, and before I could retire to some safe
+entrenchment behind the table or the sofa, he was upon me like a mad
+dog. He had me by the throat, and I had rolled backwards down on to the
+floor, with him on the top of me, squeezing the breath out of me till I
+verily thought that my last hour had come. Estelle had run out of the
+room like a startled hare. This, of course, was in accordance with my
+instructions to her, but I could not help wishing then that she had
+been less obedient and somewhat more helpful.
+
+As it was, I was beginning to feel a mere worm in the grip of that
+savage scoundrel, whose face I could perceive just above me, distorted
+with passion, whilst hoarse ejaculations escaped his trembling lips:
+
+“You meddlesome fool! You oaf! You toad! This for your interference!”
+he added as he gave me a vigorous punch on the head.
+
+I felt my senses reeling. My head was swimming, my eyes no longer could
+see distinctly. It seemed as if an unbearable pressure upon my chest
+would finally squeeze the last breath out of my body.
+
+I was trying to remember the prayers I used to murmur at my mother’s
+knee, for verily I thought that I was dying, when suddenly, through my
+fading senses, came the sound of a long, hoarse cry, whilst the floor
+was shaken as with an earthquake. The next moment the pressure on my
+chest seemed to relax. I could hear Farewell’s voice uttering language
+such as it would be impossible for me to put on record; and through it
+all hoarse and convulsive cries of: “You shan’t hurt him—you limb of
+Satan, you!”
+
+Gradually strength returned to me. I could see as well as hear, and
+what I saw filled me with wonder and with pride. Wonder at Ma’ame
+Dupont’s pluck! Pride in that her love for me had given such power to
+her mighty arms! Aroused from her slumbers by the sound of the scuffle,
+she had run to the study, only to find me in deadly peril of my life.
+Without a second’s hesitation she had rushed on Farewell, seized him by
+the collar, pulled him away from me, and then thrown the whole weight
+of her hundred kilos upon him, rendering him helpless.
+
+Ah, woman! lovely, selfless woman! My heart a prey to remorse, in that
+I could not remain in order to thank my plucky deliverer, I
+nevertheless finally struggled to my feet and fled from the apartment
+and down the stairs, never drawing breath till I felt Estelle’s hand
+resting confidingly upon my arm.
+
+5.
+
+I took her to the house where she used to lodge, and placed her under
+the care of the kind concierge who was Theodore’s aunt. Then I, too,
+went home, determined to get a good night’s rest. The morning would be
+a busy one for me. There would be the special licence to get, the cure
+of St. Jacques to interview, the religious ceremony to arrange for, and
+the places to book on the stagecoach for Boulogne _en route_ for
+England—and fortune.
+
+I was supremely happy and slept the sleep of the just. I was up betimes
+and started on my round of business at eight o’clock the next morning.
+I was a little troubled about money, because when I had paid for the
+licence and given to the cure the required fee for the religious
+service and ceremony, I had only five francs left out of the hundred
+which the adored one had given me. However, I booked the seats on the
+stage-coach and determined to trust to luck. Once Estelle was my wife,
+all money care would be at an end, since no power on earth could stand
+between me and the hundred thousand francs, the happy goal for which I
+had so ably striven.
+
+The marriage ceremony was fixed for eleven o’clock, and it was just
+upon ten when, at last, with a light heart and springy step, I ran up
+the dingy staircase which led to the adored one’s apartments. I knocked
+at the door. It was opened by a young man, who with a smile courteously
+bade me enter. I felt a little bewildered—and slightly annoyed. My
+Estelle should not receive visits from young men at this hour. I pushed
+past the intruder in the passage and walked boldly into the room
+beyond.
+
+Estelle was sitting upon the sofa, her eyes bright, her mouth smiling,
+a dimple in each cheek. I approached her with outstretched arms, but
+she paid no heed to me, and turned to the young man, who had followed
+me into the room.
+
+“Adrien,” she said, “this is kind M. Ratichon, who at risk of his life
+obtained for us all my papers of identification and also the valuable
+name and address of the English lawyers.”
+
+“Monsieur,” added the young man as he extended his hand to me, “Estelle
+and I will remain eternally your debtors.”
+
+I struck at the hand which he had so impudently held out to me and
+turned to Estelle with my usual dignified calm, but with wrath
+expressed in every line of my face.
+
+“Estelle,” I said, “what is the meaning of this?”
+
+“Oh,” she retorted with one of her provoking smiles, “you must not call
+me Estelle, you know, or Adrien will smack your face. We are indeed
+grateful to you, my good M. Ratichon,” she continued more seriously,
+“and though I only promised you another hundred francs when your work
+for me was completed, my husband and I have decided to give you a
+thousand francs in view of the risks which you ran on our behalf.”
+
+“Your husband!” I stammered.
+
+“I was married to M. Adrien Cazalès a month ago,” she said, “but we had
+perforce to keep our marriage a secret, because Mr. Farewell once vowed
+to me that unless I became his wife he would destroy all my papers of
+identification, and then—even if I ever succeeded in discovering who
+were the English lawyers who had charge of my father’s money—I could
+never prove it to them that I and no one else was entitled to it. But
+for you, dear M. Ratichon,” added the cruel and shameless one, “I
+should indeed never have succeeded.”
+
+In the midst of this overwhelming cataclysm I am proud to say that I
+retained mastery over my rage and contrived to say with perfect calm:
+
+“But why have deceived me, Mademoiselle? Why have kept your marriage a
+secret from me? Was I not toiling and working and risking my life for
+you?”
+
+“And would you have worked quite so enthusiastically for me,” queried
+the false one archly, “if I had told you everything?”
+
+I groaned. Perhaps she was right. I don’t know.
+
+I took the thousand francs and never saw M. and Mme. Cazalès again.
+
+But I met Ma’ame Dupont by accident soon after. She has left Mr.
+Farewell’s service.
+
+She still weighs one hundred kilos.
+
+I often call on her of an evening.
+
+Ah, well!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. — ON THE BRINK
+
+1.
+
+You would have thought that after the shameful way in which Theodore
+treated me in the matter of the secret treaty that I would then and
+there have turned him out of doors, sent him back to grub for scraps
+out of the gutter, and hardened my heart once and for all against that
+snake in the grass whom I had nurtured in my bosom.
+
+But, as no doubt you have remarked ere this, I have been burdened by
+Nature with an over-sensitive heart. It is a burden, my dear Sir, and
+though I have suffered inexpressibly under it, I nevertheless agree
+with the English poet, George Crabbe, whose works I have read with a
+great deal of pleasure and profit in the original tongue, and who avers
+in one of his inimitable “Tales” that it is “better to love amiss than
+nothing to have loved.”
+
+Not that I loved Theodore, you understand? But he and I had shared so
+many ups and downs together of late that I was loath to think of him as
+reduced to begging his bread in the streets. Then I kept him by me, for
+I thought that he might at times be useful to me in my business.
+
+I kept him to my hurt, as you will presently see.
+
+In those days—I am now speaking of the time immediately following the
+Restoration of our beloved King Louis XVIII to the throne of his
+forbears—Parisian society was, as it were, divided into two distinct
+categories: those who had become impoverished by the revolution and the
+wars of the Empire, and those who had made their fortunes thereby.
+Among the former was M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, a handsome young
+officer of cavalry; and among the latter was one Mauruss Mosenstein, a
+usurer of the Jewish persuasion, whose wealth was reputed in millions,
+and who had a handsome daughter biblically named Rachel, who a year ago
+had become Madame la Marquise de Firmin-Latour.
+
+From the first moment that this brilliant young couple appeared upon
+the firmament of Parisian society I took a keen interest in all their
+doings. In those days, you understand, it was in the essence of my
+business to know as much as possible of the private affairs of people
+in their position, and instinct had at once told me that in the case of
+M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour such knowledge might prove very
+remunerative.
+
+Thus I very soon found out that M. le Marquis had not a single louis of
+his own to bless himself with, and that it was Papa Mosenstein’s
+millions that kept up the young people’s magnificent establishment in
+the Rue de Grammont.
+
+I also found out that Mme. la Marquise was some dozen years older than
+Monsieur, and that she had been a widow when she married him. There
+were rumours that her first marriage had not been a happy one. The
+husband, M. le Compte de Naquet, had been a gambler and a spendthrift,
+and had dissipated as much of his wife’s fortune as he could lay his
+hands on, until one day he went off on a voyage to America, or goodness
+knows where, and was never heard of again. Mme. la Comtesse, as she
+then was, did not grieve over her loss; indeed, she returned to the
+bosom of her family, and her father—a shrewd usurer, who had amassed an
+enormous fortune during the wars—succeeded, with the aid of his
+apparently bottomless moneybags, in having his first son-in-law
+declared deceased by Royal decree, so as to enable the beautiful Rachel
+to contract another, yet more brilliant alliance, as far as name and
+lineage were concerned, with the Marquis de Firmin-Latour.
+
+Indeed, I learned that the worthy Israelite’s one passion was the
+social advancement of his daughter, whom he worshipped. So, as soon as
+the marriage was consummated and the young people were home from their
+honeymoon, he fitted up for their use the most extravagantly sumptuous
+apartment Paris had ever seen. Nothing seemed too good or too luxurious
+for Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour. He desired her to cut a
+brilliant figure in Paris society—nay, to be the Ville Lumiere’s
+brightest and most particular star. After the town house he bought a
+chateau in the country, horses and carriages, which he placed at the
+disposal of the young couple; he kept up an army of servants for them,
+and replenished their cellars with the choicest wines. He threw money
+about for diamonds and pearls which his daughter wore, and paid all his
+son-in-law’s tailors’ and shirt-makers’ bills. But always the money was
+his, you understand? The house in Paris was his, so was the chateau on
+the Loire; he lent them to his daughter. He lent her the diamonds, and
+the carriages, and the boxes at the opera and the Français. But here
+his generosity ended. He had been deceived in his daughter’s first
+husband; some of the money which he had given her had gone to pay the
+gambling debts of an unscrupulous spendthrift. He was determined that
+this should not occur again. A man might spend his wife’s money—indeed,
+the law placed most of it at his disposal in those days—but he could
+not touch or mortgage one sou that belonged to his father-in-law. And,
+strangely enough, Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour acquiesced and
+aided her father in his determination. Whether it was the Jewish blood
+in her, or merely obedience to old Mosenstein’s whim, it were
+impossible to say. Certain it is that out of the lavish pin-money which
+her father gave her as a free gift from time to time, she only doled
+out a meagre allowance to her husband, and although she had everything
+she wanted, M. le Marquis on his side had often less than twenty francs
+in his pocket.
+
+A very humiliating position, you will admit, Sir, for a dashing young
+cavalry officer. Often have I seen him gnawing his finger-nails with
+rage when, at the end of a copious dinner in one of the fashionable
+restaurants—where I myself was engaged in a business capacity to keep
+an eye on possibly light-fingered customers—it would be Mme. la
+Marquise who paid the bill, even gave the pourboire to the waiter. At
+such times my heart would be filled with pity for his misfortunes, and,
+in my own proud and lofty independence, I felt that I did not envy him
+his wife’s millions.
+
+Of course, he borrowed from every usurer in the city for as long as
+they would lend him any money; but now he was up to his eyes in debt,
+and there was not a Jew inside France who would have lent him one
+hundred francs.
+
+You see, his precarious position was as well known as were his
+extravagant tastes and the obstinate parsimoniousness of M. Mosenstein.
+
+But such men as M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, you understand, Sir,
+are destined by Nature first and by fortuitous circumstances afterwards
+to become the clients of men of ability like myself. I knew that sooner
+or later the elegant young soldier would be forced to seek the advice
+of someone wiser than himself, for indeed his present situation could
+not last much longer. It would soon be “sink” with him, for he could no
+longer “swim.”
+
+And I was determined that when that time came he should turn to me as
+the drowning man turns to the straw.
+
+So where M. le Marquis went in public I went, when possible. I was
+biding my time, and wisely too, as you will judge.
+
+2.
+
+Then one day our eyes met: not in a fashionable restaurant, I may tell
+you, but in a discreet one situated on the slopes of Montmartre. I was
+there alone, sipping a cup of coffee after a frugal dinner. I had
+drifted in there chiefly because I had quite accidentally caught sight
+of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour walking arm-in-arm up the Rue Lepic
+with a lady who was both youthful and charming—a well-known dancer at
+the opera. Presently I saw him turn into that discreet little
+restaurant, where, in very truth, it was not likely that Mme. la
+Marquise would follow him. But I did. What made me do it, I cannot say;
+but for some time now it had been my wish to make the personal
+acquaintance of M. de Firmin-Latour, and I lost no opportunity which
+might help me to attain this desire.
+
+Somehow the man interested me. His social and financial position was
+peculiar, you will admit, and here, methought, was the beginning of an
+adventure which might prove the turning-point in his career and . . .
+my opportunity. I was not wrong, as you will presently see. Whilst
+silently eating my simple dinner, I watched M. de Firmin-Latour.
+
+He had started the evening by being very gay; he had ordered champagne
+and a succulent meal, and chatted light-heartedly with his companion,
+until presently three young women, flashily dressed, made noisy
+irruption into the restaurant.
+
+M. de Firmin-Latour’s friend hailed them, introduced them to him, and
+soon he was host, not to one lady, but to four, and instead of two
+dinners he had to order five, and more champagne, and then
+dessert—peaches, strawberries, bonbons, liqueurs, flowers, and what
+not, until I could see that the bill which presently he would be called
+upon to pay would amount to far more than his quarterly allowance from
+Mme. la Marquise, far more, presumably, than he had in his pocket at
+the present moment.
+
+My brain works with marvellous rapidity, as you know. Already I had
+made up my mind to see the little comedy through to the end, and I
+watched with a good deal of interest and some pity the clouds of
+anxiety gathering over M. de Firmin-Latour’s brow.
+
+The dinner party lasted some considerable time; then the inevitable
+cataclysm occurred. The ladies were busy chattering and rouging their
+lips when the bill was presented. They affected to see and hear
+nothing: it is a way ladies have when dinner has to be paid for; but I
+saw and heard everything. The waiter stood by, silent and obsequious at
+first, whilst M. le Marquis hunted through all his pockets. Then there
+was some whispered colloquy, and the waiter’s attitude lost something
+of its correct dignity. After that the proprietor was called, and the
+whispered colloquy degenerated into altercation, whilst the ladies—not
+at all unaware of the situation—giggled amongst themselves. Finally, M.
+le Marquis offered a promissory note, which was refused.
+
+Then it was that our eyes met. M. de Firmin-Latour had flushed to the
+roots of his hair. His situation was indeed desperate, and my
+opportunity had come. With consummate sang-froid, I advanced towards
+the agitated group composed of M. le Marquis, the proprietor, and the
+head waiter. I glanced at the bill, the cause of all this turmoil,
+which reposed on a metal salver in the head waiter’s hand, and with a
+brief:
+
+“If M. le Marquis will allow me . . .” I produced my pocket-book.
+
+The bill was for nine hundred francs.
+
+At first M. le Marquis thought that I was about to pay it—and so did
+the proprietor of the establishment, who made a movement as if he would
+lie down on the floor and lick my boots. But not so. To begin with, I
+did not happen to possess nine hundred francs, and if I did, I should
+not have been fool enough to lend them to this young scapegrace. No!
+What I did was to extract from my notebook a card, one of a series
+which I always keep by me in case of an emergency like the present one.
+It bore the legend: “Comte Hercule de Montjoie, secrétaire particulier
+de M. le Duc d’Otrante,” and below it the address, “Palais du
+Commissariat de Police, 12 Quai d’Orsay.” This card I presented with a
+graceful flourish of the arm to the proprietor of the establishment,
+whilst I said with that lofty self-assurance which is one of my finest
+attributes and which I have never seen equalled:
+
+“M. le Marquis is my friend. I will be guarantee for this trifling
+amount.”
+
+The proprietor and head waiter stammered excuses. Private secretary of
+M. le Duc d’Otrante! Think of it! It is not often that such personages
+deign to frequent the restaurants of Montmartre. M. le Marquis, on the
+other hand, looked completely bewildered, whilst I, taking advantage of
+the situation, seized him familiarly by the arm, and leading him toward
+the door, I said with condescending urbanity:
+
+“One word with you, my dear Marquis. It is so long since we have met.”
+
+I bowed to the ladies.
+
+“Mesdames,” I said, and was gratified to see that they followed my
+dramatic exit with eyes of appreciation and of wonder. The proprietor
+himself offered me my hat, and a moment or two later M. de
+Firmin-Latour and I were out together in the Rue Lepic.
+
+“My dear Comte,” he said as soon as he had recovered his breath, “how
+can I think you? . . .”
+
+“Not now, Monsieur, not now,” I replied. “You have only just time to
+make your way as quickly as you can back to your palace in the Rue de
+Grammont before our friend the proprietor discovers the several
+mistakes which he has made in the past few minutes and vents his wrath
+upon your fair guests.”
+
+“You are right,” he rejoined lightly. “But I will have the pleasure to
+call on you to-morrow at the Palais du Commissariat.”
+
+“Do no such thing, Monsieur le Marquis,” I retorted with a pleasant
+laugh. “You would not find me there.”
+
+“But—” he stammered.
+
+“But,” I broke in with my wonted business-like and persuasive manner,
+“if you think that I have conducted this delicate affair for you with
+tact and discretion, then, in your own interest I should advise you to
+call on me at my private office, No. 96 Rue Daunou. Hector Ratichon, at
+your service.”
+
+He appeared more bewildered than ever.
+
+“Rue Daunou,” he murmured. “Ratichon!”
+
+“Private inquiry and confidential agent,” I rejoined. “My brains are at
+your service should you desire to extricate yourself from the
+humiliating financial position in which it has been my good luck to
+find you, and yours to meet with me.”
+
+With that I left him, Sir, to walk away or stay as he pleased. As for
+me, I went quickly down the street. I felt that the situation was
+absolutely perfect; to have spoken another word might have spoilt it.
+Moreover, there was no knowing how soon the proprietor of that humble
+hostelry would begin to have doubts as to the identity of the private
+secretary of M. le Duc d’Otrante. So I was best out of the way.
+
+3.
+
+The very next day M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour called upon me at my
+office in the Rue Daunou. Theodore let him in, and the first thing that
+struck me about him was his curt, haughty manner and the look of
+disdain wherewith he regarded the humble appointments of my business
+premises. He himself was magnificently dressed, I may tell you. His
+bottle-green coat was of the finest cloth and the most perfect cut I
+had ever seen. His kerseymere pantaloons fitted him without a wrinkle.
+He wore gloves, he carried a muff of priceless zibeline, and in his
+cravat there was a diamond the size of a broad bean.
+
+He also carried a malacca cane, which he deposited upon my desk, and a
+gold-rimmed spy-glass which, with a gesture of supreme affectation, he
+raised to his eye.
+
+“Now, M. Hector Ratichon,” he said abruptly, “perhaps you will be good
+enough to explain.”
+
+I had risen when he entered. But now I sat down again and coolly
+pointed to the best chair in the room.
+
+“Will you give yourself the trouble to sit down, M. le Marquis?” I
+riposted blandly.
+
+He called me names—rude names! but I took no notice of that . . . and
+he sat down.
+
+“Now!” he said once more.
+
+“What is it you desire to know, M. le Marquis?” I queried.
+
+“Why you interfered in my affairs last night?”
+
+“Do you complain?” I asked.
+
+“No,” he admitted reluctantly, “but I don’t understand your object.”
+
+“My object was to serve you then,” I rejoined quietly, “and later.”
+
+“What do you mean by ‘later’?”
+
+“To-day,” I replied, “to-morrow; whenever your present position becomes
+absolutely unendurable.”
+
+“It is that now,” he said with a savage oath.
+
+“I thought as much,” was my curt comment.
+
+“And do you mean to assert,” he went on more earnestly, “that you can
+find a way out of it?”
+
+“If you desire it—yes!” I said.
+
+“How?”
+
+He drew his chair nearer to my desk, and I leaned forward, with my
+elbows on the table, the finger-tips of one hand in contact with those
+of the other.
+
+“Let us begin by reviewing the situation, shall we, Monsieur?” I began.
+
+“If you wish,” he said curtly.
+
+“You are a gentleman of refined, not to say luxurious tastes, who finds
+himself absolutely without means to gratify them. Is that so?”
+
+He nodded.
+
+“You have a wife and a father-in-law who, whilst lavishing costly
+treasures upon you, leave you in a humiliating dependence on them for
+actual money.”
+
+Again he nodded approvingly.
+
+“Human nature,” I continued with gentle indulgence, “being what it is,
+you pine after what you do not possess—namely, money. Houses,
+equipages, servants, even good food and wine, are nothing to you beside
+that earnest desire for money that you can call your own, and which, if
+only you had it, you could spend at your pleasure.”
+
+“To the point, man, to the point!” he broke in impatiently.
+
+“One moment, M. le Marquis, and I have done. But first of all, with
+your permission, shall we also review the assets in your life which we
+will have to use in order to arrive at the gratification of your
+earnest wish?”
+
+“Assets? What do you mean?”
+
+“The means to our end. You want money; we must find the means to get it
+for you.”
+
+“I begin to understand,” he said, and drew his chair another inch or
+two closer to me.
+
+“Firstly, M. le Marquis,” I resumed, and now my voice had become
+earnest and incisive, “firstly you have a wife, then you have a
+father-in-law whose wealth is beyond the dreams of humble people like
+myself, and whose one great passion in life is the social position of
+the daughter whom he worships. Now,” I added, and with the tip of my
+little finger I touched the sleeve of my aristocratic client, “here at
+once is your first asset. Get at the money-bags of papa by threatening
+the social position of his daughter.”
+
+Whereupon my young gentleman jumped to his feet and swore and abused me
+for a mudlark and a muckworm and I don’t know what. He seized his
+malacca cane and threatened me with it, and asked me how the devil I
+dared thus to speak of Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour. He cursed,
+and he stormed and he raved of his sixteen quarterings and of my
+loutishness. He did everything in fact except walk out of the room.
+
+I let him go on quite quietly. It was part of his programme, and we had
+to go through the performance. As soon as he gave me the chance of
+putting in a word edgeways I rejoined quietly:
+
+“We are not going to hurt Madame la Marquise, Monsieur; and if you do
+not want the money, let us say no more about it.”
+
+Whereupon he calmed down; after a while he sat down again, this time
+with his cane between his knees and its ivory knob between his teeth.
+
+“Go on,” he said curtly.
+
+Nor did he interrupt me again whilst I expounded my scheme to him—one
+that, mind you, I had evolved during the night, knowing well that I
+should receive his visit during the day; and I flatter myself that no
+finer scheme for the bleeding of a parsimonious usurer was ever devised
+by any man.
+
+If it succeeded—and there was no reason why it should not—M. de
+Firmin-Latour would pocket a cool half-million, whilst I, sir, the
+brain that had devised the whole scheme, pronounced myself satisfied
+with the paltry emolument of one hundred thousand francs, out of which,
+remember, I should have to give Theodore a considerable sum.
+
+We talked it all over, M. le Marquis and I, the whole afternoon. I may
+tell you at once that he was positively delighted with the plan, and
+then and there gave me one hundred francs out of his own meagre purse
+for my preliminary expenses.
+
+The next morning we began work.
+
+I had begged M. le Marquis to find the means of bringing me a few
+scraps of the late M. le Comte de Naquet’s—Madame la Marquise’s first
+husband—handwriting. This, fortunately, he was able to do. They were a
+few valueless notes penned at different times by the deceased gentleman
+and which, luckily for us all, Madame had not thought it worth while to
+keep under lock and key.
+
+I think I told you before, did I not? what a marvellous expert I am in
+every kind of calligraphy, and soon I had a letter ready which was to
+represent the first fire in the exciting war which we were about to
+wage against an obstinate lady and a parsimonious usurer.
+
+My identity securely hidden under the disguise of a commissionnaire, I
+took that letter to Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour’s sumptuous abode
+in the Rue de Grammont.
+
+M. le Marquis, you understand, had in the meanwhile been thoroughly
+primed in the rôle which he was to play; as for Theodore, I thought it
+best for the moment to dispense with his aid.
+
+The success of our first skirmish surpassed our expectations.
+
+Ten minutes after the letter had been taken upstairs to Mme. la
+Marquise, one of the maids, on going past her mistress’s door, was
+startled to hear cries and moans proceeding from Madame’s room. She
+entered and found Madame lying on the sofa, her face buried in the
+cushions, and sobbing and screaming in a truly terrifying manner. The
+maid applied the usual restoratives, and after a while Madame became
+more calm and at once very curtly ordered the maid out of the room.
+
+M. le Marquis, on being apprised of this mysterious happening, was much
+distressed; he hurried to his wife’s apartments, and was as gentle and
+loving with her as he had been in the early days of their honeymoon.
+But throughout the whole of that evening, and, indeed, for the next two
+days, all the explanation that he could get from Madame herself was
+that she had a headache and that the letter which she had received that
+afternoon was of no consequence and had nothing to do with her
+migraine.
+
+But clearly the beautiful Rachel was extraordinarily agitated. At night
+she did not sleep, but would pace up and down her apartments in a state
+bordering on frenzy, which of course caused M. le Marquis a great deal
+of anxiety and of sorrow.
+
+Finally, on the Friday morning it seemed as if Madame could contain
+herself no longer. She threw herself into her husband’s arms and
+blurted out the whole truth. M. le Comte de Naquet, her first husband,
+who had been declared drowned at sea, and therefore officially deceased
+by Royal decree, was not dead at all. Madame had received a letter from
+him wherein he told her that he had indeed suffered shipwreck, then
+untold misery on a desert island for three years, until he had been
+rescued by a passing vessel, and finally been able, since he was
+destitute, to work his way back to France and to Paris. Here he had
+lived for the past few months as best he could, trying to collect
+together a little money so as to render himself presentable before his
+wife, whom he had never ceased to love.
+
+Inquiries discreetly conducted had revealed the terrible truth, that
+Madame had been faithless to him, had light-heartedly assumed the death
+of her husband, and had contracted what was nothing less than a
+bigamous marriage. Now he, M. de Naquet, standing on his rights as
+Rachel Mosenstein’s only lawful husband, demanded that she should
+return to him, and as a prelude to a permanent and amicable
+understanding, she was to call at three o’clock precisely on the
+following Friday at No. 96 Rue Daunou, where their reconciliation and
+reunion was to take place.
+
+The letter announcing this terrible news and making this preposterous
+demand she now placed in the hands of M. le Marquis, who at first was
+horrified and thunderstruck, and appeared quite unable to deal with the
+situation or to tender advice. For Madame it meant complete social
+ruin, of course, and she herself declared that she would never survive
+such a scandal. Her tears and her misery made the loving heart of M. le
+Marquis bleed in sympathy. He did all he could to console and comfort
+the lady, whom, alas! he could no longer look upon as his wife. Then,
+gradually, both he and she became more composed. It was necessary above
+all things to make sure that Madame was not being victimized by an
+impostor, and for this purpose M. le Marquis generously offered himself
+as a disinterested friend and adviser. He offered to go himself to the
+Rue Daunou at the hour appointed and to do his best to induce M. le
+Comte de Naquet—if indeed he existed—to forgo his rights on the lady
+who had so innocently taken on the name and hand of M. le Marquis de
+Firmin-Latour. Somewhat more calm, but still unconsoled, the beautiful
+Rachel accepted this generous offer. I believe that she even found five
+thousand francs in her privy purse which was to be offered to M. de
+Naquet in exchange for a promise never to worry Mme. la Marquise again
+with his presence. But this I have never been able to ascertain with
+any finality. Certain it is that when at three o’clock on that same
+afternoon M. de Firmin-Latour presented himself at my office, he did
+not offer me a share in any five thousand francs, though he spoke to me
+about the money, adding that he thought it would look well if he were
+to give it back to Madame, and to tell her that M. de Naquet had
+rejected so paltry a sum with disdain.
+
+I thought such a move unnecessary, and we argued about it rather
+warmly, and in the end he went away, as I say, without offering me any
+share in the emolument. Whether he did put his project into execution
+or not I never knew. He told me that he did. After that there followed
+for me, Sir, many days, nay, weeks, of anxiety and of strenuous work.
+Mme. la Marquise received several more letters from the supposititious
+M. de Naquet, any one of which would have landed me, Sir, in a vessel
+bound for New Caledonia. The discarded husband became more and more
+insistent as time went on, and finally sent an ultimatum to Madame
+saying that he was tired of perpetual interviews with M. le Marquis de
+Firmin-Latour, whose right to interfere in the matter he now wholly
+denied, and that he was quite determined to claim his lawful wife
+before the whole world.
+
+Madame la Marquise, in the meanwhile, had passed from one fit of
+hysterics into another. She denied her door to everyone and lived in
+the strictest seclusion in her beautiful apartment of the Rue de
+Grammont. Fortunately this all occurred in the early autumn, when the
+absence of such a society star from fashionable gatherings was not as
+noticeable as it otherwise would have been. But clearly we were working
+up for the climax, which occurred in the way I am about to relate.
+
+4.
+
+Ah, my dear Sir, when after all these years I think of my adventure
+with that abominable Marquis, righteous and noble indignation almost
+strikes me dumb. To think that with my own hands and brains I literally
+put half a million into that man’s pocket, and that he repaid me with
+the basest ingratitude, almost makes me lose my faith in human nature.
+Theodore, of course, I could punish, and did so adequately; and where
+my chastisement failed, Fate herself put the finishing touch.
+
+But M. de Firmin-Latour . . .!
+
+However, you shall judge for yourself.
+
+As I told you, we now made ready for the climax; and that climax, Sir,
+I can only describe as positively gorgeous. We began by presuming that
+Mme. la Marquise had now grown tired of incessant demands for
+interviews and small doles of money, and that she would be willing to
+offer a considerable sum to her first and only lawful husband in
+exchange for a firm guarantee that he would never trouble her again as
+long as she lived.
+
+We fixed the sum at half a million francs, and the guarantee was to
+take the form of a deed duly executed by a notary of repute and signed
+by the supposititious Comte de Naquet. A letter embodying the demand
+and offering the guarantee was thereupon duly sent to Mme. la Marquise,
+and she, after the usual attack of hysterics, duly confided the matter
+to M. de Firmin-Latour.
+
+The consultation between husband and wife on the deplorable subject was
+touching in the extreme; and I will give that abominable Marquis credit
+for playing his rôle in a masterly manner. At first he declared to his
+dear Rachel that he did not know what to suggest, for in truth she had
+nothing like half a million on which she could lay her hands. To speak
+of this awful pending scandal to Papa Mosenstein was not to be thought
+of. He was capable of repudiating the daughter altogether who was
+bringing such obloquy upon herself and would henceforth be of no use to
+him as a society star.
+
+As for himself in this terrible emergency, he, of course, had less than
+nothing, or his entire fortune would be placed—if he had one—at the
+feet of his beloved Rachel. To think that he was on the point of losing
+her was more than he could bear, and the idea that she would soon
+become the talk of every gossip-monger in society, and mayhap be put in
+prison for bigamy, wellnigh drove him crazy.
+
+What could be done in this awful perplexity he for one could not think,
+unless indeed his dear Rachel were willing to part with some of her
+jewellery; but no! he could not think of allowing her to make such a
+sacrifice.
+
+Whereupon Madame, like a drowning man, or rather woman, catching at a
+straw, bethought her of her emeralds. They were historic gems, once the
+property of the Empress Marie-Thérèse, and had been given to her on her
+second marriage by her adoring father. No, no! she would never miss
+them; she seldom wore them, for they were heavy and more valuable than
+elegant, and she was quite sure that at the Mont de Piété they would
+lend her five hundred thousand francs on them. Then gradually they
+could be redeemed before papa had become aware of their temporary
+disappearance. Madame would save the money out of the liberal allowance
+she received from him for pin-money. Anything, anything was preferable
+to this awful doom which hung over her head.
+
+But even so M. le Marquis demurred. The thought of his proud and
+fashionable Rachel going to the Mont de Piété to pawn her own jewels
+was not to be thought of. She would be seen, recognized, and the
+scandal would be as bad and worse than anything that loomed on the
+black horizon of her fate at this hour.
+
+What was to be done? What was to be done?
+
+Then M. le Marquis had a brilliant idea. He knew of a man, a very
+reliable, trustworthy man, attorney-at-law by profession, and therefore
+a man of repute, who was often obliged in the exercise of his
+profession to don various disguises when tracking criminals in the
+outlying quarters of Paris. M. le Marquis, putting all pride and
+dignity nobly aside in the interests of his adored Rachel, would borrow
+one of these disguises and himself go to the Mont de Piété with the
+emeralds, obtain the five hundred thousand francs, and remit them to
+the man whom he hated most in all the world, in exchange for the
+aforementioned guarantee.
+
+Madame la Marquise, overcome with gratitude, threw herself, in the
+midst of a flood of tears, into the arms of the man whom she no longer
+dared to call her husband, and so the matter was settled for the
+moment. M. le Marquis undertook to have the deed of guarantee drafted
+by the same notary of repute whom he knew, and, if Madame approved of
+it, the emeralds would then be converted into money, and the interview
+with M. le Comte de Naquet fixed for Wednesday, October 10th, at some
+convenient place, subsequently to be determined on—in all probability
+at the bureau of that same ubiquitous attorney-at-law, M. Hector
+Ratichon, at 96 Rue Daunon.
+
+All was going on excellently well, as you observe. I duly drafted the
+deed, and M. de Firmin-Latour showed it to Madame for her approval. It
+was so simply and so comprehensively worded that she expressed herself
+thoroughly satisfied with it, whereupon M. le Marquis asked her to
+write to her shameful persecutor in order to fix the date and hour for
+the exchange of the money against the deed duly signed and witnessed.
+M. le Marquis had always been the intermediary for her letters, you
+understand, and for the small sums of money which she had sent from
+time to time to the factitious M. de Naquet; now he was to be entrusted
+with the final negotiations which, though at a heavy cost, would bring
+security and happiness once more in the sumptuous palace of the Rue de
+Grammont.
+
+Then it was that the first little hitch occurred. Mme. la
+Marquise—whether prompted thereto by a faint breath of suspicion, or
+merely by natural curiosity—altered her mind about the appointment. She
+decided that M. le Marquis, having pledged the emeralds, should bring
+the money to her, and she herself would go to the bureau of M. Hector
+Ratichon in the Rue Daunou, there to meet M. de Naquet, whom she had
+not seen for seven years, but who had once been very dear to her, and
+herself fling in his face the five hundred thousand francs, the price
+of his silence and of her peace of mind.
+
+At once, as you perceive, the situation became delicate. To have
+demurred, or uttered more than a casual word of objection, would in the
+case of M. le Marquis have been highly impolitic. He felt that at once,
+the moment he raised his voice in protest: and when Madame declared
+herself determined he immediately gave up arguing the point.
+
+The trouble was that we had so very little time wherein to formulate
+new plans. Monsieur was to go the very next morning to the Mont de
+Piété to negotiate the emeralds, and the interview with the fabulous M.
+de Naquet was to take place a couple of hours later; and it was now
+three o’clock in the afternoon.
+
+As soon as M. de Firmin-Latour was able to leave his wife, he came
+round to my office. He appeared completely at his wits’ end, not
+knowing what to do.
+
+“If my wife,” he said, “insists on a personal interview with de Naquet,
+who does not exist, our entire scheme falls to the ground. Nay, worse!
+for I shall be driven to concoct some impossible explanation for the
+non-appearance of that worthy, and heaven only knows if I shall succeed
+in wholly allaying my wife’s suspicions.
+
+“Ah!” he added with a sigh, “it is doubly hard to have seen fortune so
+near one’s reach and then to see it dashed away at one fell swoop by
+the relentless hand of Fate.”
+
+Not one word, you observe, of gratitude to me or of recognition of the
+subtle mind that had planned and devised the whole scheme.
+
+But, Sir, it is at the hour of supreme crises like the present one that
+Hector Ratichon’s genius soars up to the empyrean. It became great,
+Sir; nothing short of great; and even the marvellous schemes of the
+Italian Macchiavelli paled before the ingenuity which I now displayed.
+
+Half an hour’s reflection had sufficed. I had made my plans, and I had
+measured the full length of the terrible risks which I ran. Among these
+New Caledonia was the least. But I chose to take the risks, Sir; my
+genius could not stoop to measuring the costs of its flight. While M.
+de Firmin-Latour alternately raved and lamented I had already planned
+and contrived. As I say, we had very little time: a few hours wherein
+to render ourselves worthy of Fortune’s smiles. And this is what I
+planned.
+
+You tell me that you were not in Paris during the year 1816 of which I
+speak. If you had been, you would surely recollect the sensation caused
+throughout the entire city by the disappearance of M. le Marquis de
+Firmin-Latour, one of the most dashing young officers in society and
+one of its acknowledged leaders. It was the 10th day of October. M. le
+Marquis had breakfasted in the company of Madame at nine o’clock. A
+couple of hours later he went out, saying he would be home for
+déjeuner. Madame clearly expected him, for his place was laid, and she
+ordered the déjeuner to be kept back over an hour in anticipation of
+his return. But he did not come. The afternoon wore on and he did not
+come. Madame sat down at two o’clock to déjeuner alone. She told the
+major-domo that M. le Marquis was detained in town and might not be
+home for some time. But the major-domo declared that Madame’s voice, as
+she told him this, sounded tearful and forced, and that she ate
+practically nothing, refusing one succulent dish after another.
+
+The staff of servants was thus kept on tenterhooks all day, and when
+the shadows of evening began to draw in, the theory was started in the
+kitchen that M. le Marquis had either met with an accident or been
+foully murdered. No one, however, dared speak of this to Madame la
+Marquise, who had locked herself up in her room in the early part of
+the afternoon, and since then had refused to see anyone. The major-domo
+was now at his wits’ end. He felt that in a measure the responsibility
+of the household rested upon his shoulders. Indeed he would have taken
+it upon himself to apprise M. Mauruss Mosenstein of the terrible
+happenings, only that the worthy gentleman was absent from Paris just
+then.
+
+Mme. la Marquise remained shut up in her room until past eight o’clock.
+Then she ordered dinner to be served and made pretence of sitting down
+to it; but again the major-domo declared that she ate nothing, whilst
+subsequently the confidential maid who had undressed her vowed that
+Madame had spent the whole night walking up and down the room.
+
+Thus two agonizing days went by; agonizing they were to everybody.
+Madame la Marquise became more and more agitated, more and more
+hysterical as time went on, and the servants could not help but notice
+this, even though she made light of the whole affair, and desperate
+efforts to control herself. The heads of her household, the major-domo,
+the confidential maid, the chef de cuisine, did venture to drop a hint
+or two as to the possibility of an accident or of foul play, and the
+desirability of consulting the police; but Madame would not hear a word
+of it; she became very angry at the suggestion, and declared that she
+was perfectly well aware of M. le Marquis’s whereabouts, that he was
+well and would return home almost immediately.
+
+As was only natural, tongues presently began to wag. Soon it was common
+talk in Paris that M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour had disappeared from
+his home and that Madame was trying to put a bold face upon the
+occurrence. There were surmises and there was gossip— oh! interminable
+and long-winded gossip! Minute circumstances in connexion with M. le
+Marquis’s private life and Mme. la Marquise’s affairs were freely
+discussed in the cafés, the clubs and restaurants, and as no one knew
+the facts of the case, surmises soon became very wild.
+
+On the third day of M. le Marquis’s disappearance Papa Mosenstein
+returned to Paris from Vichy, where he had just completed his annual
+cure. He arrived at Rue de Grammont at three o’clock in the afternoon,
+demanded to see Mme. la Marquise at once, and then remained closeted
+with her in her apartment for over an hour. After which he sent for the
+inspector of police of the section, with the result that that very same
+evening M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour was found locked up in an humble
+apartment on the top floor of a house in the Rue Daunou, not ten
+minutes’ walk from his own house. When the police—acting on information
+supplied to them by M. Mauruss Mosenstein—forced their way into that
+apartment, they were horrified to find M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour
+there, tied hand and foot with cords to a chair, his likely calls for
+help smothered by a woollen shawl wound loosely round the lower part of
+his face.
+
+He was half dead with inanition, and was conveyed speechless and
+helpless to his home in the Rue de Grammont, there, presumably, to be
+nursed back to health by Madame his wife.
+
+5.
+
+Now in all this matter, I ask you, Sir, who ran the greatest risk? Why,
+I—Hector Ratichon, of course—Hector Ratichon, in whose apartment M. de
+Firmin-Latour was discovered in a position bordering on absolute
+inanition. And the proof of this is, that that selfsame night I was
+arrested at my lodgings at Passy, and charged with robbery and
+attempted murder.
+
+It was a terrible predicament for a respectable citizen, a man of
+integrity and reputation, in which to find himself; but Papa Mosenstein
+was both tenacious and vindictive. His daughter, driven to desperation
+at last, and terrified that M. le Marquis had indeed been foully
+murdered by M. de Naquet, had made a clean breast of the whole affair
+to her father, and he in his turn had put the minions of the law in
+full possession of all the facts; and since M. le Comte de Naquet had
+vanished, leaving no manner of trace or clue of his person behind him,
+the police, needing a victim, fell back on an innocent man.
+Fortunately, Sir, that innocence clear as crystal soon shines through
+every calumny. But this was not before I had suffered terrible
+indignities and all the tortures which base ingratitude can inflict
+upon a sensitive heart.
+
+Such ingratitude as I am about to relate to you has never been equalled
+on this earth, and even after all these years, Sir, you see me overcome
+with emotion at the remembrance of it all. I was under arrest,
+remember, on a terribly serious charge, but, conscious of mine own
+innocence and of my unanswerable system of defence, I bore the
+preliminary examination by the juge d’instruction with exemplary
+dignity and patience. I knew, you see, that at my very first
+confrontation with my supposed victim the latter would at once say:
+
+“Ah! but no! This is not the man who assaulted me.”
+
+Our plan, which so far had been overwhelmingly successful, had been
+this.
+
+On the morning of the tenth, M. de Firmin-Latour having pawned the
+emeralds, and obtained the money for them, was to deposit that money in
+his own name at the bank of Raynal Frères and then at once go to the
+office in the Rue Daunou.
+
+There he would be met by Theodore, who would bind him comfortably but
+securely to a chair, put a shawl around his mouth and finally lock the
+door on him. Theodore would then go to his mother’s and there remain
+quietly until I needed his services again.
+
+It had been thought inadvisable for me to be seen that morning anywhere
+in the neighbourhood of the Rue Daunou, but that perfidious reptile
+Theodore ran no risks in doing what he was told. To begin with he is a
+past master in the art of worming himself in and out of a house without
+being seen, and in this case it was his business to exercise a double
+measure of caution. And secondly, if by some unlucky chance the police
+did subsequently connect him with the crime, there was I, his employer,
+a man of integrity and repute, prepared to swear that the man had been
+in my company at the other end of Paris all the while that M. le
+Marquis de Firmin-Latour was, by special arrangement, making use of my
+office in the Rue Daunou, which I had lent him for purposes of
+business.
+
+Finally it was agreed between us that when M. le Marquis would
+presently be questioned by the police as to the appearance of the man
+who had assaulted and robbed him, he would describe him as tall and
+blond, almost like an Angliche in countenance. Now I possess—as you
+see, Sir—all the finest characteristics of the Latin race, whilst
+Theodore looks like nothing on earth, save perhaps a cross between a
+rat and a monkey.
+
+I wish you to realize, therefore, that no one ran any risks in this
+affair excepting myself. I, as the proprietor of the apartment where
+the assault was actually supposed to have taken place, did run a very
+grave risk, because I could never have proved an alibi. Theodore was
+such a disreputable mudlark that his testimony on my behalf would have
+been valueless. But with sublime sacrifice I accepted these risks, and
+you will presently see, Sir, how I was repaid for my selflessness. I
+pined in a lonely prison-cell while these two limbs of Satan concocted
+a plot to rob me of my share in our mutual undertaking.
+
+Well, Sir, the day came when I was taken from my prison-cell for the
+purpose of being confronted with the man whom I was accused of having
+assaulted. As you will imagine, I was perfectly calm. According to our
+plan the confrontation would be the means of setting me free at once. I
+was conveyed to the house in the Rue de Grammont, and here I was kept
+waiting for some little time while the juge d’instruction went in to
+prepare M. le Marquis, who was still far from well. Then I was
+introduced into the sick-room. I looked about me with the perfect
+composure of an innocent man about to be vindicated, and calmly gazed
+on the face of the sick man who was sitting up in his magnificent bed,
+propped up with pillows.
+
+I met his glance firmly whilst M. le Juge d’instruction placed the
+question to him in a solemn and earnest tone:
+
+“M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, will you look at the prisoner before
+you and tell us whether you recognize in him the man who assaulted
+you?”
+
+And that perfidious Marquis, Sir, raised his eyes and looked me
+squarely—yes! squarely—in the face and said with incredible assurance:
+
+“Yes, Monsieur le Juge, that is the man! I recognize him.”
+
+To me it seemed then as if a thunderbolt had crashed through the
+ceiling and exploded at my feet. I was like one stunned and dazed; the
+black ingratitude, the abominable treachery, completely deprived me of
+speech. I felt choked, as if some poisonous effluvia—the poison, Sir,
+of that man’s infamy—had got into my throat. That state of inertia
+lasted, I believe, less than a second; the next I had uttered a hoarse
+cry of noble indignation.
+
+“You vampire, you!” I exclaimed. “You viper! You . . .”
+
+I would have thrown myself on him and strangled him with glee, but that
+the minions of the law had me by the arms and dragged me away out of
+the hateful presence of that traitor, despite my objurgations and my
+protestations of innocence. Imagine my feelings when I found myself
+once more in a prison-cell, my heart filled with unspeakable bitterness
+against that perfidious Judas. Can you wonder that it took me some time
+before I could collect my thoughts sufficiently to review my situation,
+which no doubt to the villain himself who had just played me this
+abominable trick must have seemed desperate indeed? Ah! I could see it
+all, of course! He wanted to see me sent to New Caledonia, whilst he
+enjoyed the fruits of his unpardonable backsliding. In order to retain
+the miserable hundred thousand francs which he had promised me he did
+not hesitate to plunge up to the neck in this heinous conspiracy.
+
+Yes, conspiracy! for the very next day, when I was once more hailed
+before the juge d’instruction, another confrontation awaited me: this
+time with that scurvy rogue Theodore. He had been suborned by M. le
+Marquis to turn against the hand that fed him. What price he was paid
+for this Judas trick I shall never know, and all that I do know is that
+he actually swore before the juge d’instruction that M. le Marquis de
+Firmin-Latour called at my office in the late forenoon of the tenth of
+October; that I then ordered him—Theodore—to go out to get his dinner
+first, and then to go all the way over to Neuilly with a message to
+someone who turned out to be non-existent. He went on to assert that
+when he returned at six o’clock in the afternoon he found the office
+door locked, and I—his employer—presumably gone. This at first greatly
+upset him, because he was supposed to sleep on the premises, but seeing
+that there was nothing for it but to accept the inevitable, he went
+round to his mother’s rooms at the back of the fish-market and remained
+there ever since, waiting to hear from me.
+
+That, Sir, was the tissue of lies which that jailbird had concocted for
+my undoing, knowing well that I could not disprove them because it had
+been my task on that eventful morning to keep an eye on M. le Marquis
+whilst he went to the Mont de Piété first, and then to MM. Raynal
+Frères, the bankers where he deposited the money. For this purpose I
+had been obliged to don a disguise, which I had not discarded till
+later in the day, and thus was unable to disprove satisfactorily the
+monstrous lies told by that perjurer.
+
+Ah! I can see that sympathy for my unmerited misfortunes has filled
+your eyes with tears. No doubt in your heart you feel that my situation
+at that hour was indeed desperate, and that I—Hector Ratichon, the
+confidant of kings, the benefactor of the oppressed—did spend the next
+few years of my life in a penal settlement, where those
+arch-malefactors themselves should have been. But no, Sir! Fate may be
+a fickle jade, rogues may appear triumphant, but not for long, Sir, not
+for long! It is brains that conquer in the end . . . brains backed by
+righteousness and by justice.
+
+Whether I had actually foreseen the treachery of those two
+rattlesnakes, or whether my habitual caution and acumen alone prompted
+me to take those measures of precaution of which I am about to tell
+you, I cannot truthfully remember. Certain it is that I did take those
+precautions which ultimately proved to be the means of compensating me
+for most that I had suffered.
+
+It had been a part of the original plan that, on the day immediately
+following the tenth of October, I, in my own capacity as Hector
+Ratichon, who had been absent from my office for twenty-four hours,
+would arrive there in the morning, find the place locked, force an
+entrance into the apartment, and there find M. le Marquis in his
+pitiable plight. After which I would, of course, immediately notify the
+police of the mysterious occurrence.
+
+That had been the rôle which I had intended to play. M. le Marquis
+approved of it and had professed himself quite willing to endure a
+twenty-four-hours’ martyrdom for the sake of half a million francs.
+But, as I have just had the honour to tell you, something which I will
+not attempt to explain prompted me at the last moment to modify my plan
+in one little respect. I thought it too soon to go back to the Rue
+Daunou within twenty-four hours of our well-contrived coup, and I did
+not altogether care for the idea of going myself to the police in order
+to explain to them that I had found a man gagged and bound in my
+office. The less one has to do with these minions of the law the
+better. Mind you, I had envisaged the possibility of being accused of
+assault and robbery, but I did not wish to take, as it were, the very
+first steps myself in that direction. You might call this a matter of
+sentiment or of prudence, as you wish.
+
+So I waited until the evening of the second day before I got the key
+from Theodore. Then before the concierge at 96 Rue Daunou had closed
+the porte-cochere for the night, I slipped into the house unobserved,
+ran up the stairs to my office and entered the apartment. I struck a
+light and made my way to the inner room where the wretched Marquis hung
+in the chair like a bundle of rags. I called to him, but he made no
+movement. As I had anticipated, he had fainted for want of food. Of
+course, I was very sorry for him, for his plight was pitiable, but he
+was playing for high stakes, and a little starvation does no man any
+harm. In his case there was half a million at the end of his brief
+martyrdom, which could, at worst, only last another twenty-four hours.
+I reckoned that Mme. la Marquise could not keep the secret of her
+husband’s possible whereabouts longer than that, and in any event I was
+determined that, despite all risks, I would go myself to the police on
+the following day.
+
+In the meanwhile, since I was here and since M. le Marquis was
+unconscious, I proceeded then and there to take the precaution which
+prudence had dictated, and without which, seeing this man’s treachery
+and Theodore’s villainy, I should undoubtedly have ended my days as a
+convict. What I did was to search M. le Marquis’s pockets for anything
+that might subsequently prove useful to me.
+
+I had no definite idea in the matter, you understand; but I had vague
+notions of finding the bankers’ receipt for the half-million francs.
+
+Well, I did not find that, but I did find the receipt from the Mont de
+Piété for a parure of emeralds on which half a million francs had been
+lent. This I carefully put away in my waistcoat pocket, but as there
+was nothing else I wished to do just then I extinguished the light and
+made my way cautiously out of the apartment and out of the house. No
+one had seen me enter or go out, and M. le Marquis had not stirred
+while I went through his pockets.
+
+6.
+
+That, Sir, was the precaution which I had taken in order to safeguard
+myself against the machinations of traitors. And see how right I was;
+see how hopeless would have been my plight at this hour when Theodore,
+too, turned against me like the veritable viper that he was. I never
+really knew when and under what conditions the infamous bargain was
+struck which was intended to deprive me of my honour and of my liberty,
+nor do I know what emolument Theodore was to receive for his treachery.
+Presumably the two miscreants arranged it all some time during that
+memorable morning of the tenth even whilst I was risking my life in
+their service.
+
+As for M. de Firmin-Latour, that worker of iniquity who, in order to
+save a paltry hundred thousand francs from the hoard which I had helped
+him to acquire, did not hesitate to commit such an abominable crime, he
+did not long remain in the enjoyment of his wealth or of his peace of
+mind.
+
+The very next day I made certain statements before M. le Juge
+d’instruction with regard to M. Mauruss Mosenstein, which caused the
+former to summon the worthy Israelite to his bureau, there to be
+confronted with me. I had nothing more to lose, since those execrable
+rogues had already, as it were, tightened the rope about my neck, but I
+had a great deal to gain—revenge above all, and perhaps the gratitude
+of M. Mosenstein for opening his eyes to the rascality of his
+son-in-law.
+
+In a stream of eloquent words which could not fail to carry conviction,
+I gave then and there in the bureau of the juge d’instruction my
+version of the events of the past few weeks, from the moment when M. le
+Marquis de Firmin-Latour came to consult me on the subject of his
+wife’s first husband, until the hour when he tried to fasten an
+abominable crime upon me. I told how I had been deceived by my own
+employé, Theodore, a man whom I had rescued out of the gutter and
+loaded with gifts, how by dint of a clever disguise which would have
+deceived his own mother he had assumed the appearance and personality
+of M. le Comte de Naquet, first and only lawful lord of the beautiful
+Rachel Mosenstein. I told of the interviews in my office, my earnest
+desire to put an end to this abominable blackmailing by informing the
+police of the whole affair. I told of the false M. de Naquet’s threats
+to create a gigantic scandal which would forever ruin the social
+position of the so-called Marquis de Firmin-Latour. I told of M. le
+Marquis’s agonized entreaties, his prayers, supplications, that I would
+do nothing in the matter for the sake of an innocent lady who had
+already grievously suffered. I spoke of my doubts, my scruples, my
+desire to do what was just and what was right.
+
+A noble expose of the situation, Sir, you will admit. It left me hot
+and breathless. I mopped my head with a handkerchief and sank back,
+gasping, in the arms of the minions of the law. The juge d’instruction
+ordered my removal, not back to my prison-cell but into his own
+ante-room, where I presently collapsed upon a very uncomfortable bench
+and endured the additional humiliation of having a glass of water held
+to my lips. Water! when I had asked for a drink of wine as my throat
+felt parched after that lengthy effort at oratory.
+
+However, there I sat and waited patiently whilst, no doubt, M. le Juge
+d’Instruction and the noble Israelite were comparing notes as to their
+impression of my marvellous speech. I had not long to wait. Less than
+ten minutes later I was once more summoned into the presence of M. le
+Juge; and this time the minions of the law were ordered to remain in
+the antechamber. I thought this was of good augury; and I waited to
+hear M. le Juge give forth the order that would at once set me free.
+But it was M. Mosenstein who first addressed me, and in very truth
+surprise rendered me momentarily dumb when he did it thus:
+
+“Now then, you consummate rascal, when you have given up the receipt of
+the Mont de Piété which you stole out of M. le Marquis’s pocket you may
+go and carry on your rogueries elsewhere and call yourself mightily
+lucky to have escaped so lightly.”
+
+I assure you, Sir, that a feather would have knocked me down. The
+coarse insult, the wanton injustice, had deprived me of the use of my
+limbs and of my speech. Then the juge d’instruction proceeded dryly:
+
+“Now then, Ratichon, you have heard what M. Mauruss Mosenstein has been
+good enough to say to you. He did it with my approval and consent. I am
+prepared to give an _ordonnance de non-lieu_ in your favour which will
+have the effect of at once setting you free if you will restore to this
+gentleman here the Mont de Piété receipt which you appear to have
+stolen.”
+
+“Sir,” I said with consummate dignity in the face of this reiterated
+taunt, “I have stolen nothing—”
+
+M. le Juge’s hand was already on the bell-pull.
+
+“Then,” he said coolly, “I can ring for the gendarmes to take you back
+to the cells, and you will stand your trial for blackmail, theft,
+assault and robbery.”
+
+I put up my hand with an elegant and perfectly calm gesture.
+
+“Your pardon, M. le Juge,” I said with the gentle resignation of
+undeserved martyrdom, “I was about to say that when I re-visited my
+rooms in the Rue Daunou after a three days’ absence, and found the
+police in possession, I picked up on the floor of my private room a
+white paper which on subsequent examination proved to be a receipt from
+the Mont de Piété for some valuable gems, and made out in the name of
+M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour.”
+
+“What have you done with it, you abominable knave?” the irascible old
+usurer rejoined roughly, and I regret to say that he grasped his
+malacca cane with ominous violence.
+
+But I was not to be thus easily intimidated.
+
+“Ah! voilà, M. le Juge,” I said with a shrug of the shoulders. “I have
+mislaid it. I do not know where it is.”
+
+“If you do not find it,” Mosenstein went on savagely, “you will find
+yourself on a convict ship before long.”
+
+“In which case, no doubt,” I retorted with suave urbanity, “the police
+will search my rooms where I lodge, and they will find the receipt from
+the Mont de Piété, which I had mislaid. And then the gossip will be all
+over Paris that Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour had to pawn her
+jewels in order to satisfy the exigencies of her first and only lawful
+husband who has since mysteriously disappeared; and some people will
+vow that he never came back from the Antipodes, whilst others—by far
+the most numerous—will shrug their shoulders and sigh: ‘One never
+knows!’ which will be exceedingly unpleasant for Mme. la Marquise.”
+
+Both M. Mauruss Mosenstein and the juge d’instruction said a great deal
+more that afternoon. I may say that their attitude towards me and the
+language that they used were positively scandalous. But I had become
+now the master of the situation and I could afford to ignore their
+insults. In the end everything was settled quite amicably. I agreed to
+dispose of the receipt from the Mont de Piété to M. Mauruss Mosenstein
+for the sum of two hundred francs, and for another hundred I would
+indicate to him the banking house where his precious son-in-law had
+deposited the half-million francs obtained for the emeralds. This
+latter information I would indeed have offered him gratuitously had he
+but known with what immense pleasure I thus put a spoke in that knavish
+Marquis’s wheel of fortune.
+
+The worthy Israelite further agreed to pay me an annuity of two hundred
+francs so long as I kept silent upon the entire subject of Mme. la
+Marquise’s first husband and of M. le Marquis’s rôle in the mysterious
+affair of the Rue Daunou. For thus was the affair classed amongst the
+police records. No one outside the chief actors of the drama and M. le
+Juge d’Instruction ever knew the true history of how a dashing young
+cavalry officer came to be assaulted and left to starve for three days
+in the humble apartment of an attorney-at-law of undisputed repute. And
+no one outside the private bureau of M. le Juge d’Instruction ever knew
+what it cost the wealthy M. Mosenstein to have the whole affair
+“classed” and hushed up.
+
+As for me, I had three hundred francs as payment for work which I had
+risked my neck and my reputation to accomplish. Three hundred instead
+of the hundred thousand which I had so richly deserved: that, and a
+paltry two hundred francs a year, which was to cease the moment that as
+much as a rumour of the whole affair was breathed in public. As if I
+could help people talking!
+
+But M. le Marquis did not enjoy the fruits of his villainy, and I had
+again the satisfaction of seeing him gnaw his finger-nails with rage
+whenever the lovely Rachel paid for his dinner at fashionable
+restaurants. Indeed Papa Mosenstein tightened the strings of his
+money-bags even more securely than he had done in the past. Under
+threats of prosecution for theft and I know not what, he forced his
+son-in-law to disgorge that half-million which he had so pleasantly
+tucked away in the banking house of Raynal Frères, and I was indeed
+thankful that prudence had, on that memorable morning, suggested to me
+the advisability of dogging the Marquis’s footsteps. I doubt not but
+what he knew whence had come the thunderbolt which had crushed his last
+hopes of an independent fortune, and no doubt too he does not cherish
+feelings of good will towards me.
+
+But this eventuality leaves me cold. He has only himself to thank for
+his misfortune. Everything would have gone well but for his treachery.
+We would have become affluent, he and I and Theodore. Theodore has gone
+to live with his mother, who has a fish-stall in the Halles; she gives
+him three sous a day for washing down the stall and selling the fish
+when it has become too odorous for the ordinary customers.
+
+And he might have had five hundred francs for himself and remained my
+confidential clerk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. — CARISSIMO
+
+1.
+
+You must not think for a moment, my dear Sir, that I was ever actually
+deceived in Theodore. Was it likely that I, who am by temperament and
+habit accustomed to read human visages like a book, was it likely, I
+say, that I would fail to see craftiness in those pale, shifty eyes,
+deceit in the weak, slobbering mouth, intemperance in the whole aspect
+of the shrunken, slouchy figure which I had, for my subsequent sorrow,
+so generously rescued from starvation?
+
+Generous? I was more than generous to him. They say that the poor are
+the friends of the poor, and I told you how poor we were in those days!
+Ah! but poor! my dear Sir, you have no conception! Meat in Paris in the
+autumn of 1816 was 24 francs the kilo, and milk 1 franc the quarter
+litre, not to mention eggs and butter, which were delicacies far beyond
+the reach of cultured, well-born people like myself.
+
+And yet throughout that trying year I fed Theodore—yes, I fed him. He
+used to share onion pie with me whenever I partook of it, and he had
+haricot soup every day, into which I allowed him to boil the skins of
+all the sausages and the luscious bones of all the cutlets of which I
+happened to partake. Then think what he cost me in drink! Never could I
+leave a half or quarter bottle of wine but he would finish it; his
+impudent fingers made light of every lock and key. I dared not allow as
+much as a sou to rest in the pocket of my coat but he would ferret it
+out the moment I hung the coat up in the outer room and my back was
+turned for a few seconds. After a while I was forced—yes, I, Sir, who
+have spoken on terms of equality with kings—I was forced to go out and
+make my own purchases in the neighbouring provision shops. And why?
+Because if I sent Theodore and gave him a few sous wherewith to make
+these purchases, he would spend the money at the nearest cabaret in
+getting drunk on absinthe.
+
+He robbed me, Sir, shamefully, despite the fact that he had ten per
+cent, commission on all the profits of the firm. I gave him twenty
+francs out of the money which I had earned at the sweat of my brow in
+the service of Estelle Bachelier. Twenty francs, Sir! Reckoning two
+hundred francs as business profit on the affair, a generous provision
+you will admit! And yet he taunted me with having received a thousand.
+This was mere guesswork, of course, and I took no notice of his taunts:
+did the brains that conceived the business deserve no payment? Was my
+labour to be counted as dross?—the humiliation, the blows which I had
+to endure while he sat in hoggish content, eating and sleeping without
+thought for the morrow? After which he calmly pocketed the twenty
+francs to earn which he had not raised one finger, and then demanded
+more.
+
+No, no, my dear Sir, you will believe me or not, that man could not go
+straight. Times out of count he would try and deceive me, despite the
+fact that, once or twice, he very nearly came hopelessly to grief in
+the attempt.
+
+Now, just to give you an instance. About this time Paris was in the
+grip of a gang of dog-thieves as unscrupulous and heartless as they
+were daring. Can you wonder at it? with that awful penury about and a
+number of expensive “tou-tous” running about the streets under the very
+noses of the indigent proletariat? The ladies of the aristocracy and of
+the wealthy bourgeoisie had imbibed this craze for lap-dogs during
+their sojourn in England at the time of the emigration, and being women
+of the Latin race and of undisciplined temperament, they were just then
+carrying their craze to excess.
+
+As I was saying, this indulgence led to wholesale thieving. Tou-tous
+were abstracted from their adoring mistresses with marvellous
+adroitness; whereupon two or three days would elapse while the adoring
+mistress wept buckets full of tears and set the police of M. Fouché,
+Duc d’Otrante, by the ears in search of her pet. The next act in the
+tragi-comedy would be an anonymous demand for money—varying in amount
+in accordance with the known or supposed wealth of the lady—and an
+equally anonymous threat of dire vengeance upon the tou-tou if the
+police were put upon the track of the thieves.
+
+You will ask me, no doubt, what all this had to do with Theodore. Well!
+I will tell you.
+
+You must know that of late he had become extraordinarily haughty and
+independent. I could not keep him to his work. His duties were to sweep
+the office—he did not do it; to light the fires—I had to light them
+myself every morning; to remain in the anteroom and show clients in—he
+was never at his post. In fact he was never there when I did want him:
+morning, noon and night he was out—gadding about and coming home, Sir,
+only to eat and sleep. I was seriously thinking of giving him the sack.
+And then one day he disappeared! Yes, Sir, disappeared completely as if
+the earth had swallowed him up. One morning—it was in the beginning of
+December and the cold was biting—I arrived at the office and found that
+his chair-bed which stood in the antechamber had not been slept in; in
+fact that it had not been made up overnight. In the cupboard I found
+the remnants of an onion pie, half a sausage, and a quarter of a litre
+of wine, which proved conclusively that he had not been in to supper.
+
+At first I was not greatly disturbed in my mind. I had found out quite
+recently that Theodore had some sort of a squalid home of his own
+somewhere behind the fish-market, together with an old and wholly
+disreputable mother who plied him with drink whenever he spent an
+evening with her and either he or she had a franc in their pocket.
+Still, after these bouts spent in the bosom of his family he usually
+returned to sleep them off at my expense in my office.
+
+I had unfortunately very little to do that day, so in the late
+afternoon, not having seen anything of Theodore all day, I turned my
+steps toward the house behind the fish-market where lived the mother of
+that ungrateful wretch.
+
+The woman’s surprise when I inquired after her precious son was
+undoubtedly genuine. Her lamentations and crocodile tears certainly
+were not. She reeked of alcohol, and the one room which she inhabited
+was indescribably filthy. I offered her half a franc if she gave me
+authentic news of Theodore, knowing well that for that sum she would
+have sold him to the devil. But very obviously she knew nothing of his
+whereabouts, and I soon made haste to shake the dirt of her abode from
+my heels.
+
+I had become vaguely anxious.
+
+I wondered if he had been murdered somewhere down a back street, and if
+I should miss him very much.
+
+I did not think that I would.
+
+Moreover, no one could have any object in murdering Theodore. In his
+own stupid way he was harmless enough, and he certainly was not
+possessed of anything worth stealing. I myself was not over-fond of the
+man—but I should not have bothered to murder him.
+
+Still, I was undoubtedly anxious, and slept but little that night
+thinking of the wretch. When the following morning I arrived at my
+office and still could see no trace of him, I had serious thoughts of
+putting the law in motion on his behalf.
+
+Just then, however, an incident occurred which drove all thoughts of
+such an insignificant personage as Theodore from my mind.
+
+I had just finished tidying up the office when there came a peremptory
+ring at the outer door, repeated at intervals of twenty seconds or so.
+It meant giving a hasty glance all round to see that no fragments of
+onion pie or of cheap claret lingered in unsuspected places, and it
+meant my going, myself, to open the door to my impatient visitor.
+
+I did it, Sir, and then at the door I stood transfixed. I had seen many
+beautiful women in my day—great ladies of the Court, brilliant ladies
+of the Consulate, the Directorate and the Empire—but never in my life
+had I seen such an exquisite and resplendent apparition as the one
+which now sailed through the antechamber of my humble abode.
+
+Sir, Hector Ratichon’s heart has ever been susceptible to the charms of
+beauty in distress. This lovely being, Sir, who now at my invitation
+entered my office and sank with perfect grace into the arm-chair, was
+in obvious distress. Tears hung on the fringe of her dark lashes, and
+the gossamer-like handkerchief which she held in her dainty hand was
+nothing but a wet rag. She gave herself exactly two minutes wherein to
+compose herself, after which she dried her eyes and turned the full
+artillery of her bewitching glance upon me.
+
+“Monsieur Ratichon,” she began, even before I had taken my accustomed
+place at my desk and assumed that engaging smile which inspires
+confidence even in the most timorous; “Monsieur Ratichon, they tell me
+that you are so clever, and—oh! I am in such trouble.”
+
+“Madame,” I rejoined with noble simplicity, “you may trust me to do the
+impossible in order to be of service to you.”
+
+Admirably put, you will admit. I have always been counted a master of
+appropriate diction, and I had been quick enough to note the plain band
+of gold which encircled the third finger of her dainty left hand,
+flanked though it was by a multiplicity of diamond, pearl and other
+jewelled rings.
+
+“You are kind, Monsieur Ratichon,” resumed the beauteous creature more
+calmly. “But indeed you will require all the ingenuity of your
+resourceful brain in order to help me in this matter. I am struggling
+in the grip of a relentless fate which, if you do not help me, will
+leave me broken-hearted.”
+
+“Command me, Madame,” I riposted quietly.
+
+From out the daintiest of reticules the fair lady now extracted a very
+greasy and very dirty bit of paper, and handed it to me with the brief
+request: “Read this, I pray you, my good M. Ratichon.” I took the
+paper. It was a clumsily worded, ill-written, ill-spelt demand for five
+thousand francs, failing which sum the thing which Madame had lost
+would forthwith be destroyed.
+
+I looked up, puzzled, at my fair client.
+
+“My darling Carissimo, my dear M. Ratichon,” she said in reply to my
+mute query.
+
+“Carissimo?” I stammered, yet further intrigued.
+
+“My darling pet, a valuable creature, the companion of my lonely
+hours,” she rejoined, once more bursting into tears. “If I lose him, my
+heart will inevitably break.”
+
+I understood at last.
+
+“Madame has lost her dog?” I asked.
+
+She nodded.
+
+“It has been stolen by one of those expert dog thieves, who then levy
+blackmail on the unfortunate owner?”
+
+Again she nodded in assent.
+
+I read the dirty, almost illegible scrawl through more carefully this
+time. It was a clumsy notification addressed to Mme. la Comtesse de
+Nolé de St. Pris to the effect that her tou-tou was for the moment
+safe, and would be restored to the arms of his fond mistress provided
+the sum of five thousand francs was deposited in the hands of the
+bearer of the missive.
+
+Minute directions were then given as to where and how the money was to
+be deposited. Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé was, on the third day from this
+at six o’clock in the evening precisely, to go in person and alone to
+the angle of the Rue Guénégaud and the Rue Mazarine, at the rear of the
+Institut.
+
+There two men would meet her, one of whom would have Carissimo in his
+arms; to the other she must hand over the money, whereupon the pet
+would at once be handed back to her. But if she failed to keep this
+appointment, or if in the meanwhile she made the slightest attempt to
+trace the writer of the missive or to lay a trap for his capture by the
+police, Carissimo would at once meet with a summary death.
+
+These were the usual tactics of experienced dog thieves, only that in
+this case the demand was certainly exorbitant. Five thousand francs!
+But even so . . . I cast a rapid and comprehensive glance on the
+brilliant apparition before me—the jewelled rings, the diamonds in the
+shell-like ears, the priceless fur coat—and with an expressive shrug of
+the shoulders I handed the dirty scrap of paper back to its fair
+recipient.
+
+“Alas, Madame,” I said, taking care that she should not guess how much
+it cost me to give her such advice, “I am afraid that in such cases
+there is nothing to be done. If you wish to save your pet you will have
+to pay. . .”
+
+“Ah! but, Monsieur,” she exclaimed tearfully, “you don’t understand.
+Carissimo is all the world to me, and this is not the first time, nor
+yet the second, that he has been stolen from me. Three times, my good
+M. Ratichon, three times has he been stolen, and three times have I
+received such peremptory demands for money for his safe return; and
+every time the demand has been more and more exorbitant. Less than a
+month ago M. le Comte paid three thousand francs for his recovery.”
+
+“Monsieur le Comte?” I queried.
+
+“My husband, Sir,” she replied, with an exquisite air of hauteur. “M.
+le Comte de Nolé de St. Pris.”
+
+“Ah, then,” I continued calmly, “I fear me that Monsieur de Nolé de St.
+Pris will have to pay again.”
+
+“But he won’t!” she now cried out in a voice broken with sobs, and
+incontinently once more saturated her gossamer handkerchief with her
+tears.
+
+“Then I see nothing for it, Madame,” I rejoined, much against my will
+with a slight touch of impatience, “I see nothing for it but that
+yourself . . .”
+
+“Ah! but, Monsieur,” she retorted, with a sigh that would have melted a
+heart of stone, “that is just my difficulty. I cannot pay . . .”
+
+“Madame,” I protested.
+
+“Oh! if I had money of my own,” she continued, with an adorable gesture
+of impatience, “I would not worry. Mais voilà: I have not a silver
+franc of my own to bless myself with. M. le Comte is over generous. He
+pays all my bills without a murmur—he pays my dressmaker, my furrier;
+he loads me with gifts and dispenses charity on a lavish scale in my
+name. I have horses, carriages, servants—everything I can possibly want
+and more, but I never have more than a few hundred francs to dispose
+of. Up to now I have never for a moment felt the want of money. To-day,
+when Carissimo is being lost to me, I feel the entire horror of my
+position.”
+
+“But surely, Madame,” I urged, “M. le Comte . . .”
+
+“No, Monsieur,” she replied. “M. le Comte has flatly refused this time
+to pay these abominable thieves for the recovery of Carissimo. He
+upbraids himself for having yielded to their demands on the three
+previous occasions. He calls these demands blackmailing, and vows that
+to give them money again is to encourage them in their nefarious
+practices. Oh! he has been cruel to me, cruel!—for the first time in my
+life, Monsieur, my husband has made me unhappy, and if I lose my
+darling now I shall indeed be broken-hearted.”
+
+I was silent for a moment or two. I was beginning to wonder what part I
+should be expected to play in the tragedy which was being unfolded
+before me by this lovely and impecunious creature.
+
+“Madame la Comtesse,” I suggested tentatively, after a while, “your
+jewellery . . . you must have a vast number which you seldom wear . . .
+five thousand francs is soon made up. . . .”
+
+You see, Sir, my hopes of a really good remunerative business had by
+now dwindled down to vanishing point. All that was left of them was a
+vague idea that the beautiful Comtesse would perhaps employ me as an
+intermediary for the sale of some of her jewellery, in which case . . .
+But already her next words disillusioned me even on that point.
+
+“No, Monsieur,” she said; “what would be the use? Through one of the
+usual perverse tricks of fate, M. le Comte would be sure to inquire
+after the very piece of jewellery of which I had so disposed, and
+moreover . . .”
+
+“Moreover—yes, Mme. la Comtesse?”
+
+“Moreover, my husband is right,” she concluded decisively. “If I give
+in to those thieves to-day and pay them five thousand francs, they
+would only set to work to steal Carissimo again and demand ten thousand
+francs from me another time.”
+
+I was silent. What could I say? Her argument was indeed unanswerable.
+
+“No, my good M. Ratichon,” she said very determinedly after a while. “I
+have quite decided that you must confound those thieves. They have
+given me three days’ grace, as you see in their abominable letter. If
+after three days the money is not forthcoming, and if in the meanwhile
+I dare to set a trap for them or in any way communicate with the
+police, my darling Carissimo will be killed and my heart be broken.”
+
+“Madame la Comtesse,” I entreated, for of a truth I could not bear to
+see her cry again.
+
+“You must bring Carissimo back to me, M. Ratichon,” she continued
+peremptorily, “before those awful three days have elapsed.”
+
+“I swear that I will,” I rejoined solemnly; but I must admit that I did
+it entirely on the spur of the moment, for of a truth I saw no prospect
+whatever of being able to accomplish what she desired.
+
+“Without my paying a single louis to those execrable thieves,” the
+exquisite creature went on peremptorily,
+
+“It shall be done, Madame la Comtesse.”
+
+“And let me tell you,” she now added, with the sweetest and archest of
+smiles, “that if you succeed in this, M. le Comte de Nolé de St. Pris
+will gladly pay you the five thousand francs which he refuses to give
+to those miscreants.”
+
+Five thousand francs! A mist swam before my eyes,
+
+“Mais, Madame la Comtesse . . .” I stammered.
+
+“Oh!” she added, with an adorable uptilting of her little chin, “I am
+not promising what I cannot fulfil. M. le Comte de Nolé only said this
+morning, apropos of dog thieves, that he would gladly give ten thousand
+francs to anyone who succeeded in ridding society of such pests.”
+
+I could have knelt down on the hard floor, Sir, and . . .
+
+“Well then, Madame,” was my ready rejoinder, “why not ten thousand
+francs to me?”
+
+She bit her coral lips . . . but she also smiled. I could see that my
+personality and my manners had greatly impressed her.
+
+“I will only be responsible for the first five thousand,” she said
+lightly. “But, for the rest, I can confidently assure you that you will
+not find a miser in M. le Comte de Nolé de St. Pris.”
+
+I could have knelt down on the hard floor, Sir, and kissed her
+exquisitely shod feet. Five thousand francs certain! Perhaps ten! A
+fortune, Sir, in those days! One that would keep me in comfort—nay,
+affluence, until something else turned up. I was swimming in the
+empyrean and only came rudely to earth when I recollected that I should
+have to give Theodore something for his share of the business. Ah!
+fortunately that for the moment he was comfortably out of the way!
+Thoughts that perhaps he had been murdered after all once more coursed
+through my brain: not unpleasantly, I’ll admit. I would not have raised
+a finger to hurt the fellow, even though he had treated me with the
+basest ingratitude and treachery; but if someone else took the trouble
+to remove him, why indeed should I quarrel with fate?
+
+Back I came swiftly to the happy present. The lovely creature was
+showing me a beautifully painted miniature of Carissimo, a King Charles
+spaniel of no common type. This she suggested that I should keep by me
+for the present for purposes of identification. After this we had to go
+into the details of the circumstances under which she had lost her pet.
+She had been for a walk with him, it seems, along the Quai Voltaire,
+and was returning home by the side of the river, when suddenly a number
+of workmen in blouses and peaked caps came trooping out of a side
+street and obstructed her progress. She had Carissimo on the lead, and
+she at once admitted to me that at first she never thought of
+connecting this pushing and jostling rabble with any possible theft.
+She held her ground for awhile, facing the crowd: for a few moments she
+was right in the midst of it, and just then she felt the dog straining
+at the lead. She turned round at once with the intention of picking him
+up, when to her horror she saw that there was only a bundle of
+something weighty at the end of the lead, and that the dog had
+disappeared.
+
+The whole incident occurred, the lovely creature declared, within the
+space of thirty seconds; the next instant the crowd had scattered in
+several directions, the men running and laughing as they went. Mme. la
+Comtesse was left standing alone on the quay. Not a passer-by in sight,
+and the only gendarme visible, a long way down the Quai, had his back
+turned toward her. Nevertheless she ran and hied him, and presently he
+turned and, realizing that something was amiss, he too ran to meet her.
+He listened to her story, swore lustily, but shrugged his shoulders in
+token that the tale did not surprise him and that but little could be
+done. Nevertheless he at once summoned those of his colleagues who were
+on duty in the neighbourhood, and one of them went off immediately to
+notify the theft at the nearest commissariat of police. After which
+they all proceeded to a comprehensive scouring of the many tortuous
+sidestreets of the quartier; but, needless to say, there was no sign of
+Carissimo or of his abductors.
+
+That night my lovely client went home distracted.
+
+The following evening, when, broken-hearted, she wandered down the
+quays living over again the agonizing moments during which she lost her
+pet, a workman in a blue blouse, with a peaked cap pulled well over his
+eyes, lurched up against her and thrust into her hand the missive which
+she had just shown me. He then disappeared into the night, and she had
+only the vaguest possible recollection of his appearance.
+
+That, Sir, was the substance of the story which the lovely creature
+told me in a voice oft choked with tears. I questioned her very closely
+and in my most impressive professional manner as to the identity of any
+one man among the crowd who might have attracted her attention, but all
+that she could tell me was that she had a vague impression of a wizened
+hunchback with evil face, shaggy red beard and hair, and a black patch
+covering the left eye.
+
+2.
+
+Not much data to go on, you will, I think, admit, and I can assure you,
+Sir, that had I not possessed that unbounded belief in myself which is
+the true hall-mark of genius, I would at the outset have felt
+profoundly discouraged.
+
+As it was, I found just the right words of consolation and of hope
+wherewith to bow my brilliant client out of my humble apartments, and
+then to settle down to deep and considered meditation. Nothing, Sir, is
+so conducive to thought as a long, brisk walk through the crowded
+streets of Paris. So I brushed my coat, put on my hat at a becoming
+angle, and started on my way.
+
+I walked as far as Suresnes, and I thought. After that, feeling
+fatigued, I sat on the terrace of the Café Bourbon, overlooking the
+river. There I sipped my coffee and thought. I walked back into Paris
+in the evening, and still thought, and thought, and thought. After that
+I had some dinner, washed down by an agreeable bottle of wine—did I
+mention that the lovely creature had given me a hundred francs on
+account?—then I went for a stroll along the Quai Voltaire, and I may
+safely say that there is not a single side and tortuous street in its
+vicinity that I did not explore from end to end during the course of
+that never to be forgotten evening.
+
+But still my mind remained in a chaotic condition. I had not succeeded
+in forming any plan. What a quandary, Sir! Oh! what a quandary! Here
+was I, Hector Ratichon, the confidant of kings, the right hand of two
+emperors, set to the task of stealing a dog—for that is what I should
+have to do—from an unscrupulous gang of thieves whose identity, abode
+and methods were alike unknown to me. Truly, Sir, you will own that
+this was a herculean task.
+
+Vaguely my thoughts reverted to Theodore. He might have been of good
+counsel, for he knew more about thieves than I did, but the ungrateful
+wretch was out of the way on the one occasion when he might have been
+of use to me who had done so much for him. Indeed, my reason told me
+that I need not trouble my head about Theodore. He had vanished; that
+he would come back presently was, of course, an indubitable fact;
+people like Theodore never vanish completely. He would come back and
+demand I know not what, his share, perhaps, in a business which was so
+promising even if it was still so vague.
+
+Five thousand francs! A round sum! If I gave Theodore five hundred the
+sum would at once appear meagre, unimportant. Four thousand five
+hundred francs!—it did not even _sound_ well to my mind.
+
+So I took care that Theodore vanished from my mental vision as
+completely as he had done for the last two days from my ken, and as
+there was nothing more that could be done that evening, I turned my
+weary footsteps toward my lodgings at Passy.
+
+All that night, Sir, I lay wakeful and tossing in my bed, alternately
+fuming and rejecting plans for the attainment of that golden goal—the
+recovery of Mme. de Nolé’s pet dog. And the whole of the next day I
+spent in vain quest. I visited every haunt of ill-fame known to me
+within the city. I walked about with a pistol in my belt, a hunk of
+bread and cheese in my pocket, and slowly growing despair in my heart.
+
+In the evening Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé called for news of Carissimo,
+and I could give her none. She cried, Sir, and implored, and her tears
+and entreaties got on to my nerves until I felt ready to fall into
+hysterics. One more day and all my chances of a bright and wealthy
+future would have vanished. Unless the money was forthcoming on the
+morrow, the dog would be destroyed, and with him my every hope of that
+five thousand francs. And though she still irradiated charm and luxury
+from her entire lovely person, I begged her not to come to the office
+again, and promised that as soon as I had any news to impart I would at
+once present myself at her house in the Faubourg St. Germain.
+
+That night I never slept one wink. Think of it, Sir! The next few hours
+were destined to see me either a prosperous man for many days to come,
+or a miserable, helpless, disappointed wretch. At eight o’clock I was
+at my office. Still no news of Theodore. I could now no longer dismiss
+him from my mind. Something had happened to him, I could have no doubt.
+This anxiety, added to the other more serious one, drove me to a state
+bordering on frenzy. I hardly knew what I was doing. I wandered all day
+up and down the Quai Voltaire, and the Quai des Grands Augustins, and
+in and around the tortuous streets till I was dog-tired, distracted,
+half crazy.
+
+I went to the Morgue, thinking to find there Theodore’s dead body, and
+found myself vaguely looking for the mutilated corpse of Carissimo.
+Indeed, after a while Theodore and Carissimo became so inextricably
+mixed up in my mind that I could not have told you if I was seeking for
+the one or for the other and if Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé was now
+waiting to clasp her pet dog or my man-of-all-work to her exquisite
+bosom.
+
+She in the meanwhile had received a second, yet more peremptory,
+missive through the same channel as the previous one. A grimy deformed
+man, with ginger-coloured hair, and wearing a black patch over one eye,
+had been seen by one of the servants lolling down the street where
+Madame lived, and subsequently the concierge discovered that an
+exceedingly dirty scrap of paper had been thrust under the door of his
+lodge. The writer of the epistle demanded that Mme. la Comtesse should
+stand in person at six o’clock that same evening at the corner of the
+Rue Guénégaud, behind the Institut de France. Two men, each wearing a
+blue blouse and peaked cap, would meet her there. She must hand over
+the money to one of them, whilst the other would have Carissimo in his
+arms. The missive closed with the usual threats that if the police were
+mixed up in the affair, or the money not forthcoming, Carissimo would
+be destroyed.
+
+Six o’clock was the hour fixed by these abominable thieves for the
+final doom of Carissimo. It was now close on five. In a little more
+than an hour my last hope of five or ten thousand francs and a smile of
+gratitude from a pair of lovely lips would have gone, never again to
+return. A great access of righteous rage seized upon me. I determined
+that those miserable thieves, whoever they were, should suffer for the
+disappointment which I was now enduring. If I was to lose five thousand
+francs, they at least should not be left free to pursue their evil
+ways. I would communicate with the police; the police should meet the
+miscreants at the corner of the Rue Guénégaud. Carissimo would die; his
+lovely mistress would be brokenhearted. I would be left to mourn yet
+another illusion of a possible fortune, but they would suffer in gaol
+or in New Caledonia the consequences of all their misdeeds.
+
+Fortified by this resolution, I turned my weary footsteps in the
+direction of the gendarmerie where I intended to lodge my denunciation
+of those abominable thieves and blackmailers. The night was dark, the
+streets ill-lighted, the air bitterly cold. A thin drizzle, half rain,
+half snow, was descending, chilling me to the bone.
+
+I was walking rapidly along the river bank with my coat collar pulled
+up to my ears, and still instinctively peering up every narrow street
+which debouches on the quay. Then suddenly I spied Theodore. He was
+coming down the Rue Beaune, slouching along with head bent in his usual
+way. He appeared to be carrying something, not exactly heavy, but
+cumbersome, under his left arm. Within the next few minutes he would
+have been face to face with me, for I had come to a halt at the angle
+of the street, determined to have it out with the rascal then and there
+in spite of the cold and in spite of my anxiety about Carissimo.
+
+All of a sudden he raised his head and saw me, and in a second he
+turned on his heel and began to run up the street in the direction
+whence he had come. At once I gave chase. I ran after him—and then,
+Sir, he came for a second within the circle of light projected by a
+street lanthorn. But in that one second I had seen that which turned my
+frozen blood into liquid lava—a tail, Sir!—a dog’s tail, fluffy and
+curly, projecting from beneath that recreant’s left arm.
+
+A dog, Sir! a dog! Carissimo! the darling of Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé’s
+heart! Carissimo, the recovery of whom would mean five thousand francs
+into my pocket! Carissimo! I knew it! For me there existed but one dog
+in all the world; one dog and one spawn of the devil, one arch-traitor,
+one limb of Satan! Theodore!
+
+How he had come by Carissimo I had not time to conjecture. I called to
+him. I called his accursed name, using appellations which fell far
+short of those which he deserved. But the louder I called the faster he
+ran, and I, breathless, panting, ran after him, determined to run him
+to earth, fearful lest I should lose him in the darkness of the night.
+All down the Rue Beaune we ran, and already I could hear behind me the
+heavy and more leisured tramp of a couple of gendarmes who in their
+turn had started to give chase.
+
+I tell you, Sir, the sound lent wings to my feet. A chance—a last
+chance—was being offered me by a benevolent Fate to earn that five
+thousand francs, the keystone to my future fortune. If I had the
+strength to seize and hold Theodore until the gendarmes came up, and
+before he had time to do away with the dog, the five thousand francs
+could still be mine.
+
+So I ran, Sir, as I had never run before; the beads of perspiration
+poured down from my forehead; the breath came stertorous and hot from
+my heaving breast.
+
+Then suddenly Theodore disappeared!
+
+Disappeared, Sir, as if the earth had swallowed him up! A second ago I
+had seen him dimly, yet distinctly through the veil of snow and rain
+ahead of me, running with that unmistakable shuffling gait of his,
+hugging the dog closely under his arm. I had seen him—another effort
+and I might have touched him!—now the long and deserted street lay dark
+and mysterious before me, and behind me I could hear the measured tramp
+of the gendarmes and their peremptory call of “Halt, in the name of the
+King!”
+
+But not in vain, Sir, am I called Hector Ratichon; not in vain have
+kings and emperors reposed confidence in my valour and my presence of
+mind. In less time than it takes to relate I had already marked with my
+eye the very spot—down the street—where I had last seen Theodore. I
+hurried forward and saw at once that my surmise had been correct. At
+that very spot, Sir, there was a low doorway which gave on a dark and
+dank passage. The door itself was open. I did not hesitate. My life
+stood in the balance but I did not falter. I might be affronting within
+the next second or two a gang of desperate thieves, but I did not
+quake.
+
+I turned into that doorway, Sir; the next moment I felt a stunning blow
+between my eyes. I just remember calling out with all the strength of
+my lungs: “Police! Gendarmes! A moi!” Then nothing more.
+
+3.
+
+I woke with the consciousness of violent wordy warfare carried on
+around me. I was lying on the ground, and the first things I saw were
+three or four pairs of feet standing close together. Gradually out of
+the confused hubbub a few sentences struck my reawakened senses.
+
+“The man is drunk.”
+
+“I won’t have him inside the house.”
+
+“I tell you this is a respectable house.” This from a shrill feminine
+voice. “We’ve never had the law inside our doors before.”
+
+By this time I had succeeded in raising myself on my elbow, and, by the
+dim light of a hanging lamp somewhere down the passage, I was pretty
+well able to take stock of my surroundings.
+
+The half-dozen bedroom candlesticks on a table up against the wall, the
+row of keys hanging on hooks fixed to a board above, the glass
+partition with the words “Concierge” and “Réception” painted across it,
+all told me that this was one of those small, mostly squalid and
+disreputable lodging houses or hotels in which this quarter of Paris
+still abounds.
+
+The two gendarmes who had been running after me were arguing the matter
+of my presence here with the proprietor of the place and with the
+concierge.
+
+I struggled to my feet. Whereupon for the space of a solid two minutes
+I had to bear as calmly as I could the abuse and vituperation which the
+feminine proprietor of this “respectable house” chose to hurl at my
+unfortunate head. After which I obtained a hearing from the bewildered
+minions of the law. To them I gave as brief and succinct a narrative as
+I could of the events of the past three days. The theft of
+Carissimo—the disappearance of Theodore—my meeting him a while ago,
+with the dog under his arm—his second disappearance, this time within
+the doorway of this “respectable abode,” and finally the blow which
+alone had prevented me from running the abominable thief to earth.
+
+The gendarmes at first were incredulous. I could see that they were
+still under the belief that my excitement was due to over-indulgence in
+alcoholic liquor, whilst Madame the proprietress called me an
+abominable liar for daring to suggest that she harboured thieves within
+her doors. Then suddenly, as if in vindication of my character, there
+came from a floor above the sound of a loud, shrill bark.
+
+“Carissimo!” I cried triumphantly. Then I added in a rapid whisper,
+“Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé is rich. She spoke of a big reward for the
+recovery of her pet.”
+
+These happy words had the effect of stimulating the zeal of the
+gendarmes. Madame the proprietress grew somewhat confused and
+incoherent, and finally blurted it out that one of her lodgers—a highly
+respectable gentleman—did keep a dog, but that there was no crime in
+that surely.
+
+“One of your lodgers?” queried the representative of the law. “When did
+he come?”
+
+“About three days ago,” she replied sullenly.
+
+“What room does he occupy?”
+
+“Number twenty-five on the third floor.”
+
+“He came with his dog?” I interposed quickly, “a spaniel?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And your lodger, is he an ugly, slouchy creature—with hooked nose,
+bleary eyes and shaggy yellow hair?”
+
+But to this she vouchsafed no reply.
+
+Already the matter had passed out of my hands. One of the gendarmes
+prepared to go upstairs and bade me follow him, whilst he ordered his
+comrade to remain below and on no account to allow anyone to enter or
+leave the house. The proprietress and concierge were warned that if
+they interfered with the due execution of the law they would be
+severely dealt with; after which we went upstairs.
+
+For a while, as we ascended, we could hear the dog barking furiously,
+then, presently, just as we reached the upper landing, we heard a loud
+curse, a scramble, and then a piteous whine quickly smothered.
+
+My very heart stood still. The next moment, however, the gendarme had
+kicked open the door of No. 25, and I followed him into the room. The
+place looked dirty and squalid in the extreme—just the sort of place I
+should have expected Theodore to haunt. It was almost bare save for a
+table in the centre, a couple of rickety chairs, a broken-down bedstead
+and an iron stove in the corner. On the table a tallow candle was
+spluttering and throwing a very feeble circle of light around.
+
+At first glance I thought that the room was empty, then suddenly I
+heard another violent expletive and became aware of a man sitting close
+beside the iron stove. He turned to stare at us as we entered, but to
+my surprise it was not Theodore’s ugly face which confronted us. The
+man sitting there alone in the room where I had expected to see
+Theodore and Carissimo had a shaggy beard of an undoubted ginger hue.
+He had on a blue blouse and a peaked cap; beneath his cap his lank hair
+protruded more decided in colour even than his beard. His head was sunk
+between his shoulders, and right across his face, from the left eyebrow
+over the cheek and as far as his ear, he had a hideous crimson scar,
+which told up vividly against the ghastly pallor of his face.
+
+But there was no sign of Theodore!
+
+At first my friend the gendarme was quite urbane. He asked very
+politely to see Monsieur’s pet dog. Monsieur denied all knowledge of a
+dog, which denial only tended to establish his own guilt and the
+veracity of mine own narrative. The gendarme thereupon became more
+peremptory and the man promptly lost his temper.
+
+I, in the meanwhile, was glancing round the room and soon spied a wall
+cupboard which had obviously been deliberately screened by the
+bedstead. While my companion was bringing the whole majesty of the law
+to bear upon the miscreant’s denegations I calmly dragged the bedstead
+aside and opened the cupboard door.
+
+An ejaculation from my quivering throat brought the gendarme to my
+side. Crouching in the dark recess of the wall cupboard was
+Carissimo—not dead, thank goodness! but literally shaking with terror.
+I pulled him out as gently as I could, for he was so frightened that he
+growled and snapped viciously at me. I handed him to the gendarme, for
+by the side of Carissimo I had seen something which literally froze my
+blood within my veins. It was Theodore’s hat and coat, which he had
+been wearing when I chased him to this house of mystery and of
+ill-fame, and wrapped together with it was a rag all smeared with
+blood, whilst the same hideous stains were now distinctly visible on
+the door of the cupboard itself.
+
+I turned to the gendarme, who at once confronted the abominable
+malefactor with the obvious proofs of a horrible crime. But the
+depraved wretch stood by, Sir, perfectly calm and with a cynicism in
+his whole bearing which I had never before seen equalled!
+
+“I know nothing about that coat,” he asserted with a shrug of the
+shoulders, “nor about the dog.”
+
+The gendarme by this time was purple with fury.
+
+“Not know anything about the dog?” he exclaimed in a voice choked with
+righteous indignation. “Why, he . . . he barked!”
+
+But this indisputable fact in no way disconcerted the miscreant.
+
+“I heard a dog yapping,” he said with consummate impudence, “but I
+thought he was in the next room. No wonder,” he added coolly, “since he
+was in a wall cupboard.”
+
+“A wall cupboard,” the gendarme rejoined triumphantly, “situated in the
+very room which you occupy at this moment.”
+
+“That is a mistake, my friend,” the cynical wretch retorted, undaunted.
+“I do not occupy this room. I do not lodge in this hotel at all.”
+
+“Then how came you to be here?”
+
+“I came on a visit to a friend who happened to be out when I arrived. I
+found a pleasant fire here, and I sat down to warm myself. Your noisy
+and unwarranted irruption into this room has so bewildered me that I no
+longer know whether I am standing on my head or on my heels.”
+
+“We’ll show you soon enough what you are standing on, my fine fellow,”
+the gendarme riposted with breezy, cheerfulness. “Allons!”
+
+I must say that the pampered minion of the law arose splendidly to the
+occasion. He seized the miscreant by the arm and took him downstairs,
+there to confront him with the proprietress of the establishment, while
+I—with marvellous presence of mind—took possession of Carissimo and hid
+him as best I could beneath my coat.
+
+In the hall below a surprise and a disappointment were in store for me.
+I had reached the bottom of the stairs when the shrill feminine accents
+of Mme. the proprietress struck unpleasantly on my ear.
+
+“No! no! I tell you!” she was saying. “This man is not my lodger. He
+never came here with a dog. There,” she added volubly, and pointing an
+unwashed finger at Carissimo who was struggling and growling in my
+arms, “there is the dog. A gentleman brought him with him last
+Wednesday, when he inquired if he could have a room here for a few
+nights. Number twenty-five happened to be vacant, and I have no
+objection to dogs. I let the gentleman have the room, and he paid me
+twenty sous in advance when he took possession and told me he would
+keep the room three nights.”
+
+“The gentleman? What gentleman?” the gendarme queried, rather inanely I
+thought.
+
+“My lodger,” the woman replied. “He is out for the moment, but he will
+be back presently I make no doubt. The dog is his. . . .”
+
+“What is he like?” the minion of the law queried abruptly.
+
+“Who? the dog?” she retorted impudently.
+
+“No, no! Your lodger.”
+
+Once more the unwashed finger went up and pointed straight at me.
+
+“He described him well enough just now; thin and slouchy in his ways.
+He has lank, yellow hair, a nose perpetually crimson—with the cold no
+doubt—and pale, watery eyes. . . .”
+
+“Theodore,” I exclaimed mentally.
+
+Bewildered, the gendarme pointed to his prisoner.
+
+“But this man . . . ?” he queried.
+
+“Why,” the proprietress replied. “I have seen Monsieur twice, or was it
+three times? He would visit number twenty-five now and then.”
+
+I will not weary you with further accounts of the close examination to
+which the representative of the law subjected the personnel of the
+squalid hotel. The concierge and the man of all work did indeed confirm
+what the proprietress said, and whilst my friend the gendarme —puzzled
+and floundering—was scratching his head in complete bewilderment, I
+thought that the opportunity had come for me to slip quietly out by the
+still open door and make my way as fast as I could to the sumptuous
+abode in the Faubourg St. Germain, where the gratitude of Mme. de Nolé,
+together with five thousand francs, were even now awaiting me.
+
+After Madame the proprietress had identified Carissimo, I had once more
+carefully concealed him under my coat. I was ready to seize my
+opportunity, after which I would be free to deal with the matter of
+Theodore’s amazing disappearance. Unfortunately just at this moment the
+little brute gave a yap, and the minion of the law at once interposed
+and took possession of him.
+
+“The dog belongs to the police now, Sir,” he said sternly.
+
+The fatuous jobbernowl wanted his share of the reward, you see.
+
+4.
+
+Having been forced thus to give up Carissimo, and with him all my hopes
+of a really substantial fortune, I was determined to make the
+red-polled miscreant suffer for my disappointment, and the minions of
+the law sweat in the exercise of their duty.
+
+I demanded Theodore! My friend, my comrade, my right hand! I had seen
+him not ten minutes ago, carrying in his arms this very dog, whom I had
+subsequently found inside a wall cupboard beside a blood-stained coat.
+Where was Theodore? Pointing an avenging finger at the red-headed
+reprobate, I boldly accused him of having murdered my friend with a
+view to robbing him of the reward offered for the recovery of the dog.
+
+This brought a new train of thought into the wooden pates of the
+gendarmes. A quartet of them had by this time assembled within the
+respectable precincts of the Hôtel des Cadets. One of them—senior to
+the others—at once dispatched a younger comrade to the nearest
+commissary of police for advice and assistance.
+
+Then he ordered us all into the room pompously labelled “Réception,”
+and there proceeded once more to interrogate us all, making copious
+notes in his leather-bound book all the time, whilst I, moaning and
+lamenting the loss of my faithful friend and man of all work, loudly
+demanded the punishment of his assassin.
+
+Theodore’s coat, his hat, the blood-stained rag, had all been brought
+down from No. 25 and laid out upon the table ready for the inspection
+of M. the Commissary of Police.
+
+That gentleman arrived with two private agents, armed with full powers
+and wrapped in the magnificent imperturbability of the law. The
+gendarme had already put him _au fait_ of the events, and as soon as he
+was seated behind the table upon which reposed the “pièces de
+conviction,” he in his turn proceeded to interrogate the ginger-pated
+miscreant.
+
+But strive how he might, M. the Commissary elicited no further
+information from him than that which we all already possessed. The man
+gave his name as Aristide Nicolet. He had no fixed abode. He had come
+to visit his friend who lodged in No. 25 in the Hôtel des Cadets. Not
+finding him at home he had sat by the fire and had waited for him. He
+knew absolutely nothing of the dog and absolutely nothing of the
+whereabouts of Theodore.
+
+“We’ll soon see about that!” asserted M. the Commissary.
+
+He ordered a perquisition of every room and every corner of the hotel,
+Madame the proprietress loudly lamenting that she and her respectable
+house would henceforth be disgraced for ever. But the thieves—whoever
+they were—were clever. Not a trace of any illicit practice was found on
+the premises—and not a trace of Theodore.
+
+Had he indeed been murdered? The thought now had taken root in my mind.
+For the moment I had even forgotten Carissimo and my vanished five
+thousand francs.
+
+Well, Sir! Aristide Nicolet was marched off to the depot—still
+protesting his innocence. The next day he was confronted with Mme. la
+Comtesse de Nolé, who could not say more than that he might have formed
+part of the gang who had jostled her on the Quai Voltaire, whilst the
+servant who had taken the missive from him failed to recognize him.
+
+Carissimo was restored to the arms of his loving mistress, but the
+reward for his recovery had to be shared between the police and myself:
+three thousand francs going to the police who apprehended the thief,
+and two thousand to me who had put them on the track.
+
+It was not a fortune, Sir, but I had to be satisfied. But in the
+meanwhile the disappearance of Theodore had remained an unfathomable
+mystery. No amount of questionings and cross-questionings, no amount of
+confrontations and perquisitions, had brought any new matter to light.
+Aristide Nicolet persisted in his statements, as did the proprietress
+and the concierge of the Hôtel des Cadets in theirs. Theodore had
+undoubtedly occupied room No. 25 in the hotel during the three days
+while I was racking my brain as to what had become of him. I equally
+undoubtedly saw him for a few moments running up the Rue Beaune with
+Carissimo’s tail projecting beneath his coat. Then he entered the open
+doorway of the hotel, and henceforth his whereabouts remained a
+baffling mystery.
+
+Beyond his coat and hat, the stained rag and the dog himself, there was
+not the faintest indication of what became of him after that. The
+concierge vowed that he did not enter the hotel—Aristide Nicolet vowed
+that he did not enter No. 25. But then the dog was in the cupboard, and
+so were the hat and coat; and even the police were bound to admit that
+in the short space of time between my last glimpse of Theodore and the
+gendarme’s entry into room 25 it would be impossible for the most
+experienced criminal on earth to murder a man, conceal every trace of
+the crime, and so to dispose of the body as to baffle the most minute
+inquiry and the most exhaustive search.
+
+Sometimes when I thought the whole matter out I felt that I was growing
+crazy.
+
+5.
+
+Thus about a week or ten days went by and I had just come reluctantly
+to the conclusion that there must be some truth in the old mediaeval
+legends which tell us that the devil runs away with his elect from time
+to time, when I received a summons from M. the Commissary of Police to
+present myself at his bureau.
+
+He was pleasant and urbane as usual, but to my anxious query after
+Theodore he only gave me the old reply: “No trace of him can be found.”
+
+Then he added: “We must therefore take it for granted, my good M.
+Ratichon, that your man of all work is—of his own free will—keeping out
+of the way. The murder theory is untenable; we have had to abandon it.
+The total disappearance of the body is an unanswerable argument against
+it. Would you care to offer a reward for information leading to the
+recovery of your missing friend?”
+
+I hesitated. I certainly was not prepared to pay anyone for finding
+Theodore.
+
+“Think it over, my good M. Ratichon,” rejoined M. le Commissaire
+pleasantly. “But in the meanwhile I must tell you that we have decided
+to set Aristide Nicolet free. There is not a particle of evidence
+against him either in the matter of the dog or of that of your friend.
+Mme. de Nolé’s servants cannot swear to his identity, whilst you have
+sworn that you last saw the dog in your man’s arms. That being so, I
+feel that we have no right to detain an innocent man.”
+
+Well, Sir, what could I say? I knew well enough that there was not a
+tittle of solid evidence against the man Nicolet, nor had I the power
+to move the police of His Majesty the King from their decision. In my
+heart of hearts I had the firm conviction that the ginger-polled
+ruffian knew all about Carissimo and all about the present whereabouts
+of that rascal Theodore. But what could I say, Sir? What could I do?
+
+I went home that night to my lodgings at Passy more perplexed than ever
+I had been in my life before.
+
+The next morning I arrived at my office soon after nine. The problem
+had presented itself to me during the night of finding a new man of all
+work who would serve me on the same terms as that ungrateful wretch
+Theodore.
+
+I mounted the stairs with a heavy step and opened the outer door of my
+apartment with my private key; and then, Sir, I assure you that for one
+brief moment I felt that my knees were giving way under me and that I
+should presently measure my full length on the floor.
+
+There, sitting at the table in my private room, was Theodore. He had
+donned one of the many suits of clothes which I always kept at the
+office for purposes of my business, and he was calmly consuming a
+luscious sausage which was to have been part of my dinner today, and
+finishing a half-bottle of my best Bordeaux.
+
+He appeared wholly unconscious of his enormities, and when I taxed him
+with his villainies and plied him with peremptory questions he met me
+with a dogged silence and a sulky attitude which I have never seen
+equalled in all my life. He flatly denied that he had ever walked the
+streets of Paris with a dog under his arm, or that I had ever chased
+him up the Rue Beaune. He denied ever having lodged in the Hôtel des
+Cadets, or been acquainted with its proprietress, or with a red-polled,
+hunchback miscreant named Aristide Nicolet. He denied that the coat and
+hat found in room No. 25 were his; in fact, he denied everything, and
+with an impudence, Sir, which was past belief.
+
+But he put the crown to his insolence when he finally demanded two
+hundred francs from me: his share in the sum paid to me by Mme. de Nolé
+for the recovery of her dog. He demanded this, Sir, in the name of
+justice and of equity, and even brandished our partnership contract in
+my face.
+
+I was so irate at his audacity, so disgusted that presently I felt that
+I could not bear the sight of him any longer. I turned my back on him
+and walked out of my own private room, leaving him there still munching
+my sausage and drinking my Bordeaux.
+
+I was going through the antechamber with a view to going out into the
+street for a little fresh air when something in the aspect of the
+chair-bedstead on which that abominable brute Theodore had apparently
+spent the night attracted my attention. I turned over one of the
+cushions, and with a cry of rage which I took no pains to suppress I
+seized upon what I found lying beneath: a blue linen blouse, Sir, a
+peaked cap, a ginger-coloured wig and beard!
+
+The villain! The abominable mountebank! The wretch! The . . . I was
+wellnigh choking with wrath.
+
+With the damning pieces of conviction in my hand, I rushed back into
+the inner room. Already my cry of indignation had aroused the vampire
+from his orgy. He stood before me sheepish, grinning, and taunted me,
+Sir—taunted me for my blindness in not recognizing him under the
+disguise of the so-called Aristide Nicolet.
+
+It was a disguise which he had kept by him in case of an emergency when
+first he decided to start business as a dog thief. Carissimo had been
+his first serious venture and but for my interference it would have
+been a wholly successful one. He had worked the whole thing out with
+marvellous cleverness, being greatly assisted by Madame Sand, the
+proprietress of the Hôtel des Cadets, who was a friend of his mother’s.
+The lady, it seems, carried on a lucrative business of the same sort
+herself, and she undertook to furnish him with the necessary
+confederates for the carrying out of his plan. The proceeds of the
+affair were to be shared equally between himself and Madame; the
+confederates, who helped to jostle Mme. de Nolé whilst her dog was
+being stolen, were to receive five francs each for their trouble.
+
+When he met me at the corner of the Rue Beaune he was on his way to the
+Rue Guénégaud, hoping to exchange Carissimo for five thousand francs.
+When he met me, however, he felt that the best thing to do for the
+moment was to seek safety in flight. He had only just time to run back
+to the hotel to warn Mme. Sand of my approach and beg her to detain me
+at any cost. Then he flew up the stairs, changed into his disguise,
+Carissimo barking all the time furiously. Whilst he was trying to
+pacify the dog, the latter bit him severely in the arm, drawing a good
+deal of blood—the crimson scar across his face was a last happy
+inspiration which put the finishing touch to his disguise and to the
+hoodwinking of the police and of me. He had only just time to staunch
+the blood from his arm and to thrust his own clothes and Carissimo into
+the wall cupboard when the gendarme and I burst in upon him.
+
+I could only gasp. For one brief moment the thought rushed through my
+mind that I would denounce him to the police for . . . for . . .
+
+But that was just the trouble. Of what could I accuse him? Of murdering
+himself or of stealing Mme. de Nolé’s dog? The commissary would hardly
+listen to such a tale . . . and it would make me seem ridiculous. . . .
+
+So I gave Theodore the soundest thrashing he ever had in his life, and
+fifty francs to keep his mouth shut.
+
+But did I not tell you that he was a monster of ingratitude?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. — THE TOYS
+
+1.
+
+You are right, Sir, I very seldom speak of my halcyon days—those days
+when the greatest monarch the world has ever known honoured me with his
+intimacy and confidence. I had my office in the Rue St. Roch then, at
+the top of a house just by the church, and not a stone’s throw from the
+palace, and I can tell you, Sir, that in those days ministers of state,
+foreign ambassadors, aye! and members of His Majesty’s household, were
+up and down my staircase at all hours of the day. I had not yet met
+Theodore then, and fate was wont to smile on me.
+
+As for M. le Duc d’Otrante, Minister of Police, he would send to me or
+for me whenever an intricate case required special acumen,
+resourcefulness and secrecy. Thus in the matter of the English
+files—have I told you of it before? No? Well, then, you shall hear.
+
+Those were the days, Sir, when the Emperor’s Berlin Decrees were going
+to sweep the world clear of English commerce and of English enterprise.
+It was not a case of paying heavy duty on English goods, or a still
+heavier fine if you smuggled; it was total prohibition, and hanging if
+you were caught bringing so much as a metre of Bradford cloth or half a
+dozen Sheffield files into the country. But you know how it is, Sir:
+the more strict the law the more ready are certain lawless human
+creatures to break it. Never was smuggling so rife as it was in those
+days—I am speaking now of 1810 or 11—never was it so daring or
+smugglers so reckless.
+
+M. le Duc d’Otrante had his hands full, I can tell you. It had become a
+matter for the secret police; the coastguard or customs officials were
+no longer able to deal with it.
+
+Then one day Hypolite Leroux came to see me. I knew the man well—a keen
+sleuthhound if ever there was one—and well did he deserve his name, for
+he was as red as a fox.
+
+“Ratichon,” he said to me, without preamble, as soon as he had seated
+himself opposite to me, and I had placed half a bottle of good Bordeaux
+and a couple of glasses on the table. “I want your help in the matter
+of these English files. We have done all that we can in our department.
+M. le Duc has doubled the customs personnel on the Swiss frontier, the
+coastguard is both keen and efficient, and yet we know that at the
+present moment there are thousands of English files used in this
+country, even inside His Majesty’s own armament works. M. le Duc
+d’Otrante is determined to put an end to the scandal. He has offered a
+big reward for information which will lead to the conviction of one or
+more of the chief culprits, and I am determined to get that reward—with
+your help, if you will give it.”
+
+“What is the reward?” I asked simply.
+
+“Five thousand francs,” he replied. “Your knowledge of English and
+Italian is what caused me to offer you a share in this splendid
+enterprise—”
+
+“It’s no good lying to me, Leroux,” I broke in quietly, “if we are
+going to work amicably together.”
+
+He swore.
+
+“The reward is ten thousand francs.” I made the shot at a venture,
+knowing my man well.
+
+“I swear that it is not,” he asserted hotly.
+
+“Swear again,” I retorted, “for I’ll not deal with you for less than
+five thousand.”
+
+He did swear again and protested loudly. But I was firm.
+
+“Have another glass of wine,” I said.
+
+After which he gave in.
+
+The affair was bound to be risky. Smugglers of English goods were
+determined and desperate men who were playing for high stakes and
+risking their necks on the board. In all matters of smuggling a
+knowledge of foreign languages was an invaluable asset. I spoke Italian
+well and knew some English. I knew my worth. We both drank a glass of
+cognac and sealed our bond then and there.
+
+After which Leroux drew his chair closer to my desk.
+
+“Listen, then,” he said. “You know the firm of Fournier Frères, in the
+Rue Colbert?”
+
+“By name, of course. Cutlers and surgical instrument makers by
+appointment to His Majesty. What about them?”
+
+“M. le Duc has had his eyes on them for some time.”
+
+“Fournier Frères!” I ejaculated. “Impossible! A more reputable firm
+does not exist in France.”
+
+“I know, I know,” he rejoined impatiently. “And yet it is a curious
+fact that M. Aristide Fournier, the junior partner, has lately bought
+for himself a house at St. Claude.”
+
+“At St. Claude?” I ejaculated.
+
+“Yes,” he responded dryly. “Very near to Gex, what?”
+
+I shrugged my shoulders, for indeed the circumstances did appear
+somewhat strange.
+
+Do you know Gex, my dear Sir? Ah, it is a curious and romantic spot. It
+has possibilities, both natural and political, which appear to have
+been expressly devised for the benefit of the smuggling fraternity.
+Nestling in the midst of the Jura mountains, it is outside the customs
+zone of the Empire. So you see the possibilities, do you not? Gex soon
+became the picturesque warehouse of every conceivable kind of
+contraband goods. On one side of it there was the Swiss frontier, and
+the Swiss Government was always willing to close one eye in the matter
+of customs provided its palm was sufficiently greased by the
+light-fingered gentry. No difficulty, therefore, as you see, in getting
+contraband goods—even English ones—as far as Gex.
+
+Here they could be kept hidden until a fitting opportunity occurred for
+smuggling them into France, opportunities for which the Jura, with
+their narrow defiles and difficult mountain paths, afforded magnificent
+scope. St. Claude, of which Leroux had just spoken as the place where
+M. Aristide Fournier had recently bought himself a house, is in France,
+only a few kilometres from the neutral zone of Gex. It seemed a strange
+spot to choose for a wealthy and fashionable member of Parisian
+bourgeois society, I was bound to admit.
+
+“But,” I mused, “one cannot go to Gex without a permit from the
+police.”
+
+“Not by road,” Leroux assented. “But you will own that there are means
+available to men who are young and vigorous like M. Fournier, who
+moreover, I understand, is an accomplished mountaineer. You know Gex,
+of course?”
+
+I had crossed the Jura once, in my youth, but was not very intimately
+familiar with the district. Leroux had a carefully drawn-out map of it
+in his pocket; this he laid out before me.
+
+“These two roads,” he began, tracing the windings of a couple of thin
+red lines on the map with the point of his finger, “are the only two
+made ones that lead in and out of the district. Here is the Valserine,”
+he went on, pointing to a blue line, “which flows from north to south,
+and both the roads wind over bridges that span the river close to our
+frontier. The French customs stations are on our side of those bridges.
+But, besides those two roads, the frontier can, of course, be crossed
+by one or other of the innumerable mountain tracks which are only
+accessible to pedestrians or mules. That is where our customs officials
+are powerless, for the tracks are precipitous and offer unlimited cover
+to those who know every inch of the ground. Several of them lead
+directly into St. Claude, at some considerable distance from the
+customs stations, and it is these tracks which are being used by M.
+Aristide Fournier for the felonious purpose of trading with the
+enemy—on this I would stake my life. But I mean to be even with him,
+and if I get the help which I require from you, I am convinced that I
+can lay him by the heels.”
+
+“I am your man,” I concluded simply.
+
+“Very well,” he resumed. “Are you prepared to journey with me to Gex?”
+
+“When do you start?”
+
+“To-day.”
+
+“I shall be ready.”
+
+He gave a deep sigh of satisfaction.
+
+“Then listen to my plan,” he said. “We’ll journey together as far as
+St. Claude; from there you will push on to Gex, and take up your abode
+in the city, styling yourself an interpreter. This will give you the
+opportunity of mixing with some of the smuggling fraternity, and it
+will be your duty to keep both your eyes and ears open. I, on the other
+hand, will take up my quarters at Mijoux, the French customs station,
+which is on the frontier, about half a dozen kilometres from Gex. Every
+day I’ll arrange to meet you, either at the latter place or somewhere
+half-way, and hear what news you may have to tell me. And mind,
+Ratichon,” he added sternly, “it means running straight, or the reward
+will slip through our fingers.”
+
+I chose to ignore the coarse insinuation, and only riposted quietly:
+
+“I must have money on account. I am a poor man, and will be out of
+pocket by the transaction from the hour I start for Gex to that when
+you pay me my fair share of the reward.”
+
+By way of a reply he took out a case from his pocket. I saw that it was
+bulging over with banknotes, which confirmed me in my conviction both
+that he was actually an emissary of the Minister of Police and that I
+could have demanded an additional thousand francs without fear of
+losing the business.
+
+“I’ll give you five hundred on account,” he said as he licked his ugly
+thumb preparatory to counting out the money before me.
+
+“Make it a thousand,” I retorted; “and call it ‘additional,’ not ‘on
+account.’”
+
+He tried to argue.
+
+“I am not keen on the business,” I said with calm dignity, “so if you
+think that I am asking too much—there are others, no doubt, who would
+do the work for less.”
+
+It was a bold move. But it succeeded. Leroux laughed and shrugged his
+shoulders. Then he counted out ten hundred-franc notes and laid them
+out upon the desk. But before I could touch them he laid his large bony
+hands over the lot and, looking me straight between the eyes, he said
+with earnest significance:
+
+“English files are worth as much as twenty francs apiece in the
+market.”
+
+“I know.”
+
+“Fournier Frères would not take the risks which they are doing for a
+consignment of less than ten thousand.”
+
+“I doubt if they would,” I rejoined blandly.
+
+“It will be your business to find out how and when the smugglers
+propose to get their next consignment over the frontier.”
+
+“Exactly.”
+
+“And to communicate any information you may have obtained to me.”
+
+“And to keep an eye on the valuable cargo, of course?” I concluded.
+
+“Yes,” he said roughly, “an eye. But hands off, understand, my good
+Ratichon, or there’ll be trouble.”
+
+He did not wait to hear my indignant protest. He had risen to his feet,
+and had already turned to go. Now he stretched his great coarse hand
+out to me.
+
+“All in good part, eh?”
+
+I took his hand. He meant no harm, did old Leroux. He was just a
+common, vulgar fellow who did not know a gentleman when he saw one.
+
+And we parted the best of friends.
+
+2.
+
+A week later I was at Gex. At St. Claude I had parted from Leroux, and
+then hired a chaise to take me to my destination. It was a matter of
+fifteen kilometres by road over the frontier of the customs zone and
+through the most superb scenery I had ever seen in my life. We drove
+through narrow gorges, on each side of which the mountain heights rose
+rugged and precipitous to incalculable altitudes above. From time to
+time only did I get peeps of almost imperceptible tracks along the
+declivities, tracks on which it seemed as if goats alone could obtain a
+footing. Once—hundreds of feet above me—I spied a couple of mules
+descending what seemed like a sheer perpendicular path down the
+mountain side. The animals appeared to be heavily laden, and I
+marvelled what forbidden goods lay hidden within their packs and
+whether in the days that were to come I too should be called upon to
+risk my life on those declivities following in the footsteps of the
+reckless and desperate criminals whom it was my duty to pursue.
+
+I confess that at the thought, and with those pictures of grim nature
+before me, I felt an unpleasant shiver coursing down my spine.
+
+Nothing of importance occurred during the first fortnight of my sojourn
+at Gex. I was installed in moderately comfortable, furnished rooms in
+the heart of the city, close to the church and market square. In one of
+my front windows, situated on the ground floor, I had placed a card
+bearing the inscription: “Aristide Barrot, Interpreter,” and below,
+“Anglais, Allemand, Italien.” I had even had a few
+clients—conversations between the local police and some poor wretches
+caught in the act of smuggling a few yards of Swiss silk or a couple of
+cream cheeses over the French frontier, and sent back to Gex to be
+dealt with by the local authorities.
+
+Leroux had found lodgings at Mijoux, and twice daily he walked over to
+Gex to consult with me. We met, mornings and evenings, at the café
+restaurant of the Crâne Chauve, an obscure little tavern situated on
+the outskirts of the city. He was waxing impatient at what he called my
+supineness, for indeed so far I had had nothing to report.
+
+There was no sign of M. Aristide Fournier. No one in Gex appeared to
+know anything about him, though the proprietor of the principal hotel
+in the town did recollect having had a visitor of that name once or
+twice during the past year. But, of course, during this early stage of
+my stay in the town it was impossible for me to believe anything that I
+was told. I had not yet succeeded in winning the confidence of the
+inhabitants, and it was soon pretty evident to me that the whole
+countryside was engaged in the perilous industry of smuggling. Everyone
+from the mayor downwards did a bit of a deal now and again in
+contraband goods. In ordinary cases it only meant fines if one was
+caught, or perhaps imprisonment for repeated offenses.
+
+But four or five days after my arrival at Gex I saw three fellows
+handed over to the police of the department. They had been caught in
+the act of trying to ford the Valserine with half a dozen pack-mules
+laden with English cloth. They were hanged at St. Claude two days
+later.
+
+I can assure you, Sir, that the news of this summary administration of
+justice sent another cold shiver down my spine, and I marvelled if
+indeed Leroux’s surmises were correct and if a respectable tradesman
+like Aristide Fournier would take such terrible risks even for the sake
+of heavy gains.
+
+I had been in Gex just a fortnight when the weather, which hitherto had
+been splendid, turned to squalls and storms. We were then in the second
+week of September. A torrential rain had fallen the whole of one day,
+during which I had only been out in order to meet Leroux, as usual, at
+the Café du Crâne Chauve. I had just come home from our evening
+meeting—it was then ten o’clock—and I was preparing to go comfortably
+to bed, when I was startled by a violent ring at the front-door bell.
+
+I had only just time to wonder if this belated visitor desired to see
+me or my worthy landlady, Mme. Bournon, when her heavy footsteps
+resounded along the passage. The next moment I heard my name spoken
+peremptorily by a harsh voice, and Mme. Bournon’s reply that M.
+Aristide Barrot was indeed within. A few seconds later she ushered my
+nocturnal visitor into my room.
+
+He was wrapped in a dark mantle from head to foot, and he wore a
+wide-brimmed hat pulled right over his eyes. He did not remove either
+as he addressed me without further preamble.
+
+“You are an interpreter, Sir?” he queried, speaking very rapidly and in
+sharp commanding tones.
+
+“At your service,” I replied.
+
+“My name is Ernest Berty. I want you to come with me at once to my
+house. I require your services as intermediary between myself and some
+men who have come to see me on business. These men whom I wish you to
+see are Russians,” he added, I fancied as an afterthought, “but they
+speak English fluently.”
+
+I suppose that I looked just as I felt—somewhat dubious owing to the
+lateness of the hour and the darkness of the night, not to speak of the
+abominable weather, for he continued with marked impatience:
+
+“It is imperative that you should come at once. Though my house is at
+some little distance from here, I have a chaise outside which will also
+bring you back, and,” he added significantly, “I will pay you whatever
+you demand.”
+
+“It is very late,” I demurred, “the weather—”
+
+“Your fee, man!” he broke in roughly, “and let’s get on!”
+
+“Five hundred francs,” I said at a venture.
+
+“Come!” was his curt reply. “I will give you the money as we drive
+along.”
+
+I wished I had made it a thousand; apparently my services were worth a
+great deal to him. However, I picked up my mantle and my hat, and
+within a few seconds was ready to go. I shouted up to Mme. Bournon that
+I would not be home for a couple of hours, but that as I had my key I
+need not disturb her when I returned.
+
+Once outside the door I almost regretted my ready acquiescence in this
+nocturnal adventure. The rain was beating down unmercifully, and at
+first I saw no sign of a vehicle; but in answer to my visitor’s sharp
+command I followed him down the street as far as the market square, at
+the corner of which I spied the dim outline of a carriage and a couple
+of horses.
+
+Without wasting too many words, M. Ernest Berty bundled me into the
+carriage, and very soon we were on the way. The night was impenetrably
+dark and the chaise more than ordinarily rickety. I had but little
+opportunity to ascertain which way we were going. A small lanthorn
+fixed opposite to me in the interior of the carriage, and flickering
+incessantly before my eyes, made it still more impossible for me to see
+anything outside the narrow window. My companion sat beside me, silent
+and absorbed. After a while I ventured to ask him which way we were
+driving.
+
+“Through the town,” he replied curtly. “My house is just outside
+Divonne.”
+
+Now, Divonne is, as I knew, quite close to the Swiss frontier. It is a
+matter of seven or eight kilometres—an hour’s drive at the very least
+in this supremely uncomfortable vehicle. I tried to induce further
+conversation, but made no headway against my companion’s taciturnity.
+However, I had little cause for complaint in another direction. After
+the first quarter of an hour, and when we had left the cobblestones of
+the city behind us, he drew a bundle of notes from his pocket, and by
+the flickering light of the lanthorn he counted out ten fifty-franc
+notes and handed them without another word to me.
+
+The drive was unspeakably wearisome; but after a while I suppose that
+the monotonous rumbling of the wheels and the incessant patter of the
+rain against the window-panes lulled me into a kind of torpor. Certain
+it is that presently—much sooner than I had anticipated—the chaise drew
+up with a jerk, and I was roused to full consciousness by hearing M.
+Berty’s voice saying curtly:
+
+“Here we are! Come with me!”
+
+I was stiff, Sir, and I was shivering—not so much with cold as with
+excitement. You will readily understand that all my faculties were now
+on the qui vive. Somehow or other during the wearisome drive by the
+side of my close-tongued companion my mind had fastened on the
+certitude that my adventure of this night bore a close connexion to the
+firm of Fournier Frères and to the English files which were causing so
+many sleepless nights to M. le Duc d’Otrante, Minister of Police.
+
+But nothing in my manner, as I stepped out of the carriage under the
+porch of the house which loomed dark and massive out of the surrounding
+gloom, betrayed anything of what I felt. Outwardly I was just a worthy
+bourgeois, an interpreter by profession, and delighted at the
+remunerative work so opportunely put in my way.
+
+The house itself appeared lonely as well as dark. M. Berty led the way
+across a narrow passage, at the end of which there was a door which he
+pushed open, saying in his usual abrupt manner: “Go in there and wait.
+I’ll send for you directly.”
+
+Then he closed the door on me, and I heard his footsteps recrossing the
+corridor and presently ascending some stairs. I was left alone in a
+small, sparsely furnished room, dimly lighted by an oil lamp which hung
+down from the ceiling. There was a table in the middle of the room, a
+square of carpet on the floor, and a couple of chairs beside a small
+iron stove. I noticed that the single window was closely shuttered and
+barred. I sat down and waited. At first the silence around me was only
+broken by the pattering of the rain against the shutters and the
+soughing of the wind down the iron chimney pipe, but after a little
+while my senses, which by this time had become super-acute, were
+conscious of various noises within the house itself: footsteps
+overhead, a confused murmur of voices, and anon the unmistakable sound
+of a female voice raised as if in entreaty or in complaint.
+
+Somehow a vague feeling of alarm possessed itself of my nervous system.
+I began to realise my position—alone, a stranger in a house as to whose
+situation I had not the remotest idea, and among a set of men who, if
+my surmises were correct, were nothing less than a gang of determined
+and dangerous criminals. The voices, especially the female one, were
+now sounding more clear. I tiptoed to the door, and very gently opened
+it. There was indeed no mistaking the tone of desperate pleading which
+came from some room above and through & woman’s lips. I even caught the
+words: “Oh, don’t! Oh, don’t! Not again!” repeated at intervals with
+pitiable insistence.
+
+Mastering my not unnatural anxiety, I opened the door a little farther
+and slipped out into the passage, all my instincts of chivalry towards
+beauty in distress aroused by those piteous cries. Forgetful of every
+possible danger and of all prudence, I had already darted down the
+corridor, determined to do my duty as a gentleman as soon as I had
+ascertained whence had come those cries of anguish, when I heard the
+frou-frou of skirts and a rapid patter of small feet down the stairs.
+The next moment a radiant vision, all white muslin, fair curls and the
+scent of violets, descended on me from above, a soft hand closed over
+mine and drew me, unresisting, back into the room from whence I had
+just come.
+
+Bewildered, I gazed on the winsome apparition before me, and beheld a
+young girl, slender as a lily, dressed in a soft, clinging gown which
+made her appear more slender still, her fair hair arranged in a tangle
+of unruly curls round the dainty oval of her face.
+
+She was exquisite, Sir! And the slenderness of her! You cannot imagine
+it! She looked like a young sapling bending to the gale. But what cut
+me to the heart was the look of terror and of misery in her face. She
+clasped her hands together and the tears gathered in her eyes.
+
+“Go, Sir, go at once!” she murmured under her breath, speaking very
+rapidly. “Do not waste a minute, I beg of you! As you value your life,
+go before it is too late!”
+
+“But, Mademoiselle,” I stammered; for indeed her words and appearance
+had roused all my worst fears, but also all my instincts of the
+sleuth-hound scenting his quarry.
+
+“Don’t argue, I beg of you,” continued the lovely creature, who indeed
+seemed the prey of overwhelming emotions—fear, horror, pity. “When he
+comes back do not let him find you here. I’ll explain, I’ll know what
+to say, only I entreat you—go!”
+
+Sir, I have many faults, but cowardice does not happen to be one of
+them, and the more the angel pleaded the more determined was I to see
+this business through. I was, of course, quite convinced by now that I
+was on the track of M. Aristide Fournier and the English files, and I
+was not going to let five thousand francs and the gratitude of the
+Minister of Police slip through my fingers so easily.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” I rejoined as calmly as I could, “let me assure you
+that though your anxiety for me is like manna to a starving man, I have
+no fears for my own safety. I have come here in the capacity of a
+humble interpreter; I certainly am not worth putting out of the way.
+Moreover, I have been paid for my services, and these I will render to
+my employer to the best of my capabilities.”
+
+“Ah, but you don’t know,” she retorted, not departing one jot from her
+attitude of terror and of entreaty, “you don’t understand. This house,
+Monsieur,” she added in a hoarse whisper, “is nothing but a den of
+criminals wherein no honest man or woman is safe.”
+
+“Pardon, Mademoiselle,” I riposted as lightly and as gallantly as I
+could, “I see before me the living proof that angels, at any rate,
+dwell therein.”
+
+“Alas! Sir,” she rejoined, with a heart-rending sigh, “if you mean me,
+I am only to be pitied. My dear mother and I are naught but slaves to
+the will of my brother, who uses us as tools for his nefarious ends.”
+
+“But . . .” I stammered, horrified beyond speech at the vista of
+villainy which her words had opened up before me.
+
+“My mother, Sir,” she said simply, “is old and ailing; she is dying of
+anguish at sight of her son’s misdeeds. I would not, could not leave
+her, yet I would give my life to see her free from that miscreant’s
+clutches!”
+
+My whole soul was stirred to its depths by the intensity of passion
+which rang through this delicate creature’s words. What weird and
+awesome mystery of iniquity and of crime lay hid, I wondered, between
+these walls? In what tragedy had I thus accidentally become involved
+while fulfilling my prosaic duty in the interest of His Majesty’s
+exchequer? As in a flash it suddenly came to me that perhaps I could
+serve both this lovely creature and the Emperor better by going out of
+the house now, and lying hidden all the night through somewhere in its
+vicinity until in daylight I could locate its exact situation. Then I
+could communicate with Leroux at once and procure the apprehension of
+this Berty—or Fournier—who apparently was a desperate criminal. Already
+a bold plan was taking shape in my brain, and with my mind’s eye I had
+measured the distance which separated me from the front door and safety
+when, in the distance, I heard heavy footsteps slowly descending the
+stairs. I looked at my lovely companion, and saw her eyes gradually
+dilating with increased horror. She gave a smothered cry, pressed her
+handkerchief to her lips, then she murmured hoarsely, “Too late!” and
+fled precipitately from the room, leaving me a prey to mingled emotions
+such as I had never experienced before.
+
+3.
+
+A moment or two later M. Ernest Berty, or whatever his real name may
+have been, entered the room. Whether he had encountered his exquisite
+sister on the corridor or the stairs, I could not tell; his face, in
+the dim light of the hanging lamp, looked impenetrable and sinister.
+
+“This way, M. Barrot,” he said curtly.
+
+Just for one brief moment the thought occurred to me to throw myself
+upon him with my whole weight—which was considerable—and make a wild
+dash for the front door. But it was more than probable that I should be
+intercepted and brought back, after which no doubt I would be an object
+of suspicion to these rascals and my life would not be worth an hour’s
+purchase. With the young girl’s warnings ringing in my ears, I felt
+that my one chance of safety and of circumventing these criminals lay
+in my seeming ingenuousness and complete guileless-ness.
+
+I assumed a perfect professional manner and followed my companion up
+the stairs. He ushered me into a room just above the one where I had
+been waiting up to now. Three men dressed in rough clothes were sitting
+at a table on which stood a couple of tankards and four empty pewter
+mugs. My employer offered me a glass of ale, which I declined. Then we
+got to work.
+
+At the first words which M. Berty uttered I knew that all my surmises
+had been correct. Whether he himself was M. Aristide Fournier, or
+another partner of that firm, or some other rascal engaged in nefarious
+doings, I could not know; certain it was that through the medium of
+cipher words and phrases which he thought were unintelligible to me,
+and which he ordered me to interpret into English, he was giving
+directions to the three men with regard to the convoying of contraband
+cargo over the frontier.
+
+There was much talk of “toys” and “babies”—the latter were to take a
+walk in the mountains and to avoid the “thorns”; the “toys” were to be
+securely fastened and well protected against water. It was obviously a
+case of mules and of the goods, the “thorns” being the customs
+officials. By the time that we had finished I was absolutely convinced
+in my mind that the cargo was one of English files or razors, for it
+was evidently extraordinarily valuable and not at all bulky, seeing
+that two “babies” were to carry all the “toys” for a considerable
+distance. The men, too, were obviously English. I tried the few words
+of Russian that I knew on them, and their faces remained perfectly
+blank.
+
+Yes, indeed, I was on the track of M. Aristide Fournier, and of one of
+the most important hauls of enemy goods which had ever been made in
+France. Not only that. I had also before me one of the most brutish
+criminals it had ever been my misfortune to come across. A bully, a
+fiend of cruelty. In very truth my fertile brain was seething with
+plans for eventually laying that abominable ruffian by the heels:
+hanging would be a merciful punishment for such a miscreant. Yes,
+indeed, five thousand francs—a goodly sum in those days, Sir—was
+practically assured me. But over and above mere lucre there was the
+certainty that in a few days’ time I should see the light of gratitude
+shining out of a pair of lustrous blue eyes, and a winning smile
+chasing away the look of fear and of sorrow from the sweetest face I
+had seen for many a day.
+
+Despite the turmoil that was raging in my brain, however, I flatter
+myself that my manner with the rascals remained consistently calm,
+businesslike, indifferent to all save to the work in hand. The
+soi-disant Ernest Berty spoke invariably in French, either dictating
+his orders or seeking information, and I made verbal translation into
+English of all that he said. The séance lasted close upon an hour, and
+presently I gathered that the affair was terminated and that I could
+consider myself dismissed.
+
+I was about to take my leave, having apparently completed my work, when
+M. Ernest Berty called me back with a curt command.
+
+“One moment, M. Barrot,” he said.
+
+“At Monsieur’s service,” I responded blandly.
+
+“As you see,” he continued, “these fellows do not know a word of
+French. All along the way which they will have to traverse they will
+meet friendly outposts, who will report to them on the condition of the
+roads and warn them of any danger that might be ahead. Their ignorance
+of our language may be a source of infinite peril to them. They need an
+interpreter to accompany them over the mountains.”
+
+He paused for a moment or two, then added abruptly:
+
+“Would you care to go? The matter is important,” he went on quietly,
+“and I am willing to pay you. It means a couple of nights’ journey—a
+halt in the mountains during the day—and there will be ten thousand
+francs for you if the ‘toys’ reach St. Claude safely.”
+
+I suppose that something in my face betrayed the eagerness which I
+felt. Here was indeed the finger of Providence pointing to the best
+means of undoing this abominable criminal. Not that I intended to risk
+my neck for any ten thousand francs he chose to offer me, but as the
+trusted guide of his ingenuous “babies” I could convoy them—not to St.
+Claude, as he blandly believed, but straight into the arms of Leroux
+and the customs officials.
+
+“Then that is understood,” he said in his usual dictatorial manner,
+taking my consent for granted. “Ten thousand francs. And you will
+accompany these gentlemen and their ‘babies’ as far as St. Claude?”
+
+“I am a poor man, Sir,” I responded meekly.
+
+“Of course you are,” he broke in roughly.
+
+Then from a number of papers which lay upon the table, he selected one
+which he held out to me.
+
+“Do you know St. Cergues?” he asked.
+
+“Yes,” I replied. “It is a short walk from Gex.”
+
+“This,” he added, pointing to a paper which I had taken from him, “is a
+plan of the village and of the Pass of Cergues close by. Study it
+carefully. At some point some way up the pass, which I have marked with
+a cross, I and my men with the ‘babies’ will be waiting for you
+to-morrow evening at eight o’clock. You cannot possibly fail to find
+the spot, for the plan is very accurate and very minute, and it is less
+than five hundred metres from the last house at the entrance of the
+pass. I shall escort the men until then, and hand them over into your
+charge for the mountain journey. Is that clear?”
+
+“Perfectly.”
+
+“Very well, then; you may go. The carriage is outside the door. You
+know your way.”
+
+He dismissed me with a curt nod, and the next two minutes saw me
+outside this house of mystery and installed inside the ramshackle
+vehicle on my way back to my lodgings.
+
+I was worn out with fatigue and excitement, and I imagine that I slept
+most of the way. Certain it is that the journey home was not nearly so
+long as the outward one had been. The rain was still coming down
+heavily, but I cared nothing about the weather, nothing about fatigue.
+My path to fame and fortune had been made easier for me than in my
+wildest dreams I would have dared to hope. In the morning I would see
+Leroux and make final arrangements for the capture of those impudent
+smugglers, and I thought the best way would be for him to meet me and
+the “babies” and the “toys” at the very outset of our journey, as I did
+not greatly relish the idea of crossing lonely and dangerous mountain
+paths in the company of these ruffians.
+
+I reached home without adventure. The vehicle drew up just outside my
+lodgings, and I was about to alight when my eyes were attracted by
+something white which lay on the front seat of the carriage,
+conspicuously placed so that the light from the inside lanthorn fell
+full upon it. I had been too tired and too dazed, I suppose, to notice
+the thing before, but now, on closer inspection, I saw that it was a
+note, and that it was addressed to me: “M. Aristide Barrot,
+Interpreter,” and below my name were the words: “Very urgent.”
+
+I took the note feeling a thrill of excitement running through my veins
+at its touch. I alighted, and the vehicle immediately disappeared into
+the night. I had only caught one glimpse of the horses, and none at all
+of the coachman. Then I went straight into my room, and by the light of
+the table lamp I unfolded and read the mysterious note. It bore no
+signature, but at the first words I knew that the writer was none other
+than the lovely young creature who had appeared to me like an angel of
+innocence in the midst of that den of thieves.
+
+
+“Monsieur,” she had written in a hand which had clearly been trembling
+with agitation, “you are good, you are kind; I entreat you to be
+merciful. My dear mother, whom I worship, is sick with terror and
+misery. She will die if she remains any longer under the sway of that
+inhuman monster who, alas! is my own brother. And if I lose her I shall
+die, too, for I should no longer have anyone to stand between me and
+his cruelties.
+
+“My dear mother has some relations living at St. Claude. She would have
+gone to them before now, but my brother keeps us both virtual prisoners
+here, and we have no means of arranging for such a perilous journey for
+ourselves. Now, by the most extraordinary stroke of good fortune, my
+brother will be absent all day to-morrow and the following night. My
+dear mother and I feel that God Himself is showing us the way to our
+release.
+
+“Will you, can you help us, dear M. Barrot? Mother and I will be at Gex
+to-morrow at one hour after sundown. We will lie perdu in the little
+Taverne du Roi de Rome, where, if you come to us, you will find us
+waiting anxiously. If you can do nothing to help us, we must return
+broken-hearted to our hated prison; but something in my heart tells me
+that you can help us. All that we want is a vehicle of some sort and
+the escort of a brave man like yourself as far as St. Claude, where our
+relatives will thank you on their knees for your kindness and
+generosity to two helpless, miserable, unprotected women, and I will
+kiss your hands in unbounded gratitude and devotion.”
+
+
+It were impossible, Monsieur, to tell you of the varied emotions which
+filled my heart when I had perused that heart-rending appeal. All my
+instincts of chivalry were aroused. I was determined to do my duty to
+these helpless ladies as a man and as a gallant knight. Even before I
+finally went to bed I had settled in my mind what I meant to do.
+Fortunately it was quite possible for me to reconcile my duties to my
+Emperor and those which I owed to myself in the matter of the reward
+for the apprehension of the smugglers, with my burning desire to be the
+saviour and protector of the lovely creature whose beauty had inflamed
+my impressionable heart, and to have my hands kissed by her in
+gratitude and devotion.
+
+The next morning Leroux and I were deep in our plans, whilst we sipped
+our coffee outside the Crâne Chauve. He was beside himself with joy and
+excitement at the prospective haul, which would, of course, redound
+enormously to his credit, even though the success of the whole
+undertaking would be due to my acumen, my resourcefulness and my pluck.
+Fortunately I found him not only ready but eager to render me what
+assistance he could in the matter of the two ladies who had thrown
+themselves so entirely on my protection.
+
+“We might get valuable information out of them,” he remarked. “In the
+excess of their gratitude they may betray many more secrets and
+nefarious doings of the firm of Fournier Frères.”
+
+“Which further proves,” I remarked, “how deeply you and Monsieur le
+Ministre of Police are indebted to me over this affair.”
+
+He did not argue the point. Indeed, we were both of us far too much
+excited to waste words in useless bickerings. Our plans for the evening
+were fairly simple. We both pored over the map which Fournier-Berty had
+given me, until we felt that we could reach blindfolded the spot which
+had been marked with a cross. We then arranged that Leroux should
+betake himself thither with a strong posse of gendarmes during the day,
+and lie hidden in the vicinity until such time as I myself appeared
+upon the scene, identified my friends of the night before, parleyed
+with them for a minute or two, and finally retired, leaving the law in
+all its majesty, as represented by Leroux, to deal with the rascals.
+
+In the meantime I also mapped out for myself my own share in this
+night’s adventurous work. I had hired a vehicle to take me as far as
+St. Cergues; here I intended to leave it at the local inn, and then
+proceed on foot up the mountain pass to the appointed spot. As soon as
+I had seen the smugglers safely in the hands of Leroux and the
+gendarmes, I would make my way back to St. Cergues as rapidly as I
+could, step into my vehicle, drive like the wind back to Gex, and place
+myself at the disposal of my fair angel and her afflicted mother.
+
+Leroux promised me that at the customs station on the French frontier
+the officials would look after me and the ladies, and that a pair of
+fresh horses would be ready to take us straight on to St. Claude,
+which, if all was well, we could then reach by daybreak.
+
+Having settled all these matters we parted company, he to arrange his
+own affairs with the Commissary of Police and the customs officials,
+and I to await with as much patience as I could the hour when I could
+start for St. Cergues.
+
+4.
+
+The night—just as I anticipated—promised to be very dark. A thin
+drizzle, which wetted the unfortunate pedestrian to the marrow, had
+replaced the torrential rain of the previous day.
+
+Twilight was closing in very fast. In the late autumn afternoon I drove
+to St. Cergues, after which I left the chaise in the village and boldly
+started to walk up the mountain pass. I had studied the map so
+carefully that I was quite sure of my way, but though my appointment
+with the rascals was for eight o’clock, I wished to reach the appointed
+spot before the last flicker of grey light had disappeared from the
+sky.
+
+Soon I had left the last house well behind me. Boldly I plunged into
+the narrow path. The loneliness of the place was indescribable. Every
+step which I took on the stony track seemed to rouse the echoes of the
+grim heights which rose precipitously on either side of me, and in my
+mind I felt aghast at the extraordinary courage of those men who—like
+Aristide Fournier and his gang—chose to affront such obvious and
+manifold dangers as these frowning mountain regions held for them for
+the sake of paltry lucre.
+
+I had walked, according to my reckoning, just upon five hundred metres
+through the gorge, when on ahead I perceived the flicker of lights
+which appeared to be moving to and fro. The silence and loneliness no
+longer seemed to be absolute. A few metres from where I was men were
+living and breathing, plotting and planning, unconscious of the net
+which the unerring hand of a skilful fowler had drawn round them and
+their misdeeds.
+
+The next moment I was challenged by a peremptory “Halt!” Recognition
+followed. M. Ernest Berty, or Aristide Fournier, whichever he was,
+acknowledged with a few words my punctuality, whilst through the gloom
+I took rapid stock of his little party. I saw the vague outline of
+three men and a couple of mules which appeared to be heavily laden.
+They were assembled on a flat piece of ground which appeared like a
+roofless cavern carved out of the mountain side. The walls of rock
+around them afforded them both cover and refuge. They seemed in no
+hurry to start. They had the long night before them, so one of them
+remarked in English.
+
+However, presently M. Fournier-Berty gave the signal for the start to
+be made, he himself preparing to take leave of his men. Just at that
+moment my ears caught the welcome sound of the tramping of feet, and
+before any of the rascals there could realise what was happening, their
+way was barred by Leroux and his gendarmes, who loudly gave the order,
+“Hands up, in the name of the Emperor!”
+
+I was only conscious of a confused murmur of voices, of the click of
+firearms, of words of command passing to and fro, and of several
+violent oaths uttered in the not unfamiliar voice of M. Aristide
+Fournier. But already I had spied Leroux. I only exchanged a few words
+with him, for indeed my share of the evening’s work was done as far as
+he was concerned, and I made haste to retrace my steps through the
+darkness and the rain along the lonely mountain path toward the goal
+where chivalry and manly ardour beckoned to me from afar.
+
+I found my vehicle waiting for me at St. Cergues, and by the promise of
+an additional pourboire, I succeeded in making the driver whip up his
+horses to some purpose. Less than an hour later we drew up at Gex
+outside the little inn, pretentiously called Le Roi de Rome. On
+alighting I was met by the proprietress who, in answer to my inquiry
+after two ladies who had arrived that afternoon, at once conducted me
+upstairs.
+
+Already my mind was busy conjuring up visions of the fair lady of
+yester-eve. The landlady threw open a door and ushered me into a small
+room which reeked of stale food and damp clothes. I stepped in and
+found myself face to face with a large and exceedingly ugly old woman
+who rose with difficulty from the sofa as I entered.
+
+“M. Aristide Barrot,” she said as soon as the landlady had closed the
+door behind me.
+
+“At your service, Madame,” I stammered. “But—”
+
+I was indeed almost aghast. Never in my life had I seen anything so
+grotesque as this woman. To begin with she was more than ordinarily
+stout and unwieldy—indeed, she appeared like a veritable mountain of
+flesh; but what was so disturbing to my mind was that she was nothing
+but a hideous caricature of her lovely daughter, whose dainty features
+she grotesquely recalled. Her face was seamed and wrinkled, her white
+hair was plastered down above her yellow forehead. She wore an
+old-fashioned bonnet tied under her chin, and her huge bulk was draped
+in a large-patterned cashmere shawl.
+
+“You expected to see my dear daughter beside me, my good M. Barrot,”
+she said after a while speaking with remarkable gentleness and dignity.
+
+“I confess, Madame—” I murmured.
+
+“Ah! the darling has sacrificed herself for my sake. We found to-day
+that though my son was out of the way, he had set his abominable
+servants to watch over us. Soon we realized that we could not both get
+away. It meant one of us staying behind to act the part of unconcern
+and to throw dust in the eyes of our jailers. My daughter—ah! she is an
+angel, Monsieur—feared that the disappointment and my son’s cruelty,
+when he returned on the morrow and found that he had been tricked,
+would seriously endanger my life. She decided that I must go and that
+she would remain.”
+
+“But, Madame—” I protested.
+
+“I know, Monsieur,” she rejoined with the same calm dignity which
+already had commanded my respect, “I know that you think me a selfish
+old woman; but my Angèle—she is an angel, of a truth!—made all the
+arrangements, and I could not help but obey her. But have no fears for
+her safety, Monsieur. My son would not dare lay hands on her as often
+as he has done on me. Angèle will be brave, and our relations at St.
+Claude will, directly we arrive, make arrangements to go and fetch her
+and bring her back to me. My brother is an influential man; he would
+never have allowed my son to martyrize me and Angèle had he known what
+we have had to endure.”
+
+Of course I could not then tell her that all her fears for herself and
+the lovely Angèle could now be laid to rest. Her ruffianly son was even
+now being conveyed by Leroux and his gendarmes to the frontier, where
+the law would take its course. I was indeed not sorry for him. I was
+not sorry to think that he would end his evil life upon the guillotine
+or the gallows. I was only grieved for Angèle who would spend a night
+and a day, perhaps more, in agonized suspense, knowing nothing of the
+events which at one great swoop would free her and her beloved mother
+from the tyranny of a hated brother and send him to expiate his crimes.
+Not only did I grieve, Sir, for the tender victim of that man’s
+brutality, but I trembled for her safety. I did not know what minions
+or confederates Fournier-Berty had left in the lonely house yonder, or
+under what orders they were in case he did not return from his
+nocturnal expedition.
+
+Indeed for the moment I felt so agitated at thought of that beautiful
+angel’s peril that I looked down with anger and scorn at the fat old
+woman who ought to have remained beside her daughter to comfort and to
+shield her.
+
+I was on the point of telling her everything, and dragging her back to
+her post of duty which she should never have relinquished. Fortunately
+my sense of what I owed to my own professional dignity prevented my
+taking such a step. It was clearly not for me to argue. My first duty
+was to stand by this helpless woman in distress, who had been committed
+to my charge, and to convey her safely to St. Claude. After which I
+could see to it that Mademoiselle Angèle was brought along too as
+quickly as influential relatives could contrive.
+
+In the meanwhile I derived some consolation from the thought that at
+any rate for the next four and twenty hours the lovely creature would
+be safe. No news of the arrest of Aristide Fournier could possibly
+reach the lonely house until I myself could return thither and take her
+under my protection.
+
+So I said nothing; but with perfect gallantry, just as if fat Mme.
+Fournier had been a young and beautiful woman, I begged her to give
+herself the trouble of mounting into the carriage which was waiting for
+her.
+
+It took time and trouble, Sir, to hoist that mass of solid flesh into
+the vehicle, and the driver grumbled not a little at the unexpected
+weight. However, his horses were powerful, wiry, mountain ponies, and
+we made headway through the darkness and along the smooth, departmental
+road at moderate speed. I may say that it was a miserably uncomfortable
+journey for me, sitting, as I was forced to do, on the narrow front
+seat of the carriage, without support for my head or room for my legs.
+But Madame’s bulk filled the whole of the back seat, and it never
+seemed to enter her head that I too might like the use of a cushion.
+However, even the worst moments and the weariest journeys must come to
+an end, and we reached the frontier in the small hours of the morning.
+Here we found the customs officials ready to render us any service we
+might require. Leroux had not failed to order the fresh relay of
+horses, and whilst these were being put to, the polite officers of the
+station gave Madame and myself some excellent coffee. Beyond the
+formal: “Madame has nothing to declare for His Majesty’s customs?” and
+my companion’s equally formal: “Nothing, Monsieur, except my personal
+belongings,” they did not ply us with questions, and after half an
+hour’s halt we again proceeded on our way.
+
+We reached St. Claude at daybreak, and following Madame’s directions,
+the driver pulled up in front of a large house in the Avenue du Jura.
+Again there was the same difficulty in hoisting the unwieldy lady out
+of the vehicle, but this time, in response to my vigorous pull at the
+outside bell, the concierge and another man came out of the house, and
+very respectfully they approached Madame and conveyed her into the
+house.
+
+While they did so she apparently gave them some directions about
+myself, for anon the concierge returned, and with extreme politeness
+told me that Madame Fournier greatly hoped that I would stay in St.
+Claude a day or two as she had the desire to see me again very soon.
+She also honoured me with an invitation to dine with her that same
+evening at seven of the clock. This was the first time, I noticed, that
+the name Fournier was actually used in connexion with any of the people
+with whom I had become so dramatically involved. Not that I had ever
+doubted the identity of the ruffianly Ernest Berty; still it was very
+satisfactory to have my surmises confirmed. I concluded that the fine
+house in the Avenue du Jura belonged to Mme. Fournier’s brother, and I
+vaguely wondered who he was. The invitation to dinner had certainly
+been given in her name, and the servants had received her with a show
+of respect which suggested that she was more than a guest in her
+brother’s house.
+
+Be that as it may, I betook myself for the nonce to the Hôtel des
+Moines in the centre of the town and killed time for the rest of the
+day as best I could. For one thing I needed rest after the emotions and
+the fatigue of the past forty-eight hours. Remember, Sir, I had not
+slept for two nights and had spent the last eight hours on the narrow
+front seat of a jolting chaise. So I had a good rest in the afternoon,
+and at seven o’clock I presented myself once more at the house in the
+Avenue du Jura.
+
+My intention was to retire early to bed after spending an agreeable
+evening with the family, who would no doubt overwhelm me with their
+gratitude, and at daybreak I would drive back to Gex after I had heard
+all the latest news from Leroux.
+
+I confess that it was with a pardonable feeling of agitation that I
+tugged at the wrought-iron bell-pull on the perron of the magnificent
+mansion in the Avenue du Jura. To begin with I felt somewhat rueful at
+having to appear before ladies at this hour in my travelling clothes,
+and then, you will admit, Sir, that it was a somewhat awkward
+predicament for a man of highly sensitive temperament to meet on terms
+of equality a refined if stout lady whose son he had just helped to
+send to the gallows. Fortunately there was no likelihood of Mme.
+Fournier being as yet aware of this unpleasant fact: even if she did
+know at this hour that her son’s illicit adventure had come to grief,
+she could not possibly in her mind connect me with his ill-fortune. So
+I allowed the sumptuous valet to take my hat and coat and I followed
+him with as calm a demeanour as I could assume up the richly carpeted
+stairs. Obviously the relatives of Mme. Fournier were more than well to
+do. Everything in the house showed evidences of luxury, not to say
+wealth. I was ushered into an elegant salon wherein every corner showed
+traces of dainty feminine hands. There were embroidered silk cushions
+upon the sofa, lace covers upon the tables, whilst a work basket,
+filled with a riot of many coloured silks, stood invitingly open. And
+through the apartment, Sir, a scent of violets lingered and caressed my
+nostrils, reminding me of a beauteous creature in distress whom it had
+been my good fortune to succour.
+
+I had waited less than five minutes when I heard a swift, elastic step
+approaching through the next room, and a second or so later, before I
+had time to take up an appropriate posture, the door was thrown open
+and the exquisite vision of my waking dreams—the beautiful Angèle—
+stood smiling before me.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” I stammered somewhat clumsily, for of a truth I was
+hardly able to recover my breath, and surprise had well nigh robbed me
+of speech, “how comes it that you are here?”
+
+She only smiled in reply, the most adorable smile I had ever seen on
+any human face, so full of joy, of mischief—aye, of triumph, was it. I
+asked after Madame. Again she smiled, and said Madame was in her room,
+resting from the fatigues of her journey. I had scarce recovered from
+my initial surprise when another—more complete still—confronted me.
+This was the appearance of Monsieur Aristide Fournier, whom I had
+fondly imagined already expiating his crimes in a frontier prison, but
+who now entered, also smiling, also extremely pleasant, who greeted me
+as if we were lifelong friends, and who then—I scarce could believe my
+eyes—placed his arm affectionately round his sister’s waist, while she
+turned her sweet face up to his and gave him a fond—nay, a loving look.
+A loving look to him who was a brute and a bully and a miscreant
+amenable to the gallows! True his appearance was completely changed:
+his eyes were bright and kindly, his mouth continued to smile, his
+manner was urbane in the extreme when he finally introduced himself to
+me as: “Aristide Fournier, my dear Monsieur Ratichon, at your service.”
+
+He knew my name, he knew who I was! whilst I . . . I had to pass my
+hand once or twice over my forehead and to close and reopen my eyes
+several times, for, of a truth, it all seemed like a dream. I tried to
+stammer out a question or two, but I could only gasp, and the lovely
+Angèle appeared highly amused at my distress.
+
+“Let us dine,” she said gaily, “after which you may ask as many
+questions as you like.”
+
+In very truth I was in no mood for dinner. Puzzlement and anxiety
+appeared to grip me by the throat and to choke me. It was all very well
+for the beautiful creature to laugh and to make merry. She had cruelly
+deceived me, played upon the chords of my sensitive heart for purposes
+which no doubt would presently be made clear, but in the meanwhile
+since the smuggling of the English files had been successful—as it
+apparently was—what had become of Leroux and his gendarmes?
+
+What tragedy had been enacted in the narrow gorge of St. Cergues, and
+what, oh! what had become of my hopes of that five thousand francs for
+the apprehension of the smugglers, promised me by Leroux? Can you
+wonder that for the moment the very thought of dinner was abhorrent to
+me? But only for the moment. The next a sumptuous valet had thrown open
+the folding-doors, and down the vista of the stately apartment I
+perceived a table richly laden with china and glass and silver, whilst
+a distinctly savoury odour was wafted to my nostrils.
+
+“We will not answer a single question,” the fair Angèle reiterated with
+adorable determination, “until after we have dined.”
+
+What, Sir, would you have done in my place? I believe that never until
+this hour had Hector Ratichon reached to such a sublimity of manner. I
+bowed with perfect dignity in token of obedience to the fair creature,
+Sir; then without a word I offered her my arm. She placed her hand upon
+it, and I conducted her to the dining-room, whilst Aristide Fournier,
+who at this hour should have been on a fair way to being hanged,
+followed in our wake.
+
+Ah! it seemed indeed a lovely dream: one that lasted through an
+excellent and copious dinner, and which turned to delightful reality
+when, over a final glass of succulent Madeira, Monsieur Aristide
+Fournier slowly counted out one hundred notes, worth one hundred francs
+each, and presented these to me with a gracious nod.
+
+“Your fee, Monsieur,” he said, “and allow me to say that never have I
+paid out so large a sum with such a willing hand.”
+
+“But I have done nothing,” I murmured from out the depths of my
+bewilderment.
+
+Mademoiselle Angèle and Monsieur Fournier looked at one another, and,
+no doubt, I presented a very comical spectacle; for both of them burst
+into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.
+
+“Indeed, Monsieur,” quoth Monsieur Fournier as soon as he could speak
+coherently, “you have done everything that you set out to do and done
+it with perfect chivalry. You conveyed ‘the toys’ safely over the
+frontier as far as St. Claude.”
+
+“But how?” I stammered, “how?”
+
+Again Mademoiselle Angèle laughed, and through the ripples of her
+laughter came her merry words:
+
+“Maman was very fat, was she not, my good Monsieur Ratichon? Did you
+not think she was extraordinarily like me?”
+
+I caught the glance in her eyes, and they were literally glowing with
+mischief. Then all of a sudden I understood. She had impersonated a fat
+mother, covered her lovely face with lines, worn a disfiguring wig and
+an antiquated bonnet, and round her slender figure she had tucked away
+thousands of packages of English files. I could only gasp.
+Astonishment, not to say admiration, at her pluck literally took my
+breath away.
+
+“But, Monsieur Berty?” I murmured, my mind in a turmoil, my thoughts
+running riot through my brain. “The Englishmen, the mules, the packs?”
+
+“Monsieur Berty, as you see, stands before you now in the person of
+Monsieur Fournier,” she replied. “The Englishmen were three faithful
+servants who threw dust not only in your eyes, my dear M. Ratichon, but
+in those of the customs officials, while the packs contained harmless
+personal luggage which was taken by your friend and his gendarmes to
+the customs station at Mijoux, and there, after much swearing, equally
+solemnly released with many apologies to M. Fournier, who was allowed
+to proceed unmolested on his way, and who arrived here safely this
+afternoon, whilst Maman divested herself of her fat and once more
+became the slender Mme. Aristide Fournier, at your service.”
+
+She bobbed me a dainty curtsy, and I could only try and hide the pain
+which this last cruel stab had inflicted on my heart. So she was not
+“Mademoiselle” after all, and henceforth it would even be wrong to
+indulge in dreams of her.
+
+But the ten thousand francs crackled pleasantly in my breast pocket,
+and when I finally took leave of Monsieur Aristide Fournier and his
+charming wife, I was an exceedingly happy man.
+
+But Leroux never forgave me. Of what he suspected me I do not know, or
+if he suspected me at all. He certainly must have known about fat Maman
+from the customs officials who had given us coffee at Mijoux.
+
+But he never mentioned the subject to me at all, nor has he spoken to
+me since that memorable night. To one of his colleagues he once said
+that no words in his vocabulary could possibly be adequate to express
+his feelings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. — HONOUR AMONG ———
+
+1.
+
+Ah, my dear Sir, it is easy enough to despise our profession, but
+believe me that all the finer qualities—those of loyalty and of
+truth—are essential, not only to us, but to our subordinates, if we are
+to succeed in making even a small competence out of it.
+
+Now let me give you an instance. Here was I, Hector Ratichon, settled
+in Paris in that eventful year 1816 which saw the new order of things
+finally swept aside and the old order resume its triumphant sway, which
+saw us all, including our God-given King Louis XVIII, as poor as the
+proverbial church mice and as eager for a bit of comfort and luxury as
+a hungry dog is for a bone; the year which saw the army disbanded and
+hordes of unemployed and unemployable men wandering disconsolate and
+half starved through the country seeking in vain for some means of
+livelihood, while the Allied troops, well fed and well clothed, stalked
+about as if the sacred soil of France was so much dirt under their
+feet; the year, my dear Sir, during which more intrigues were hatched
+and more plots concocted than in any previous century in the whole
+history of France. We were all trying to make money, since there was so
+precious little of it about. Those of us who had brains succeeded, and
+then not always.
+
+Now, I had brains—I do not boast of them; they are a gift from
+Heaven—but I had them, and good looks, too, and a general air of
+strength, coupled with refinement, which was bound to appeal to anyone
+needing help and advice, and willing to pay for both, and yet—but you
+shall judge.
+
+You know my office in the Rue Daunou, you have been in it—plainly
+furnished; but, as I said, these were not days of luxury. There was an
+antechamber, too, where that traitor, blackmailer and thief, Theodore,
+my confidential clerk in those days, lodged at my expense and kept
+importunate clients at bay for what was undoubtedly a liberal
+salary—ten per cent, on all the profits of the business—and yet he was
+always complaining, the ungrateful, avaricious brute!
+
+Well, Sir, on that day in September—it was the tenth, I remember—1816,
+I must confess that I was feeling exceedingly dejected. Not one client
+for the last three weeks, half a franc in my pocket, and nothing but a
+small quarter of Strasburg patty in the larder. Theodore had eaten most
+of it, and I had just sent him out to buy two sous’ worth of stale
+bread wherewith to finish the remainder. But after that? You will
+admit, Sir, that a less buoyant spirit would not have remained so long
+undaunted.
+
+I was just cursing that lout Theodore inwardly, for he had been gone
+half an hour, and I strongly suspected him of having spent my two sous
+on a glass of absinthe, when there was a ring at the door, and I,
+Hector Ratichon, the confidant of kings and intimate counsellor of half
+the aristocracy in the kingdom, was forced to go and open the door just
+like a common lackey.
+
+But here the sight which greeted my eyes fully compensated me for the
+temporary humiliation, for on the threshold stood a gentleman who had
+wealth written plainly upon his fine clothes, upon the dainty linen at
+his throat and wrists, upon the quality of his rich satin necktie and
+the perfect set of his fine cloth pantaloons, which were of an
+exquisite shade of dove-grey. When, then, the apparition spoke,
+inquiring with just a sufficiency of aristocratic hauteur whether M.
+Hector Ratichon were in, you cannot be surprised, my dear Sir, that my
+dejection fell from me like a cast-off mantle and that all my usual
+urbanity of manner returned to me as I informed the elegant gentleman
+that M. Ratichon was even now standing before him, and begged him to
+take the trouble to pass through into my office.
+
+This he did, and I placed a chair in position for him. He sat down,
+having previously dusted the chair with a graceful sweep of his
+lace-edged handkerchief. Then he raised a gold-rimmed eyeglass to his
+right eye with a superlatively elegant gesture, and surveyed me
+critically for a moment or two ere he said:
+
+“I am told, my good M. Ratichon, that you are a trustworthy fellow, and
+one who is willing to undertake a delicate piece of business for a
+moderate honorarium.”
+
+Except for the fact that I did not like the word “moderate,” I was
+enchanted with him.
+
+“Rumour for once has not lied, Monsieur,” I replied in my most
+attractive manner.
+
+“Well,” he rejoined—I won’t say curtly, but with businesslike brevity,
+“for all purposes connected with the affair which I desire to treat
+with you my name, as far as you are concerned, shall be Jean Duval.
+Understand?”
+
+“Perfectly, Monsieur le Marquis,” I replied with a bland smile.
+
+It was a wild guess, but I don’t think that I underestimated my new
+client’s rank, for he did not wince.
+
+“You know Mlle. Mars?” he queried.
+
+“The actress?” I replied. “Perfectly.”
+
+“She is playing in _Le Rêve_ at the Theatre Royal just now.”
+
+“She is.”
+
+“In the first and third acts of the play she wears a gold bracelet set
+with large green stones.”
+
+“I noticed it the other night. I had a seat in the parterre, I may
+say.”
+
+“I want that bracelet,” broke in the soi-disant Jean Duval
+unceremoniously. “The stones are false, the gold strass. I admire Mlle.
+Mars immensely. I dislike seeing her wearing false jewellery. I wish to
+have the bracelet copied in real stones, and to present it to her as a
+surprise on the occasion of the twenty-fifth performance of _Le Rêve_.
+It will cost me a king’s ransom, and her, for the time being, an
+infinite amount of anxiety. She sets great store by the valueless
+trinket solely because of the merit of its design, and I want its
+disappearance to have every semblance of a theft. All the greater will
+be the lovely creature’s pleasure when, at my hands, she will receive
+an infinitely precious jewel the exact counterpart in all save its
+intrinsic value of the trifle which she had thought lost.”
+
+It all sounded deliciously romantic. A flavour of the past
+century—before the endless war and abysmal poverty had killed all
+chivalry in us—clung to this proposed transaction. There was nothing of
+the roturier, nothing of a Jean Duval, in this polished man of the
+world who had thought out this subtle scheme for ingratiating himself
+in the eyes of his lady fair.
+
+I murmured an appropriate phrase, placing my services entirely at M. le
+Marquis’s disposal, and once more he broke in on my polished diction
+with that brusquerie which betrayed the man accustomed to be silently
+obeyed.
+
+“Mlle. Mars wears the bracelet,” he said, “during the third act of _Le
+Rêve_. At the end of the act she enters her dressing-room, and her maid
+helps her to change her dress. During this entr’acte Mademoiselle with
+her own hands puts by all the jewellery which she has to wear during
+the more gorgeous scenes of the play. In the last act—the finale of the
+tragedy—she appears in a plain stuff gown, whilst all her jewellery
+reposes in the small iron safe in her dressing-room. It is while
+Mademoiselle is on the stage during the last act that I want you to
+enter her dressing-room and to extract the bracelet out of the safe for
+me.”
+
+“I, M. le Marquis?” I stammered. “I, to steal a—”
+
+“Firstly, M.—er—er—Ratichon, or whatever your confounded name may be,”
+interposed my client with inimitable hauteur, “understand that my name
+is Jean Duval, and if you forget this again I shall be under the
+necessity of laying my cane across your shoulders and incidentally to
+take my business elsewhere. Secondly, let me tell you that your
+affectations of outraged probity are lost on me, seeing that I know all
+about the stolen treaty which—”
+
+“Enough, M. Jean Duval,” I said with a dignity equal, if not greater,
+than his own; “do not, I pray you, misunderstand me. I am ready to do
+you service. But if you will deign to explain how I am to break open an
+iron safe inside a crowded building and extract therefrom a trinket,
+without being caught in the act and locked up for house-breaking and
+theft, I shall be eternally your debtor.”
+
+“The extracting of the trinket is your affair,” he rejoined dryly. “I
+will give you five hundred francs if you bring the bracelet to me
+within fourteen days.”
+
+“But—” I stammered again.
+
+“Your task will not be such a difficult one after all. I will give you
+the duplicate key of the safe.”
+
+He dived into the breast pocket of his coat, and drew from it a
+somewhat large and clumsy key, which he placed upon my desk.
+
+“I managed to get that easily enough,” he said nonchalantly, “a couple
+of nights ago, when I had the honour of visiting Mademoiselle in her
+dressing-room. A piece of wax in my hand, Mademoiselle’s momentary
+absorption in her reflection while her maid was doing her hair, and the
+impression of the original key was in my possession. But between taking
+a model of the key and the actual theft of the bracelet out of the safe
+there is a wide gulf which a gentleman cannot bridge over. Therefore, I
+choose to employ you, M.—er—er—Ratichon, to complete the transaction
+for me.”
+
+“For five hundred francs?” I queried blandly.
+
+“It is a fair sum,” he argued.
+
+“Make it a thousand,” I rejoined firmly, “and you shall have the
+bracelet within fourteen days.”
+
+He paused a moment in order to reflect; his steel-grey eyes, cool and
+disdainful, were fixed searchingly on my face. I pride myself on the
+way that I bear that kind of scrutiny, so even now I looked bland and
+withal purposeful and capable.
+
+“Very well,” he said, after a few moments, and he rose from his chair
+as he spoke; “it shall be a thousand francs, M.—er—er—Ratichon, and I
+will hand over the money to you in exchange for the bracelet—but it
+must be done within fourteen days, remember.”
+
+I tried to induce him to give me a small sum on account. I was about to
+take terrible risks, remember; housebreaking, larceny, theft—call it
+what you will, it meant the _police correctionelle_ and a couple of
+years in New Orleans for sure. He finally gave me fifty francs, and
+once more threatened to take his business elsewhere, so I had to accept
+and to look as urbane and dignified as I could.
+
+He was out of the office and about to descend the stairs when a thought
+struck me.
+
+“Where and how can I communicate with M. Jean Duval,” I asked, “when my
+work is done?”
+
+“I will call here,” he replied, “at ten o’clock of every morning that
+follows a performance of _Le Rêve_. We can complete our transaction
+then across your office desk.”
+
+The next moment he was gone. Theodore passed him on the stairs and
+asked me, with one of his impertinent leers, whether we had a new
+client and what we might expect from him. I shrugged my shoulders. “A
+new client!” I said disdainfully. “Bah! Vague promises of a couple of
+louis for finding out if Madame his wife sees more of a certain captain
+of the guards than Monsieur the husband cares about.”
+
+Theodore sniffed. He always sniffs when financial matters are on the
+tapis.
+
+“Anything on account?” he queried.
+
+“A paltry ten francs,” I replied, “and I may as well give you your
+share of it now.”
+
+I tossed a franc to him across the desk. By the terms of my contract
+with him, you understand, he was entitled to ten per cent, of every
+profit accruing from the business in lieu of wages, but in this
+instance do you not think that I was justified in looking on one franc
+now, and perhaps twenty when the transaction was completed, as a more
+than just honorarium for his share in it? Was I not taking all the
+risks in this delicate business? Would it be fair for me to give him a
+hundred francs for sitting quietly in the office or sipping absinthe at
+a neighbouring bar whilst I risked New Orleans—not to speak of the
+gallows?
+
+He gave me a strange look as he picked up the silver franc, spat on it
+for luck, bit it with his great yellow teeth to ascertain if it were
+counterfeit or genuine, and finally slipped it into his pocket, and
+shuffled out of the office whistling through his teeth.
+
+An abominably low, deceitful creature, that Theodore, you will see
+anon. But I won’t anticipate.
+
+2.
+
+The next performance of _Le Rêve_ was announced for the following
+evening, and I started on my campaign. As you may imagine, it did not
+prove an easy matter. To obtain access through the stage-door to the
+back of the theatre was one thing—a franc to the doorkeeper had done
+the trick—to mingle with the scene-shifters, to talk with the supers,
+to take off my hat with every form of deep respect to the principals
+had been equally simple.
+
+I had even succeeded in placing a bouquet on the dressing-table of the
+great tragedienne on my second visit to the theatre. Her dressing-room
+door had been left ajar during that memorable fourth act which was to
+see the consummation of my labours. I had the bouquet in my hand,
+having brought it expressly for that purpose. I pushed open the door,
+and found myself face to face with a young though somewhat forbidding
+damsel, who peremptorily demanded what my business might be.
+
+In order to minimise the risk of subsequent trouble, I had assumed the
+disguise of a middle-aged Angliche—red side-whiskers, florid
+complexion, a ginger-coloured wig plastered rigidly over the ears
+towards the temples, high stock collar, nankeen pantaloons, a patch
+over one eye and an eyeglass fixed in the other. My own sainted mother
+would never have known me.
+
+With becoming diffidence I explained in broken French that my deep
+though respectful admiration of Mlle. Mars had prompted me to lay a
+floral tribute at her feet. I desired nothing more.
+
+The damsel eyed me coldly, though at the moment I was looking quite my
+best, diffident yet courteous, a perfect gentleman of the old regime.
+Then she took the bouquet from me and put it down on the
+dressing-table.
+
+I fancied that she smiled, not unkindly, and I ventured to pass the
+time of day. She replied not altogether disapprovingly. She sat down by
+the dressing-table and took up some needlework which she had obviously
+thrown aside on my arrival. Close by, on the floor, was a solid iron
+chest with huge ornamental hinges and a large escutcheon over the lock.
+It stood about a foot high and perhaps a couple of feet long.
+
+There was nothing else in the room that suggested a receptacle for
+jewellery; this, therefore, was obviously the safe which contained the
+bracelet. At the self-same second my eyes alighted on a large and
+clumsy-looking key which lay upon the dressing-table, and my hand at
+once wandered instinctively to the pocket of my coat and closed
+convulsively on the duplicate one which the soi-disant Jean Duval had
+given me.
+
+I talked eloquently for a while. The damsel answered in monosyllables,
+but she sat unmoved at needlework, and after ten minutes or so I was
+forced to beat a retreat.
+
+I returned to the charge at the next performance of _Le Rêve_, this
+time with a box of bonbons for the maid instead of the bouquet for the
+mistress. The damsel was quite amenable to a little conversation, quite
+willing that I should dally in her company. She munched the bonbons and
+coquetted a little with me. But she went on stolidly with her
+needlework, and I could see that nothing would move her out of that
+room, where she had obviously been left in charge.
+
+Then I bethought me of Theodore. I realised that I could not carry this
+affair through successfully without his help. So I gave him a further
+five francs—as I said to him it was out of my own savings—and I assured
+him that a certain M. Jean Duval had promised me a couple of hundred
+francs when the business which he had entrusted to me was
+satisfactorily concluded. It was for this business—so I explained—that
+I required his help, and he seemed quite satisfied.
+
+His task was, of course, a very easy one. What a contrast to the risk I
+was about to run! Twenty-five francs, my dear Sir, just for knocking at
+the door of Mlle. Mars’ dressing-room during the fourth act, whilst I
+was engaged in conversation with the attractive guardian of the iron
+safe, and to say in well-assumed, breathless tones:
+
+“Mademoiselle Mars has been taken suddenly unwell on the stage. Will
+her maid go to her at once?”
+
+It was some little distance from the dressing-room to the wings—down a
+flight of ill-lighted stone stairs which demanded cautious ascent and
+descent. Theodore had orders to obstruct the maid during her progress
+as much as he could without rousing her suspicions.
+
+I reckoned that she would be fully three minutes going, questioning,
+finding out that the whole thing was a hoax, and running back to the
+dressing-room—three minutes in which to open the chest, extract the
+bracelet and, incidentally, anything else of value there might be close
+to my hand. Well, I had thought of that eventuality, too; one must
+think of everything, you know—that is where genius comes in. Then, if
+possible, relock the safe, so that the maid, on her return, would find
+everything apparently in order and would not, perhaps, raise the alarm
+until I was safely out of the theatre.
+
+It could be done—oh, yes, it could be done—with a minute to spare! And
+to-morrow at ten o’clock M. Jean Duval would appear, and I would not
+part with the bracelet until a thousand francs had passed from his
+pocket into mine. I must get Theodore out of the house, by the way,
+before the arrival of M. Duval.
+
+A thousand francs! I had not seen a thousand francs all at once for
+years. What a dinner I would have tomorrow! There was a certain little
+restaurant in the Rue des Pipots where they concocted a cassolette of
+goose liver and pork chops with haricot beans which . . . ! I only tell
+you that.
+
+How I got through the rest of that day I cannot tell you. The evening
+found me—quite an habitué now—behind the stage of the Theatre Royal,
+nodding to one or two acquaintances, most of the people looking on me
+with grave respect and talking of me as the eccentric milor. I was
+supposed to be pining for an introduction to the great tragedienne,
+who, very exclusive as usual, had so far given me the cold shoulder.
+
+Ten minutes after the rise of the curtain on the fourth act I was in
+the dressing-room, presenting the maid with a gold locket which I had
+bought from a cheapjack’s barrow for five and twenty francs—almost the
+last of the fifty which I had received from M. Duval on account. The
+damsel was eyeing the locket somewhat disdainfully and giving me
+grudging thanks for it when there came a hurried knock at the door. The
+next moment Theodore poked his ugly face into the room. He, too, had
+taken the precaution of assuming an excellent disguise—peaked cap set
+aslant over one eye, grimy face, the blouse of a scene-shifter.
+
+“Mlle. Mars,” he gasped breathlessly; “she has been taken ill—on the
+stage—very suddenly. She is in the wings—asking for her maid. They
+think she will faint.”
+
+The damsel rose, visibly frightened.
+
+“I’ll come at once,” she said, and without the slightest flurry she
+picked up the key of the safe and slipped it into her pocket. I fancied
+that she gave me a look as she did this. Oh, she was a pearl among
+Abigails! Then she pointed unceremoniously to the door.
+
+“Milor!” was all she said, but of course I understood. I had no idea
+that English milors could be thus treated by pert maidens. But what
+cared I for social amenities just then? My hand had closed over the
+duplicate key of the safe, and I walked out of the room in the wake of
+the damsel. Theodore had disappeared.
+
+Once in the passage, the girl started to run. A second or two later I
+heard the patter of her high-heeled shoes down the stone stairs. I had
+not a moment to lose.
+
+To slip back into the dressing-room was but an instant’s work. The next
+I was kneeling in front of the chest. The key fitted the lock
+accurately; one turn, and the lid flew open.
+
+The chest was filled with a miscellaneous collection of theatrical
+properties all lying loose—showy necklaces, chains, pendants, all of
+them obviously false; but lying beneath them, and partially hidden by
+the meretricious ornaments, were one or two boxes covered with velvet
+such as jewellers use. My keen eyes noted these at once. I was indeed
+in luck! For the moment, however, my hand fastened on a leather case
+which reposed on the top in one corner, and which very obviously, from
+its shape, contained a bracelet. My hands did not tremble, though I was
+quivering with excitement. I opened the case. There, indeed, was the
+bracelet—the large green stones, the magnificent gold setting, the
+whole jewel dazzlingly beautiful. If it were real—the thought flashed
+through my mind—it would be indeed priceless. I closed the case and put
+it on the dressing-table beside me. I had at least another minute to
+spare—sixty seconds wherein to dive for those velvet-covered boxes
+which— My hand was on one of them when a slight noise caused me
+suddenly to turn and to look behind me. It all happened as quickly as a
+flash of lightning. I just saw a man disappearing through the door. One
+glance at the dressing-table showed me the whole extent of my
+misfortune. The case containing the bracelet had gone, and at that
+precise moment I heard a commotion from the direction of the stairs and
+a woman screaming at the top of her voice: “Thief! Stop thief!”
+
+Then, Sir, I brought upon the perilous situation that presence of mind
+for which the name of Hector Ratichon will for ever remain famous.
+Without a single flurried movement, I slipped one of the velvet-covered
+cases which I still had in my hand into the breast pocket of my coat, I
+closed down the lid of the iron chest and locked it with the duplicate
+key, and I went out of the room, closing the door behind me.
+
+The passage was dark. The damsel was running up the stairs with a
+couple of stage hands behind her. She was explaining to them volubly,
+and to the accompaniment of sundry half-hysterical little cries, the
+infamous hoax to which she had fallen a victim. You might think, Sir,
+that here was I caught like a rat in a trap, and with that
+velvet-covered case in my breast pocket by way of damning evidence
+against me!
+
+Not at all, Sir! Not at all! Not so is Hector Ratichon, the keenest
+secret agent France has ever known, the confidant of kings, brought to
+earth by an untoward move of fate. Even before the damsel and the stage
+hands had reached the top of the stairs and turned into the corridor,
+which was on my left, I had slipped round noiselessly to my right and
+found shelter in a narrow doorway, where I was screened by the
+surrounding darkness and by a projection of the frame. While the three
+of them made straight for Mademoiselle’s dressing-room, and spent some
+considerable time there in uttering varied ejaculations when they found
+the place and the chest to all appearances untouched, I slipped out of
+my hiding-place, sped rapidly along the corridor, and was soon half-way
+down the stairs.
+
+Here my habitual composure in the face of danger stood me in good
+stead. It enabled me to walk composedly and not too hurriedly through
+the crowd behind the scenes—supers, scene-shifters, principals, none of
+whom seemed to be aware as yet of the hoax practised on Mademoiselle
+Mars’ maid; and I reckon that I was out of the stage door exactly five
+minutes after Theodore had called the damsel away.
+
+But I was minus the bracelet, and in my mind there was the firm
+conviction that that traitor Theodore had played me one of his
+abominable tricks. As I said, the whole thing had occurred as quickly
+as a flash of lightning, but even so my keen, experienced eyes had
+retained the impression of a peaked cap and the corner of a blue blouse
+as they disappeared through the dressing-room door.
+
+3.
+
+Tact, wariness and strength were all required, you must admit, in order
+to deal with the present delicate situation. I was speeding along the
+Rue de Richelieu on my way to my office. My intention was to spend the
+night there, where I had a chair-bedstead on which I had oft before
+slept soundly after a day’s hard work, and anyhow it was too late to go
+to my lodgings at Passy at this hour.
+
+Moreover, Theodore slept in the antechamber of the office, and I was
+more firmly convinced than ever that it was he who had stolen the
+bracelet. “Blackleg! Thief! Traitor!” I mused. “But thou hast not done
+with Hector Ratichon yet.”
+
+In the meanwhile I bethought me of the velvet-covered box in my breast
+pocket, and of the ginger-coloured hair and whiskers that I was still
+wearing, and which might prove an unpleasant “piece de conviction” in
+case the police were after the stolen bracelet.
+
+With a view to examining the one and getting rid of the other, I turned
+into the Square Louvois, which, as usual, was very dark and wholly
+deserted. Here I took off my wig and whiskers and threw them over the
+railings into the garden. Then I drew the velvet-covered box from my
+pocket, opened it, and groped for its contents. Imagine my feelings, my
+dear Sir, when I realised that the case was empty! Fate was indeed
+against me that night. I had been fooled and cheated by a traitor, and
+had risked New Orleans and worse for an empty box.
+
+For a moment I must confess that I lost that imperturbable sang-froid
+which is the admiration of all my friends, and with a genuine oath I
+flung the case over the railings in the wake of the milor’s hair and
+whiskers. Then I hurried home.
+
+Theodore had not returned. He did not come in until the small hours of
+the morning, and then he was in a state that I can only describe, with
+your permission, as hoggish. He could hardly speak. I had him at my
+mercy. Neither tact nor wariness was required for the moment. I
+stripped him to his skin; he only laughed like an imbecile. His eyes
+had a horrid squint in them; he was hideous. I found five francs in one
+of his pockets, but neither in his clothes nor on his person did I find
+the bracelet.
+
+“What have you done with it?” I cried, for by this time I was maddened
+with rage.
+
+“I don’t know what you are talking about!” he stammered thickly, as he
+tottered towards his bed. “Give me back my five francs, you thief!” the
+brutish creature finally blurted out ere he fell into a hog-like sleep.
+
+4.
+
+Desperate evils need desperate remedies. I spent the rest of the night
+thinking hard. By the time that dawn was breaking my mind was made up.
+Theodore’s stertorous breathing assured me that he was still
+insentient. I was muscular in those days, and he a meagre, attenuated,
+drink-sodden creature. I lifted him out of his bed in the antechamber
+and carried him into mine in the office. I found a coil of rope, and
+strapped him tightly in the chair-bedstead so that he could not move. I
+tied a scarf round his mouth so that he could not scream. Then, at six
+o’clock, when the humbler eating-houses begin to take down their
+shutters, I went out.
+
+I had Theodore’s five francs in my pocket, and I was desperately
+hungry. I spent ten sous on a cup of coffee and a plate of fried onions
+and haricot beans, and three francs on a savoury pie, highly flavoured
+with garlic, and a quarter-bottle of excellent cognac. I drank the
+coffee and ate the onions and the beans, and I took the pie and cognac
+home.
+
+I placed a table close to the chair-bedstead and on it I disposed the
+pie and the cognac in such a manner that the moment Theodore woke his
+eyes were bound to alight on them. Then I waited. I absolutely ached to
+have a taste of that pie myself, it smelt so good, but I waited.
+
+Theodore woke at nine o’clock. He struggled like a fool, but he still
+appeared half dazed. No doubt he thought that he was dreaming. Then I
+sat down on the edge of the bed and cut myself off a large piece of the
+pie. I ate it with marked relish in front of Theodore, whose eyes
+nearly started out of their sockets. Then I brewed myself a cup of
+coffee. The mingled odour of coffee and garlic filled the room. It was
+delicious. I thought that Theodore would have a fit. The veins stood
+out on his forehead and a kind of gurgle came from behind the scarf
+round his mouth. Then I told him he could partake of the pie and coffee
+if he told me what he had done with the bracelet. He shook his head
+furiously, and I left the pie, the cognac and the coffee on the table
+before him and went into the antechamber, closing the office door
+behind me, and leaving him to meditate on his treachery.
+
+What I wanted to avoid above everything was the traitor meeting M. Jean
+Duval. He had the bracelet—of that I was as convinced as that I was
+alive. But what could he do with a piece of false jewellery? He could
+not dispose of it, save to a vendor of theatrical properties, who no
+doubt was well acquainted with the trinket and would not give more than
+a couple of francs for what was obviously stolen property. After all, I
+had promised Theodore twenty francs; he would not be such a fool as to
+sell that birthright for a mess of pottage and the sole pleasure of
+doing me a bad turn.
+
+There was no doubt in my mind that he had put the thing away somewhere
+in what he considered a safe place pending a reward being offered by
+Mlle. Mars for the recovery of the bracelet. The more I thought of this
+the more convinced I was that that was, indeed, his proposed plan of
+action—oh, how I loathed the blackleg!—and mine henceforth would be to
+dog his every footstep and never let him out of my sight until I forced
+him to disgorge his ill-gotten booty.
+
+At ten o’clock M. Jean Duval arrived, as was his wont, supercilious and
+brusque as usual. I was just explaining to him that I hoped to have
+excellent news for him after the next performance of _Le Rêve_ when
+there was a peremptory ring at the bell. I went to open the door, and
+there stood a police inspector in uniform with a sheaf of papers in his
+hand.
+
+Now, I am not over-fond of our Paris police; they poke their noses in
+where they are least wanted. Their incompetence favours the
+machinations of rogues and frustrates the innocent ambitions of the
+just. However, in this instance the inspector looked amiable enough,
+though his manner, I must say, was, as usual, unpleasantly curt.
+
+“Here, Ratichon,” he said, “there has been an impudent theft of a
+valuable bracelet out of Mademoiselle Mars’ dressing-room at the
+Theatre Royal last night. You and your mate frequent all sorts of
+places of ill-fame; you may hear something of the affair.”
+
+I chose to ignore the insult, and the inspector detached a paper from
+the sheaf which he held and threw it across the table to me.
+
+“There is a reward of two thousand five hundred francs,” he said, “for
+the recovery of the bracelet. You will find on that paper an accurate
+description of the jewel. It contains the celebrated Maroni emerald,
+presented to the ex-Emperor by the Sultan, and given by him to Mlle.
+Mars.”
+
+Whereupon he turned unceremoniously on his heel and went, leaving me
+face to face with the man who had so shamefully tried to swindle me. I
+turned, and resting my elbow on the table and my chin in my hand, I
+looked mutely on the soi-disant Jean Duval and equally mutely pointed
+with an accusing finger to the description of the famous bracelet which
+he had declared to me was merely strass and base metal.
+
+But he had the impudence to turn on me before I could utter a syllable.
+
+“Where is the bracelet?” he demanded. “You consummate liar, you! Where
+is it? You stole it last night! What have you done with it?”
+
+“I extracted, at your request,” I replied with as much dignity as I
+could command, “a piece of theatrical jewellery, which you stated to me
+to be worthless, out of an iron chest, the key of which you placed in
+my hands. I . . .”
+
+“Enough of this rubbish!” he broke in roughly. “You have the bracelet.
+Give it me now, or . . .”
+
+He broke off and looked somewhat alarmed in the direction of the office
+door, from the other side of which there had just come a loud crash,
+followed by loud, if unintelligible, vituperation. What had happened I
+could not guess; all that I could do was to carry off the situation as
+boldly as I dared.
+
+“You shall have the bracelet, Sir,” I said in my most suave manner.
+“You shall have it, but not unless you will pay me three thousand
+francs for it. I can get two thousand five hundred by taking it
+straight to Mlle. Mars.”
+
+“And be taken up by the police for stealing it,” he retorted. “How will
+you explain its being in your possession?”
+
+I did not blanch.
+
+“That is my affair,” I replied. “Will you give me three thousand francs
+for it? It is worth sixty thousand francs to a clever thief like you.”
+
+“You hound!” he cried, livid with rage, and raised his cane as if he
+would strike me.
+
+“Aye, it was cleverly done, M. Jean Duval, whoever you may be. I know
+that the gentleman-thief is a modern product of the old regime, but I
+did not know that the fraternity could show such a fine specimen as
+yourself. Pay Hector Ratichon a thousand francs for stealing a bracelet
+for you worth sixty! Indeed, M. Jean Duval, you deserved to succeed!”
+
+Again he shook his cane at me.
+
+“If you touch me,” I declared boldly, “I shall take the bracelet at
+once to Mlle. Mars.”
+
+He bit his lip and made a great effort to pull himself together.
+
+“I haven’t three thousand francs by me,” he said.
+
+“Go, fetch the money,” I retorted, “and I’ll fetch the bracelet.”
+
+He demurred for a while, but I was firm, and after he had threatened to
+thrash me, to knock me down, and to denounce me to the police, he gave
+in and went to fetch the money.
+
+5.
+
+When I remembered Theodore—Theodore, whom only a thin partition wall
+had separated from the full knowledge of the value of his ill-gotten
+treasure!—I could have torn my hair out by the roots with the magnitude
+of my rage. He, the traitor, the blackleg, was about to triumph, where
+I, Hector Ratichon, had failed! He had but to take the bracelet to
+Mlle. Mars himself and obtain the munificent reward whilst I, after I
+had taken so many risks and used all the brains and tact wherewith
+Nature had endowed me, would be left with the meagre remnants of the
+fifty francs which M. Jean Duval had so grudgingly thrown to me.
+Twenty-five francs for a gold locket, ten francs for a bouquet, another
+ten for bonbons, and five for gratuities to the stage-doorkeeper! Make
+the calculation, my good Sir, and see what I had left. If it had not
+been for the five francs which I had found in Theodore’s pocket last
+night, I would at this moment not only have been breakfastless, but
+also absolutely penniless.
+
+As it was, my final hope—and that a meagre one—was to arouse one spark
+of honesty in the breast of the arch-traitor, and either by cajolery or
+threats, to induce him to share his ill-gotten spoils with me.
+
+I had left him snoring and strapped to the chair-bedstead, and when I
+opened the office door I was marvelling in my mind whether I could
+really bear to see him dying slowly of starvation with that savoury pie
+tantalizingly under his nose. The crash which I had heard a few minutes
+ago prepared me for a change of scene. Even so, I confess that the
+sight which I beheld glued me to the threshold. There sat Theodore at
+the table, finishing the last morsel of pie, whilst the chair-bedstead
+lay in a tangled heap upon the floor.
+
+I cannot tell you how nasty he was to me about the whole thing,
+although I showed myself at once ready to forgive him all his lies and
+his treachery, and was at great pains to explain to him how I had given
+up my own bed and strapped him into it solely for the benefit of his
+health, seeing that at the moment he was threatened with delirium
+tremens.
+
+He would not listen to reason or to the most elementary dictates of
+friendship. Having poured the vials of his bilious temper over my
+devoted head, he became as perverse and as obstinate as a mule. With
+the most consummate impudence I ever beheld in any human being, he
+flatly denied all knowledge of the bracelet.
+
+Whilst I talked he stalked past me into the ante-chamber, where he at
+once busied himself in collecting all his goods and chattels. These he
+stuffed into his pockets until he appeared to be bulging all over his
+ugly-body; then he went to the door ready to go out. On the threshold
+he turned and gave me a supercilious glance over his shoulder.
+
+“Take note, my good Ratichon,” he said, “that our partnership is
+dissolved as from to-morrow, the twentieth day of September.”
+
+“As from this moment, you infernal scoundrel!” I cried.
+
+But he did not pause to listen, and slammed the door in my face.
+
+For two or three minutes I remained quite still, whilst I heard the
+shuffling footsteps slowly descending the corridor. Then I followed
+him, quietly, surreptitiously, as a fox will follow its prey. He never
+turned round once, but obviously he knew that he was being followed.
+
+I will not weary you, my dear Sir, with the details of the dance which
+he led me in and about Paris during the whole of that memorable day.
+Never a morsel passed my lips from breakfast to long after sundown. He
+tried every trick known to the profession to throw me off the scent.
+But I stuck to him like a leech. When he sauntered I sauntered; when he
+ran I ran; when he glued his nose to the window of an eating house I
+halted under a doorway close by; when he went to sleep on a bench in
+the Luxembourg Gardens I watched over him as a mother over a babe.
+
+Towards evening—it was an hour after sunset and the street-lamps were
+just being lighted—he must have thought that he had at last got rid of
+me; for, after looking carefully behind him, he suddenly started to
+walk much faster and with an amount of determination which he had
+lacked hitherto. I marvelled if he was not making for the Rue Daunou,
+where was situated the squalid tavern of ill-fame which he was wont to
+frequent. I was not mistaken.
+
+I tracked the traitor to the corner of the street, and saw him
+disappear beneath the doorway of the Taverne des Trois Tigres. I
+resolved to follow. I had money in my pocket—about twenty-five sous—and
+I was mightily thirsty. I started to run down the street, when suddenly
+Theodore came rushing back out of the tavern, hatless and breathless,
+and before I succeeded in dodging him he fell into my arms.
+
+“My money!” he said hoarsely. “I must have my money at once! You thief!
+You . . .”
+
+Once again my presence of mind stood me in good stead.
+
+“Pull yourself together, Theodore,” I said with much dignity, “and do
+not make a scene in the open street.”
+
+But Theodore was not at all prepared to pull himself together. He was
+livid with rage.
+
+“I had five francs in my pocket last night!” he cried. “You have stolen
+them, you abominable rascal!”
+
+“And you stole from me a bracelet worth three thousand francs to the
+firm,” I retorted. “Give me that bracelet and you shall have your money
+back.”
+
+“I can’t,” he blurted out desperately.
+
+“How do you mean, you can’t?” I exclaimed, whilst a horrible fear like
+an icy claw suddenly gripped at my heart. “You haven’t lost it, have
+you?”
+
+“Worse!” he cried, and fell up against me in semi-unconsciousness.
+
+I shook him violently. I bellowed in his ear, and suddenly, after that
+one moment of apparent unconsciousness, he became, not only wide awake,
+but as strong as a lion and as furious as a bull. We closed in on one
+another. He hammered at me with his fists, calling me every kind of
+injurious name he could think of, and I had need of all my strength to
+ward off his attacks.
+
+For a few moments no one took much notice of us. Fracas and quarrels
+outside the drinking-houses in the mean streets of Paris were so
+frequent these days that the police did not trouble much about them.
+But after a while Theodore became so violent that I was forced to call
+vigorously for help. I thought he meant to murder me. People came
+rushing out of the tavern, and someone very officiously started
+whistling for the gendarmes. This had the effect of bringing Theodore
+to his senses. He calmed down visibly, and before the crowd had had
+time to collect round us we had both sauntered off, walking in apparent
+amity side by side down the street.
+
+But at the first corner Theodore halted, and this time he confined
+himself to gripping me by the arm with one hand whilst with the other
+he grasped one of the buttons of my coat.
+
+“That five francs,” he said in a hoarse, half-choked voice. “I must
+have that five francs! Can’t you see that I can’t have that bracelet
+till I have my five francs wherewith to redeem it?”
+
+“To redeem it!” I gasped. I was indeed glad then that he held me by the
+arm, for it seemed to me as if I was falling down a yawning abyss which
+had opened at my feet.
+
+“Yes,” said Theodore, and his voice sounded as if it came from a great
+distance and through cotton-wool,
+
+“I knew that you would be after that bracelet like a famished hyena
+after a bone, so I tied it securely inside the pocket of the blouse I
+was wearing, and left this with Legros, the landlord of the Trois
+Tigres. It was a good blouse; he lent me five francs on it. Of course,
+he knew nothing about the bracelet then. But he only lends money to
+clients in this manner on the condition that it is repaid within
+twenty-four hours. I have got to pay him back before eight o’clock this
+evening or he will dispose of the blouse as he thinks best. It is close
+on eight o’clock now. Give me back my five francs, you confounded
+thief, before Legros has time to discover the bracelet! We’ll share the
+reward, I promise you. Faith of an honest man. You liar, you cheat,
+you—”
+
+What was the use of talking? I had not got five francs. I had spent ten
+sous in getting myself some breakfast, and three francs in a savoury
+pie flavoured with garlic and in a quarter of a bottle of cognac. I
+groaned aloud. I had exactly twenty-five sous left.
+
+We went back to the tavern hoping against hope that Legros had not yet
+turned out the pockets of the blouse, and that we might induce him, by
+threat or cajolery or the usurious interest of twenty-five sous, to
+grant his client a further twenty-four hours wherein to redeem the
+pledge.
+
+One glance at the interior of the tavern, however, told us that all our
+hopes were in vain. Legros, the landlord, was even then turning the
+blouse over and over, whilst his hideous hag of a wife was talking to
+the police inspector, who was showing her the paper that announced the
+offer of two thousand five hundred francs for the recovery of a
+valuable bracelet, the property of Mlle. Mars, the distinguished
+tragedienne.
+
+We only waited one minute with our noses glued against the windows of
+the Trois Tigres, just long enough to see Legros extracting the leather
+case from the pocket of the blouse, just long enough to hear the police
+inspector saying peremptorily:
+
+“You, Legros, ought to be able to let the police know who stole the
+bracelet. You must know who left that blouse with you last night.”
+
+Then we both fled incontinently down the street.
+
+Now, Sir, was I not right when I said that honour and loyalty are the
+essential qualities in our profession? If Theodore had not been such a
+liar and such a traitor, he and I, between us, would have been richer
+by three thousand francs that day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. — AN OVER-SENSITIVE HEART
+
+1.
+
+No doubt, Sir, that you have noticed during the course of our
+conversations that Nature has endowed me with an over-sensitive heart.
+I feel keenly, Sir, very keenly. Blows dealt me by Fate, or, as has
+been more often the case, by the cruel and treacherous hand of man,
+touch me on the raw. I suffer acutely. I am highly strung. I am one of
+those rare beings whom Nature pre-ordained for love and for happiness.
+I am an ideal family man.
+
+What? You did not know that I was married? Indeed, Sir, I am. And
+though Madame Ratichon does not perhaps fulfil all my ideals of
+exquisite womanhood, nevertheless she has been an able and willing
+helpmate during these last years of comparative prosperity. Yes, you
+see me fairly prosperous now. My industry, my genius—if I may so
+express myself—found their reward at last. You will be the first to
+acknowledge—you, the confidant of my life’s history—that that reward
+was fully deserved. I worked for it, toiled and thought and struggled,
+up to the last; and had Fate been just, rather than grudging, I should
+have attained that ideal which would have filled my cup of happiness to
+the brim.
+
+But, anyway, the episode connected with my marriage did mark the close
+of my professional career, and is therefore worthy of record. Since
+that day, Sir—a happy one for me, a blissful one for Mme. Ratichon—I
+have been able, thanks to the foresight of an all-wise Providence, to
+gratify my bucolic tastes. I live now, Sir, amidst my flowers, with my
+dog and my canary and Mme. Ratichon, smiling with kindly indulgence on
+the struggles and the blunders of my younger colleagues, oft consulted
+by them in matters that require special tact and discretion. I sit and
+dream now beneath the shade of a vine-clad arbour of those glorious
+days of long ago, when kings and emperors placed the destiny of their
+inheritance in my hands, when autocrats and dictators came to me for
+assistance and advice, and the name of Hector Ratichon stood for
+everything that was most astute and most discreet. And if at times a
+gentle sigh of regret escapes my lips, Mme. Ratichon—whose thinness is
+ever my despair, for I admire comeliness, Sir, as being more
+womanly—Mme. Ratichon, I say, comes to me with the gladsome news that
+dinner is served; and though she is not all that I could wish in the
+matter of the culinary arts, yet she can fry a cutlet passably, and one
+of her brothers is a wholesale wine merchant of excellent reputation.
+
+It was soon after my connexion with that abominable Marquis de
+Firmin-Latour that I first made the acquaintance of the present Mme.
+Ratichon, under somewhat peculiar circumstances.
+
+I remember it was on the first day of April in the year 1817 that M.
+Rochez—Fernand Rochez was his exact name—came to see me at my office in
+the Rue Daunou, and the date proved propitious, as you will presently
+see. How M. Rochez came to know of my gifts and powers, I cannot tell
+you. He never would say. He had heard of me through a friend, was all
+that he vouchsafed to say.
+
+Theodore had shown him in. Ah! have I not mentioned the fact that I had
+forgiven Theodore his lies and his treachery, and taken him back to my
+bosom and to my board? My sensitive heart had again got the better of
+my prudence, and Theodore was installed once more in the antechamber of
+my apartments in the Rue Daunou, and was, as heretofore, sharing with
+me all the good things that I could afford. So there he was on duty on
+that fateful first of April which was destined to be the turning-point
+of my destiny. And he showed M. de Rochez in.
+
+At once I knew my man—the type, I mean. Immaculately dressed, scented
+and befrilled, haughty of manner and nonchalant of speech, M. Rochez
+had the word “adventurer” writ all over his well-groomed person. He was
+young, good-looking, his nails were beautifully polished, his
+pantaloons fitted him without a wrinkle. These were of a soft putty
+shade; his coat was bottle-green, and his hat of the latest modish
+shape. A perfect exquisite, in fact.
+
+And he came to the point without much preamble.
+
+“M.—er—Ratichon,” he said, “I have heard of you through a friend, who
+tells me that you are the most unscrupulous scoundrel he has ever come
+across.”
+
+“Sir—!” I began, rising from my seat in indignant protest at the coarse
+insult. But with an authoritative gesture he checked the flow of my
+indignation.
+
+“No comedy, I pray you, Sir,” he said. “We are not at the Theatre
+Molière, but, I presume, in an office where business is transacted both
+briefly and with discretion.”
+
+“At your service, Monsieur,” I replied.
+
+“Then listen, will you?” he went on curtly, “and pray do not interrupt.
+Only speak in answer to a question from me.”
+
+I bowed my head in silence. Thus must the proud suffer when they happen
+to be sparsely endowed with riches.
+
+“You have no doubt heard of Mlle. Goldberg,” M. Rochez continued after
+a moment’s pause, “the lovely daughter of the rich usurer in the Rue
+des Médecins.”
+
+I had heard of Mlle. Goldberg. Her beauty and her father’s wealth were
+reported to be fabulous. I indicated my knowledge of the beautiful lady
+by a mute inclination of the head.
+
+“I love Mlle. Goldberg,” my client resumed, “and I have reason for the
+belief that I am not altogether indifferent to her. Glances, you
+understand, from eyes as expressive as those of the exquisite Jewess
+speak more eloquently than words.”
+
+He had forbidden me to speak, so I could only express concurrence in
+the sentiments which he expressed by a slight elevation of my left
+eyebrow.
+
+“I am determined to win the affections of Mlle. Goldberg,” M. Rochez
+went on glibly, “and equally am I determined to make her my wife.”
+
+“A very natural determination,” I remarked involuntarily.
+
+“My only trouble with regard to pressing my court is the fact that my
+lovely Leah is never allowed outside her father’s house, save in his
+company or that of his sister—an old maid of dour mien and sour
+disposition, who acts the part of a duenna with dog-like tenacity. Over
+and over again have I tried to approach the lady of my heart, only to
+be repelled or roughly rebuked for my insolence by her irascible old
+aunt.”
+
+“You are not the first lover, Sir,” I remarked drily, “who hath seen
+obstacles thus thrown in his way, and—”
+
+“One moment, M.—er—Ratichon,” he broke in sharply. “I have not
+finished. I will not attempt to describe my feelings to you. I have
+been writhing—yes, writhing!—in face of those obstacles of which you
+speak so lightly, and for a long time I have been cudgelling my brains
+as to the possible means whereby I might approach my divinity
+unchecked. Then one day I bethought me of you—”
+
+“Of me, Sir?” I ejaculated, sorely puzzled. “Why of me?”
+
+“None of my friends,” he replied nonchalantly, “would care to undertake
+so scrubby a task as I would assign to you.”
+
+“I pray you to be more explicit,” I retorted with unimpaired dignity.
+
+Once more he paused. Obviously he was a born mountebank, and he
+calculated all his effects to a nicety.
+
+“You, M.—er—Ratichon,” he said curtly at last, “will have to take the
+duenna off my hands.”
+
+I was beginning to understand. So I let him prattle on the while my
+busy brain was already at work evolving the means to render this man
+service, which in its turn I expected to be amply repaid. Thus I cannot
+repeat exactly all that he said, for I was only listening with half an
+ear. But the substance of it all was this: I was to pose as the friend
+of M. Fernand Rochez, and engage the attention of Mlle. Goldberg senior
+the while he paid his court to the lovely Leah. It was not a repellent
+task altogether, because M. Rochez’s suggestion opened a vista of
+pleasant parties at open-air cafés, with foaming tankards of beer, on
+warm afternoons the while the young people sipped sirops and fed on
+love. My newly found friend was pleased to admit that my personality
+and appearance would render my courtship of the elderly duenna a
+comparatively easy one. She would soon, he declared, fall a victim to
+my charms.
+
+After which the question of remuneration came in, and over this we did
+not altogether agree. Ultimately I decided to accept an advance of two
+hundred francs and a new suit of clothes, which I at once declared was
+indispensable under the circumstances, seeing that in my well-worn coat
+I might have the appearance of a fortune-hunter in the eyes of the
+suspicious old dame.
+
+Within my mind I envisaged the possibility of touching M. Rochez for a
+further two hundred francs if and when opportunity arose.
+
+2.
+
+The formal introduction took place on the boulevards one fine afternoon
+shortly after that. Mlle. Leah was walking under the trees with her
+duenna when we—M. Rochez and I—came face to face with them. My friend
+raised his hat, and I did likewise. Mademoiselle Leah blushed and the
+ogre frowned. Sir, she was an ogre!—bony and angular and hook-nosed,
+with thin lips that closed with a snap, and cold grey eyes that sent a
+shiver down your spine! Rochez introduced me to her, and I made myself
+exceedingly agreeable to her, while my friend succeeded in exchanging
+two or three whispered words with his inamorata.
+
+But we did not get very far that day. Mlle. Goldberg senior soon
+marched her lovely charge away.
+
+Ah, Sir, she was lovely indeed! And in my heart I not only envied
+Rochez his good fortune but I also felt how entirely unworthy he was of
+it. Nor did the beautiful Leah give me the impression of being quite so
+deeply struck with his charms as he would have had me believe. Indeed,
+it struck me during those few minutes that I stood dutifully talking to
+her duenna that the fair young Jewess cast more than one approving
+glance in my direction.
+
+Be that as it may, the progress of our respective courtships, now that
+the ice was broken, took on a more decided turn. At first it only
+amounted to meetings on the boulevards and a cursory greeting, but soon
+Mlle. Goldberg senior, delighted with my conversation, would
+deliberately turn to walk with me under the trees the while Fernand
+Rochez followed by the side of his adored. A week later the ladies
+accepted my friend’s offer to sit under the awning of the Café Bourbon
+and to sip sirops, whilst we indulged in tankards of foaming “blondes.”
+
+Within a fortnight, Sir—I may say it without boasting—I had Mlle.
+Goldberg senior in the hollow of my hand. On the boulevards, as soon as
+she caught sight of me, her dour face would be wreathed in smiles, a
+row of large yellow teeth would appear between her thin lips, and her
+cold, grey eyes would soften with a glance of welcome which more than
+ever sent a cold shudder down my spine. While we four were together,
+either promenading or sitting at open-air cafés in the cool of the
+evening, the old duenna had eyes and ears only for me, and if my friend
+Rochez did not get on with his own courtship as fast as he would have
+wished the fault rested entirely with him.
+
+For he did _not_ get on with his courtship, and that was a fact. The
+fair Leah was very sweet, very coy, greatly amused, I fancy, at her
+aunt’s obvious infatuation for me, and not a little flattered at the
+handsome M. Rochez’s attentions to herself. But there it all ended. And
+whenever I questioned Rochez on the subject, he flew into a temper and
+consigned all middle-aged Jewesses to perdition, and all the lovely and
+young ones to a comfortable kind of Hades to which he alone amongst the
+male sex would have access. From which I gathered that I was not wrong
+in my surmises, that the fair Leah had been smitten by my personality
+and my appearance rather than by those of my friend, and that he was
+suffering the pangs of an insane jealousy.
+
+This, of course, he never would admit. All that he told me one day was
+that Leah, with the characteristic timidity of her race, refused to
+marry him unless she could obtain her father’s consent to the union.
+Old Goldberg, duly approached on the matter, flatly forbade his
+daughter to have anything further to do with that fortune-hunter, that
+parasite, that beggarly pick-thank—such, Sir, were but a few
+complimentary epithets which he hurled with great volubility at his
+daughter’s absent suitor.
+
+It was from Mlle. Goldberg, senior, that my friend and I had the
+details of that stormy interview between father and daughter; after
+which, she declared that interviews between the lovers would
+necessarily become very difficult of arrangement. From which you will
+gather that the worthy soul, though she was as ugly as sin, was by this
+time on the side of the angels. Indeed, she was more than that. She
+professed herself willing to aid and abet them in every way she could.
+This Rochez confided to me, together with his assurance that he was
+determined to take his Fate into his own hands and, since the beautiful
+Leah would not come to him of her own accord, to carry her off by
+force.
+
+Ah, my dear Sir, those were romantic days, you must remember! Days when
+men placed the possession of the woman they loved above every treasure,
+every consideration upon earth. Ah, romance! Romance, Sir, was the
+breath of our nostrils, the blood in our veins! Imagine how readily we
+all fell in with my friend’s plans. I, of course, was the moving spirit
+in it all; mine was the genius which was destined to turn gilded
+romance into grim reality. Yes, grim! For you shall see! . . .
+
+Mlle. Goldberg, senior, who appropriately enough was named Sarah, gave
+us the clue how to proceed, after which my genius worked alone.
+
+You must know that old Goldberg’s house in the Rue des Médecins—a large
+apartment house in which he occupied a few rooms on the ground floor
+behind his shop—backed on to a small uncultivated garden which ended in
+a tall brick wall, the meeting-place of all the felines in the
+neighbourhood, and in which there was a small postern gate, now
+disused. This gate gave on a narrow cul-de-sac—grandiloquently named
+Passage Corneille—which was flanked on the opposite side by the tall
+boundary wall of an adjacent convent.
+
+That cul-de-sac was marked out from the very first in my mind as our
+objective. Around and about it, as it were, did I build the edifice of
+my schemes, aided by the ever-willing Sarah. The old maid threw herself
+into the affair with zest, planning and contriving like a veritable
+strategist; and I must admit that she was full of resource and
+invention. We were now in mid-May and enjoying a spell of hot summer
+weather. This gave the inventive Sarah the excuse for using the back
+garden as a place wherein to sit in the cool of the evening in the
+company of her niece.
+
+Ah, you see the whole thing now at a glance, do you not? The postern
+gate, the murky night, the daring lover, the struggling maiden, the
+willing accomplices. The actors were all there, ready for the curtain
+to be rung up on the palpitating drama.
+
+Then it was that a brilliant idea came into my brain. It was born on
+the very day that I realized with indisputable certainty that the
+lovely Leah was not in reality in love with Rochez. He fatuously
+believed that she was ready to fall into his arms, that only maidenly
+timidity held her back, and that the moment she had been snatched from
+her father’s house and found herself in the arms of her adoring lover,
+she would turn to him in the very fullness of love and confidence.
+
+But I knew better. I had caught a look now and again—an undefinable
+glance, which told me the whole pitiable tale. She did not love Rochez;
+and in the drama which we were preparing to enact the curtain would
+fall on his rapture and her unhappiness.
+
+Ah, Sir! imagine what my feelings were when I realized this! This fair
+girl, against whom we were all conspiring like so many traitors, was
+still ignorant of the fatal brink on which she stood. She chatted and
+coquetted and smiled, little dreaming that in a very few days her
+happiness would be wrecked and she would be linked for life to a man
+whom she could never love. Rochez’s idea, of course, was primarily to
+get hold of her fortune. I had already ascertained for him, through the
+ever-willing Sarah, that this fortune came from Leah’s grandfather, who
+had left a sum of two hundred thousand francs on trust for her
+children, she to enjoy the income for her life. There certainly was a
+clause in the will whereby the girl would forfeit that fortune if she
+married without her father’s consent; but according to Rochez’s plans
+this could scarcely be withheld once she had been taken forcibly away
+from home, held in durance, and with her reputation hopelessly
+compromised. She could then pose as an injured victim, throw herself at
+her father’s feet, and beg him to give that consent without which she
+would for ever remain an outcast of society, a pariah amongst her kind.
+
+A pretty piece of villainous combination, you will own! And I, Sir, was
+to lend a hand in this abomination!—nay, I was to be the chief villain
+in the drama! It was I who, even now, was spending the hours of the
+night, when I might have been dreaming sentimental dreams, in oiling
+the lock of the postern gate which was to give us access into papa
+Goldberg’s garden. It was I who, under cover of darkness and guided by
+that old jade Sarah, was to sneak into that garden on the appointed
+night and forcibly seize the unsuspecting maiden and carry her to the
+carriage which Rochez would have in readiness for her.
+
+You see what a coward he was! It was a criminal offence in those days,
+punishable with deportation to New Caledonia, to abduct a young lady
+from her parents’ house; and Rochez left me the dirty work to do in
+case the girl screamed and attracted the police. Now you will tell me
+if I was not justified in doing what I did, and I will abide by your
+judgment.
+
+I was to take all the risks, remember!—New Caledonia, the police, the
+odium attached to so foul a deed; and do you know for what? For a
+paltry thousand francs, which with much difficulty I had induced
+Rochez—nay, forced him!—to hand over to me in anticipation of what I
+was about to accomplish for his sake. A thousand francs! Did this
+miserliness not characterize the man? Was it to such a scrubby knave
+that I, at risk of my life and of my honour, would hand over that jewel
+amongst women, that pearl above price?—a lady with a personal fortune
+amounting to two hundred thousand francs?
+
+No, Sir; I would not! Then and there I vowed that I would not! Mine
+were to be all the risks; then mine should be the reward! What Rochez
+meant to do, that I could too, and with far greater reason. The lovely
+Leah did at times frown on Fernand; but she invariably smiled on me.
+She would fall into my arms far more readily than into his, and papa
+Goldberg would be equally forced to give his consent to her marriage
+with me as with that self-seeking carpet-knight whom he abhorred.
+
+Needless to say, I kept my own counsel, and did not speak of my project
+even to Sarah. To all appearances I was to be the mere tool in this
+affair, the unfortunate cat employed to snatch the roast chestnuts out
+of the fire for the gratification of a mealy-mouthed monkey.
+
+3.
+
+The appointed day and hour were at hand. Fernand Rochez had engaged a
+barouche which was to take him and his lovely victim to a little house
+at Auteuil, which he had rented for the purpose. There the lovers were
+to lie perdu until such time as papa Goldberg had relented and the
+marriage could be duly solemnized in the synagogue of the Rue des
+Halles. Sarah had offered in the meanwhile to do all that in her power
+lay to soften the old man’s heart and to bring about the happy
+conclusion of the romantic adventure.
+
+For the latter we had chosen the night of May 23rd. It was a moonless
+night, and the Passage Corneille, from whence I was to operate, was
+most usefully dark. Sarah Goldberg had, according to convention, left
+the postern gate on the latch, and at ten o’clock precisely I made my
+way up the cul-de-sac and cautiously turned the handle of the door. I
+confess that my heart beat somewhat uncomfortably in my bosom.
+
+I had left Rochez and his barouche in the Rue des Pipots, about a
+hundred metres from the angle of the Passage Corneille, and it was
+along those hundred metres of a not altogether unfrequented street that
+he expected me presently to carry a possibly screaming and struggling
+burden in the very teeth of a gendarmerie always on the look-out for
+exciting captures.
+
+No, Sir; that was not to be! And it was with a resolute if beating
+heart that I presently felt the postern gate yielding to the pressure
+of my hand. The neighbouring church clock of St. Sulpice had just
+finished striking ten. I pushed open the gate and tip-toed across the
+threshold.
+
+In the garden the boughs of a dilapidated old ash tree were soughing in
+the wind above my head, whilst from the top of the boundary wall the
+yarring and yowling of beasts of the feline species grated unpleasantly
+on my ear. I could not see my hand before my eyes, and had just
+stretched it out in order to guide my footsteps when it was seized with
+a kindly yet firm pressure, whilst a voice murmured softly:
+
+“Hush!”
+
+“Who is it?” I whispered in response.
+
+“It is I—Sarah!” the voice replied. “Everything is all right, but Leah
+is unsuspecting. I am sure that if she suspected anything she would not
+set foot outside the door.”
+
+“What shall we do?” I asked.
+
+“Wait here a moment quietly,” Sarah rejoined, speaking in a rapid
+whisper, “under cover of this wall. Within the next few minutes Leah
+will come out of the house. I have left my knitting upon a garden
+chair, and I will ask her to run out and fetch it. That will be your
+opportunity. The chair is in the angle of the wall, there,” she added,
+pointing to her right, “not three paces from where you are standing
+now. Leah has a white dress on. She will have to stoop in order to pick
+up the knitting. I have taken the precaution to entangle the wool in
+the leg of the chair, so she will be some few seconds entirely at your
+mercy. Have you a shawl?”
+
+I had, of course, provided myself with one. A shawl is always a
+necessary adjunct to such adventures. Breathlessly, silently, I
+intimated to my kind accomplice that I would obey her behests and that
+I was prepared for every eventuality. The next moment her hold upon my
+hand relaxed, she gave another quickly-whispered “Hush!” and
+disappeared into the night.
+
+For a second or two after that my ear caught the soft sound of her
+retreating footsteps, then nothing more. To say that I felt anxious and
+ill at ease was but to put it mildly. I was face to face with an
+adventure which might cost me at least five years’ acute discomfort in
+New Caledonia, but which might also bring me as rich a reward as could
+befall any man of modest ambitions: a lovely wife and a comfortable
+fortune. My whole life seemed to be hanging on a thread, and my
+overwrought senses seemed almost to catch the sound of the
+spinning-wheel of Fate weaving the web of my destiny.
+
+A moment or two later I again caught the distinct sound of a gentle
+footfall upon the soft earth. My eyes by now were somewhat accustomed
+to the gloom. It was very dark, you understand; but through the
+darkness I saw something white moving slowly toward me. Then my heart
+thumped more furiously than ever before. I dared not breathe. I saw the
+lovely Leah approaching, or, rather, I felt her approach, for it was
+too dark to see. She moved in the direction which Sarah had indicated
+to me as being the place where stood the garden chair with the knitting
+upon it. I grasped the shawl. I was ready.
+
+Another few seconds of agonising suspense went by. The fair Leah had
+ceased to move. Undoubtedly she was engaged in disentangling the wool
+from the leg of the chair. That was my opportunity. More stealthy than
+any cat, I tiptoed toward the chair—and, indeed, at that moment I
+blessed the sudden yowl set up by some feline in its wrath which rent
+the still night air and effectually drowned any sound which I might
+make.
+
+There, not three paces away from me, was the dim outline of the young
+girl’s form vaguely discernible in the gloom—a white mass, almost
+motionless, against a background of inky blackness. With a quick
+intaking of my breath I sprang forward, the shawl outspread in my hand,
+and with a quick dexterous gesture I threw it over her head, and the
+next second had her, faintly struggling, in my arms. She was as light
+as a feather, and I was as strong as a giant. Think of it, Sir! There
+was I, alone in the darkness, holding in my arms, together with a
+lovely form, a fortune of two hundred thousand francs!
+
+Of that fool Fernand Rochez I did not trouble to think. He had a
+barouche waiting _up_ the Rue des Pipots, a hundred metres from the
+corner of the Passage Corneille, but I had a chaise and pair of horses
+waiting _down_ that same street, and that now was my objective. Yes,
+Sir! I had arranged the whole thing! But I had done it for mine own
+advantage, not for that of the miserly friend who had been too great a
+coward to risk his own skin for the sake of his beloved.
+
+The guerdon was mine, and I was determined this time that no traitor or
+ingrate should filch from me the reward of my labours. With the
+thousand francs which Rochez had given me for my services I had engaged
+the chaise and horses, paid the coachman lavishly, and secured a cosy
+little apartment for my future wife in a pleasant hostelry I knew of at
+Suresnes.
+
+I had taken the precaution to leave the wicket-gate on the latch. With
+my foot I pushed it open, and, keeping well under the cover of the tall
+convent wall, I ran swiftly to the corner of the Rue des Pipots. Here I
+paused a moment. Through the silence of the night my ear caught the
+faint sound of horses snorting and harness jingling in the distance,
+both sides from where I stood; but of gendarmes or passers-by there was
+no sign. Gathering up the full measure of my courage and holding my
+precious burden closer to my heart, I ran quickly down the street.
+
+Within the next few seconds I had the seemingly inanimate maiden safely
+deposited in the inside of the barouche and myself sitting by her side.
+The driver cracked his whip, and whilst I, happy but exhausted, was
+mopping my streaming forehead the chaise rattled gaily along the uneven
+pavements of the great city in the direction of Suresnes.
+
+What that fool Rochez was doing I could not definitely ascertain. I
+looked through the vasistas of the coach, but could see nothing in
+pursuit of us. Then I turned my full attention to my lovely companion.
+It was pitch dark inside the carriage, you understand; only from time
+to time, as we drove past an overhanging street lanthorn, I caught a
+glimpse of that priceless bundle beside me, which lay there so still
+and so snug, still wrapped up in the shawl.
+
+With cautious, loving fingers I undid its folds. Under cover of the
+darkness the sweet and modest creature, released of her bonds, turned
+for an instant to me, and for a few, very few, happy seconds I held her
+in my arms.
+
+“Have no fear, fair one,” I murmured in her ear. “It is I, Hector
+Ratichon, who adores you and who cannot live without you! Forgive me
+for this seeming violence, which was prompted by an undying passion,
+and remember that to me you are as sacred as a divinity until the happy
+hour when I can proclaim you to the world as my beloved wife!”
+
+I pressed her against my heart, and my lips imprinted a delicate kiss
+upon her forehead. After which, with chaste decorum, she once more
+turned away from me, covered her face and head with the shawl, and drew
+back into the remote corner of the carriage, where she remained, silent
+and absorbed, no doubt, in the contemplation of her happiness.
+
+I respected her silence, and I, too, fell to meditating upon my good
+fortune. Here was I, Sir, within sight of a haven wherein I could live
+through the twilight of my days in comfort and in peace, a beautiful
+young wife, a modest fortune! I had never in my wildest dreams
+envisaged a Fate more fair. The little house at Chantilly which I
+coveted, the plot of garden, the espalier peaches—all, all would be
+mine now! It seemed indeed too good to be true!
+
+The very next moment I was rudely awakened from those golden dreams by
+a loud clatter, and stern voices shouting the ominous word, “Halt!” The
+carriage drew up with such a jerk that I was flung off my seat against
+the front window and my nose seriously bruised. A faint cry of terror
+came from the precious bundle beside me.
+
+“Have no fear, my beloved,” I whispered hurriedly. “Your own Hector
+will protect you!”
+
+Already the door of the carriage had been violently torn open; the next
+moment a gruff voice called out peremptorily:
+
+“By order of the Chief Commissary of Police!”
+
+I was dumbfounded. In what manner had the Chief Commissary of Police
+been already apprised of this affair? The whole thing was, of course, a
+swift and vengeful blow dealt to me by that cowardly Rochez. But how,
+in the name of thunder, had he got to work so quickly? But, of course,
+there was no time now for reflection. The gruff voice was going on more
+peremptorily and more insistently:
+
+“Is Hector Ratichon here?”
+
+I was dumb. My throat had closed up, and I could not have uttered a
+sound to save my life. The police had even got my name quite straight!
+
+“Now then, Ratichon,” that same irascible voice continued, “get out of
+there! In the name of the law I charge you with the abduction of a
+defenceless female, and my orders are to bring you forthwith before the
+Chief Commissary of Police.”
+
+Then it was, Sir, that bliss once more re-entered my soul. I had just
+felt a small hand pressing something crisp into mine, whilst a soft
+voice whispered in my ear:
+
+“Give him this, and tell him to let you go in peace. Say that I am
+Mademoiselle Goldberg, your promised wife.”
+
+The feel of that crackling note in my hand at once restored my courage.
+Covering the lovely creature beside me with a protecting arm, I replied
+boldly to the minion of the law.
+
+“This lady,” I said, “is my affianced wife. You, Sir Gendarme, are
+overstepping your powers. I demand that you let us proceed in peace.”
+
+“My orders are—” the gendarme resumed; but already my sensitive ear had
+detected a faint wavering in the gruffness of his voice. The hectoring
+tone had gone out of it. I could not see him, of course, but somehow I
+felt that his attitude had become less arrogant and his glance more
+shifty.
+
+“This gentleman has spoken the truth,” now came in soft, dulcet tones
+from under the shawl that wrapped the head of my beloved. “I am Mlle.
+Goldberg, M. le Gendarme, and I am travelling with M. Hector Ratichon
+entirely of my own free will, since I have promised him that I would be
+his wife.”
+
+“Ah!” the gendarme ejaculated, obviously mollified.
+
+“If Mademoiselle is the fiancée of Monsieur, and is acting of her own
+free will—”
+
+“It is not for you to interfere, eh, my friend?” I broke in jocosely.
+“You will now let us proceed in peace, and for your trouble you will no
+doubt accept this token of my consideration.” And, groping in the
+darkness, I found the rough hand of the gendarme, and speedily pressed
+into it the crisp note which my adored one had given to me.
+
+“Ah!” he said, with very obvious gratification. “If Monsieur Ratichon
+will assure me that Mademoiselle here is indeed his affianced wife,
+then indeed it is not a case of abduction, and—”
+
+“Abduction!” I retorted, flaring up in righteous indignation. “Who
+dares to use the word in connexion with this lovely lady? Mademoiselle
+Goldberg, I swear, will be Madame Ratichon within the next four and
+twenty hours. And the sooner you, Sir Gendarme, allow us to proceed on
+our way the less pain will you cause to this distressed and virtuous
+damsel.”
+
+This settled the whole affair quite comfortably. The gendarme shut the
+carriage door with a bang, and at my request gave the order to the
+driver to proceed. The latter once again cracked his whip, and once
+again the cumbrous vehicle, after an awkward lurch, rattled on its way
+along the cobblestones of the sleeping city.
+
+Once more I was alone with the priceless treasure by my side—alone and
+happy—more happy, I might say, than I had been before. Had not my
+adored one openly acknowledged her love for me and her desire to stand
+with me at the hymeneal altar? To put it vulgarly—though vulgarity in
+every form is repellent to me—she had burnt her boats. She had allowed
+her name to be coupled with mine in the presence of the minions of the
+law. What, after that, could her father do but give his consent to a
+union which alone would save his only child’s reputation from the
+cruelty of waggish tongues?
+
+No doubt, Sir, that I was happy. True, that when the uncouth gendarme
+finally slammed to the door of our carriage and we restarted on our
+way, my ears had been unpleasantly tickled by the sound of prolonged
+and ribald laughter—laughter which sounded strangely and unpleasantly
+familiar. But after a few seconds’ serious reflection I dismissed the
+matter from my thoughts. If, as indeed I gravely suspected, it was
+Fernand Rochez who had striven thus to put a spoke in the wheel of my
+good fortune, he would certainly not have laughed when I drove
+triumphantly away with my conquered bride by my side. And, of course,
+my ears _must_ have deceived me when they caught the sound of a girl’s
+merry laugh mingling with the more ribald one of the man.
+
+4.
+
+I have paused purposely, Sir, ere I embark upon the narration of the
+final stage of this, my life’s adventure.
+
+The chaise was bowling along the banks of the river toward Suresnes.
+Presently the driver struck to his right and plunged into the
+fastnesses of the Bois de Boulogne. For a while, therefore, we were in
+utter darkness. My lovely companion neither moved nor spoke. Somewhere
+in the far distance a church clock struck eleven. One whole hour had
+gone by since first I had embarked on this great undertaking.
+
+I was excited, feverish. The beautiful Leah’s silence and tranquillity
+grated upon my nerves. I could not understand how she could remain
+there so placid when her whole life’s happiness had so suddenly, so
+unexpectedly, been assured. I became more and more fidgety as time went
+on. Soon I felt that I could no longer hold myself in proper control.
+Being of an impulsive disposition, this tranquil acceptance of so great
+a joy became presently intolerable, and, unable to restrain my ardour
+any longer, I seized that passive bundle of loveliness in my arms.
+
+“Have no fear,” I murmured once again, as I pressed her to my heart.
+
+But my admonition was obviously unnecessary. The beautiful Leah showed
+not the slightest sign of fear. She rested her head against my shoulder
+and put one arm around my neck. I was in raptures.
+
+Just then the vehicle swung out of the Bois and once more rattled upon
+the cobblestones. This time we were nearing Suresnes. A vague light,
+emanating from the lanthorns at the bridge-head, was already faintly
+visible ahead of us. Soon it grew brighter. The next moment we passed
+immediately beneath the lanthorns. The interior of the carriage was
+flooded with light . . . and, Sir, I gave a gasp of unadulterated
+dismay! The being whom I held in my arms, whose face was even at that
+moment raised up to my own, was not the lovely Leah! It was Sarah, Sir!
+Sarah Goldberg, the dour, angular aunt, whose yellow teeth gleamed for
+one brief moment through her thin lips as she threw me one of those
+glances of amorous welcome which invariably sent a cold shiver down my
+spine. Sarah Goldberg! I scarce could believe my eyes, and for a moment
+did indeed think that the elusive, swiftly-vanished light of the
+bridge-head lanthorns had played my excited senses a weird and cruel
+trick. But no! The very next second proved my disillusionment. Sarah
+spoke to me!
+
+She spoke to me and laughed! Ah, she was happy, Sir! Happy in that she
+had completely and irrevocably tricked me! That traitor Fernand Rochez
+was up to the neck in the plot which had saddled me for ever with an
+ugly, elderly wife of dour mien and no fortune, while he and the lovely
+Leah were spinning the threads of perfect love at the other end of
+Paris and laughing their fill at my discomfiture. Think, Sir, what I
+suffered during those few brief minutes while the coach lurched through
+the narrow streets of Suresnes, and I had perforce to listen to the
+protestations of undying love from this unprepossessing female!
+
+That love, she vowed, was her excuse, and everything, she asserted, was
+fair in love and war. She knew that after Rochez had attained his
+heart’s desire and carried off the lady of his choice—which he had
+successfully done half an hour before I myself made my way up the
+Passage Corneille—I would pass out of her life for ever. This she could
+not endure. Life at once would become intolerable. And, aided and
+abetted by Rochez and Leah, she had planned and contrived my
+mystification and won me by foul means, since she could not do so by
+fair; and it seemed as if her volubility then was the forecast of what
+my life with her would be in the future. Talk! Talk! Talk! She never
+ceased!
+
+She told me the whole story of the abominable conspiracy against my
+liberty. Her brother, M. Goldberg, she explained, had determined upon
+remarriage. She, Sarah, felt that henceforth she would be in the way of
+everybody; she would have no home. Leah married to Rochez; a new and
+young Mme. Goldberg ruling in the old house of the Rue des Médecins!
+Ah, it was unthinkable!
+
+And I, Sir—I, Hector Ratichon—had, it appears, by my polite manners and
+prepossessing ways, induced this dour old maid to believe that she was
+not altogether indifferent to me. Ah, how I cursed my own charms, when
+I realised whither they had led me! It seems that it was that fickle
+jade Leah who first imagined the whole execrable plot. Rochez was to
+entrust me with the task of carrying off his beloved, and thus I would
+be tricked in the darkness into abducting Mlle. Goldberg senior from
+her home. Then some friends of Rochez arranged to play the comedy of
+false gendarmes, and again I was tricked into acknowledging Sarah as my
+affianced wife before independent witnesses. After that I could no
+longer repudiate mine honourable intentions, for if I did, then I
+should be arraigned before the law on a criminal charge of abduction.
+In this comedy of false gendarmes Rochez himself and the heartless Leah
+had joined with zest and laughed over my discomfiture, whilst the
+friends who played their rôles to such perfection had a paltry hundred
+francs each as the price of this infamous trick. Now my doom was
+sealed, and all that was left for me to do was to think disconsolately
+over my future.
+
+I did bitterly reproach Sarah for her treachery and tried to still her
+protestations of love by pointing out to her that I had absolutely no
+fortune, and could only offer her a life of squalor, not to say of
+what. But this she knew, and vowed that penury by my side would make
+her happier than luxury beside any other man. Ah, Sir, ‘tis given to
+few men to arouse such selfless passion in a woman’s heart, and it hath
+oft been my dream in the past one day thus to be adored for myself
+alone!
+
+But for the moment I was too deeply angered to listen placidly to
+Sarah’s vows of undying affection. My nerves were irritated by her
+fulsome adulation; indeed, I could not bear the sight of her nor yet
+the sound of her voice. You may imagine how thankful I was when the
+chaise came at last to a halt outside the humble little hostelry where
+I had engaged the room which I had so fondly hoped would have been
+occupied by the lovely and fickle Leah.
+
+I bundled Mlle. Goldberg senior into the house, and here again I had to
+endure galling mortification in the shape of sidelong glances cast at
+me and my future bride by the landlord of the hostelry and his ill-bred
+daughter. When I engaged the room I had very foolishly told them that
+it would be occupied by a lovely lady who had consented to be my wife,
+and that she would remain here in happy seclusion until such time as
+all arrangements for our wedding were complete. The humiliation of
+these vulgar people’s irony seemed like the last straw which
+overweighed my forbearance. The room and pension I had already paid two
+days in advance, so I had nothing more to say either to the ribald
+landlord or to Mlle. Goldberg senior. I was bitterly angered against
+her, and refused her the solace of a kindly look or of an encouraging
+pressure from my hand, even though she waited for both with the
+pathetic patience of an old spaniel.
+
+I re-entered the coach, which was to take me back to mine own humble
+lodgings in Passy. Here at least I was alone—alone with my gloomy
+thoughts. My heart was full of wrath against the woman who had so
+basely tricked me, and I viewed with dismay amounting almost to despair
+the prospect of spending the rest of my life in her company. That night
+I slept but little, nor yet the following night, or the night after
+that. Those days I spent in seclusion, thankful for my solitude.
+
+Twice each day did Mlle. Goldberg come to my lodgings. In the foolish
+past I had somewhat injudiciously acquainted her of where I lived. Now
+she came and asked to be allowed to see me, but invariably did I refuse
+thus to gratify her. I felt that time alone would perhaps soften my
+feelings a little towards her. In the meanwhile I must commend her
+discretion and delicacy of procedure. She did not in any way attempt to
+molest me. When she was told by Theodore—whom I employed during the day
+to guard me against unwelcome visitors—that I refused to see her, she
+invariably went away without demur, nor did she refer in any way,
+either with adjurations or threats, to the impending wedding. Indeed,
+Sir, she was a lady of vast discretion.
+
+On the third day, however, I received a visit from M. Goldberg himself.
+I could not refuse to see him. Indeed, he would not be denied, but
+roughly pushed Theodore aside, who tried to hinder him. He had come
+armed with a riding-whip, and nothing but mine own innate dignity saved
+me from outrage. He came, Sir, with a marriage licence for his sister
+and me in one pocket and with a denunciation to the police against me
+for abduction in another. He gave me the choice. What could I do, Sir?
+I was like a helpless babe in the hands of unscrupulous brigands!
+
+The marriage licence was for the following day—at the mairie of the
+eighth arrondissement first, and in the synagogue of the Rue des Halles
+afterwards. I chose the marriage licence. What could I do, Sir? I was
+helpless!
+
+Of my wedding day I have but a dim recollection. It was all hustle and
+bustle; from the mairie to the synagogue, and thence to the house of M.
+Goldberg in the Rue des Médecins. I must say that the old usurer
+received me and my bride with marked amiability. He was, I gathered,
+genuinely pleased that his sister had found happiness and a home by the
+side of an honourable man, seeing that he himself was on the point of
+contracting a fresh alliance with a Jewish lady of unsurpassed
+loveliness.
+
+Of Rochez and Leah we saw nothing that day, and from one or two words
+which M. Goldberg let fall I concluded that he was greatly angered
+against his daughter because of her marriage with a fortune-hunting
+adventurer, who, he weirdly hinted, had already found quick and
+exemplary punishment for his crime. I was sincerely glad to hear this,
+even though I could not get M. Goldberg to explain in what that
+exemplary punishment consisted.
+
+The climax came at six o’clock of that eventful afternoon, at the hour
+when I, with the newly-enthroned Mme. Ratichon on my arm, was about to
+take leave of M. Goldberg. I must admit that at that moment my heart
+was overflowing with bitterness. I had been led like a lamb to the
+slaughter; I had been made to look foolish and absurd in the midst of
+this Israelite community which I despised; I was saddled for the rest
+of my life with an unprepossessing elderly wife, who could do naught
+for me but share the penury, the hard crusts, the onion pies with me
+and Theodore. The only advantage I might ever derive from her was that
+she would darn my stockings, sew the buttons on my vests, and goffer
+the frills of my shirts!
+
+Was this not enough to turn any man’s naturally sweet disposition to
+gall? No doubt my mobile face betrayed something of the bitterness of
+my thoughts, for M. Goldberg at one moment slapped me vigorously on the
+back and bade me be of good cheer, as things were not so bad as I
+imagined. I was on the point of asking him what he meant when I saw
+another gentleman advancing toward me. His face, which was sallow and
+oily, bore a kind of obsequious smile; his clothes were of rusty black,
+and his features were markedly Jewish in character. He had some law
+papers under his arm, and he was perpetually rubbing his thin, bony
+hands together as if he were for ever washing them.
+
+“Monsieur Hector Ratichon,” he said unctuously, “it is with much
+gratification that I bring you the joyful news.”
+
+Joyful news!—to me! Ah, Sir, the words struck at first with cruel irony
+upon mine ear. But not so a second later, for the Jewish gentleman went
+on speaking, and what he said appeared to my reeling senses like songs
+of angels from paradise.
+
+At first I could not grasp his full meaning. A moment ago I had been in
+the depths of despair, and now—now—a whole vista of beatitude opened
+out before me! What the worthy Israelite said was that, by the terms of
+Grandpapa Goldberg’s will, if Leah married without her father’s
+consent, one-half of the fortune destined for her would revert to her
+aunt, Sarah Goldberg, now Madame Hector Ratichon.
+
+Can you wonder that I could scarce believe my ears? One-half that
+fortune meant that a hundred thousand francs would now become mine! M.
+Goldberg had already made it very clear to his daughter and to Rochez
+that he would never give his consent to their marriage, and, as this
+was now consummated, they had already forfeited one-half of the
+grandfather’s fortune in favour of my Sarah. That was the exemplary
+punishment which they were to suffer for their folly.
+
+But their folly—aye! and their treachery—had become my joy. In this
+moment of heavenly rapture I was speechless, but I turned to Sarah with
+loving arms outstretched, and the next instant she nestled against my
+heart like a joyful if elderly bird.
+
+What is said of a people, Sir, is also true of the individual. Happy he
+who hath no history. Since that never-to-be-forgotten hour my life has
+run its simple, uneventful course here in this quiet corner of our
+beautiful France, with my pony and my dog and my chickens, and Mme.
+Ratichon to minister to my creature comforts.
+
+I bought this little property, Sir, soon after my marriage, and my
+office in the Rue Daunou knows me no more. You like the house, Sir? Ah,
+yes! And the garden? . . . After déjeuner you must see my prize
+chickens. Theodore will show them to you. You did not know Theodore was
+here? Well, yes! He lives with us. Madame Ratichon finds him useful
+about the house, and, not being used to luxuries, he is on the whole
+pleasantly contented.
+
+Ah, here comes Madame Ratichon to tell us that the déjeuner is served!
+This way, Sir, under the porch. . . . After you!
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASTLES IN THE AIR ***
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Castles in the Air, by Baroness Emmuska Orczy</title>
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Castles in the Air, by Baroness Emmuska Orczy</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Castles in the Air</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Baroness Emmuska Orczy</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: May 28, 2004 [eBook #12461]<br />
+[Most recently updated: October 5, 2022]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Jim Tinsley and David Widger</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASTLES IN THE AIR ***</div>
+
+<h1>CASTLES IN THE AIR</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">By Baroness Emmuska Orczy</h2>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_FORE">FOREWORD</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0002"><b>CASTLES IN THE AIR</b></a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0001">CHAPTER I. &mdash; A ROLAND FOR HIS OLIVER</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0002">CHAPTER II. &mdash; A FOOL’S PARADISE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0003">CHAPTER III. &mdash; ON THE BRINK</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0004">CHAPTER IV. &mdash; CARISSIMO</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0005">CHAPTER V. &mdash; THE TOYS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0006">CHAPTER VI. &mdash; HONOUR AMONG&mdash;&mdash;</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0007">CHAPTER VII. &mdash; AN OVER-SENSITIVE HEART</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_FORE"></a>
+FOREWORD</h2>
+
+<p>
+In presenting this engaging rogue to my readers, I feel that I owe them, if not
+an apology, at least an explanation for this attempt at enlisting sympathy in
+favour of a man who has little to recommend him save his own unconscious
+humour. In very truth my good friend Ratichon is an unblushing liar, thief, a
+forger&mdash;anything you will; his vanity is past belief, his scruples are
+non-existent. How he escaped a convict settlement it is difficult to imagine,
+and hard to realize that he died&mdash;presumably some years after the event
+recorded in the last chapter of his autobiography&mdash;a respected member of
+the community, honoured by that same society which should have raised a
+punitive hand against him. Yet this I believe to be the case. At any rate, in
+spite of close research in the police records of the period, I can find no
+mention of Hector Ratichon. “Heureux le peuple qui n’a pas d’histoire” applies,
+therefore, to him, and we must take it that Fate and his own sorely troubled
+country dealt lightly with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Which brings me back to my attempt at an explanation. If Fate dealt kindly, why
+not we? Since time immemorial there have been worse scoundrels unhung than
+Hector Ratichon, and he has the saving grace&mdash; which few possess&mdash;of
+unruffled geniality. Buffeted by Fate, sometimes starving, always thirsty, he
+never complains; and there is all through his autobiography what we might call
+an “Ah, well!” attitude about his outlook on life. Because of this, and because
+his very fatuity makes us smile, I feel that he deserves forgiveness and even a
+certain amount of recognition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fragmentary notes, which I have only very slightly modified, came into my
+hands by a happy chance one dull post-war November morning in Paris, when rain,
+sleet and the north wind drove me for shelter under the arcades of the Odéon,
+and a kindly vendor of miscellaneous printed matter and mouldy MSS. allowed me
+to rummage amongst a load of old papers which he was about to consign to the
+rubbish heap. I imagine that the notes were set down by the actual person to
+whom the genial Hector Ratichon recounted the most conspicuous events of his
+chequered career, and as I turned over the torn and musty pages, which hung
+together by scraps of mouldy thread, I could not help feeling the
+humour&mdash;aye! and the pathos&mdash;of that drabby side of old Paris which
+was being revealed to me through the medium of this rogue’s adventures. And
+even as, holding the fragments in my hand, I walked home that morning through
+the rain something of that same quaint personality seemed once more to haunt
+the dank and dreary streets of the once dazzling Ville Lumière. I seemed to see
+the shabby bottle-green coat, the nankeen pantaloons, the down-at-heel shoes of
+this “confidant of Kings”; I could hear his unctuous, self-satisfied laugh, and
+sensed his furtive footstep whene’er a gendarme came into view. I saw his
+ruddy, shiny face beaming at me through the sleet and the rain as, like a
+veritable squire of dames, he minced his steps upon the boulevard, or, like a
+reckless smuggler, affronted the grave dangers of mountain fastnesses upon the
+Juras; and I was quite glad to think that a life so full of unconscious humour
+had not been cut short upon the gallows. And I thought kindly of him, for he
+had made me smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is nothing fine about him, nothing romantic; nothing in his actions to
+cause a single thrill to the nerves of the most unsophisticated reader.
+Therefore, I apologize in that I have not held him up to a just obloquy because
+of his crimes, and I ask indulgence for his turpitudes because of the laughter
+which they provoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+EMMUSKA ORCZY. <i>Paris, 1921</i>.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_4_0002"></a>
+CASTLES IN THE AIR</h2>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0001"></a>
+CHAPTER I. &mdash; A ROLAND FOR HIS OLIVER</h2>
+
+<h3>1.</h3>
+
+<p>
+My name is Ratichon&mdash;Hector Ratichon, at your service, and I make so bold
+as to say that not even my worst enemy would think of minimizing the value of
+my services to the State. For twenty years now have I placed my powers at the
+disposal of my country: I have served the Republic, and was confidential agent
+to Citizen Robespierre; I have served the Empire, and was secret factotum to
+our great Napoléon; I have served King Louis&mdash;with a brief interval of one
+hundred days&mdash; for the past two years, and I can only repeat that no one,
+in the whole of France, has been so useful or so zealous in tracking criminals,
+nosing out conspiracies, or denouncing traitors as I have been.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And yet you see me a poor man to this day: there has been a persistently
+malignant Fate which has worked against me all these years, and would&mdash;but
+for a happy circumstance of which I hope anon to tell you&mdash;have left me
+just as I was, in the matter of fortune, when I first came to Paris and set up
+in business as a volunteer police agent at No. 96 Rue Daunou.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My apartment in those days consisted of an antechamber, an outer office where,
+if need be, a dozen clients might sit, waiting their turn to place their
+troubles, difficulties, anxieties before the acutest brain in France, and an
+inner room wherein that same acute brain&mdash;mine, my dear Sir&mdash;was wont
+to ponder and scheme. That apartment was not luxuriously
+furnished&mdash;furniture being very dear in those days&mdash;but there were a
+couple of chairs and a table in the outer office, and a cupboard wherein I kept
+the frugal repast which served me during the course of a long and laborious
+day. In the inner office there were more chairs and another table, littered
+with papers: letters and packets all tied up with pink tape (which cost three
+sous the metre), and bundles of letters from hundreds of clients, from the
+highest and the lowest in the land, you understand, people who wrote to me and
+confided in me to-day as kings and emperors had done in the past. In the
+antechamber there was a chair-bedstead for Theodore to sleep on when I required
+him to remain in town, and a chair on which he could sit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, of course, there was Theodore!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah! my dear Sir, of him I can hardly speak without feeling choked with the
+magnitude of my emotion. A noble indignation makes me dumb. Theodore, sir, has
+ever been the cruel thorn that times out of number hath wounded my
+over-sensitive heart. Think of it! I had picked him out of the gutter! No! no!
+I do not mean this figuratively! I mean that, actually and in the flesh, I took
+him up by the collar of his tattered coat and dragged him out of the gutter in
+the Rue Blanche, where he was grubbing for trifles out of the slime and mud. He
+was frozen, Sir, and starved&mdash;yes, starved! In the intervals of picking
+filth up out of the mud he held out a hand blue with cold to the passers-by and
+occasionally picked up a sou. When I found him in that pitiable condition he
+had exactly twenty centimes between him and absolute starvation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I, Sir Hector Ratichon, the confidant of two kings, three autocrats and an
+emperor, took that man to my bosom&mdash;fed him, clothed him, housed him, gave
+him the post of secretary in my intricate, delicate, immensely important
+business&mdash;and I did this, Sir, at a salary which, in comparison with his
+twenty centimes, must have seemed a princely one to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His duties were light. He was under no obligation to serve me or to be at his
+post before seven o’clock in the morning, and all that he had to do then was to
+sweep out the three rooms, fetch water from the well in the courtyard below,
+light the fire in the iron stove which stood in my inner office, shell the
+haricots for his own mess of pottage, and put them to boil. During the day his
+duties were lighter still. He had to run errands for me, open the door to
+prospective clients, show them into the outer office, explain to them that his
+master was engaged on affairs relating to the kingdom of France, and generally
+prove himself efficient, useful and loyal&mdash;all of which qualities he
+assured me, my dear Sir, he possessed to the fullest degree. And I believed
+him, Sir; I nurtured the scorpion in my over-sensitive bosom! I promised him
+ten per cent. on all the profits of my business, and all the remnants from my
+own humble repasts&mdash;bread, the skins of luscious sausages, the bones from
+savoury cutlets, the gravy from the tasty carrots and onions. You would have
+thought that his gratitude would become boundless, that he would almost worship
+the benefactor who had poured at his feet the full cornucopia of comfort and
+luxury. Not so! That man, Sir, was a snake in the grass&mdash;a serpent&mdash;a
+crocodile! Even now that I have entirely severed my connexion with that
+ingrate, I seem to feel the wounds, like dagger-thrusts, which he dealt me with
+so callous a hand. But I have done with him&mdash;done, I tell you! How could I
+do otherwise than to send him back to the gutter from whence I should never
+have dragged him? My goodness, he repaid with an ingratitude so black that you,
+Sir, when you hear the full story of his treachery, will exclaim aghast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah, you shall judge! His perfidy commenced less than a week after I had given
+him my third best pantaloons and three sous to get his hair cut, thus making a
+man of him. And yet, you would scarcely believe it, in the matter of the secret
+documents he behaved toward me like a veritable Judas!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Listen, my dear Sir.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I told you, I believe, that I had my office in the Rue Daunou. You understand
+that I had to receive my clients&mdash;many of whom were of exalted
+rank&mdash;-in a fashionable quarter of Paris. But I actually lodged in
+Passy&mdash;being fond of country pursuits and addicted to fresh air&mdash;in a
+humble hostelry under the sign of the “Grey Cat”; and here, too, Theodore had a
+bed. He would walk to the office a couple of hours before I myself started on
+the way, and I was wont to arrive as soon after ten o’clock of a morning as I
+could do conveniently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On this memorable occasion of which I am about to tell you&mdash;it was during
+the autumn of 1815&mdash;I had come to the office unusually early, and had just
+hung my hat and coat in the outer room, and taken my seat at my desk in the
+inner office, there to collect my thoughts in preparation for the grave events
+which the day might bring forth, when, suddenly, an ill-dressed, dour-looking
+individual entered the room without so much as saying, “By your leave,” and
+after having pushed Theodore&mdash;who stood by like a lout&mdash;most
+unceremoniously to one side. Before I had time to recover from my surprise at
+this unseemly intrusion, the uncouth individual thrust Theodore roughly out of
+the room, slammed the door in his face, and having satisfied himself that he
+was alone with me and that the door was too solid to allow of successful
+eavesdropping, he dragged the best chair forward&mdash;the one, sir, which I
+reserve for lady visitors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He threw his leg across it, and, sitting astride, he leaned his elbows over the
+back and glowered at me as if he meant to frighten me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My name is Charles Saurez,” he said abruptly, “and I want your assistance in a
+matter which requires discretion, ingenuity and alertness. Can I have it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was about to make a dignified reply when he literally threw the next words at
+me: “Name your price, and I will pay it!” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What could I do, save to raise my shoulders in token that the matter of money
+was one of supreme indifference to me, and my eyebrows in a manner of doubt
+that M. Charles Saurez had the means wherewith to repay my valuable services?
+By way of a rejoinder he took out from the inner pocket of his coat a greasy
+letter-case, and with his exceedingly grimy fingers extracted therefrom some
+twenty banknotes, which a hasty glance on my part revealed as representing a
+couple of hundred francs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will give you this as a retaining fee,” he said, “if you will undertake the
+work I want you to do; and I will double the amount when you have carried the
+work out successfully.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Four hundred francs! It was not lavish, it was perhaps not altogether the price
+I would have named, but it was very good, these hard times. You understand? We
+were all very poor in France in that year 1815 of which I speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I am always quite straightforward when I am dealing with a client who means
+business. I pushed aside the litter of papers in front of me, leaned my elbows
+upon my desk, rested my chin in my hands, and said briefly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“M. Charles Saurez, I listen!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew his chair a little closer and dropped his voice almost to a whisper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know the Chancellerie of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perfectly,” I replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know M. de Marsan’s private office? He is chief secretary to M. de
+Talleyrand.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” I said, “but I can find out.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is on the first floor, immediately facing the service staircase, and at the
+end of the long passage which leads to the main staircase.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Easy to find, then,” I remarked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Quite. At this hour and until twelve o’clock, M. de Marsan will be occupied in
+copying a document which I desire to possess. At eleven o’clock precisely there
+will be a noisy disturbance in the corridor which leads to the main staircase.
+M. de Marsan, in all probability, will come out of his room to see what the
+disturbance is about. Will you undertake to be ready at that precise moment to
+make a dash from the service staircase into the room to seize the document,
+which no doubt will be lying on the top of the desk, and bring it to an address
+which I am about to give you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is risky,” I mused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very,” he retorted drily, “or I’d do it myself, and not pay you four hundred
+francs for your trouble.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Trouble!” I exclaimed, with withering sarcasm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Trouble, you call it? If I am caught, it means penal servitude&mdash;New
+Caledonia, perhaps&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Exactly,” he said, with the same irritating calmness; “and if you succeed it
+means four hundred francs. Take it or leave it, as you please, but be quick
+about it. I have no time to waste; it is past nine o’clock already, and if you
+won’t do the work, someone else will.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a few seconds longer I hesitated. Schemes, both varied and wild, rushed
+through my active brain: refuse to take this risk, and denounce the plot to the
+police; refuse it, and run to warn M. de Marsan; refuse it, and&mdash; I had
+little time for reflection. My uncouth client was standing, as it were, with a
+pistol to my throat&mdash;with a pistol and four hundred francs! The police
+might perhaps give me half a louis for my pains, or they might possibly
+remember an unpleasant little incident in connexion with the forgery of some
+Treasury bonds which they have never succeeded in bringing home to me&mdash;one
+never knows! M. de Marsan might throw me a franc, and think himself generous at
+that!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All things considered, then, when M. Charles Saurez suddenly said, “Well?” with
+marked impatience, I replied, “Agreed,” and within five minutes I had two
+hundred francs in my pocket, with the prospect of two hundred more during the
+next four and twenty hours. I was to have a free hand in conducting my own
+share of the business, and M. Charles Saurez was to call for the document at my
+lodgings at Passy on the following morning at nine o’clock.
+</p>
+
+<h3>2.</h3>
+
+<p>
+I flatter myself that I conducted the business with remarkable skill. At
+precisely ten minutes to eleven I rang at the Chancellerie of the Ministry for
+Foreign Affairs. I was dressed as a respectable commissionnaire, and I carried
+a letter and a small parcel addressed to M. de Marsan. “First floor,” said the
+concierge curtly, as soon as he had glanced at the superscription on the
+letter. “Door faces top of the service stairs.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I mounted and took my stand some ten steps below the landing, keeping the door
+of M. de Marsan’s room well in sight. Just as the bells of Notre Dame boomed
+the hour I heard what sounded like a furious altercation somewhere in the
+corridor just above me. There was much shouting, then one or two cries of
+“Murder!” followed by others of “What is it?” and “What in the name of
+&mdash;&mdash;&mdash; is all this infernal row about?” Doors were opened and
+banged, there was a general running and rushing along that corridor, and the
+next minute the door in front of me was opened also, and a young man came out,
+pen in hand, and shouting just like everybody else:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What the &mdash;&mdash;&mdash; is all this infernal row about?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Murder, help!” came from the distant end of the corridor, and M. de
+Marsan&mdash;undoubtedly it was he&mdash;did what any other young man under the
+like circumstances would have done: he ran to see what was happening and to
+lend a hand in it, if need be. I saw his slim figure disappearing down the
+corridor at the very moment that I slipped into his room. One glance upon the
+desk sufficed: there lay the large official-looking document, with the royal
+signature affixed thereto, and close beside it the copy which M. de Marsan had
+only half finished&mdash;the ink on it was still wet. Hesitation, Sir, would
+have been fatal. I did not hesitate; not one instant. Three seconds had
+scarcely elapsed before I picked up the document, together with M. de Marsan’s
+half-finished copy of the same, and a few loose sheets of Chancellerie paper
+which I thought might be useful. Then I slipped the lot inside my blouse. The
+bogus letter and parcel I left behind me, and within two minutes of my entry
+into the room I was descending the service staircase quite unconcernedly, and
+had gone past the concierge’s lodge without being challenged. How thankful I
+was to breathe once more the pure air of heaven. I had spent an exceedingly
+agitated five minutes, and even now my anxiety was not altogether at rest. I
+dared not walk too fast lest I attracted attention, and yet I wanted to put the
+river, the Pont Neuf, and a half dozen streets between me and the Chancellerie
+of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. No one who has not gone through such an
+exciting adventure as I have just recorded can conceive what were my feelings
+of relief and of satisfaction when I at last found myself quietly mounting the
+stairs which led to my office on the top floor of No. 96 Rue Daunou.
+</p>
+
+<h3>3.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Now, I had not said anything to Theodore about this affair. It was certainly
+arranged between us when he entered my service as confidential clerk and
+doorkeeper that in lieu of wages, which I could not afford to pay him, he would
+share my meals with me and have a bed at my expense in the same house at Passy
+where I lodged; moreover, I would always give him a fair percentage on the
+profits which I derived from my business. The arrangement suited him very well.
+I told you that I picked him out of the gutter, and I heard subsequently that
+he had gone through many an unpleasant skirmish with the police in his day, and
+if I did not employ him no one else would.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After all, he did earn a more or less honest living by serving me. But in this
+instance, since I had not even asked for his assistance, I felt that,
+considering the risks of New Caledonia and a convict ship which I had taken, a
+paltry four hundred francs could not by any stretch of the imagination rank as
+a “profit” in a business&mdash;and Theodore was not really entitled to a
+percentage, was he?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So when I returned I crossed the ante-chamber and walked past him with my
+accustomed dignity; nor did he offer any comment on my get-up. I often affected
+a disguise in those days, even when I was not engaged in business, and the
+dress and get-up of a respectable commissionnaire was a favourite one with me.
+As soon as I had changed I sent him out to make purchases for our
+luncheon&mdash;five sous’ worth of stale bread, and ten sous’ worth of liver
+sausage, of which he was inordinately fond. He would take the opportunity on
+the way of getting moderately drunk on as many glasses of absinthe as he could
+afford. I saw him go out of the outer door, and then I set to work to examine
+the precious document.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, one glance was sufficient for me to realize its incalculable value!
+Nothing more or less than a Treaty of Alliance between King Louis XVIII of
+France and the King of Prussia in connexion with certain schemes of naval
+construction. I did not understand the whole diplomatic verbiage, but it was
+pretty clear to my unsophisticated mind that this treaty had been entered into
+in secret by the two monarchs, and that it was intended to prejudice the
+interests both of Denmark and of Russia in the Baltic Sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I also realized that both the Governments of Denmark and Russia would no doubt
+pay a very considerable sum for the merest glance at this document, and that my
+client of this morning was certainly a secret service agent&mdash;otherwise a
+spy&mdash;of one of those two countries, who did not choose to take the very
+severe risks which I had taken this morning, but who would, on the other hand,
+reap the full reward of the daring coup, whilst I was to be content with four
+hundred francs!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, I am a man of deliberation as well as of action, and at this
+juncture&mdash;feeling that Theodore was still safely out of the way&mdash;I
+thought the whole matter over quietly, and then took what precautions I thought
+fit for the furthering of my own interests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To begin with, I set to work to make a copy of the treaty on my own account. I
+have brought the study of calligraphy to a magnificent degree of perfection,
+and the writing on the document was easy enough to imitate, as was also the
+signature of our gracious King Louis and of M. de Talleyrand, who had
+countersigned it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If you remember, I had picked up two or three loose sheets of paper off M. de
+Marsan’s desk; these bore the arms of the Chancellerie of Foreign Affairs
+stamped upon them, and were in every way identical with that on which the
+original document had been drafted. When I had finished my work I flattered
+myself that not the greatest calligraphic expert could have detected the
+slightest difference between the original and the copy which I had made.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The work took me a long time. When at last I folded up the papers and slipped
+them once more inside my blouse it was close upon two. I wondered why Theodore
+had not returned with our luncheon, but on going to the little anteroom which
+divides my office from the outer door, great was my astonishment to see him
+lolling there on the rickety chair which he affectioned, and half asleep. I had
+some difficulty in rousing him. Apparently he had got rather drunk while he was
+out, and had then returned and slept some of his booze off, without thinking
+that I might be hungry and needing my luncheon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why didn’t you let me know you had come back?” I asked curtly, for indeed I
+was very cross with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I thought you were busy,” he replied, with what I thought looked like a leer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have never really cared for Theodore, you understand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, I partook of our modest luncheon with him in perfect amity and
+brotherly love, but my mind was busy all the time. I began to wonder if
+Theodore suspected something; if so, I knew that I could not trust him. He
+would try and ferret things out, and then demand a share in my hard-earned
+emoluments to which he was really not entitled. I did not feel safe with that
+bulky packet of papers on me, and I felt that Theodore’s bleary eyes were
+perpetually fixed upon the bulge in the left-hand side of my coat. At one
+moment he looked so strange that I thought he meant to knock me down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So my mind was quickly made up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After luncheon I would go down to my lodgings at Passy, and I knew of a snug
+little hiding-place in my room there where the precious documents would be
+quite safe until such time as I was to hand them&mdash;or one of them&mdash;to
+M. Charles Saurez.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This plan I put into execution, and with remarkable ingenuity too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While Theodore was busy clearing up the debris of our luncheon, I not only gave
+him the slip, but as I went out I took the precaution of locking the outer door
+after me, and taking the key away in my pocket. I thus made sure that Theodore
+could not follow me. I then walked to Passy&mdash;a matter of two
+kilometres&mdash;and by four o’clock I had the satisfaction of stowing the
+papers safely away under one of the tiles in the flooring of my room, and then
+pulling the strip of carpet in front of my bed snugly over the hiding-place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Theodore’s attic, where he slept, was at the top of the house, whilst my room
+was on the ground floor, and so I felt that I could now go back quite
+comfortably to my office in the hope that more remunerative work and more
+lavish clients would come my way before nightfall.
+</p>
+
+<h3>4.</h3>
+
+<p>
+It was a little after five o’clock when I once more turned the key in the outer
+door of my rooms in the Rue Daunou.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Theodore did not seem in the least to resent having been locked in for two
+hours. I think he must have been asleep most of the time. Certainly I heard a
+good deal of shuffling when first I reached the landing outside the door; but
+when I actually walked into the apartment with an air of quiet unconcern
+Theodore was sprawling on the chair-bedstead, with eyes closed, a nose the
+colour of beetroot, and emitting sounds through his thin, cracked lips which I
+could not, Sir, describe graphically in your presence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I took no notice of him, however, even though, as I walked past him, I saw that
+he opened one bleary eye and watched my every movement. I went straight into my
+private room and shut the door after me. And here, I assure you, my dear Sir, I
+literally fell into my favourite chair, overcome with emotion and excitement.
+Think what I had gone through! The events of the last few hours would have
+turned any brain less keen, less daring than that of Hector Ratichon. And here
+was I, alone at last, face to face with the future. What a future, my dear Sir!
+Fate was smiling on me at last. At last I was destined to reap a rich reward
+for all the skill, the energy, the devotion, which up to this hour I had placed
+at the service of my country and my King&mdash;or my Emperor, as the case might
+be&mdash;without thought of my own advantage. Here was I now in possession of a
+document&mdash;two documents&mdash;each one of which was worth at least a
+thousand francs to persons whom I could easily approach. One thousand francs!
+Was I dreaming? Five thousand would certainly be paid by the Government whose
+agent M. Charles Saurez admittedly was for one glance at that secret treaty
+which would be so prejudicial to their political interests; whilst M. de Marsan
+himself would gladly pay another five thousand for the satisfaction of placing
+the precious document intact before his powerful and irascible uncle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ten thousand francs! How few were possessed of such a sum in these days! How
+much could be done with it! I would not give up business altogether, of course,
+but with my new capital I would extend it and, there was a certain little
+house, close to Chantilly, a house with a few acres of kitchen garden and some
+fruit trees, the possession of which would render me happier than any king. . .
+. I would marry! Oh, yes! I would certainly marry&mdash;found a family. I was
+still young, my dear Sir, and passably good looking. In fact there was a
+certain young widow, comely and amiable, who lived not far from Passy, who had
+on more than one occasion given me to understand that I was more than passably
+good looking. I had always been susceptible where the fair sex was concerned,
+and now . . . oh, now! I could pick and choose! The comely widow had a small
+fortune of her own, and there were others! . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus I dreamed on for the better part of an hour, until, soon after six
+o’clock, there was a knock at the outer door and I heard Theodore’s shuffling
+footsteps crossing the small anteroom. There was some muttered conversation,
+and presently my door was opened and Theodore’s ugly face was thrust into the
+room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A lady to see you,” he said curtly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, he dropped his voice, smacked his lips, and winked with one eye. “Very
+pretty,” he whispered, “but has a young man with her whom she calls Arthur.
+Shall I send them in?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I then and there made up my mind that I would get rid of Theodore now that I
+could afford to get a proper servant. My business would in future be greatly
+extended; it would become very important, and I was beginning to detest
+Theodore. But I said “Show the lady in!” with becoming dignity, and a few
+moments later a beautiful woman entered my room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was vaguely conscious that a creature of my own sex walked in behind her, but
+of him I took no notice. I rose to greet the lady and invited her to sit down,
+but I had the annoyance of seeing the personage whom deliberately she called
+“Arthur” coming familiarly forward and leaning over the back of her chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I hated him. He was short and stout and florid, with an impertinent-looking
+moustache, and hair that was very smooth and oily save for two tight curls,
+which looked like the horns of a young goat, on each side of the centre
+parting. I hated him cordially, and had to control my feelings not to show him
+the contempt which I felt for his fatuousness and his air of self-complacency.
+Fortunately the beautiful being was the first to address me, and thus I was
+able to ignore the very presence of the detestable man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are M. Ratichon, I believe,” she said in a voice that was dulcet and
+adorably tremulous, like the voice of some sweet, shy young thing in the
+presence of genius and power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hector Ratichon,” I replied calmly. “Entirely at your service, Mademoiselle.”
+Then I added, with gentle, encouraging kindliness, “Mademoiselle...?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My name is Geoffroy,” she replied, “Madeleine Geoffroy.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She raised her eyes&mdash;such eyes, my dear Sir!&mdash;of a tender, luscious
+grey, fringed with lashes and dewy with tears. I met her glance. Something in
+my own eyes must have spoken with mute eloquence of my distress, for she went
+on quickly and with a sweet smile. “And this,” she said, pointing to her
+companion, “is my brother, Arthur Geoffroy.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An exclamation of joyful surprise broke from my lips, and I beamed and smiled
+on M. Arthur, begged him to be seated, which he refused, and finally I myself
+sat down behind my desk. I now looked with unmixed benevolence on both my
+clients, and then perceived that the lady’s exquisite face bore unmistakable
+signs of recent sorrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And now, Mademoiselle,” I said, as soon as I had taken up a position
+indicative of attention and of encouragement, “will you deign to tell me how I
+can have the honour to serve you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Monsieur,” she began in a voice that trembled with emotion, “I have come to
+you in the midst of the greatest distress that any human being has ever been
+called upon to bear. It was by the merest accident that I heard of you. I have
+been to the police; they cannot&mdash;will not&mdash;act without I furnish them
+with certain information which it is not in my power to give them. Then when I
+was half distraught with despair, a kindly agent there spoke to me of you. He
+said that you were attached to the police as a voluntary agent, and that they
+sometimes put work in your way which did not happen to be within their own
+scope. He also said that sometimes you were successful.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nearly always, Mademoiselle,” I broke in firmly and with much dignity. “Once
+more I beg of you to tell me in what way I may have the honour to serve you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is not for herself, Monsieur,” here interposed M. Arthur, whilst a blush
+suffused Mlle. Geoffroy’s lovely face, “that my sister desires to consult you,
+but for her fiancé M. de Marsan, who is very ill indeed, hovering, in fact,
+between life and death. He could not come in person. The matter is one that
+demands the most profound secrecy.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You may rely on my discretion, Monsieur,” I murmured, without showing, I
+flatter myself, the slightest trace of that astonishment which, at mention of
+M. de Marsan’s name, had nearly rendered me speechless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“M. de Marsan came to see me in utmost distress, Monsieur,” resumed the lovely
+creature. “He had no one in whom he could&mdash;or rather dared&mdash;confide.
+He is in the Chancellerie for Foreign Affairs. His uncle M. de Talleyrand
+thinks a great deal of him and often entrusts him with very delicate work. This
+morning he gave M. de Marsan a valuable paper to copy&mdash;a paper, Monsieur,
+the importance of which it were impossible to overestimate. The very safety of
+this country, the honour of our King, are involved in it. I cannot tell you its
+exact contents, and it is because I would not tell more about it to the police
+that they would not help me in any way, and referred me to you. How could they,
+said the chief Commissary to me, run after a document the contents of which
+they did not even know? But you will be satisfied with what I have told you,
+will you not, my dear M. Ratichon?” she continued, with a pathetic quiver in
+her voice and a look of appeal in her eyes which St. Anthony himself could not
+have resisted, “and help me to regain possession of that paper, the final loss
+of which would cost M. de Marsan his life.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To say that my feeling of elation of a while ago had turned to one of supreme
+beatitude would be to put it very mildly indeed. To think that here was this
+lovely being in tears before me, and that it lay in my power to dry those tears
+with a word and to bring a smile round those perfect lips, literally made my
+mouth water in anticipation&mdash;for I am sure that you will have guessed,
+just as I did in a moment, that the valuable document of which this adorable
+being was speaking, was snugly hidden away under the flooring of my room in
+Passy. I hated that unknown de Marsan. I hated this Arthur who leaned so
+familiarly over her chair, but I had the power to render her a service beside
+which their lesser claims on her regard would pale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, I am not the man to act on impulse, even at a moment like this. I
+wanted to think the whole matter over first, and . . . well . . . I had made up
+my mind to demand five thousand francs when I handed the document over to my
+first client to-morrow morning. At any rate, for the moment I acted&mdash;if I
+may say so&mdash;with great circumspection and dignity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I must presume, Mademoiselle,” I said in my most business-like manner, “that
+the document you speak of has been stolen.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Stolen, Monsieur,” she assented whilst the tears once more gathered in her
+eyes, “and M. de Marsan now lies at death’s door with a terrible attack of
+brain fever, brought on by shock when he discovered the loss.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How and when was it stolen?” I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Some time during the morning,” she replied. “M. de Talleyrand gave the
+document to M. de Marsan at nine o’clock, telling him that he wanted the copy
+by midday. M. de Marsan set to work at once, laboured uninterruptedly until
+about eleven o’clock, when a loud altercation, followed by cries of ‘Murder!’
+and of ‘Help!’ and proceeding from the corridor outside his door, caused him to
+run out of the room in order to see what was happening. The altercation turned
+out to be between two men who had pushed their way into the building by the
+main staircase, and who became very abusive to the gendarme who ordered them
+out. The men were not hurt; nevertheless they screamed as if they were being
+murdered. They took to their heels quickly enough, and I don’t know what has
+become of them, but . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But,” I concluded blandly, “whilst M. de Marsan was out of the room the
+precious document was stolen.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It was, Monsieur,” exclaimed Mlle. Geoffroy piteously. “You will find it for
+us . . . will you not?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then she added more calmly: “My brother and I are offering ten thousand francs
+reward for the recovery of the document.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I did not fall off my chair, but I closed my eyes. The vision which the lovely
+lady’s words had conjured up dazzled me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mademoiselle,” I said with solemn dignity, “I pledge you my word of honour
+that I will find the document for you and lay it at your feet or die in your
+service. Give me twenty hours, during which I will move heaven and earth to
+discover the thief. I will go at once to the Chancellerie and collect what
+evidence I can. I have worked under M. de Robespierre, Mademoiselle, under the
+great Napoléon, and under the illustrious Fouché! I have never been known to
+fail, once I have set my mind upon a task.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In that case you will earn your ten thousand francs, my friend,” said the
+odious Arthur drily, “and my sister and M. de Marsan will still be your
+debtors. Are there any questions you would like to ask before we go?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“None,” I said loftily, choosing to ignore his sneering manner. “If
+Mademoiselle deigns to present herself here to-morrow at two o’clock I will
+have news to communicate to her.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You will admit that I carried off the situation in a becoming manner. Both
+Mademoiselle and Arthur Geoffroy gave me a few more details in connexion with
+the affair. To these details I listened with well simulated interest. Of
+course, they did not know that there were no details in connexion with this
+affair that I did not know already. My heart was actually dancing within my
+bosom. The future was so entrancing that the present appeared like a dream; the
+lovely being before me seemed like an angel, an emissary from above come to
+tell me of the happiness which was in store for me. The house near
+Chantilly&mdash;the little widow&mdash;the kitchen garden&mdash;the magic words
+went on hammering in my brain. I longed now to be rid of my visitors, to be
+alone once more, so as to think out the epilogue of this glorious adventure.
+Ten thousand francs was the reward offered me by this adorable creature! Well,
+then, why should not M. Charles Saurez, on his side, pay me another ten
+thousand for the same document, which was absolutely undistinguishable from the
+first?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ten thousand, instead of two hundred which he had the audacity to offer me!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seven o’clock had struck before I finally bowed my clients out of the room.
+Theodore had gone. The lazy lout would never stay as much as five minutes after
+his appointed time, so I had to show the adorable creature and her fat brother
+out of the premises myself. But I did not mind that. I flatter myself that I
+can always carry off an awkward situation in a dignified manner. A brief
+allusion to the inefficiency of present-day servants, a jocose comment on my
+own simplicity of habits, and the deed was done. M. Arthur Geoffroy and
+Mademoiselle Madeleine his sister were half-way down the stairs. A quarter of
+an hour later I was once more out in the streets of Paris. It was a beautiful,
+balmy night. I had two hundred francs in my pocket and there was a magnificent
+prospect of twenty thousand francs before me! I could afford some slight
+extravagance. I had dinner at one of the fashionable restaurants on the quay,
+and I remained some time out on the terrace sipping my coffee and liqueur,
+dreaming dreams such as I had never dreamed before. At ten o’clock I was once
+more on my way to Passy.
+</p>
+
+<h3>5.</h3>
+
+<p>
+When I turned the corner of the street and came is sight of the squalid house
+where I lodged, I felt like a being from another world. Twenty thousand
+francs&mdash;a fortune!&mdash;was waiting for me inside those dingy walls. Yes,
+twenty thousand, for by now I had fully made up my mind. I had two documents
+concealed beneath the floor of my bedroom&mdash;one so like the other that none
+could tell them apart. One of these I would restore to the lovely being who had
+offered me ten thousand francs for it, and the other I would sell to my first
+and uncouth client for another ten thousand francs!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Four hundred! Bah! Ten thousand shall you pay for the treaty, my friend of the
+Danish or Russian Secret Service! Ten thousand!&mdash;it is worth that to you!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In that happy frame of mind I reached the front door of my dingy abode. Imagine
+my surprise on being confronted with two agents of police, each with fixed
+bayonet, who refused to let me pass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I lodge here,” I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Your name?” queried one of the men. “Hector Ratichon,” I replied. Whereupon
+they gave me leave to enter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was very mysterious. My heart beat furiously. Fear for the safety of my
+precious papers held me in a death-like grip. I ran straight to my room, locked
+the door after me, and pulled the curtains together in front of the window.
+Then, with hands that trembled as if with ague, I pulled aside the strip of
+carpet which concealed the hiding-place of what meant a fortune to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I nearly fainted with joy; the papers were there&mdash;quite safely. I took
+them out and replaced them inside my coat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I ran up to see if Theodore was in. I found him in bed. He told me that he
+had left the office whilst my visitors were still with me, as he felt terribly
+sick. He had been greatly upset when, about an hour ago, the maid-of-all-work
+had informed him that the police were in the house, that they would allow no
+one&mdash;except the persons lodging in the house&mdash;to enter it, and no
+one, once in, would be allowed to leave. How long these orders would hold good
+Theodore did not know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I left him moaning and groaning and declaring that he felt very ill, and I went
+in quest of information. The corporal in command of the gendarmes was
+exceedingly curt with me at first, but after a time he unbent and condescended
+to tell me that my landlord had been denounced for permitting a Bonapartiste
+club to hold its sittings in his house. So far so good. Such denunciations were
+very frequent these days, and often ended unpleasantly for those concerned, but
+the affair had obviously nothing to do with me. I felt that I could breathe
+again. But there was still the matter of the consigne. If no one, save the
+persons who lodged in the house, would be allowed to enter it, how would M.
+Charles Saurez contrive to call for the stolen document and, incidentally, to
+hand me over the ten thousand francs I was hoping for? And if no one, once
+inside the house, would be allowed to leave it, how could I meet Mlle. Geoffroy
+to-morrow at two o’clock in my office and receive ten thousand francs from her
+in exchange for the precious paper?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Moreover the longer the police stayed in this house and poked their noses about
+in affairs that concerned hardworking citizens like myself&mdash;why&mdash;the
+greater the risk would be of the matter of the stolen document coming to light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was positively maddening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I never undressed that night, but just lay down on my bed, thinking. The house
+was very still at times, but at others I could hear the tramp of the police
+agents up and down the stairs and also outside my window. The latter gave on a
+small, dilapidated back garden which had a wooden fence at the end of it.
+Beyond it were some market gardens belonging to a M. Lorraine. It did not take
+me very long to realize that that way lay my fortune of twenty thousand francs.
+But for the moment I remained very still. My plan was already made. At about
+midnight I went to the window and opened it cautiously. I had heard no noise
+from that direction for some time, and I bent my ear to listen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not a sound! Either the sentry was asleep, or he had gone on his round, and for
+a few moments the way was free. Without a moment’s hesitation I swung my leg
+over the sill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still no sound. My heart beat so fast that I could almost hear it. The night
+was very dark. A thin mist-like drizzle was falling; in fact the weather
+conditions were absolutely perfect for my purpose. With utmost wariness I
+allowed myself to drop from the window-ledge on to the soft ground below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If I was caught by the sentry I had my answer ready: I was going to meet my
+sweetheart at the end of the garden. It is an excuse which always meets with
+the sympathy of every true-hearted Frenchman. The sentry would, of course,
+order me back to my room, but I doubt if he would ill-use me; the denunciation
+was against the landlord, not against me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still not a sound. I could have danced with joy. Five minutes more and I would
+be across the garden and over that wooden fence, and once more on my way to
+fortune. My fall from the window had been light, as my room was on the ground
+floor; but I had fallen on my knees, and now, as I picked myself up, I looked
+up, and it seemed to me as if I saw Theodore’s ugly face at his attic window.
+Certainly there was a light there, and I may have been mistaken as to
+Theodore’s face being visible. The very next second the light was extinguished
+and I was left in doubt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I did not pause to think. In a moment I was across the garden, my hands
+gripped the top of the wooden fence, I hoisted myself up&mdash;with some
+difficulty, I confess&mdash;but at last I succeeded. I threw my leg over and
+gently dropped down on the other side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then suddenly two rough arms encircled my waist, and before I could attempt to
+free myself a cloth was thrown over my head, and I was lifted up and carried
+away, half suffocated and like an insentient bundle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the cloth was removed from my face I was half sitting, half lying, in an
+arm-chair in a strange room which was lighted by an oil lamp that hung from the
+ceiling above. In front of me stood M. Arthur Geoffroy and that beast Theodore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Arthur Geoffroy was coolly folding up the two valuable papers for the
+possession of which I had risked a convict ship and New Caledonia, and which
+would have meant affluence for me for many days to come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Theodore who had removed the cloth from my face. As soon as I had
+recovered my breath I made a rush for him, for I wanted to strangle him. But M.
+Arthur Geoffroy was too quick and too strong for me. He pushed me back into the
+chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Easy, easy, M. Ratichon,” he said pleasantly; “do not vent your wrath upon
+this good fellow. Believe me, though his actions may have deprived you of a few
+thousand francs, they have also saved you from lasting and biting remorse. This
+document, which you stole from M. de Marsan and so ingeniously duplicated,
+involved the honour of our King and our country, as well as the life of an
+innocent man. My sister’s fiancé would never have survived the loss of the
+document which had been entrusted to his honour.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I would have returned it to Mademoiselle to-morrow,” I murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Only one copy of it, I think,” he retorted; “the other you would have sold to
+whichever spy of the Danish or Russian Governments happened to have employed
+you in this discreditable business.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How did you know?” I said involuntarily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Through a very simple process of reasoning, my good M. Ratichon,” he replied
+blandly. “You are a very clever man, no doubt, but the cleverest of us is at
+times apt to make a mistake. You made two, and I profited by them. Firstly,
+after my sister and I left you this afternoon, you never made the slightest
+pretence of making inquiries or collecting information about the mysterious
+theft of the document. I kept an eye on you throughout the evening. You left
+your office and strolled for a while on the quays; you had an excellent dinner
+at the Restaurant des Anglais; then you settled down to your coffee and
+liqueur. Well, my good M. Ratichon, obviously you would have been more active
+in the matter if you had not known exactly where and when and how to lay your
+hands upon the document, for the recovery of which my sister had offered you
+ten thousand francs.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I groaned. I had not been quite so circumspect as I ought to have been, but who
+would have thought&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I have had something to do with police work in my day,” continued M. Geoffroy
+blandly, “though not of late years; but my knowledge of their methods is not
+altogether rusty and my powers of observation are not yet dulled. During my
+sister’s visit to you this afternoon I noticed the blouse and cap of a
+commissionnaire lying in a bundle in a corner of your room. Now, though M. de
+Marsan has been in a burning fever since he discovered his loss, he kept just
+sufficient presence of mind at the moment to say nothing about that loss to any
+of the Chancellerie officials, but to go straight home to his apartments in the
+Rue Royale and to send for my sister and for me. When we came to him he was
+already partly delirious, but he pointed to a parcel and a letter which he had
+brought away from his office. The parcel proved to be an empty box and the
+letter a blank sheet of paper; but the most casual inquiry of the concierge at
+the Chancellerie elicited the fact that a commissionaire had brought these
+things in the course of the morning. That was your second mistake, my good M.
+Ratichon; not a very grave one, perhaps, but I have been in the police, and
+somehow, the moment I caught sight of that blouse and cap in your office, I
+could not help connecting it with the commissionnaire who had brought a bogus
+parcel and letter to my future brother-in-law a few minutes before that
+mysterious and unexplained altercation took place in the corridor.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again I groaned. I felt as a child in the hands of that horrid creature who
+seemed to be dissecting all the thoughts which had run riot through my mind
+these past twenty hours.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It was all very simple, my good M. Ratichon,” now concluded my tormentor still
+quite amiably. “Another time you will have to be more careful, will you not?
+You will also have to bestow more confidence upon your partner or servant.
+Directly I had seen that commissionnaire’s blouse and cap, I set to work to
+make friends with M. Theodore. When my sister and I left your office in the Rue
+Daunou, we found him waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs. Five francs
+loosened his tongue: he suspected that you were up to some game in which you
+did not mean him to have a share; he also told us that you had spent two hours
+in laborious writing, and that you and he both lodged at a dilapidated little
+inn, called the ‘Grey Cat,’ in Passy. I think he was rather disappointed that
+we did not shower more questions, and therefore more emoluments, upon him.
+Well, after I had denounced this house to the police as a Bonapartiste club,
+and saw it put under the usual consigne, I bribed the corporal of the
+gendarmerie in charge of it to let me have Theodore’s company for the little
+job I had in hand, and also to clear the back garden of sentries so as to give
+you a chance and the desire to escape. All the rest you know. Money will do
+many things, my good M. Ratichon, and you see how simple it all was. It would
+have been still more simple if the stolen document had not been such an
+important one that the very existence of it must be kept a secret even from the
+police. So I could not have you shadowed and arrested as a thief in the usual
+manner! However, I have the document and its ingenious copy, which is all that
+matters. Would to God,” he added with a suppressed curse, “that I could get
+hold equally easily of the Secret Service agent to whom you, a Frenchman, were
+going to sell the honour of your country!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then it was that&mdash;though broken in spirit and burning with thoughts of the
+punishment I would mete out to Theodore&mdash;my full faculties returned to me,
+and I queried abruptly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What would you give to get him?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Five hundred francs,” he replied without hesitation. “Can you find him?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Make it a thousand,” I retorted, “and you shall have him.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will you give me five hundred francs now,” I insisted, “and another five
+hundred when you have the man, and I will tell you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Agreed,” he said impatiently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I was not to be played with by him again. I waited in silence until he had
+taken a pocket-book from the inside of his coat and counted out five hundred
+francs, which he kept in his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now&mdash;” he commanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The man,” I then announced calmly, “will call on me for the document at my
+lodgings at the hostelry of the ‘Grey Cat’ to-morrow morning at nine o’clock.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good,” rejoined M. Geoffroy. “We shall be there.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made no demur about giving me the five hundred francs, but half my pleasure
+in receiving them vanished when I saw Theodore’s bleary eyes fixed ravenously
+upon them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Another five hundred francs,” M. Geoffroy went on quietly, “will be yours as
+soon as the spy is in our hands.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I did get that further five hundred of course, for M. Charles Saurez was
+punctual to the minute, and M. Geoffroy was there with the police to apprehend
+him. But to think that I might have had twenty thousand&mdash;!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I had to give Theodore fifty francs on the transaction, as he threatened me
+with the police when I talked of giving him the sack.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But we were quite good friends again after that until&mdash; But you shall
+judge.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0002"></a>
+CHAPTER II. &mdash; A FOOL’S PARADISE</h2>
+
+<h3>1.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Ah! my dear Sir, I cannot tell you how poor we all were in France in that year
+of grace 1816&mdash;so poor, indeed, that a dish of roast pork was looked upon
+as a feast, and a new gown for the wife an unheard-of luxury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The war had ruined everyone. Twenty-two years! and hopeless humiliation and
+defeat at the end of it. The Emperor handed over to the English; a Bourbon
+sitting on the throne of France; crowds of foreign soldiers still lording it
+all over the country&mdash;until the country had paid its debts to her foreign
+invaders, and thousands of our own men still straggling home through Germany
+and Belgium&mdash;the remnants of Napoléon’s Grand Army&mdash;ex-prisoners of
+war, or scattered units who had found their weary way home at last, shoeless,
+coatless, half starved and perished from cold and privations, unfit for
+housework, for agriculture, or for industry, fit only to follow their fallen
+hero, as they had done through a quarter of a century, to victory and to death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With me, Sir, business in Paris was almost at a standstill. I, who had been the
+confidential agent of two kings, three democrats and one emperor; I, who had
+held diplomatic threads in my hands which had caused thrones to totter and
+tyrants to quake, and who had brought more criminals and intriguers to book
+than any other man alive&mdash;I now sat in my office in the Rue Daunou day
+after day with never a client to darken my doors, even whilst crime and
+political intrigue were more rife in Paris than they had been in the most
+corrupt days of the Revolution and the Consulate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I told you, I think, that I had forgiven Theodore his abominable treachery in
+connexion with the secret naval treaty, and we were the best of
+friends&mdash;that is, outwardly, of course. Within my inmost heart I felt,
+Sir, that I could never again trust that shameless traitor&mdash;that I had in
+very truth nurtured a serpent in my bosom. But I am proverbially
+tender-hearted. You will believe me or not, I simply could not turn that vermin
+out into the street. He deserved it! Oh, even he would have admitted when he
+was quite sober, which was not often, that I had every right to give him the
+sack, to send him back to the gutter whence he had come, there to grub once
+more for scraps of filth and to stretch a half-frozen hand to the charity of
+the passers by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I did not do it, Sir. No, I did not do it. I kept him on at the office as
+my confidential servant; I gave him all the crumbs that fell from mine own
+table, and he helped himself to the rest. I made as little difference as I
+could in my intercourse with him. I continued to treat him almost as an equal.
+The only difference I did make in our mode of life was that I no longer gave
+him bed and board at the hostelry where I lodged in Passy, but placed the
+chair-bedstead in the anteroom of the office permanently at his disposal, and
+allowed him five sous a day for his breakfast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But owing to the scarcity of business that now came my way, Theodore had little
+or nothing to do, and he was in very truth eating his head off, and with that,
+grumble, grumble all the time, threatening to leave me, if you please, to leave
+my service for more remunerative occupation. As if anyone else would dream of
+employing such an out-at-elbows mudlark&mdash;a jail-bird, Sir, if you’ll
+believe me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus the Spring of 1816 came along. Spring, Sir, with its beauty and its
+promises, and the thoughts of love which come eternally in the minds of those
+who have not yet wholly done with youth. Love, Sir! I dreamed of it on those
+long, weary afternoons in April, after I had consumed my scanty repast, and
+whilst Theodore in the anteroom was snoring like a hog. At even, when tired out
+and thirsty, I would sit for a while outside a humble café on the outer
+boulevards, I watched the amorous couples wander past me on their way to
+happiness. At night I could not sleep, and bitter were my thoughts, my
+revilings against a cruel fate that had condemned me&mdash;a man with so
+sensitive a heart and so generous a nature&mdash;to the sorrows of perpetual
+solitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That, Sir, was my mood, when on a never-to-be-forgotten afternoon toward the
+end of April, I sat mooning disconsolately in my private room and a timid
+rat-tat at the outer door of the apartment roused Theodore from his brutish
+slumbers. I heard him shuffling up to the door, and I hurriedly put my necktie
+straight and smoothed my hair, which had become disordered despite the fact
+that I had only indulged in a very abstemious déjeuner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I said that the knock at my door was in the nature of a timid rat-rat I
+did not perhaps describe it quite accurately. It was timid, if you will
+understand me, and yet bold, as coming from one who might hesitate to enter and
+nevertheless feels assured of welcome. Obviously a client, I thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Effectively, Sir, the next moment my eyes were gladdened by the sight of a
+lovely woman, beautifully dressed, young, charming, smiling but to hide her
+anxiety, trustful, and certainly wealthy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The moment she stepped into the room I knew that she was wealthy; there was an
+air of assurance about her which only those are able to assume who are not
+pestered with creditors. She wore two beautiful diamond rings upon her hands
+outside her perfectly fitting glove, and her bonnet was adorned with flowers so
+exquisitely fashioned that a butterfly would have been deceived and would have
+perched on it with delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her shoes were of the finest kid, shiny at the toes like tiny mirrors, whilst
+her dainty ankles were framed in the filmy lace frills of her pantalets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Within the wide brim of her bonnet her exquisite face appeared like a rosebud
+nestling in a basket. She smiled when I rose to greet her, gave me a look that
+sent my susceptible heart a-flutter and caused me to wish that I had not taken
+that bottle-green coat of mine to the Mont de Piété only last week. I offered
+her a seat, which she took, arranging her skirts about her with inimitable
+grace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“One moment,” I added, as soon as she was seated, “and I am entirely at your
+service.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I took up pen and paper&mdash;an unfinished letter which I always keep handy
+for the purpose&mdash;and wrote rapidly. It always looks well for a lawyer or
+an <i>agent confidentiel</i> to keep a client waiting for a moment or two while
+he attends to the enormous pressure of correspondence which, if allowed to
+accumulate for five minutes, would immediately overwhelm him. I signed and
+folded the letter, threw it with a nonchalant air into a basket filled to the
+brim with others of equal importance, buried my face in my hands for a few
+seconds as if to collect my thoughts, and finally said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And now, Mademoiselle, will you deign to tell me what procures me the honour
+of your visit?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lovely creature had watched my movements with obvious impatience, a frown
+upon her exquisite brow. But now she plunged straightway into her story.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Monsieur,” she said with that pretty, determined air which became her so well,
+“my name is Estelle Bachelier. I am an orphan, an heiress, and have need of
+help and advice. I did not know to whom to apply. Until three months ago I was
+poor and had to earn my living by working in a milliner’s shop in the Rue St.
+Honoré. The concierge in the house where I used to lodge is my only friend, but
+she cannot help me for reasons which will presently be made clear to you. She
+told me, however, that she had a nephew named Theodore, who was clerk to M.
+Ratichon, advocate and confidential agent. She gave me your address; and as I
+knew no one else I determined to come and consult you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I flatter myself, that though my countenance is exceptionally mobile, I possess
+marvellous powers for keeping it impassive when necessity arises. In this
+instance, at mention of Theodore’s name, I showed neither surprise nor
+indignation. Yet you will readily understand that I felt both. Here was that
+man, once more revealed as a traitor. Theodore had an aunt of whom he had never
+as much as breathed a word. He had an aunt, and that aunt a
+concierge&mdash;<i>ipso facto</i>, if I may so express it, a woman of some
+substance, who, no doubt, would often have been only too pleased to extend
+hospitality to the man who had so signally befriended her nephew; a woman, Sir,
+who was undoubtedly possessed of savings which both reason and gratitude would
+cause her to invest in an old-established and substantial business run by a
+trustworthy and capable man, such, for instance, as the bureau of a
+confidential agent in a good quarter of Paris, which, with the help of a little
+capital, could be rendered highly lucrative and beneficial to all those,
+concerned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I determined then and there to give Theodore a piece of my mind and to insist
+upon an introduction to his aunt. After which I begged the beautiful creature
+to proceed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My father, Monsieur,” she continued, “died three months ago, in England,
+whither he had emigrated when I was a mere child, leaving my poor mother to
+struggle along for a livelihood as best she could. My mother died last year,
+Monsieur, and I have had a hard life; and now it seems that my father made a
+fortune in England and left it all to me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was greatly interested in her story.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The first intimation I had of it, Monsieur, was three months ago, when I had a
+letter from an English lawyer in London telling me that my father, Jean Paul
+Bachelier&mdash;that was his name, Monsieur&mdash;had died out there and made a
+will leaving all his money, about one hundred thousand francs, to me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, yes!” I murmured, for my throat felt parched and my eyes dim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hundred thousand francs! Ye gods!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It seems,” she proceeded demurely, “that my father put it in his will that the
+English lawyers were to pay me the interest on the money until I married or
+reached the age of twenty-one. Then the whole of the money was to be handed
+over to me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had to steady myself against the table or I would have fallen over backwards!
+This godlike creature, to whom the sum of one hundred thousand francs was to be
+paid over when she married, had come to me for help and advice! The thought
+sent my brain reeling! I am so imaginative!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Proceed, Mademoiselle, I pray you,” I contrived to say with dignified calm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, Monsieur, as I don’t know a word of English, I took the letter to Mr.
+Farewell, who is the English traveller for Madame Cécile, the milliner for whom
+I worked. He is a kind, affable gentleman and was most helpful to me. He was,
+as a matter of fact, just going over to England the very next day. He offered
+to go and see the English lawyers for me, and to bring me back all particulars
+of my dear father’s death and of my unexpected fortune.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And,” said I, for she had paused a moment, “did Mr. Farewell go to England on
+your behalf?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, Monsieur. He went and returned about a fortnight later. He had seen the
+English lawyers, who confirmed all the good news which was contained in their
+letter. They took, it seems, a great fancy to Mr. Farewell, and told him that
+since I was obviously too young to live alone and needed a guardian to look
+after my interests, they would appoint him my guardian, and suggested that I
+should make my home with him until I was married or had attained the age of
+twenty-one. Mr. Farewell told me that though this arrangement might be somewhat
+inconvenient in his bachelor establishment, he had been unable to resist the
+entreaties of the English lawyers, who felt that no one was more fitted for
+such onerous duties than himself, seeing that he was English and so obviously
+my friend.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The scoundrel! The blackguard!” I exclaimed in an unguarded outburst of fury.
+. . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Your pardon, Mademoiselle,” I added more calmly, seeing that the lovely
+creature was gazing at me with eyes full of astonishment not unmixed with
+distrust, “I am anticipating. Am I to understand, then, that you have made your
+home with this Mr. Farewell?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, Monsieur, at number sixty-five Rue des Pyramides.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is he a married man?” I asked casually.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He is a widower, Monsieur.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Middle-aged?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Quite elderly, Monsieur.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could have screamed with joy. I was not yet forty myself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why!” she added gaily, “he is thinking of retiring from business&mdash;he is,
+as I said, a commercial traveller&mdash;in favour of his nephew, M. Adrien
+Cazalès.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once more I had to steady myself against the table. The room swam round me. One
+hundred thousand francs!&mdash;a lovely creature!&mdash;an unscrupulous
+widower!&mdash;an equally dangerous young nephew. I rose and tottered to the
+window. I flung it wide open&mdash;a thing I never do save at moments of acute
+crises.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The breath of fresh air did me good. I returned to my desk, and was able once
+more to assume my habitual dignity and presence of mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In all this, Mademoiselle,” I said in my best professional manner, “I do not
+gather how I can be of service to you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am coming to that, Monsieur,” she resumed after a slight moment of
+hesitation, even as an exquisite blush suffused her damask cheeks. “You must
+know that at first I was very happy in the house of my new guardian. He was
+exceedingly kind to me, though there were times already when I fancied . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hesitated&mdash;more markedly this time&mdash;and the blush became deeper
+on her cheeks. I groaned aloud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Surely he is too old,” I suggested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Much too old,” she assented emphatically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once more I would have screamed with joy had not a sharp pang, like a
+dagger-thrust, shot through my heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But the nephew, eh?” I said as jocosely, as indifferently as I could. “Young
+M. Cazalès? What?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh!” she replied with perfect indifference. “I hardly ever see him.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Unfortunately it were not seemly for an avocat and the <i>agent
+confidentiel</i> of half the Courts of Europe to execute the measures of a
+polka in the presence of a client, or I would indeed have jumped up and danced
+with glee. The happy thoughts were hammering away in my mind: “The old one is
+much too old&mdash;the young one she never sees!” and I could have knelt down
+and kissed the hem of her gown for the exquisite indifference with which she
+had uttered those magic words: “Oh! I hardly ever see him!”&mdash;words which
+converted my brightest hopes into glowing possibilities.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, as it was, I held my emotions marvellously in check, and with perfect
+sang-froid once more asked the beauteous creature how I could be of service to
+her in her need.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of late, Monsieur,” she said, as she raised a pair of limpid, candid blue eyes
+to mine, “my position in Mr. Farewell’s house has become intolerable. He
+pursues me with his attentions, and he has become insanely jealous. He will not
+allow me to speak to anyone, and has even forbidden M. Cazalès, his own nephew,
+the house. Not that I care about that,” she added with an expressive shrug of
+the shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He has forbidden M. Cazalès the house,” rang like a paean in my ear. “Not that
+she cares about that! Tra la, la, la, la, la!” What I actually contrived to say
+with a measured and judicial air was:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you deign to entrust me with the conduct of your affairs, I would at once
+communicate with the English lawyers in your name and suggest to them the
+advisability of appointing another guardian. . . . I would suggest, for
+instance . . . er . . . that I . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How can you do that, Monsieur?” she broke in somewhat impatiently, “seeing
+that I cannot possibly tell you who these lawyers are?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eh?” I queried, gasping.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I neither know their names nor their residence in England.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once more I gasped. “Will you explain?” I murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It seems, Monsieur, that while my dear mother lived she always refused to take
+a single sou from my father, who had so basely deserted her. Of course, she did
+not know that he was making a fortune over in England, nor that he was making
+diligent inquiries as to her whereabouts when he felt that he was going to die.
+Thus, he discovered that she had died the previous year and that I was working
+in the atelier of Madame Cécile, the well-known milliner. When the English
+lawyers wrote to me at that address they, of course, said that they would
+require all my papers of identification before they paid any money over to me,
+and so, when Mr. Farewell went over to England, he took all my papers with him
+and . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She burst into tears and exclaimed piteously:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh! I have nothing now, Monsieur&mdash;nothing to prove who I am! Mr. Farewell
+took everything, even the original letter which the English lawyers wrote to
+me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Farewell,” I urged, “can be forced by the law to give all your papers up to
+you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh! I have nothing now, Monsieur&mdash;he threatened to destroy all my papers
+unless I promised to become his wife! And I haven’t the least idea how and
+where to find the English lawyers. I don’t remember either their name or their
+address; and if I did, how could I prove my identity to their satisfaction? I
+don’t know a soul in Paris save a few irresponsible millinery apprentices and
+Madame Cécile, who, no doubt, is hand in glove with Mr. Farewell. I am all
+alone in the world and friendless. . . . I have come to you, Monsieur, in my
+distress . . . and you will help me, will you not?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked more adorable in grief than she had ever done before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To tell you that at this moment visions floated in my mind, before which
+Dante’s visions of Paradise would seem pale and tame, were but to put it
+mildly. I was literally soaring in heaven. For you see I am a man of intellect
+and of action. No sooner do I see possibilities before me than my brain soars
+in an empyrean whilst conceiving daring plans for my body’s permanent abode in
+elysium. At this present moment, for instance&mdash;to name but a few of the
+beatific visions which literally dazzled me with their radiance&mdash;I could
+see my fair client as a lovely and blushing bride by my side, even whilst
+Messieurs X. and X., the two still unknown English lawyers, handed me a heavy
+bag which bore the legend “One hundred thousand francs.” I could see . . . But
+I had not the time now to dwell on these ravishing dreams. The beauteous
+creature was waiting for my decision. She had placed her fate in my hands; I
+placed my hand on my heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mademoiselle,” I said solemnly, “I will be your adviser and your friend. Give
+me but a few days’ grace, every hour, every minute of which I will spend in
+your service. At the end of that time I will not only have learned the name and
+address of the English lawyers, but I will have communicated with them on your
+behalf, and all your papers proving your identity will be in your hands. Then
+we can come to a decision with regard to a happier and more comfortable home
+for you. In the meanwhile I entreat you to do nothing that may precipitate Mr.
+Farewell’s actions. Do not encourage his advances, but do not repulse them, and
+above all keep me well informed of everything that goes on in his house.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She spoke a few words of touching gratitude, then she rose, and with a gesture
+of exquisite grace she extracted a hundred-franc note from her reticule and
+placed it upon my desk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mademoiselle,” I protested with splendid dignity, “I have done nothing as
+yet.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah! but you will, Monsieur,” she entreated in accents that completed my
+subjugation to her charms. “Besides, you do not know me! How could I expect you
+to work for me and not to know if, in the end, I should repay you for all your
+trouble? I pray you to take this small sum without demur. Mr. Farewell keeps me
+well supplied with pocket money. There will be another hundred for you when you
+place the papers in my hands.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I bowed to her, and, having once more assured her of my unswerving loyalty to
+her interests, I accompanied her to the door, and anon saw her graceful figure
+slowly descend the stairs and then disappear along the corridor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I went back to my room, and was only just in time to catch Theodore calmly
+pocketing the hundred-franc note which my fair client had left on the table. I
+secured the note and I didn’t give him a black eye, for it was no use putting
+him in a bad temper when there was so much to do.
+</p>
+
+<h3>2.</h3>
+
+<p>
+That very same evening I interviewed the concierge at No. 65 Rue des Pyramides.
+From him I learned that Mr. Farewell lived on a very small income on the top
+floor of the house, that his household consisted of a housekeeper who cooked
+and did the work of the apartment for him, and an odd-job man who came every
+morning to clean boots, knives, draw water and carry up fuel from below. I also
+learned that there was a good deal of gossip in the house anent the presence in
+Mr. Farewell’s bachelor establishment of a young and beautiful girl, whom he
+tried to keep a virtual prisoner under his eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning, dressed in a shabby blouse, alpaca cap, and trousers frayed
+out round the ankles, I&mdash;Hector Ratichon, the confidant of kings&mdash;was
+lounging under the porte-cochere of No. 65 Rue des Pyramides. I was watching
+the movements of a man, similarly attired to myself, as he crossed and
+recrossed the courtyard to draw water from the well or to fetch wood from one
+of the sheds, and then disappeared up the main staircase.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A casual, tactful inquiry of the concierge assured me that that man was indeed
+in the employ of Mr. Farewell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I waited as patiently and inconspicuously as I could, and at ten o’clock I saw
+that my man had obviously finished his work for the morning and had finally
+come down the stairs ready to go home. I followed him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I will not speak of the long halt in the cabaret du Chien Noir, where he spent
+an hour and a half in the company of his friends, playing dominoes and drinking
+eau-de-vie whilst I had perforce to cool my heels outside. Suffice it to say
+that I did follow him to his house just behind the fish-market, and that half
+an hour later, tired out but triumphant, having knocked at his door, I was
+admitted into the squalid room which he occupied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He surveyed me with obvious mistrust, but I soon reassured him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My friend Mr. Farewell has recommended you to me,” I said with my usual
+affability. “I was telling him just awhile ago that I needed a man to look
+after my office in the Rue Daunou of a morning, and he told me that in you I
+would find just the man I wanted.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hm!” grunted the fellow, very sullenly I thought. “I work for Farewell in the
+mornings. Why should he recommend me to you? Am I not giving satisfaction?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perfect satisfaction,” I rejoined urbanely; “that is just the point. Mr.
+Farewell desires to do you a good turn seeing that I offered to pay you twenty
+sous for your morning’s work instead of the ten which you are getting from
+him.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw his eyes glisten at mention of the twenty sous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’d best go and tell him then that I am taking on your work,” he said; and his
+tone was no longer sullen now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Quite unnecessary,” I rejoined. “I arranged everything with Mr. Farewell
+before I came to you. He has already found someone else to do his work, and I
+shall want you to be at my office by seven o’clock to-morrow morning. And,” I
+added, for I am always cautious and judicious, and I now placed a piece of
+silver in his hand, “here are the first twenty sous on account.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took the money and promptly became very civil, even obsequious. He not only
+accompanied me to the door, but all the way down the stairs, and assured me all
+the time that he would do his best to give me entire satisfaction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I left my address with him, and sure enough, he turned up at the office the
+next morning at seven o’clock precisely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Theodore had had my orders to direct him in his work, and I was left free to
+enact the second scene of the moving drama in which I was determined to play
+the hero and to ring down the curtain to the sound of the wedding bells.
+</p>
+
+<h3>3.</h3>
+
+<p>
+I took on the work of odd-job man at 65 Rue des Pyramides. Yes, I! Even I, who
+had sat in the private room of an emperor discussing the destinies of Europe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But with a beautiful bride and one hundred thousand francs as my goal I would
+have worked in a coal mine or on the galleys for such a guerdon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The task, I must tell you, was terribly irksome to a man of my sensibilities,
+endowed with an active mind and a vivid imagination. The dreary monotony of
+fetching water and fuel from below and polishing the boots of that
+arch-scoundrel Farewell would have made a less stout spirit quail. I had, of
+course, seen through the scoundrel’s game at once. He had rendered Estelle
+quite helpless by keeping all her papers of identification and by withholding
+from her all the letters which, no doubt, the English lawyers wrote to her from
+time to time. Thus she was entirely in his power. But, thank heaven! only
+momentarily, for I, Hector Ratichon, argus-eyed, was on the watch. Now and then
+the monotony of my existence and the hardship of my task were relieved by a
+brief glimpse of Estelle or a smile of understanding from her lips; now and
+then she would contrive to murmur as she brushed past me while I was polishing
+the scoundrel’s study floor, “Any luck yet?” And this quiet understanding
+between us gave me courage to go on with my task.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After three days I had conclusively made up my mind that Mr. Farewell kept his
+valuable papers in the drawer of the bureau in the study. After that I always
+kept a lump of wax ready for use in my pocket. On the fifth day I was very
+nearly caught trying to take an impression of the lock of the bureau drawer. On
+the seventh I succeeded, and took the impression over to a locksmith I knew of,
+and gave him an order to have a key made to fit it immediately. On the ninth
+day I had the key.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then commenced a series of disappointments and of unprofitable days which would
+have daunted one less bold and less determined. I don’t think that Farewell
+ever suspected me, but it is a fact that never once did he leave me alone in
+his study whilst I was at work there polishing the oak floor. And in the
+meanwhile I could see how he was pursuing my beautiful Estelle with his
+unwelcome attentions. At times I feared that he meant to abduct her; his was a
+powerful personality and she seemed like a little bird fighting against the
+fascination of a serpent. Latterly, too, an air of discouragement seemed to
+dwell upon her lovely face. I was half distraught with anxiety, and once or
+twice, whilst I knelt upon the hard floor, scrubbing and polishing as if my
+life depended on it, whilst he&mdash;the unscrupulous scoundrel&mdash;sat
+calmly at his desk, reading or writing, I used to feel as if the next moment I
+must attack him with my scrubbing-brush and knock him down senseless whilst I
+ransacked his drawers. My horror of anything approaching violence saved me from
+so foolish a step.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then it was that in the hour of my blackest despair a flash of genius pierced
+through the darkness of my misery. For some days now Madame Dupont, Farewell’s
+housekeeper, had been exceedingly affable to me. Every morning now, when I came
+to work, there was a cup of hot coffee waiting for me, and, when I left, a
+small parcel of something appetizing for me to take away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hallo!” I said to myself one day, when, over a cup of coffee, I caught sight
+of her small, piggy eyes leering at me with an unmistakable expression of
+admiration. “Does salvation lie where I least expected it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the moment I did nothing more than wink at the fat old thing, but the next
+morning I had my arm round her waist&mdash;a metre and a quarter, Sir, where it
+was tied in the middle&mdash;and had imprinted a kiss upon her glossy cheek.
+What that love-making cost me I cannot attempt to describe. Once Estelle came
+into the kitchen when I was staggering under a load of a hundred kilos sitting
+on my knee. The reproachful glance which she cast at me filled my soul with
+unspeakable sorrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I was working for her dear sake; working that I might win her in the end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A week later Mr. Farewell was absent from home for the evening. Estelle had
+retired to her room, and I was a welcome visitor in the kitchen, where Madame
+Dupont had laid out a regular feast for me. I had brought a couple of bottles
+of champagne with me and, what with the unaccustomed drink and the ogling and
+love-making to which I treated her, a hundred kilos of foolish womanhood was
+soon hopelessly addled and incapable. I managed to drag her to the sofa, where
+she remained quite still, with a beatific smile upon her podgy face, her eyes
+swimming in happy tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had not a moment to lose. The very next minute I was in the study and with a
+steady hand was opening the drawers of the bureau and turning over the letters
+and papers which I found therein.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly an exclamation of triumph escaped my lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I held a packet in my hand on which was written in a clear hand: “The papers of
+Mlle. Estelle Bachelier.” A brief examination of the packet sufficed. It
+consisted of a number of letters written in English, which language I only
+partially understand, but they all bore the same signature, “John Pike and
+Sons, solicitors,” and the address was at the top, “168 Cornhill, London.” It
+also contained my Estelle’s birth certificate, her mother’s marriage
+certificate, and her police registration card.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was rapt in the contemplation of my own ingenuity in having thus brilliantly
+attained my goal, when a stealthy noise in the next room roused me from my
+trance and brought up vividly to my mind the awful risks which I was running at
+this moment. I turned like an animal at bay to see Estelle’s beautiful face
+peeping at me through the half-open door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hist!” she whispered. “Have you got the papers?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I waved the packet triumphantly. She, excited and adorable, stepped briskly
+into the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let me see,” she murmured excitedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I, emboldened by success, cried gaily:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not till I have received compensation for all that I have done and endured.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Compensation?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In the shape of a kiss.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh! I won’t say that she threw herself in my arms then and there. No, no! She
+demurred. All young girls, it seems, demur under the circumstances; but she was
+adorable, coy and tender in turns, pouting and coaxing, and playing like a
+kitten till she had taken the papers from me and, with a woman’s natural
+curiosity, had turned the English letters over and over, even though she could
+not read a word of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, Sir, in the midst of her innocent frolic and at the very moment when I
+was on the point of snatching the kiss which she had so tantalizingly denied
+me, we heard the opening and closing of the front door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Farewell had come home, and there was no other egress from the study save
+the sitting-room, which in its turn had no other egress but the door leading
+into the very passage where even now Mr. Farewell was standing, hanging up his
+hat and cloak on the rack.
+</p>
+
+<h3>4.</h3>
+
+<p>
+We stood hand in hand&mdash;Estelle and I&mdash;fronting the door through which
+Mr. Farewell would presently appear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To-night we fly together,” I declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where to?” she whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Can you go to the woman at your former lodgings?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then I will take you there to-night. To-morrow we will be married before the
+Procureur du Roi; in the evening we leave for England.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, yes!” she murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“When he comes in I’ll engage him in conversation,” I continued hurriedly. “You
+make a dash for the door and run downstairs as fast as you can. I’ll follow as
+quickly as may be and meet you under the porte-cochere.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had only just time to nod assent when the door which gave on the
+sitting-room was pushed open, and Farewell, unconscious at first of our
+presence, stepped quietly into the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Estelle,” he cried, more puzzled than angry when he suddenly caught sight of
+us both, “what are you doing here with that lout?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was trembling with excitement&mdash;not fear, of course, though Farewell was
+a powerful-looking man, a head taller than I was. I stepped boldly forward,
+covering the adored one with my body.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The lout,” I said with calm dignity, “has frustrated the machinations of a
+knave. To-morrow I go to England in order to place Mademoiselle Estelle
+Bachelier under the protection of her legal guardians, Messieurs Pike and Sons,
+solicitors, of London.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave a cry of rage, and before I could retire to some safe entrenchment
+behind the table or the sofa, he was upon me like a mad dog. He had me by the
+throat, and I had rolled backwards down on to the floor, with him on the top of
+me, squeezing the breath out of me till I verily thought that my last hour had
+come. Estelle had run out of the room like a startled hare. This, of course,
+was in accordance with my instructions to her, but I could not help wishing
+then that she had been less obedient and somewhat more helpful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As it was, I was beginning to feel a mere worm in the grip of that savage
+scoundrel, whose face I could perceive just above me, distorted with passion,
+whilst hoarse ejaculations escaped his trembling lips:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You meddlesome fool! You oaf! You toad! This for your interference!” he added
+as he gave me a vigorous punch on the head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I felt my senses reeling. My head was swimming, my eyes no longer could see
+distinctly. It seemed as if an unbearable pressure upon my chest would finally
+squeeze the last breath out of my body.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was trying to remember the prayers I used to murmur at my mother’s knee, for
+verily I thought that I was dying, when suddenly, through my fading senses,
+came the sound of a long, hoarse cry, whilst the floor was shaken as with an
+earthquake. The next moment the pressure on my chest seemed to relax. I could
+hear Farewell’s voice uttering language such as it would be impossible for me
+to put on record; and through it all hoarse and convulsive cries of: “You
+shan’t hurt him&mdash;you limb of Satan, you!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gradually strength returned to me. I could see as well as hear, and what I saw
+filled me with wonder and with pride. Wonder at Ma’ame Dupont’s pluck! Pride in
+that her love for me had given such power to her mighty arms! Aroused from her
+slumbers by the sound of the scuffle, she had run to the study, only to find me
+in deadly peril of my life. Without a second’s hesitation she had rushed on
+Farewell, seized him by the collar, pulled him away from me, and then thrown
+the whole weight of her hundred kilos upon him, rendering him helpless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah, woman! lovely, selfless woman! My heart a prey to remorse, in that I could
+not remain in order to thank my plucky deliverer, I nevertheless finally
+struggled to my feet and fled from the apartment and down the stairs, never
+drawing breath till I felt Estelle’s hand resting confidingly upon my arm.
+</p>
+
+<h3>5.</h3>
+
+<p>
+I took her to the house where she used to lodge, and placed her under the care
+of the kind concierge who was Theodore’s aunt. Then I, too, went home,
+determined to get a good night’s rest. The morning would be a busy one for me.
+There would be the special licence to get, the cure of St. Jacques to
+interview, the religious ceremony to arrange for, and the places to book on the
+stagecoach for Boulogne <i>en route</i> for England&mdash;and fortune.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was supremely happy and slept the sleep of the just. I was up betimes and
+started on my round of business at eight o’clock the next morning. I was a
+little troubled about money, because when I had paid for the licence and given
+to the cure the required fee for the religious service and ceremony, I had only
+five francs left out of the hundred which the adored one had given me. However,
+I booked the seats on the stage-coach and determined to trust to luck. Once
+Estelle was my wife, all money care would be at an end, since no power on earth
+could stand between me and the hundred thousand francs, the happy goal for
+which I had so ably striven.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marriage ceremony was fixed for eleven o’clock, and it was just upon ten
+when, at last, with a light heart and springy step, I ran up the dingy
+staircase which led to the adored one’s apartments. I knocked at the door. It
+was opened by a young man, who with a smile courteously bade me enter. I felt a
+little bewildered&mdash;and slightly annoyed. My Estelle should not receive
+visits from young men at this hour. I pushed past the intruder in the passage
+and walked boldly into the room beyond.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Estelle was sitting upon the sofa, her eyes bright, her mouth smiling, a dimple
+in each cheek. I approached her with outstretched arms, but she paid no heed to
+me, and turned to the young man, who had followed me into the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Adrien,” she said, “this is kind M. Ratichon, who at risk of his life obtained
+for us all my papers of identification and also the valuable name and address
+of the English lawyers.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Monsieur,” added the young man as he extended his hand to me, “Estelle and I
+will remain eternally your debtors.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I struck at the hand which he had so impudently held out to me and turned to
+Estelle with my usual dignified calm, but with wrath expressed in every line of
+my face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Estelle,” I said, “what is the meaning of this?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh,” she retorted with one of her provoking smiles, “you must not call me
+Estelle, you know, or Adrien will smack your face. We are indeed grateful to
+you, my good M. Ratichon,” she continued more seriously, “and though I only
+promised you another hundred francs when your work for me was completed, my
+husband and I have decided to give you a thousand francs in view of the risks
+which you ran on our behalf.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Your husband!” I stammered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I was married to M. Adrien Cazalès a month ago,” she said, “but we had
+perforce to keep our marriage a secret, because Mr. Farewell once vowed to me
+that unless I became his wife he would destroy all my papers of identification,
+and then&mdash;even if I ever succeeded in discovering who were the English
+lawyers who had charge of my father’s money&mdash;I could never prove it to
+them that I and no one else was entitled to it. But for you, dear M. Ratichon,”
+added the cruel and shameless one, “I should indeed never have succeeded.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the midst of this overwhelming cataclysm I am proud to say that I retained
+mastery over my rage and contrived to say with perfect calm:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But why have deceived me, Mademoiselle? Why have kept your marriage a secret
+from me? Was I not toiling and working and risking my life for you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And would you have worked quite so enthusiastically for me,” queried the false
+one archly, “if I had told you everything?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I groaned. Perhaps she was right. I don’t know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I took the thousand francs and never saw M. and Mme. Cazalès again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I met Ma’ame Dupont by accident soon after. She has left Mr. Farewell’s
+service.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She still weighs one hundred kilos.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I often call on her of an evening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah, well!
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0003"></a>
+CHAPTER III. &mdash; ON THE BRINK</h2>
+
+<h3>1.</h3>
+
+<p>
+You would have thought that after the shameful way in which Theodore treated me
+in the matter of the secret treaty that I would then and there have turned him
+out of doors, sent him back to grub for scraps out of the gutter, and hardened
+my heart once and for all against that snake in the grass whom I had nurtured
+in my bosom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, as no doubt you have remarked ere this, I have been burdened by Nature
+with an over-sensitive heart. It is a burden, my dear Sir, and though I have
+suffered inexpressibly under it, I nevertheless agree with the English poet,
+George Crabbe, whose works I have read with a great deal of pleasure and profit
+in the original tongue, and who avers in one of his inimitable “Tales” that it
+is “better to love amiss than nothing to have loved.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not that I loved Theodore, you understand? But he and I had shared so many ups
+and downs together of late that I was loath to think of him as reduced to
+begging his bread in the streets. Then I kept him by me, for I thought that he
+might at times be useful to me in my business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I kept him to my hurt, as you will presently see.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In those days&mdash;I am now speaking of the time immediately following the
+Restoration of our beloved King Louis XVIII to the throne of his
+forbears&mdash;Parisian society was, as it were, divided into two distinct
+categories: those who had become impoverished by the revolution and the wars of
+the Empire, and those who had made their fortunes thereby. Among the former was
+M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, a handsome young officer of cavalry; and among
+the latter was one Mauruss Mosenstein, a usurer of the Jewish persuasion, whose
+wealth was reputed in millions, and who had a handsome daughter biblically
+named Rachel, who a year ago had become Madame la Marquise de Firmin-Latour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the first moment that this brilliant young couple appeared upon the
+firmament of Parisian society I took a keen interest in all their doings. In
+those days, you understand, it was in the essence of my business to know as
+much as possible of the private affairs of people in their position, and
+instinct had at once told me that in the case of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour
+such knowledge might prove very remunerative.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus I very soon found out that M. le Marquis had not a single louis of his own
+to bless himself with, and that it was Papa Mosenstein’s millions that kept up
+the young people’s magnificent establishment in the Rue de Grammont.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I also found out that Mme. la Marquise was some dozen years older than
+Monsieur, and that she had been a widow when she married him. There were
+rumours that her first marriage had not been a happy one. The husband, M. le
+Compte de Naquet, had been a gambler and a spendthrift, and had dissipated as
+much of his wife’s fortune as he could lay his hands on, until one day he went
+off on a voyage to America, or goodness knows where, and was never heard of
+again. Mme. la Comtesse, as she then was, did not grieve over her loss; indeed,
+she returned to the bosom of her family, and her father&mdash;a shrewd usurer,
+who had amassed an enormous fortune during the wars&mdash;succeeded, with the
+aid of his apparently bottomless moneybags, in having his first son-in-law
+declared deceased by Royal decree, so as to enable the beautiful Rachel to
+contract another, yet more brilliant alliance, as far as name and lineage were
+concerned, with the Marquis de Firmin-Latour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indeed, I learned that the worthy Israelite’s one passion was the social
+advancement of his daughter, whom he worshipped. So, as soon as the marriage
+was consummated and the young people were home from their honeymoon, he fitted
+up for their use the most extravagantly sumptuous apartment Paris had ever
+seen. Nothing seemed too good or too luxurious for Mme. la Marquise de
+Firmin-Latour. He desired her to cut a brilliant figure in Paris
+society&mdash;nay, to be the Ville Lumiere’s brightest and most particular
+star. After the town house he bought a chateau in the country, horses and
+carriages, which he placed at the disposal of the young couple; he kept up an
+army of servants for them, and replenished their cellars with the choicest
+wines. He threw money about for diamonds and pearls which his daughter wore,
+and paid all his son-in-law’s tailors’ and shirt-makers’ bills. But always the
+money was his, you understand? The house in Paris was his, so was the chateau
+on the Loire; he lent them to his daughter. He lent her the diamonds, and the
+carriages, and the boxes at the opera and the Français. But here his generosity
+ended. He had been deceived in his daughter’s first husband; some of the money
+which he had given her had gone to pay the gambling debts of an unscrupulous
+spendthrift. He was determined that this should not occur again. A man might
+spend his wife’s money&mdash;indeed, the law placed most of it at his disposal
+in those days&mdash;but he could not touch or mortgage one sou that belonged to
+his father-in-law. And, strangely enough, Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour
+acquiesced and aided her father in his determination. Whether it was the Jewish
+blood in her, or merely obedience to old Mosenstein’s whim, it were impossible
+to say. Certain it is that out of the lavish pin-money which her father gave
+her as a free gift from time to time, she only doled out a meagre allowance to
+her husband, and although she had everything she wanted, M. le Marquis on his
+side had often less than twenty francs in his pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A very humiliating position, you will admit, Sir, for a dashing young cavalry
+officer. Often have I seen him gnawing his finger-nails with rage when, at the
+end of a copious dinner in one of the fashionable restaurants&mdash;where I
+myself was engaged in a business capacity to keep an eye on possibly
+light-fingered customers&mdash;it would be Mme. la Marquise who paid the bill,
+even gave the pourboire to the waiter. At such times my heart would be filled
+with pity for his misfortunes, and, in my own proud and lofty independence, I
+felt that I did not envy him his wife’s millions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course, he borrowed from every usurer in the city for as long as they would
+lend him any money; but now he was up to his eyes in debt, and there was not a
+Jew inside France who would have lent him one hundred francs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You see, his precarious position was as well known as were his extravagant
+tastes and the obstinate parsimoniousness of M. Mosenstein.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But such men as M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, you understand, Sir, are
+destined by Nature first and by fortuitous circumstances afterwards to become
+the clients of men of ability like myself. I knew that sooner or later the
+elegant young soldier would be forced to seek the advice of someone wiser than
+himself, for indeed his present situation could not last much longer. It would
+soon be “sink” with him, for he could no longer “swim.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I was determined that when that time came he should turn to me as the
+drowning man turns to the straw.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So where M. le Marquis went in public I went, when possible. I was biding my
+time, and wisely too, as you will judge.
+</p>
+
+<h3>2.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Then one day our eyes met: not in a fashionable restaurant, I may tell you, but
+in a discreet one situated on the slopes of Montmartre. I was there alone,
+sipping a cup of coffee after a frugal dinner. I had drifted in there chiefly
+because I had quite accidentally caught sight of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour
+walking arm-in-arm up the Rue Lepic with a lady who was both youthful and
+charming&mdash;a well-known dancer at the opera. Presently I saw him turn into
+that discreet little restaurant, where, in very truth, it was not likely that
+Mme. la Marquise would follow him. But I did. What made me do it, I cannot say;
+but for some time now it had been my wish to make the personal acquaintance of
+M. de Firmin-Latour, and I lost no opportunity which might help me to attain
+this desire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Somehow the man interested me. His social and financial position was peculiar,
+you will admit, and here, methought, was the beginning of an adventure which
+might prove the turning-point in his career and . . . my opportunity. I was not
+wrong, as you will presently see. Whilst silently eating my simple dinner, I
+watched M. de Firmin-Latour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had started the evening by being very gay; he had ordered champagne and a
+succulent meal, and chatted light-heartedly with his companion, until presently
+three young women, flashily dressed, made noisy irruption into the restaurant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Firmin-Latour’s friend hailed them, introduced them to him, and soon he
+was host, not to one lady, but to four, and instead of two dinners he had to
+order five, and more champagne, and then dessert&mdash;peaches, strawberries,
+bonbons, liqueurs, flowers, and what not, until I could see that the bill which
+presently he would be called upon to pay would amount to far more than his
+quarterly allowance from Mme. la Marquise, far more, presumably, than he had in
+his pocket at the present moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My brain works with marvellous rapidity, as you know. Already I had made up my
+mind to see the little comedy through to the end, and I watched with a good
+deal of interest and some pity the clouds of anxiety gathering over M. de
+Firmin-Latour’s brow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dinner party lasted some considerable time; then the inevitable cataclysm
+occurred. The ladies were busy chattering and rouging their lips when the bill
+was presented. They affected to see and hear nothing: it is a way ladies have
+when dinner has to be paid for; but I saw and heard everything. The waiter
+stood by, silent and obsequious at first, whilst M. le Marquis hunted through
+all his pockets. Then there was some whispered colloquy, and the waiter’s
+attitude lost something of its correct dignity. After that the proprietor was
+called, and the whispered colloquy degenerated into altercation, whilst the
+ladies&mdash;not at all unaware of the situation&mdash;giggled amongst
+themselves. Finally, M. le Marquis offered a promissory note, which was
+refused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then it was that our eyes met. M. de Firmin-Latour had flushed to the roots of
+his hair. His situation was indeed desperate, and my opportunity had come. With
+consummate sang-froid, I advanced towards the agitated group composed of M. le
+Marquis, the proprietor, and the head waiter. I glanced at the bill, the cause
+of all this turmoil, which reposed on a metal salver in the head waiter’s hand,
+and with a brief:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If M. le Marquis will allow me . . .” I produced my pocket-book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bill was for nine hundred francs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first M. le Marquis thought that I was about to pay it&mdash;and so did the
+proprietor of the establishment, who made a movement as if he would lie down on
+the floor and lick my boots. But not so. To begin with, I did not happen to
+possess nine hundred francs, and if I did, I should not have been fool enough
+to lend them to this young scapegrace. No! What I did was to extract from my
+notebook a card, one of a series which I always keep by me in case of an
+emergency like the present one. It bore the legend: “Comte Hercule de Montjoie,
+secrétaire particulier de M. le Duc d’Otrante,” and below it the address,
+“Palais du Commissariat de Police, 12 Quai d’Orsay.” This card I presented with
+a graceful flourish of the arm to the proprietor of the establishment, whilst I
+said with that lofty self-assurance which is one of my finest attributes and
+which I have never seen equalled:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“M. le Marquis is my friend. I will be guarantee for this trifling amount.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The proprietor and head waiter stammered excuses. Private secretary of M. le
+Duc d’Otrante! Think of it! It is not often that such personages deign to
+frequent the restaurants of Montmartre. M. le Marquis, on the other hand,
+looked completely bewildered, whilst I, taking advantage of the situation,
+seized him familiarly by the arm, and leading him toward the door, I said with
+condescending urbanity:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“One word with you, my dear Marquis. It is so long since we have met.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I bowed to the ladies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mesdames,” I said, and was gratified to see that they followed my dramatic
+exit with eyes of appreciation and of wonder. The proprietor himself offered me
+my hat, and a moment or two later M. de Firmin-Latour and I were out together
+in the Rue Lepic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dear Comte,” he said as soon as he had recovered his breath, “how can I
+think you? . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not now, Monsieur, not now,” I replied. “You have only just time to make your
+way as quickly as you can back to your palace in the Rue de Grammont before our
+friend the proprietor discovers the several mistakes which he has made in the
+past few minutes and vents his wrath upon your fair guests.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are right,” he rejoined lightly. “But I will have the pleasure to call on
+you to-morrow at the Palais du Commissariat.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do no such thing, Monsieur le Marquis,” I retorted with a pleasant laugh. “You
+would not find me there.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But&mdash;” he stammered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But,” I broke in with my wonted business-like and persuasive manner, “if you
+think that I have conducted this delicate affair for you with tact and
+discretion, then, in your own interest I should advise you to call on me at my
+private office, No. 96 Rue Daunou. Hector Ratichon, at your service.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He appeared more bewildered than ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Rue Daunou,” he murmured. “Ratichon!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Private inquiry and confidential agent,” I rejoined. “My brains are at your
+service should you desire to extricate yourself from the humiliating financial
+position in which it has been my good luck to find you, and yours to meet with
+me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With that I left him, Sir, to walk away or stay as he pleased. As for me, I
+went quickly down the street. I felt that the situation was absolutely perfect;
+to have spoken another word might have spoilt it. Moreover, there was no
+knowing how soon the proprietor of that humble hostelry would begin to have
+doubts as to the identity of the private secretary of M. le Duc d’Otrante. So I
+was best out of the way.
+</p>
+
+<h3>3.</h3>
+
+<p>
+The very next day M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour called upon me at my office in
+the Rue Daunou. Theodore let him in, and the first thing that struck me about
+him was his curt, haughty manner and the look of disdain wherewith he regarded
+the humble appointments of my business premises. He himself was magnificently
+dressed, I may tell you. His bottle-green coat was of the finest cloth and the
+most perfect cut I had ever seen. His kerseymere pantaloons fitted him without
+a wrinkle. He wore gloves, he carried a muff of priceless zibeline, and in his
+cravat there was a diamond the size of a broad bean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He also carried a malacca cane, which he deposited upon my desk, and a
+gold-rimmed spy-glass which, with a gesture of supreme affectation, he raised
+to his eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now, M. Hector Ratichon,” he said abruptly, “perhaps you will be good enough
+to explain.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had risen when he entered. But now I sat down again and coolly pointed to the
+best chair in the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will you give yourself the trouble to sit down, M. le Marquis?” I riposted
+blandly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He called me names&mdash;rude names! but I took no notice of that . . . and he
+sat down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now!” he said once more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is it you desire to know, M. le Marquis?” I queried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why you interfered in my affairs last night?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you complain?” I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” he admitted reluctantly, “but I don’t understand your object.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My object was to serve you then,” I rejoined quietly, “and later.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What do you mean by ‘later’?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To-day,” I replied, “to-morrow; whenever your present position becomes
+absolutely unendurable.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is that now,” he said with a savage oath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I thought as much,” was my curt comment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And do you mean to assert,” he went on more earnestly, “that you can find a
+way out of it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you desire it&mdash;yes!” I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew his chair nearer to my desk, and I leaned forward, with my elbows on
+the table, the finger-tips of one hand in contact with those of the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let us begin by reviewing the situation, shall we, Monsieur?” I began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you wish,” he said curtly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are a gentleman of refined, not to say luxurious tastes, who finds himself
+absolutely without means to gratify them. Is that so?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You have a wife and a father-in-law who, whilst lavishing costly treasures
+upon you, leave you in a humiliating dependence on them for actual money.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again he nodded approvingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Human nature,” I continued with gentle indulgence, “being what it is, you pine
+after what you do not possess&mdash;namely, money. Houses, equipages, servants,
+even good food and wine, are nothing to you beside that earnest desire for
+money that you can call your own, and which, if only you had it, you could
+spend at your pleasure.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To the point, man, to the point!” he broke in impatiently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“One moment, M. le Marquis, and I have done. But first of all, with your
+permission, shall we also review the assets in your life which we will have to
+use in order to arrive at the gratification of your earnest wish?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Assets? What do you mean?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The means to our end. You want money; we must find the means to get it for
+you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I begin to understand,” he said, and drew his chair another inch or two closer
+to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Firstly, M. le Marquis,” I resumed, and now my voice had become earnest and
+incisive, “firstly you have a wife, then you have a father-in-law whose wealth
+is beyond the dreams of humble people like myself, and whose one great passion
+in life is the social position of the daughter whom he worships. Now,” I added,
+and with the tip of my little finger I touched the sleeve of my aristocratic
+client, “here at once is your first asset. Get at the money-bags of papa by
+threatening the social position of his daughter.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whereupon my young gentleman jumped to his feet and swore and abused me for a
+mudlark and a muckworm and I don’t know what. He seized his malacca cane and
+threatened me with it, and asked me how the devil I dared thus to speak of Mme.
+la Marquise de Firmin-Latour. He cursed, and he stormed and he raved of his
+sixteen quarterings and of my loutishness. He did everything in fact except
+walk out of the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I let him go on quite quietly. It was part of his programme, and we had to go
+through the performance. As soon as he gave me the chance of putting in a word
+edgeways I rejoined quietly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We are not going to hurt Madame la Marquise, Monsieur; and if you do not want
+the money, let us say no more about it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whereupon he calmed down; after a while he sat down again, this time with his
+cane between his knees and its ivory knob between his teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go on,” he said curtly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nor did he interrupt me again whilst I expounded my scheme to him&mdash;one
+that, mind you, I had evolved during the night, knowing well that I should
+receive his visit during the day; and I flatter myself that no finer scheme for
+the bleeding of a parsimonious usurer was ever devised by any man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If it succeeded&mdash;and there was no reason why it should not&mdash;M. de
+Firmin-Latour would pocket a cool half-million, whilst I, sir, the brain that
+had devised the whole scheme, pronounced myself satisfied with the paltry
+emolument of one hundred thousand francs, out of which, remember, I should have
+to give Theodore a considerable sum.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We talked it all over, M. le Marquis and I, the whole afternoon. I may tell you
+at once that he was positively delighted with the plan, and then and there gave
+me one hundred francs out of his own meagre purse for my preliminary expenses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning we began work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had begged M. le Marquis to find the means of bringing me a few scraps of the
+late M. le Comte de Naquet’s&mdash;Madame la Marquise’s first
+husband&mdash;handwriting. This, fortunately, he was able to do. They were a
+few valueless notes penned at different times by the deceased gentleman and
+which, luckily for us all, Madame had not thought it worth while to keep under
+lock and key.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I think I told you before, did I not? what a marvellous expert I am in every
+kind of calligraphy, and soon I had a letter ready which was to represent the
+first fire in the exciting war which we were about to wage against an obstinate
+lady and a parsimonious usurer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My identity securely hidden under the disguise of a commissionnaire, I took
+that letter to Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour’s sumptuous abode in the Rue
+de Grammont.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. le Marquis, you understand, had in the meanwhile been thoroughly primed in
+the rôle which he was to play; as for Theodore, I thought it best for the
+moment to dispense with his aid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The success of our first skirmish surpassed our expectations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ten minutes after the letter had been taken upstairs to Mme. la Marquise, one
+of the maids, on going past her mistress’s door, was startled to hear cries and
+moans proceeding from Madame’s room. She entered and found Madame lying on the
+sofa, her face buried in the cushions, and sobbing and screaming in a truly
+terrifying manner. The maid applied the usual restoratives, and after a while
+Madame became more calm and at once very curtly ordered the maid out of the
+room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. le Marquis, on being apprised of this mysterious happening, was much
+distressed; he hurried to his wife’s apartments, and was as gentle and loving
+with her as he had been in the early days of their honeymoon. But throughout
+the whole of that evening, and, indeed, for the next two days, all the
+explanation that he could get from Madame herself was that she had a headache
+and that the letter which she had received that afternoon was of no consequence
+and had nothing to do with her migraine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But clearly the beautiful Rachel was extraordinarily agitated. At night she did
+not sleep, but would pace up and down her apartments in a state bordering on
+frenzy, which of course caused M. le Marquis a great deal of anxiety and of
+sorrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally, on the Friday morning it seemed as if Madame could contain herself no
+longer. She threw herself into her husband’s arms and blurted out the whole
+truth. M. le Comte de Naquet, her first husband, who had been declared drowned
+at sea, and therefore officially deceased by Royal decree, was not dead at all.
+Madame had received a letter from him wherein he told her that he had indeed
+suffered shipwreck, then untold misery on a desert island for three years,
+until he had been rescued by a passing vessel, and finally been able, since he
+was destitute, to work his way back to France and to Paris. Here he had lived
+for the past few months as best he could, trying to collect together a little
+money so as to render himself presentable before his wife, whom he had never
+ceased to love.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Inquiries discreetly conducted had revealed the terrible truth, that Madame had
+been faithless to him, had light-heartedly assumed the death of her husband,
+and had contracted what was nothing less than a bigamous marriage. Now he, M.
+de Naquet, standing on his rights as Rachel Mosenstein’s only lawful husband,
+demanded that she should return to him, and as a prelude to a permanent and
+amicable understanding, she was to call at three o’clock precisely on the
+following Friday at No. 96 Rue Daunou, where their reconciliation and reunion
+was to take place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The letter announcing this terrible news and making this preposterous demand
+she now placed in the hands of M. le Marquis, who at first was horrified and
+thunderstruck, and appeared quite unable to deal with the situation or to
+tender advice. For Madame it meant complete social ruin, of course, and she
+herself declared that she would never survive such a scandal. Her tears and her
+misery made the loving heart of M. le Marquis bleed in sympathy. He did all he
+could to console and comfort the lady, whom, alas! he could no longer look upon
+as his wife. Then, gradually, both he and she became more composed. It was
+necessary above all things to make sure that Madame was not being victimized by
+an impostor, and for this purpose M. le Marquis generously offered himself as a
+disinterested friend and adviser. He offered to go himself to the Rue Daunou at
+the hour appointed and to do his best to induce M. le Comte de Naquet&mdash;if
+indeed he existed&mdash;to forgo his rights on the lady who had so innocently
+taken on the name and hand of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour. Somewhat more
+calm, but still unconsoled, the beautiful Rachel accepted this generous offer.
+I believe that she even found five thousand francs in her privy purse which was
+to be offered to M. de Naquet in exchange for a promise never to worry Mme. la
+Marquise again with his presence. But this I have never been able to ascertain
+with any finality. Certain it is that when at three o’clock on that same
+afternoon M. de Firmin-Latour presented himself at my office, he did not offer
+me a share in any five thousand francs, though he spoke to me about the money,
+adding that he thought it would look well if he were to give it back to Madame,
+and to tell her that M. de Naquet had rejected so paltry a sum with disdain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I thought such a move unnecessary, and we argued about it rather warmly, and in
+the end he went away, as I say, without offering me any share in the emolument.
+Whether he did put his project into execution or not I never knew. He told me
+that he did. After that there followed for me, Sir, many days, nay, weeks, of
+anxiety and of strenuous work. Mme. la Marquise received several more letters
+from the supposititious M. de Naquet, any one of which would have landed me,
+Sir, in a vessel bound for New Caledonia. The discarded husband became more and
+more insistent as time went on, and finally sent an ultimatum to Madame saying
+that he was tired of perpetual interviews with M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour,
+whose right to interfere in the matter he now wholly denied, and that he was
+quite determined to claim his lawful wife before the whole world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame la Marquise, in the meanwhile, had passed from one fit of hysterics into
+another. She denied her door to everyone and lived in the strictest seclusion
+in her beautiful apartment of the Rue de Grammont. Fortunately this all
+occurred in the early autumn, when the absence of such a society star from
+fashionable gatherings was not as noticeable as it otherwise would have been.
+But clearly we were working up for the climax, which occurred in the way I am
+about to relate.
+</p>
+
+<h3>4.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Ah, my dear Sir, when after all these years I think of my adventure with that
+abominable Marquis, righteous and noble indignation almost strikes me dumb. To
+think that with my own hands and brains I literally put half a million into
+that man’s pocket, and that he repaid me with the basest ingratitude, almost
+makes me lose my faith in human nature. Theodore, of course, I could punish,
+and did so adequately; and where my chastisement failed, Fate herself put the
+finishing touch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But M. de Firmin-Latour . . .!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, you shall judge for yourself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I told you, we now made ready for the climax; and that climax, Sir, I can
+only describe as positively gorgeous. We began by presuming that Mme. la
+Marquise had now grown tired of incessant demands for interviews and small
+doles of money, and that she would be willing to offer a considerable sum to
+her first and only lawful husband in exchange for a firm guarantee that he
+would never trouble her again as long as she lived.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We fixed the sum at half a million francs, and the guarantee was to take the
+form of a deed duly executed by a notary of repute and signed by the
+supposititious Comte de Naquet. A letter embodying the demand and offering the
+guarantee was thereupon duly sent to Mme. la Marquise, and she, after the usual
+attack of hysterics, duly confided the matter to M. de Firmin-Latour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The consultation between husband and wife on the deplorable subject was
+touching in the extreme; and I will give that abominable Marquis credit for
+playing his rôle in a masterly manner. At first he declared to his dear Rachel
+that he did not know what to suggest, for in truth she had nothing like half a
+million on which she could lay her hands. To speak of this awful pending
+scandal to Papa Mosenstein was not to be thought of. He was capable of
+repudiating the daughter altogether who was bringing such obloquy upon herself
+and would henceforth be of no use to him as a society star.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for himself in this terrible emergency, he, of course, had less than
+nothing, or his entire fortune would be placed&mdash;if he had one&mdash;at the
+feet of his beloved Rachel. To think that he was on the point of losing her was
+more than he could bear, and the idea that she would soon become the talk of
+every gossip-monger in society, and mayhap be put in prison for bigamy,
+wellnigh drove him crazy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What could be done in this awful perplexity he for one could not think, unless
+indeed his dear Rachel were willing to part with some of her jewellery; but no!
+he could not think of allowing her to make such a sacrifice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whereupon Madame, like a drowning man, or rather woman, catching at a straw,
+bethought her of her emeralds. They were historic gems, once the property of
+the Empress Marie-Thérèse, and had been given to her on her second marriage by
+her adoring father. No, no! she would never miss them; she seldom wore them,
+for they were heavy and more valuable than elegant, and she was quite sure that
+at the Mont de Piété they would lend her five hundred thousand francs on them.
+Then gradually they could be redeemed before papa had become aware of their
+temporary disappearance. Madame would save the money out of the liberal
+allowance she received from him for pin-money. Anything, anything was
+preferable to this awful doom which hung over her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But even so M. le Marquis demurred. The thought of his proud and fashionable
+Rachel going to the Mont de Piété to pawn her own jewels was not to be thought
+of. She would be seen, recognized, and the scandal would be as bad and worse
+than anything that loomed on the black horizon of her fate at this hour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What was to be done? What was to be done?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then M. le Marquis had a brilliant idea. He knew of a man, a very reliable,
+trustworthy man, attorney-at-law by profession, and therefore a man of repute,
+who was often obliged in the exercise of his profession to don various
+disguises when tracking criminals in the outlying quarters of Paris. M. le
+Marquis, putting all pride and dignity nobly aside in the interests of his
+adored Rachel, would borrow one of these disguises and himself go to the Mont
+de Piété with the emeralds, obtain the five hundred thousand francs, and remit
+them to the man whom he hated most in all the world, in exchange for the
+aforementioned guarantee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame la Marquise, overcome with gratitude, threw herself, in the midst of a
+flood of tears, into the arms of the man whom she no longer dared to call her
+husband, and so the matter was settled for the moment. M. le Marquis undertook
+to have the deed of guarantee drafted by the same notary of repute whom he
+knew, and, if Madame approved of it, the emeralds would then be converted into
+money, and the interview with M. le Comte de Naquet fixed for Wednesday,
+October 10th, at some convenient place, subsequently to be determined
+on&mdash;in all probability at the bureau of that same ubiquitous
+attorney-at-law, M. Hector Ratichon, at 96 Rue Daunon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All was going on excellently well, as you observe. I duly drafted the deed, and
+M. de Firmin-Latour showed it to Madame for her approval. It was so simply and
+so comprehensively worded that she expressed herself thoroughly satisfied with
+it, whereupon M. le Marquis asked her to write to her shameful persecutor in
+order to fix the date and hour for the exchange of the money against the deed
+duly signed and witnessed. M. le Marquis had always been the intermediary for
+her letters, you understand, and for the small sums of money which she had sent
+from time to time to the factitious M. de Naquet; now he was to be entrusted
+with the final negotiations which, though at a heavy cost, would bring security
+and happiness once more in the sumptuous palace of the Rue de Grammont.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then it was that the first little hitch occurred. Mme. la
+Marquise&mdash;whether prompted thereto by a faint breath of suspicion, or
+merely by natural curiosity&mdash;altered her mind about the appointment. She
+decided that M. le Marquis, having pledged the emeralds, should bring the money
+to her, and she herself would go to the bureau of M. Hector Ratichon in the Rue
+Daunou, there to meet M. de Naquet, whom she had not seen for seven years, but
+who had once been very dear to her, and herself fling in his face the five
+hundred thousand francs, the price of his silence and of her peace of mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At once, as you perceive, the situation became delicate. To have demurred, or
+uttered more than a casual word of objection, would in the case of M. le
+Marquis have been highly impolitic. He felt that at once, the moment he raised
+his voice in protest: and when Madame declared herself determined he
+immediately gave up arguing the point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The trouble was that we had so very little time wherein to formulate new plans.
+Monsieur was to go the very next morning to the Mont de Piété to negotiate the
+emeralds, and the interview with the fabulous M. de Naquet was to take place a
+couple of hours later; and it was now three o’clock in the afternoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as M. de Firmin-Latour was able to leave his wife, he came round to my
+office. He appeared completely at his wits’ end, not knowing what to do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If my wife,” he said, “insists on a personal interview with de Naquet, who
+does not exist, our entire scheme falls to the ground. Nay, worse! for I shall
+be driven to concoct some impossible explanation for the non-appearance of that
+worthy, and heaven only knows if I shall succeed in wholly allaying my wife’s
+suspicions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah!” he added with a sigh, “it is doubly hard to have seen fortune so near
+one’s reach and then to see it dashed away at one fell swoop by the relentless
+hand of Fate.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not one word, you observe, of gratitude to me or of recognition of the subtle
+mind that had planned and devised the whole scheme.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, Sir, it is at the hour of supreme crises like the present one that Hector
+Ratichon’s genius soars up to the empyrean. It became great, Sir; nothing short
+of great; and even the marvellous schemes of the Italian Macchiavelli paled
+before the ingenuity which I now displayed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Half an hour’s reflection had sufficed. I had made my plans, and I had measured
+the full length of the terrible risks which I ran. Among these New Caledonia
+was the least. But I chose to take the risks, Sir; my genius could not stoop to
+measuring the costs of its flight. While M. de Firmin-Latour alternately raved
+and lamented I had already planned and contrived. As I say, we had very little
+time: a few hours wherein to render ourselves worthy of Fortune’s smiles. And
+this is what I planned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You tell me that you were not in Paris during the year 1816 of which I speak.
+If you had been, you would surely recollect the sensation caused throughout the
+entire city by the disappearance of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, one of the
+most dashing young officers in society and one of its acknowledged leaders. It
+was the 10th day of October. M. le Marquis had breakfasted in the company of
+Madame at nine o’clock. A couple of hours later he went out, saying he would be
+home for déjeuner. Madame clearly expected him, for his place was laid, and she
+ordered the déjeuner to be kept back over an hour in anticipation of his
+return. But he did not come. The afternoon wore on and he did not come. Madame
+sat down at two o’clock to déjeuner alone. She told the major-domo that M. le
+Marquis was detained in town and might not be home for some time. But the
+major-domo declared that Madame’s voice, as she told him this, sounded tearful
+and forced, and that she ate practically nothing, refusing one succulent dish
+after another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The staff of servants was thus kept on tenterhooks all day, and when the
+shadows of evening began to draw in, the theory was started in the kitchen that
+M. le Marquis had either met with an accident or been foully murdered. No one,
+however, dared speak of this to Madame la Marquise, who had locked herself up
+in her room in the early part of the afternoon, and since then had refused to
+see anyone. The major-domo was now at his wits’ end. He felt that in a measure
+the responsibility of the household rested upon his shoulders. Indeed he would
+have taken it upon himself to apprise M. Mauruss Mosenstein of the terrible
+happenings, only that the worthy gentleman was absent from Paris just then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mme. la Marquise remained shut up in her room until past eight o’clock. Then
+she ordered dinner to be served and made pretence of sitting down to it; but
+again the major-domo declared that she ate nothing, whilst subsequently the
+confidential maid who had undressed her vowed that Madame had spent the whole
+night walking up and down the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus two agonizing days went by; agonizing they were to everybody. Madame la
+Marquise became more and more agitated, more and more hysterical as time went
+on, and the servants could not help but notice this, even though she made light
+of the whole affair, and desperate efforts to control herself. The heads of her
+household, the major-domo, the confidential maid, the chef de cuisine, did
+venture to drop a hint or two as to the possibility of an accident or of foul
+play, and the desirability of consulting the police; but Madame would not hear
+a word of it; she became very angry at the suggestion, and declared that she
+was perfectly well aware of M. le Marquis’s whereabouts, that he was well and
+would return home almost immediately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As was only natural, tongues presently began to wag. Soon it was common talk in
+Paris that M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour had disappeared from his home and
+that Madame was trying to put a bold face upon the occurrence. There were
+surmises and there was gossip&mdash; oh! interminable and long-winded gossip!
+Minute circumstances in connexion with M. le Marquis’s private life and Mme. la
+Marquise’s affairs were freely discussed in the cafés, the clubs and
+restaurants, and as no one knew the facts of the case, surmises soon became
+very wild.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the third day of M. le Marquis’s disappearance Papa Mosenstein returned to
+Paris from Vichy, where he had just completed his annual cure. He arrived at
+Rue de Grammont at three o’clock in the afternoon, demanded to see Mme. la
+Marquise at once, and then remained closeted with her in her apartment for over
+an hour. After which he sent for the inspector of police of the section, with
+the result that that very same evening M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour was found
+locked up in an humble apartment on the top floor of a house in the Rue Daunou,
+not ten minutes’ walk from his own house. When the police&mdash;acting on
+information supplied to them by M. Mauruss Mosenstein&mdash;forced their way
+into that apartment, they were horrified to find M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour
+there, tied hand and foot with cords to a chair, his likely calls for help
+smothered by a woollen shawl wound loosely round the lower part of his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was half dead with inanition, and was conveyed speechless and helpless to
+his home in the Rue de Grammont, there, presumably, to be nursed back to health
+by Madame his wife.
+</p>
+
+<h3>5.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Now in all this matter, I ask you, Sir, who ran the greatest risk? Why,
+I&mdash;Hector Ratichon, of course&mdash;Hector Ratichon, in whose apartment M.
+de Firmin-Latour was discovered in a position bordering on absolute inanition.
+And the proof of this is, that that selfsame night I was arrested at my
+lodgings at Passy, and charged with robbery and attempted murder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a terrible predicament for a respectable citizen, a man of integrity and
+reputation, in which to find himself; but Papa Mosenstein was both tenacious
+and vindictive. His daughter, driven to desperation at last, and terrified that
+M. le Marquis had indeed been foully murdered by M. de Naquet, had made a clean
+breast of the whole affair to her father, and he in his turn had put the
+minions of the law in full possession of all the facts; and since M. le Comte
+de Naquet had vanished, leaving no manner of trace or clue of his person behind
+him, the police, needing a victim, fell back on an innocent man. Fortunately,
+Sir, that innocence clear as crystal soon shines through every calumny. But
+this was not before I had suffered terrible indignities and all the tortures
+which base ingratitude can inflict upon a sensitive heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such ingratitude as I am about to relate to you has never been equalled on this
+earth, and even after all these years, Sir, you see me overcome with emotion at
+the remembrance of it all. I was under arrest, remember, on a terribly serious
+charge, but, conscious of mine own innocence and of my unanswerable system of
+defence, I bore the preliminary examination by the juge d’instruction with
+exemplary dignity and patience. I knew, you see, that at my very first
+confrontation with my supposed victim the latter would at once say:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah! but no! This is not the man who assaulted me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our plan, which so far had been overwhelmingly successful, had been this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the morning of the tenth, M. de Firmin-Latour having pawned the emeralds,
+and obtained the money for them, was to deposit that money in his own name at
+the bank of Raynal Frères and then at once go to the office in the Rue Daunou.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There he would be met by Theodore, who would bind him comfortably but securely
+to a chair, put a shawl around his mouth and finally lock the door on him.
+Theodore would then go to his mother’s and there remain quietly until I needed
+his services again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It had been thought inadvisable for me to be seen that morning anywhere in the
+neighbourhood of the Rue Daunou, but that perfidious reptile Theodore ran no
+risks in doing what he was told. To begin with he is a past master in the art
+of worming himself in and out of a house without being seen, and in this case
+it was his business to exercise a double measure of caution. And secondly, if
+by some unlucky chance the police did subsequently connect him with the crime,
+there was I, his employer, a man of integrity and repute, prepared to swear
+that the man had been in my company at the other end of Paris all the while
+that M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour was, by special arrangement, making use of
+my office in the Rue Daunou, which I had lent him for purposes of business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally it was agreed between us that when M. le Marquis would presently be
+questioned by the police as to the appearance of the man who had assaulted and
+robbed him, he would describe him as tall and blond, almost like an Angliche in
+countenance. Now I possess&mdash;as you see, Sir&mdash;all the finest
+characteristics of the Latin race, whilst Theodore looks like nothing on earth,
+save perhaps a cross between a rat and a monkey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wish you to realize, therefore, that no one ran any risks in this affair
+excepting myself. I, as the proprietor of the apartment where the assault was
+actually supposed to have taken place, did run a very grave risk, because I
+could never have proved an alibi. Theodore was such a disreputable mudlark that
+his testimony on my behalf would have been valueless. But with sublime
+sacrifice I accepted these risks, and you will presently see, Sir, how I was
+repaid for my selflessness. I pined in a lonely prison-cell while these two
+limbs of Satan concocted a plot to rob me of my share in our mutual
+undertaking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, Sir, the day came when I was taken from my prison-cell for the purpose of
+being confronted with the man whom I was accused of having assaulted. As you
+will imagine, I was perfectly calm. According to our plan the confrontation
+would be the means of setting me free at once. I was conveyed to the house in
+the Rue de Grammont, and here I was kept waiting for some little time while the
+juge d’instruction went in to prepare M. le Marquis, who was still far from
+well. Then I was introduced into the sick-room. I looked about me with the
+perfect composure of an innocent man about to be vindicated, and calmly gazed
+on the face of the sick man who was sitting up in his magnificent bed, propped
+up with pillows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I met his glance firmly whilst M. le Juge d’instruction placed the question to
+him in a solemn and earnest tone:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, will you look at the prisoner before you and
+tell us whether you recognize in him the man who assaulted you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And that perfidious Marquis, Sir, raised his eyes and looked me
+squarely&mdash;yes! squarely&mdash;in the face and said with incredible
+assurance:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, Monsieur le Juge, that is the man! I recognize him.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To me it seemed then as if a thunderbolt had crashed through the ceiling and
+exploded at my feet. I was like one stunned and dazed; the black ingratitude,
+the abominable treachery, completely deprived me of speech. I felt choked, as
+if some poisonous effluvia&mdash;the poison, Sir, of that man’s
+infamy&mdash;had got into my throat. That state of inertia lasted, I believe,
+less than a second; the next I had uttered a hoarse cry of noble indignation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You vampire, you!” I exclaimed. “You viper! You . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I would have thrown myself on him and strangled him with glee, but that the
+minions of the law had me by the arms and dragged me away out of the hateful
+presence of that traitor, despite my objurgations and my protestations of
+innocence. Imagine my feelings when I found myself once more in a prison-cell,
+my heart filled with unspeakable bitterness against that perfidious Judas. Can
+you wonder that it took me some time before I could collect my thoughts
+sufficiently to review my situation, which no doubt to the villain himself who
+had just played me this abominable trick must have seemed desperate indeed? Ah!
+I could see it all, of course! He wanted to see me sent to New Caledonia,
+whilst he enjoyed the fruits of his unpardonable backsliding. In order to
+retain the miserable hundred thousand francs which he had promised me he did
+not hesitate to plunge up to the neck in this heinous conspiracy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, conspiracy! for the very next day, when I was once more hailed before the
+juge d’instruction, another confrontation awaited me: this time with that
+scurvy rogue Theodore. He had been suborned by M. le Marquis to turn against
+the hand that fed him. What price he was paid for this Judas trick I shall
+never know, and all that I do know is that he actually swore before the juge
+d’instruction that M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour called at my office in the
+late forenoon of the tenth of October; that I then ordered
+him&mdash;Theodore&mdash;to go out to get his dinner first, and then to go all
+the way over to Neuilly with a message to someone who turned out to be
+non-existent. He went on to assert that when he returned at six o’clock in the
+afternoon he found the office door locked, and I&mdash;his
+employer&mdash;presumably gone. This at first greatly upset him, because he was
+supposed to sleep on the premises, but seeing that there was nothing for it but
+to accept the inevitable, he went round to his mother’s rooms at the back of
+the fish-market and remained there ever since, waiting to hear from me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That, Sir, was the tissue of lies which that jailbird had concocted for my
+undoing, knowing well that I could not disprove them because it had been my
+task on that eventful morning to keep an eye on M. le Marquis whilst he went to
+the Mont de Piété first, and then to MM. Raynal Frères, the bankers where he
+deposited the money. For this purpose I had been obliged to don a disguise,
+which I had not discarded till later in the day, and thus was unable to
+disprove satisfactorily the monstrous lies told by that perjurer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah! I can see that sympathy for my unmerited misfortunes has filled your eyes
+with tears. No doubt in your heart you feel that my situation at that hour was
+indeed desperate, and that I&mdash;Hector Ratichon, the confidant of kings, the
+benefactor of the oppressed&mdash;did spend the next few years of my life in a
+penal settlement, where those arch-malefactors themselves should have been. But
+no, Sir! Fate may be a fickle jade, rogues may appear triumphant, but not for
+long, Sir, not for long! It is brains that conquer in the end . . . brains
+backed by righteousness and by justice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whether I had actually foreseen the treachery of those two rattlesnakes, or
+whether my habitual caution and acumen alone prompted me to take those measures
+of precaution of which I am about to tell you, I cannot truthfully remember.
+Certain it is that I did take those precautions which ultimately proved to be
+the means of compensating me for most that I had suffered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It had been a part of the original plan that, on the day immediately following
+the tenth of October, I, in my own capacity as Hector Ratichon, who had been
+absent from my office for twenty-four hours, would arrive there in the morning,
+find the place locked, force an entrance into the apartment, and there find M.
+le Marquis in his pitiable plight. After which I would, of course, immediately
+notify the police of the mysterious occurrence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That had been the rôle which I had intended to play. M. le Marquis approved of
+it and had professed himself quite willing to endure a twenty-four-hours’
+martyrdom for the sake of half a million francs. But, as I have just had the
+honour to tell you, something which I will not attempt to explain prompted me
+at the last moment to modify my plan in one little respect. I thought it too
+soon to go back to the Rue Daunou within twenty-four hours of our
+well-contrived coup, and I did not altogether care for the idea of going myself
+to the police in order to explain to them that I had found a man gagged and
+bound in my office. The less one has to do with these minions of the law the
+better. Mind you, I had envisaged the possibility of being accused of assault
+and robbery, but I did not wish to take, as it were, the very first steps
+myself in that direction. You might call this a matter of sentiment or of
+prudence, as you wish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I waited until the evening of the second day before I got the key from
+Theodore. Then before the concierge at 96 Rue Daunou had closed the
+porte-cochere for the night, I slipped into the house unobserved, ran up the
+stairs to my office and entered the apartment. I struck a light and made my way
+to the inner room where the wretched Marquis hung in the chair like a bundle of
+rags. I called to him, but he made no movement. As I had anticipated, he had
+fainted for want of food. Of course, I was very sorry for him, for his plight
+was pitiable, but he was playing for high stakes, and a little starvation does
+no man any harm. In his case there was half a million at the end of his brief
+martyrdom, which could, at worst, only last another twenty-four hours. I
+reckoned that Mme. la Marquise could not keep the secret of her husband’s
+possible whereabouts longer than that, and in any event I was determined that,
+despite all risks, I would go myself to the police on the following day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the meanwhile, since I was here and since M. le Marquis was unconscious, I
+proceeded then and there to take the precaution which prudence had dictated,
+and without which, seeing this man’s treachery and Theodore’s villainy, I
+should undoubtedly have ended my days as a convict. What I did was to search M.
+le Marquis’s pockets for anything that might subsequently prove useful to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had no definite idea in the matter, you understand; but I had vague notions
+of finding the bankers’ receipt for the half-million francs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, I did not find that, but I did find the receipt from the Mont de Piété
+for a parure of emeralds on which half a million francs had been lent. This I
+carefully put away in my waistcoat pocket, but as there was nothing else I
+wished to do just then I extinguished the light and made my way cautiously out
+of the apartment and out of the house. No one had seen me enter or go out, and
+M. le Marquis had not stirred while I went through his pockets.
+</p>
+
+<h3>6.</h3>
+
+<p>
+That, Sir, was the precaution which I had taken in order to safeguard myself
+against the machinations of traitors. And see how right I was; see how hopeless
+would have been my plight at this hour when Theodore, too, turned against me
+like the veritable viper that he was. I never really knew when and under what
+conditions the infamous bargain was struck which was intended to deprive me of
+my honour and of my liberty, nor do I know what emolument Theodore was to
+receive for his treachery. Presumably the two miscreants arranged it all some
+time during that memorable morning of the tenth even whilst I was risking my
+life in their service.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for M. de Firmin-Latour, that worker of iniquity who, in order to save a
+paltry hundred thousand francs from the hoard which I had helped him to
+acquire, did not hesitate to commit such an abominable crime, he did not long
+remain in the enjoyment of his wealth or of his peace of mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The very next day I made certain statements before M. le Juge d’instruction
+with regard to M. Mauruss Mosenstein, which caused the former to summon the
+worthy Israelite to his bureau, there to be confronted with me. I had nothing
+more to lose, since those execrable rogues had already, as it were, tightened
+the rope about my neck, but I had a great deal to gain&mdash;revenge above all,
+and perhaps the gratitude of M. Mosenstein for opening his eyes to the
+rascality of his son-in-law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a stream of eloquent words which could not fail to carry conviction, I gave
+then and there in the bureau of the juge d’instruction my version of the events
+of the past few weeks, from the moment when M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour came
+to consult me on the subject of his wife’s first husband, until the hour when
+he tried to fasten an abominable crime upon me. I told how I had been deceived
+by my own employé, Theodore, a man whom I had rescued out of the gutter and
+loaded with gifts, how by dint of a clever disguise which would have deceived
+his own mother he had assumed the appearance and personality of M. le Comte de
+Naquet, first and only lawful lord of the beautiful Rachel Mosenstein. I told
+of the interviews in my office, my earnest desire to put an end to this
+abominable blackmailing by informing the police of the whole affair. I told of
+the false M. de Naquet’s threats to create a gigantic scandal which would
+forever ruin the social position of the so-called Marquis de Firmin-Latour. I
+told of M. le Marquis’s agonized entreaties, his prayers, supplications, that I
+would do nothing in the matter for the sake of an innocent lady who had already
+grievously suffered. I spoke of my doubts, my scruples, my desire to do what
+was just and what was right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A noble expose of the situation, Sir, you will admit. It left me hot and
+breathless. I mopped my head with a handkerchief and sank back, gasping, in the
+arms of the minions of the law. The juge d’instruction ordered my removal, not
+back to my prison-cell but into his own ante-room, where I presently collapsed
+upon a very uncomfortable bench and endured the additional humiliation of
+having a glass of water held to my lips. Water! when I had asked for a drink of
+wine as my throat felt parched after that lengthy effort at oratory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, there I sat and waited patiently whilst, no doubt, M. le Juge
+d’Instruction and the noble Israelite were comparing notes as to their
+impression of my marvellous speech. I had not long to wait. Less than ten
+minutes later I was once more summoned into the presence of M. le Juge; and
+this time the minions of the law were ordered to remain in the antechamber. I
+thought this was of good augury; and I waited to hear M. le Juge give forth the
+order that would at once set me free. But it was M. Mosenstein who first
+addressed me, and in very truth surprise rendered me momentarily dumb when he
+did it thus:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now then, you consummate rascal, when you have given up the receipt of the
+Mont de Piété which you stole out of M. le Marquis’s pocket you may go and
+carry on your rogueries elsewhere and call yourself mightily lucky to have
+escaped so lightly.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I assure you, Sir, that a feather would have knocked me down. The coarse
+insult, the wanton injustice, had deprived me of the use of my limbs and of my
+speech. Then the juge d’instruction proceeded dryly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now then, Ratichon, you have heard what M. Mauruss Mosenstein has been good
+enough to say to you. He did it with my approval and consent. I am prepared to
+give an <i>ordonnance de non-lieu</i> in your favour which will have the effect
+of at once setting you free if you will restore to this gentleman here the Mont
+de Piété receipt which you appear to have stolen.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sir,” I said with consummate dignity in the face of this reiterated taunt, “I
+have stolen nothing&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. le Juge’s hand was already on the bell-pull.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then,” he said coolly, “I can ring for the gendarmes to take you back to the
+cells, and you will stand your trial for blackmail, theft, assault and
+robbery.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I put up my hand with an elegant and perfectly calm gesture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Your pardon, M. le Juge,” I said with the gentle resignation of undeserved
+martyrdom, “I was about to say that when I re-visited my rooms in the Rue
+Daunou after a three days’ absence, and found the police in possession, I
+picked up on the floor of my private room a white paper which on subsequent
+examination proved to be a receipt from the Mont de Piété for some valuable
+gems, and made out in the name of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What have you done with it, you abominable knave?” the irascible old usurer
+rejoined roughly, and I regret to say that he grasped his malacca cane with
+ominous violence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I was not to be thus easily intimidated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah! voilà, M. le Juge,” I said with a shrug of the shoulders. “I have mislaid
+it. I do not know where it is.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you do not find it,” Mosenstein went on savagely, “you will find yourself
+on a convict ship before long.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In which case, no doubt,” I retorted with suave urbanity, “the police will
+search my rooms where I lodge, and they will find the receipt from the Mont de
+Piété, which I had mislaid. And then the gossip will be all over Paris that
+Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour had to pawn her jewels in order to satisfy
+the exigencies of her first and only lawful husband who has since mysteriously
+disappeared; and some people will vow that he never came back from the
+Antipodes, whilst others&mdash;by far the most numerous&mdash;will shrug their
+shoulders and sigh: ‘One never knows!’ which will be exceedingly unpleasant for
+Mme. la Marquise.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Both M. Mauruss Mosenstein and the juge d’instruction said a great deal more
+that afternoon. I may say that their attitude towards me and the language that
+they used were positively scandalous. But I had become now the master of the
+situation and I could afford to ignore their insults. In the end everything was
+settled quite amicably. I agreed to dispose of the receipt from the Mont de
+Piété to M. Mauruss Mosenstein for the sum of two hundred francs, and for
+another hundred I would indicate to him the banking house where his precious
+son-in-law had deposited the half-million francs obtained for the emeralds.
+This latter information I would indeed have offered him gratuitously had he but
+known with what immense pleasure I thus put a spoke in that knavish Marquis’s
+wheel of fortune.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The worthy Israelite further agreed to pay me an annuity of two hundred francs
+so long as I kept silent upon the entire subject of Mme. la Marquise’s first
+husband and of M. le Marquis’s rôle in the mysterious affair of the Rue Daunou.
+For thus was the affair classed amongst the police records. No one outside the
+chief actors of the drama and M. le Juge d’Instruction ever knew the true
+history of how a dashing young cavalry officer came to be assaulted and left to
+starve for three days in the humble apartment of an attorney-at-law of
+undisputed repute. And no one outside the private bureau of M. le Juge
+d’Instruction ever knew what it cost the wealthy M. Mosenstein to have the
+whole affair “classed” and hushed up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for me, I had three hundred francs as payment for work which I had risked my
+neck and my reputation to accomplish. Three hundred instead of the hundred
+thousand which I had so richly deserved: that, and a paltry two hundred francs
+a year, which was to cease the moment that as much as a rumour of the whole
+affair was breathed in public. As if I could help people talking!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But M. le Marquis did not enjoy the fruits of his villainy, and I had again the
+satisfaction of seeing him gnaw his finger-nails with rage whenever the lovely
+Rachel paid for his dinner at fashionable restaurants. Indeed Papa Mosenstein
+tightened the strings of his money-bags even more securely than he had done in
+the past. Under threats of prosecution for theft and I know not what, he forced
+his son-in-law to disgorge that half-million which he had so pleasantly tucked
+away in the banking house of Raynal Frères, and I was indeed thankful that
+prudence had, on that memorable morning, suggested to me the advisability of
+dogging the Marquis’s footsteps. I doubt not but what he knew whence had come
+the thunderbolt which had crushed his last hopes of an independent fortune, and
+no doubt too he does not cherish feelings of good will towards me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this eventuality leaves me cold. He has only himself to thank for his
+misfortune. Everything would have gone well but for his treachery. We would
+have become affluent, he and I and Theodore. Theodore has gone to live with his
+mother, who has a fish-stall in the Halles; she gives him three sous a day for
+washing down the stall and selling the fish when it has become too odorous for
+the ordinary customers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he might have had five hundred francs for himself and remained my
+confidential clerk.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0004"></a>
+CHAPTER IV. &mdash; CARISSIMO</h2>
+
+<h3>1.</h3>
+
+<p>
+You must not think for a moment, my dear Sir, that I was ever actually deceived
+in Theodore. Was it likely that I, who am by temperament and habit accustomed
+to read human visages like a book, was it likely, I say, that I would fail to
+see craftiness in those pale, shifty eyes, deceit in the weak, slobbering
+mouth, intemperance in the whole aspect of the shrunken, slouchy figure which I
+had, for my subsequent sorrow, so generously rescued from starvation?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Generous? I was more than generous to him. They say that the poor are the
+friends of the poor, and I told you how poor we were in those days! Ah! but
+poor! my dear Sir, you have no conception! Meat in Paris in the autumn of 1816
+was 24 francs the kilo, and milk 1 franc the quarter litre, not to mention eggs
+and butter, which were delicacies far beyond the reach of cultured, well-born
+people like myself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And yet throughout that trying year I fed Theodore&mdash;yes, I fed him. He
+used to share onion pie with me whenever I partook of it, and he had haricot
+soup every day, into which I allowed him to boil the skins of all the sausages
+and the luscious bones of all the cutlets of which I happened to partake. Then
+think what he cost me in drink! Never could I leave a half or quarter bottle of
+wine but he would finish it; his impudent fingers made light of every lock and
+key. I dared not allow as much as a sou to rest in the pocket of my coat but he
+would ferret it out the moment I hung the coat up in the outer room and my back
+was turned for a few seconds. After a while I was forced&mdash;yes, I, Sir, who
+have spoken on terms of equality with kings&mdash;I was forced to go out and
+make my own purchases in the neighbouring provision shops. And why? Because if
+I sent Theodore and gave him a few sous wherewith to make these purchases, he
+would spend the money at the nearest cabaret in getting drunk on absinthe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He robbed me, Sir, shamefully, despite the fact that he had ten per cent,
+commission on all the profits of the firm. I gave him twenty francs out of the
+money which I had earned at the sweat of my brow in the service of Estelle
+Bachelier. Twenty francs, Sir! Reckoning two hundred francs as business profit
+on the affair, a generous provision you will admit! And yet he taunted me with
+having received a thousand. This was mere guesswork, of course, and I took no
+notice of his taunts: did the brains that conceived the business deserve no
+payment? Was my labour to be counted as dross?&mdash;the humiliation, the blows
+which I had to endure while he sat in hoggish content, eating and sleeping
+without thought for the morrow? After which he calmly pocketed the twenty
+francs to earn which he had not raised one finger, and then demanded more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No, no, my dear Sir, you will believe me or not, that man could not go
+straight. Times out of count he would try and deceive me, despite the fact
+that, once or twice, he very nearly came hopelessly to grief in the attempt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, just to give you an instance. About this time Paris was in the grip of a
+gang of dog-thieves as unscrupulous and heartless as they were daring. Can you
+wonder at it? with that awful penury about and a number of expensive “tou-tous”
+running about the streets under the very noses of the indigent proletariat? The
+ladies of the aristocracy and of the wealthy bourgeoisie had imbibed this craze
+for lap-dogs during their sojourn in England at the time of the emigration, and
+being women of the Latin race and of undisciplined temperament, they were just
+then carrying their craze to excess.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I was saying, this indulgence led to wholesale thieving. Tou-tous were
+abstracted from their adoring mistresses with marvellous adroitness; whereupon
+two or three days would elapse while the adoring mistress wept buckets full of
+tears and set the police of M. Fouché, Duc d’Otrante, by the ears in search of
+her pet. The next act in the tragi-comedy would be an anonymous demand for
+money&mdash;varying in amount in accordance with the known or supposed wealth
+of the lady&mdash;and an equally anonymous threat of dire vengeance upon the
+tou-tou if the police were put upon the track of the thieves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You will ask me, no doubt, what all this had to do with Theodore. Well! I will
+tell you.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You must know that of late he had become extraordinarily haughty and
+independent. I could not keep him to his work. His duties were to sweep the
+office&mdash;he did not do it; to light the fires&mdash;I had to light them
+myself every morning; to remain in the anteroom and show clients in&mdash;he
+was never at his post. In fact he was never there when I did want him: morning,
+noon and night he was out&mdash;gadding about and coming home, Sir, only to eat
+and sleep. I was seriously thinking of giving him the sack. And then one day he
+disappeared! Yes, Sir, disappeared completely as if the earth had swallowed him
+up. One morning&mdash;it was in the beginning of December and the cold was
+biting&mdash;I arrived at the office and found that his chair-bed which stood
+in the antechamber had not been slept in; in fact that it had not been made up
+overnight. In the cupboard I found the remnants of an onion pie, half a
+sausage, and a quarter of a litre of wine, which proved conclusively that he
+had not been in to supper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first I was not greatly disturbed in my mind. I had found out quite recently
+that Theodore had some sort of a squalid home of his own somewhere behind the
+fish-market, together with an old and wholly disreputable mother who plied him
+with drink whenever he spent an evening with her and either he or she had a
+franc in their pocket. Still, after these bouts spent in the bosom of his
+family he usually returned to sleep them off at my expense in my office.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had unfortunately very little to do that day, so in the late afternoon, not
+having seen anything of Theodore all day, I turned my steps toward the house
+behind the fish-market where lived the mother of that ungrateful wretch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The woman’s surprise when I inquired after her precious son was undoubtedly
+genuine. Her lamentations and crocodile tears certainly were not. She reeked of
+alcohol, and the one room which she inhabited was indescribably filthy. I
+offered her half a franc if she gave me authentic news of Theodore, knowing
+well that for that sum she would have sold him to the devil. But very obviously
+she knew nothing of his whereabouts, and I soon made haste to shake the dirt of
+her abode from my heels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had become vaguely anxious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wondered if he had been murdered somewhere down a back street, and if I
+should miss him very much.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I did not think that I would.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Moreover, no one could have any object in murdering Theodore. In his own stupid
+way he was harmless enough, and he certainly was not possessed of anything
+worth stealing. I myself was not over-fond of the man&mdash;but I should not
+have bothered to murder him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still, I was undoubtedly anxious, and slept but little that night thinking of
+the wretch. When the following morning I arrived at my office and still could
+see no trace of him, I had serious thoughts of putting the law in motion on his
+behalf.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just then, however, an incident occurred which drove all thoughts of such an
+insignificant personage as Theodore from my mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had just finished tidying up the office when there came a peremptory ring at
+the outer door, repeated at intervals of twenty seconds or so. It meant giving
+a hasty glance all round to see that no fragments of onion pie or of cheap
+claret lingered in unsuspected places, and it meant my going, myself, to open
+the door to my impatient visitor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I did it, Sir, and then at the door I stood transfixed. I had seen many
+beautiful women in my day&mdash;great ladies of the Court, brilliant ladies of
+the Consulate, the Directorate and the Empire&mdash;but never in my life had I
+seen such an exquisite and resplendent apparition as the one which now sailed
+through the antechamber of my humble abode.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir, Hector Ratichon’s heart has ever been susceptible to the charms of beauty
+in distress. This lovely being, Sir, who now at my invitation entered my office
+and sank with perfect grace into the arm-chair, was in obvious distress. Tears
+hung on the fringe of her dark lashes, and the gossamer-like handkerchief which
+she held in her dainty hand was nothing but a wet rag. She gave herself exactly
+two minutes wherein to compose herself, after which she dried her eyes and
+turned the full artillery of her bewitching glance upon me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Monsieur Ratichon,” she began, even before I had taken my accustomed place at
+my desk and assumed that engaging smile which inspires confidence even in the
+most timorous; “Monsieur Ratichon, they tell me that you are so clever,
+and&mdash;oh! I am in such trouble.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Madame,” I rejoined with noble simplicity, “you may trust me to do the
+impossible in order to be of service to you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Admirably put, you will admit. I have always been counted a master of
+appropriate diction, and I had been quick enough to note the plain band of gold
+which encircled the third finger of her dainty left hand, flanked though it was
+by a multiplicity of diamond, pearl and other jewelled rings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are kind, Monsieur Ratichon,” resumed the beauteous creature more calmly.
+“But indeed you will require all the ingenuity of your resourceful brain in
+order to help me in this matter. I am struggling in the grip of a relentless
+fate which, if you do not help me, will leave me broken-hearted.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Command me, Madame,” I riposted quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From out the daintiest of reticules the fair lady now extracted a very greasy
+and very dirty bit of paper, and handed it to me with the brief request: “Read
+this, I pray you, my good M. Ratichon.” I took the paper. It was a clumsily
+worded, ill-written, ill-spelt demand for five thousand francs, failing which
+sum the thing which Madame had lost would forthwith be destroyed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked up, puzzled, at my fair client.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My darling Carissimo, my dear M. Ratichon,” she said in reply to my mute
+query.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Carissimo?” I stammered, yet further intrigued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My darling pet, a valuable creature, the companion of my lonely hours,” she
+rejoined, once more bursting into tears. “If I lose him, my heart will
+inevitably break.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I understood at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Madame has lost her dog?” I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It has been stolen by one of those expert dog thieves, who then levy blackmail
+on the unfortunate owner?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again she nodded in assent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I read the dirty, almost illegible scrawl through more carefully this time. It
+was a clumsy notification addressed to Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé de St. Pris to
+the effect that her tou-tou was for the moment safe, and would be restored to
+the arms of his fond mistress provided the sum of five thousand francs was
+deposited in the hands of the bearer of the missive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Minute directions were then given as to where and how the money was to be
+deposited. Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé was, on the third day from this at six
+o’clock in the evening precisely, to go in person and alone to the angle of the
+Rue Guénégaud and the Rue Mazarine, at the rear of the Institut.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There two men would meet her, one of whom would have Carissimo in his arms; to
+the other she must hand over the money, whereupon the pet would at once be
+handed back to her. But if she failed to keep this appointment, or if in the
+meanwhile she made the slightest attempt to trace the writer of the missive or
+to lay a trap for his capture by the police, Carissimo would at once meet with
+a summary death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These were the usual tactics of experienced dog thieves, only that in this case
+the demand was certainly exorbitant. Five thousand francs! But even so . . . I
+cast a rapid and comprehensive glance on the brilliant apparition before
+me&mdash;the jewelled rings, the diamonds in the shell-like ears, the priceless
+fur coat&mdash;and with an expressive shrug of the shoulders I handed the dirty
+scrap of paper back to its fair recipient.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Alas, Madame,” I said, taking care that she should not guess how much it cost
+me to give her such advice, “I am afraid that in such cases there is nothing to
+be done. If you wish to save your pet you will have to pay. . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah! but, Monsieur,” she exclaimed tearfully, “you don’t understand. Carissimo
+is all the world to me, and this is not the first time, nor yet the second,
+that he has been stolen from me. Three times, my good M. Ratichon, three times
+has he been stolen, and three times have I received such peremptory demands for
+money for his safe return; and every time the demand has been more and more
+exorbitant. Less than a month ago M. le Comte paid three thousand francs for
+his recovery.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Monsieur le Comte?” I queried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My husband, Sir,” she replied, with an exquisite air of hauteur. “M. le Comte
+de Nolé de St. Pris.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, then,” I continued calmly, “I fear me that Monsieur de Nolé de St. Pris
+will have to pay again.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But he won’t!” she now cried out in a voice broken with sobs, and
+incontinently once more saturated her gossamer handkerchief with her tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then I see nothing for it, Madame,” I rejoined, much against my will with a
+slight touch of impatience, “I see nothing for it but that yourself . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah! but, Monsieur,” she retorted, with a sigh that would have melted a heart
+of stone, “that is just my difficulty. I cannot pay . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Madame,” I protested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh! if I had money of my own,” she continued, with an adorable gesture of
+impatience, “I would not worry. Mais voilà: I have not a silver franc of my own
+to bless myself with. M. le Comte is over generous. He pays all my bills
+without a murmur&mdash;he pays my dressmaker, my furrier; he loads me with
+gifts and dispenses charity on a lavish scale in my name. I have horses,
+carriages, servants&mdash;everything I can possibly want and more, but I never
+have more than a few hundred francs to dispose of. Up to now I have never for a
+moment felt the want of money. To-day, when Carissimo is being lost to me, I
+feel the entire horror of my position.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But surely, Madame,” I urged, “M. le Comte . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, Monsieur,” she replied. “M. le Comte has flatly refused this time to pay
+these abominable thieves for the recovery of Carissimo. He upbraids himself for
+having yielded to their demands on the three previous occasions. He calls these
+demands blackmailing, and vows that to give them money again is to encourage
+them in their nefarious practices. Oh! he has been cruel to me,
+cruel!&mdash;for the first time in my life, Monsieur, my husband has made me
+unhappy, and if I lose my darling now I shall indeed be broken-hearted.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was silent for a moment or two. I was beginning to wonder what part I should
+be expected to play in the tragedy which was being unfolded before me by this
+lovely and impecunious creature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Madame la Comtesse,” I suggested tentatively, after a while, “your jewellery .
+. . you must have a vast number which you seldom wear . . . five thousand
+francs is soon made up. . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You see, Sir, my hopes of a really good remunerative business had by now
+dwindled down to vanishing point. All that was left of them was a vague idea
+that the beautiful Comtesse would perhaps employ me as an intermediary for the
+sale of some of her jewellery, in which case . . . But already her next words
+disillusioned me even on that point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, Monsieur,” she said; “what would be the use? Through one of the usual
+perverse tricks of fate, M. le Comte would be sure to inquire after the very
+piece of jewellery of which I had so disposed, and moreover . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Moreover&mdash;yes, Mme. la Comtesse?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Moreover, my husband is right,” she concluded decisively. “If I give in to
+those thieves to-day and pay them five thousand francs, they would only set to
+work to steal Carissimo again and demand ten thousand francs from me another
+time.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was silent. What could I say? Her argument was indeed unanswerable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, my good M. Ratichon,” she said very determinedly after a while. “I have
+quite decided that you must confound those thieves. They have given me three
+days’ grace, as you see in their abominable letter. If after three days the
+money is not forthcoming, and if in the meanwhile I dare to set a trap for them
+or in any way communicate with the police, my darling Carissimo will be killed
+and my heart be broken.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Madame la Comtesse,” I entreated, for of a truth I could not bear to see her
+cry again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You must bring Carissimo back to me, M. Ratichon,” she continued peremptorily,
+“before those awful three days have elapsed.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I swear that I will,” I rejoined solemnly; but I must admit that I did it
+entirely on the spur of the moment, for of a truth I saw no prospect whatever
+of being able to accomplish what she desired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Without my paying a single louis to those execrable thieves,” the exquisite
+creature went on peremptorily,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It shall be done, Madame la Comtesse.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And let me tell you,” she now added, with the sweetest and archest of smiles,
+“that if you succeed in this, M. le Comte de Nolé de St. Pris will gladly pay
+you the five thousand francs which he refuses to give to those miscreants.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Five thousand francs! A mist swam before my eyes,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mais, Madame la Comtesse . . .” I stammered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh!” she added, with an adorable uptilting of her little chin, “I am not
+promising what I cannot fulfil. M. le Comte de Nolé only said this morning,
+apropos of dog thieves, that he would gladly give ten thousand francs to anyone
+who succeeded in ridding society of such pests.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could have knelt down on the hard floor, Sir, and . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well then, Madame,” was my ready rejoinder, “why not ten thousand francs to
+me?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She bit her coral lips . . . but she also smiled. I could see that my
+personality and my manners had greatly impressed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will only be responsible for the first five thousand,” she said lightly.
+“But, for the rest, I can confidently assure you that you will not find a miser
+in M. le Comte de Nolé de St. Pris.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could have knelt down on the hard floor, Sir, and kissed her exquisitely shod
+feet. Five thousand francs certain! Perhaps ten! A fortune, Sir, in those days!
+One that would keep me in comfort&mdash;nay, affluence, until something else
+turned up. I was swimming in the empyrean and only came rudely to earth when I
+recollected that I should have to give Theodore something for his share of the
+business. Ah! fortunately that for the moment he was comfortably out of the
+way! Thoughts that perhaps he had been murdered after all once more coursed
+through my brain: not unpleasantly, I’ll admit. I would not have raised a
+finger to hurt the fellow, even though he had treated me with the basest
+ingratitude and treachery; but if someone else took the trouble to remove him,
+why indeed should I quarrel with fate?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Back I came swiftly to the happy present. The lovely creature was showing me a
+beautifully painted miniature of Carissimo, a King Charles spaniel of no common
+type. This she suggested that I should keep by me for the present for purposes
+of identification. After this we had to go into the details of the
+circumstances under which she had lost her pet. She had been for a walk with
+him, it seems, along the Quai Voltaire, and was returning home by the side of
+the river, when suddenly a number of workmen in blouses and peaked caps came
+trooping out of a side street and obstructed her progress. She had Carissimo on
+the lead, and she at once admitted to me that at first she never thought of
+connecting this pushing and jostling rabble with any possible theft. She held
+her ground for awhile, facing the crowd: for a few moments she was right in the
+midst of it, and just then she felt the dog straining at the lead. She turned
+round at once with the intention of picking him up, when to her horror she saw
+that there was only a bundle of something weighty at the end of the lead, and
+that the dog had disappeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The whole incident occurred, the lovely creature declared, within the space of
+thirty seconds; the next instant the crowd had scattered in several directions,
+the men running and laughing as they went. Mme. la Comtesse was left standing
+alone on the quay. Not a passer-by in sight, and the only gendarme visible, a
+long way down the Quai, had his back turned toward her. Nevertheless she ran
+and hied him, and presently he turned and, realizing that something was amiss,
+he too ran to meet her. He listened to her story, swore lustily, but shrugged
+his shoulders in token that the tale did not surprise him and that but little
+could be done. Nevertheless he at once summoned those of his colleagues who
+were on duty in the neighbourhood, and one of them went off immediately to
+notify the theft at the nearest commissariat of police. After which they all
+proceeded to a comprehensive scouring of the many tortuous sidestreets of the
+quartier; but, needless to say, there was no sign of Carissimo or of his
+abductors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That night my lovely client went home distracted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The following evening, when, broken-hearted, she wandered down the quays living
+over again the agonizing moments during which she lost her pet, a workman in a
+blue blouse, with a peaked cap pulled well over his eyes, lurched up against
+her and thrust into her hand the missive which she had just shown me. He then
+disappeared into the night, and she had only the vaguest possible recollection
+of his appearance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That, Sir, was the substance of the story which the lovely creature told me in
+a voice oft choked with tears. I questioned her very closely and in my most
+impressive professional manner as to the identity of any one man among the
+crowd who might have attracted her attention, but all that she could tell me
+was that she had a vague impression of a wizened hunchback with evil face,
+shaggy red beard and hair, and a black patch covering the left eye.
+</p>
+
+<h3>2.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Not much data to go on, you will, I think, admit, and I can assure you, Sir,
+that had I not possessed that unbounded belief in myself which is the true
+hall-mark of genius, I would at the outset have felt profoundly discouraged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As it was, I found just the right words of consolation and of hope wherewith to
+bow my brilliant client out of my humble apartments, and then to settle down to
+deep and considered meditation. Nothing, Sir, is so conducive to thought as a
+long, brisk walk through the crowded streets of Paris. So I brushed my coat,
+put on my hat at a becoming angle, and started on my way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I walked as far as Suresnes, and I thought. After that, feeling fatigued, I sat
+on the terrace of the Café Bourbon, overlooking the river. There I sipped my
+coffee and thought. I walked back into Paris in the evening, and still thought,
+and thought, and thought. After that I had some dinner, washed down by an
+agreeable bottle of wine&mdash;did I mention that the lovely creature had given
+me a hundred francs on account?&mdash;then I went for a stroll along the Quai
+Voltaire, and I may safely say that there is not a single side and tortuous
+street in its vicinity that I did not explore from end to end during the course
+of that never to be forgotten evening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But still my mind remained in a chaotic condition. I had not succeeded in
+forming any plan. What a quandary, Sir! Oh! what a quandary! Here was I, Hector
+Ratichon, the confidant of kings, the right hand of two emperors, set to the
+task of stealing a dog&mdash;for that is what I should have to do&mdash;from an
+unscrupulous gang of thieves whose identity, abode and methods were alike
+unknown to me. Truly, Sir, you will own that this was a herculean task.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Vaguely my thoughts reverted to Theodore. He might have been of good counsel,
+for he knew more about thieves than I did, but the ungrateful wretch was out of
+the way on the one occasion when he might have been of use to me who had done
+so much for him. Indeed, my reason told me that I need not trouble my head
+about Theodore. He had vanished; that he would come back presently was, of
+course, an indubitable fact; people like Theodore never vanish completely. He
+would come back and demand I know not what, his share, perhaps, in a business
+which was so promising even if it was still so vague.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Five thousand francs! A round sum! If I gave Theodore five hundred the sum
+would at once appear meagre, unimportant. Four thousand five hundred
+francs!&mdash;it did not even <i>sound</i> well to my mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I took care that Theodore vanished from my mental vision as completely as he
+had done for the last two days from my ken, and as there was nothing more that
+could be done that evening, I turned my weary footsteps toward my lodgings at
+Passy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All that night, Sir, I lay wakeful and tossing in my bed, alternately fuming
+and rejecting plans for the attainment of that golden goal&mdash;the recovery
+of Mme. de Nolé’s pet dog. And the whole of the next day I spent in vain quest.
+I visited every haunt of ill-fame known to me within the city. I walked about
+with a pistol in my belt, a hunk of bread and cheese in my pocket, and slowly
+growing despair in my heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the evening Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé called for news of Carissimo, and I
+could give her none. She cried, Sir, and implored, and her tears and entreaties
+got on to my nerves until I felt ready to fall into hysterics. One more day and
+all my chances of a bright and wealthy future would have vanished. Unless the
+money was forthcoming on the morrow, the dog would be destroyed, and with him
+my every hope of that five thousand francs. And though she still irradiated
+charm and luxury from her entire lovely person, I begged her not to come to the
+office again, and promised that as soon as I had any news to impart I would at
+once present myself at her house in the Faubourg St. Germain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That night I never slept one wink. Think of it, Sir! The next few hours were
+destined to see me either a prosperous man for many days to come, or a
+miserable, helpless, disappointed wretch. At eight o’clock I was at my office.
+Still no news of Theodore. I could now no longer dismiss him from my mind.
+Something had happened to him, I could have no doubt. This anxiety, added to
+the other more serious one, drove me to a state bordering on frenzy. I hardly
+knew what I was doing. I wandered all day up and down the Quai Voltaire, and
+the Quai des Grands Augustins, and in and around the tortuous streets till I
+was dog-tired, distracted, half crazy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went to the Morgue, thinking to find there Theodore’s dead body, and found
+myself vaguely looking for the mutilated corpse of Carissimo. Indeed, after a
+while Theodore and Carissimo became so inextricably mixed up in my mind that I
+could not have told you if I was seeking for the one or for the other and if
+Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé was now waiting to clasp her pet dog or my
+man-of-all-work to her exquisite bosom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She in the meanwhile had received a second, yet more peremptory, missive
+through the same channel as the previous one. A grimy deformed man, with
+ginger-coloured hair, and wearing a black patch over one eye, had been seen by
+one of the servants lolling down the street where Madame lived, and
+subsequently the concierge discovered that an exceedingly dirty scrap of paper
+had been thrust under the door of his lodge. The writer of the epistle demanded
+that Mme. la Comtesse should stand in person at six o’clock that same evening
+at the corner of the Rue Guénégaud, behind the Institut de France. Two men,
+each wearing a blue blouse and peaked cap, would meet her there. She must hand
+over the money to one of them, whilst the other would have Carissimo in his
+arms. The missive closed with the usual threats that if the police were mixed
+up in the affair, or the money not forthcoming, Carissimo would be destroyed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Six o’clock was the hour fixed by these abominable thieves for the final doom
+of Carissimo. It was now close on five. In a little more than an hour my last
+hope of five or ten thousand francs and a smile of gratitude from a pair of
+lovely lips would have gone, never again to return. A great access of righteous
+rage seized upon me. I determined that those miserable thieves, whoever they
+were, should suffer for the disappointment which I was now enduring. If I was
+to lose five thousand francs, they at least should not be left free to pursue
+their evil ways. I would communicate with the police; the police should meet
+the miscreants at the corner of the Rue Guénégaud. Carissimo would die; his
+lovely mistress would be brokenhearted. I would be left to mourn yet another
+illusion of a possible fortune, but they would suffer in gaol or in New
+Caledonia the consequences of all their misdeeds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fortified by this resolution, I turned my weary footsteps in the direction of
+the gendarmerie where I intended to lodge my denunciation of those abominable
+thieves and blackmailers. The night was dark, the streets ill-lighted, the air
+bitterly cold. A thin drizzle, half rain, half snow, was descending, chilling
+me to the bone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was walking rapidly along the river bank with my coat collar pulled up to my
+ears, and still instinctively peering up every narrow street which debouches on
+the quay. Then suddenly I spied Theodore. He was coming down the Rue Beaune,
+slouching along with head bent in his usual way. He appeared to be carrying
+something, not exactly heavy, but cumbersome, under his left arm. Within the
+next few minutes he would have been face to face with me, for I had come to a
+halt at the angle of the street, determined to have it out with the rascal then
+and there in spite of the cold and in spite of my anxiety about Carissimo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All of a sudden he raised his head and saw me, and in a second he turned on his
+heel and began to run up the street in the direction whence he had come. At
+once I gave chase. I ran after him&mdash;and then, Sir, he came for a second
+within the circle of light projected by a street lanthorn. But in that one
+second I had seen that which turned my frozen blood into liquid lava&mdash;a
+tail, Sir!&mdash;a dog’s tail, fluffy and curly, projecting from beneath that
+recreant’s left arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A dog, Sir! a dog! Carissimo! the darling of Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé’s heart!
+Carissimo, the recovery of whom would mean five thousand francs into my pocket!
+Carissimo! I knew it! For me there existed but one dog in all the world; one
+dog and one spawn of the devil, one arch-traitor, one limb of Satan! Theodore!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How he had come by Carissimo I had not time to conjecture. I called to him.
+I called his accursed name, using appellations which fell far short of those
+which he deserved. But the louder I called the faster he ran, and I,
+breathless, panting, ran after him, determined to run him to earth, fearful
+lest I should lose him in the darkness of the night. All down the Rue Beaune we
+ran, and already I could hear behind me the heavy and more leisured tramp of a
+couple of gendarmes who in their turn had started to give chase.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I tell you, Sir, the sound lent wings to my feet. A chance&mdash;a last
+chance&mdash;was being offered me by a benevolent Fate to earn that five
+thousand francs, the keystone to my future fortune. If I had the strength to
+seize and hold Theodore until the gendarmes came up, and before he had time to
+do away with the dog, the five thousand francs could still be mine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I ran, Sir, as I had never run before; the beads of perspiration poured down
+from my forehead; the breath came stertorous and hot from my heaving breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then suddenly Theodore disappeared!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Disappeared, Sir, as if the earth had swallowed him up! A second ago I had seen
+him dimly, yet distinctly through the veil of snow and rain ahead of me,
+running with that unmistakable shuffling gait of his, hugging the dog closely
+under his arm. I had seen him&mdash;another effort and I might have touched
+him!&mdash;now the long and deserted street lay dark and mysterious before me,
+and behind me I could hear the measured tramp of the gendarmes and their
+peremptory call of “Halt, in the name of the King!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But not in vain, Sir, am I called Hector Ratichon; not in vain have kings and
+emperors reposed confidence in my valour and my presence of mind. In less time
+than it takes to relate I had already marked with my eye the very
+spot&mdash;down the street&mdash;where I had last seen Theodore. I hurried
+forward and saw at once that my surmise had been correct. At that very spot,
+Sir, there was a low doorway which gave on a dark and dank passage. The door
+itself was open. I did not hesitate. My life stood in the balance but I did not
+falter. I might be affronting within the next second or two a gang of desperate
+thieves, but I did not quake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I turned into that doorway, Sir; the next moment I felt a stunning blow between
+my eyes. I just remember calling out with all the strength of my lungs:
+“Police! Gendarmes! A moi!” Then nothing more.
+</p>
+
+<h3>3.</h3>
+
+<p>
+I woke with the consciousness of violent wordy warfare carried on around me. I
+was lying on the ground, and the first things I saw were three or four pairs of
+feet standing close together. Gradually out of the confused hubbub a few
+sentences struck my reawakened senses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The man is drunk.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I won’t have him inside the house.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I tell you this is a respectable house.” This from a shrill feminine voice.
+“We’ve never had the law inside our doors before.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time I had succeeded in raising myself on my elbow, and, by the dim
+light of a hanging lamp somewhere down the passage, I was pretty well able to
+take stock of my surroundings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The half-dozen bedroom candlesticks on a table up against the wall, the row of
+keys hanging on hooks fixed to a board above, the glass partition with the
+words “Concierge” and “Réception” painted across it, all told me that this was
+one of those small, mostly squalid and disreputable lodging houses or hotels in
+which this quarter of Paris still abounds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two gendarmes who had been running after me were arguing the matter of my
+presence here with the proprietor of the place and with the concierge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I struggled to my feet. Whereupon for the space of a solid two minutes I had to
+bear as calmly as I could the abuse and vituperation which the feminine
+proprietor of this “respectable house” chose to hurl at my unfortunate head.
+After which I obtained a hearing from the bewildered minions of the law. To
+them I gave as brief and succinct a narrative as I could of the events of the
+past three days. The theft of Carissimo&mdash;the disappearance of
+Theodore&mdash;my meeting him a while ago, with the dog under his arm&mdash;his
+second disappearance, this time within the doorway of this “respectable abode,”
+and finally the blow which alone had prevented me from running the abominable
+thief to earth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The gendarmes at first were incredulous. I could see that they were still under
+the belief that my excitement was due to over-indulgence in alcoholic liquor,
+whilst Madame the proprietress called me an abominable liar for daring to
+suggest that she harboured thieves within her doors. Then suddenly, as if in
+vindication of my character, there came from a floor above the sound of a loud,
+shrill bark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Carissimo!” I cried triumphantly. Then I added in a rapid whisper, “Mme. la
+Comtesse de Nolé is rich. She spoke of a big reward for the recovery of her
+pet.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These happy words had the effect of stimulating the zeal of the gendarmes.
+Madame the proprietress grew somewhat confused and incoherent, and finally
+blurted it out that one of her lodgers&mdash;a highly respectable
+gentleman&mdash;did keep a dog, but that there was no crime in that surely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“One of your lodgers?” queried the representative of the law. “When did he
+come?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“About three days ago,” she replied sullenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What room does he occupy?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Number twenty-five on the third floor.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He came with his dog?” I interposed quickly, “a spaniel?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And your lodger, is he an ugly, slouchy creature&mdash;with hooked nose,
+bleary eyes and shaggy yellow hair?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But to this she vouchsafed no reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Already the matter had passed out of my hands. One of the gendarmes prepared to
+go upstairs and bade me follow him, whilst he ordered his comrade to remain
+below and on no account to allow anyone to enter or leave the house. The
+proprietress and concierge were warned that if they interfered with the due
+execution of the law they would be severely dealt with; after which we went
+upstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a while, as we ascended, we could hear the dog barking furiously, then,
+presently, just as we reached the upper landing, we heard a loud curse, a
+scramble, and then a piteous whine quickly smothered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My very heart stood still. The next moment, however, the gendarme had kicked
+open the door of No. 25, and I followed him into the room. The place looked
+dirty and squalid in the extreme&mdash;just the sort of place I should have
+expected Theodore to haunt. It was almost bare save for a table in the centre,
+a couple of rickety chairs, a broken-down bedstead and an iron stove in the
+corner. On the table a tallow candle was spluttering and throwing a very feeble
+circle of light around.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first glance I thought that the room was empty, then suddenly I heard
+another violent expletive and became aware of a man sitting close beside the
+iron stove. He turned to stare at us as we entered, but to my surprise it was
+not Theodore’s ugly face which confronted us. The man sitting there alone in
+the room where I had expected to see Theodore and Carissimo had a shaggy beard
+of an undoubted ginger hue. He had on a blue blouse and a peaked cap; beneath
+his cap his lank hair protruded more decided in colour even than his beard. His
+head was sunk between his shoulders, and right across his face, from the left
+eyebrow over the cheek and as far as his ear, he had a hideous crimson scar,
+which told up vividly against the ghastly pallor of his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But there was no sign of Theodore!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first my friend the gendarme was quite urbane. He asked very politely to see
+Monsieur’s pet dog. Monsieur denied all knowledge of a dog, which denial only
+tended to establish his own guilt and the veracity of mine own narrative. The
+gendarme thereupon became more peremptory and the man promptly lost his temper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I, in the meanwhile, was glancing round the room and soon spied a wall cupboard
+which had obviously been deliberately screened by the bedstead. While my
+companion was bringing the whole majesty of the law to bear upon the
+miscreant’s denegations I calmly dragged the bedstead aside and opened the
+cupboard door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An ejaculation from my quivering throat brought the gendarme to my side.
+Crouching in the dark recess of the wall cupboard was Carissimo&mdash;not dead,
+thank goodness! but literally shaking with terror. I pulled him out as gently
+as I could, for he was so frightened that he growled and snapped viciously at
+me. I handed him to the gendarme, for by the side of Carissimo I had seen
+something which literally froze my blood within my veins. It was Theodore’s hat
+and coat, which he had been wearing when I chased him to this house of mystery
+and of ill-fame, and wrapped together with it was a rag all smeared with blood,
+whilst the same hideous stains were now distinctly visible on the door of the
+cupboard itself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I turned to the gendarme, who at once confronted the abominable malefactor with
+the obvious proofs of a horrible crime. But the depraved wretch stood by, Sir,
+perfectly calm and with a cynicism in his whole bearing which I had never
+before seen equalled!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know nothing about that coat,” he asserted with a shrug of the shoulders,
+“nor about the dog.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The gendarme by this time was purple with fury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not know anything about the dog?” he exclaimed in a voice choked with
+righteous indignation. “Why, he . . . he barked!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this indisputable fact in no way disconcerted the miscreant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I heard a dog yapping,” he said with consummate impudence, “but I thought he
+was in the next room. No wonder,” he added coolly, “since he was in a wall
+cupboard.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A wall cupboard,” the gendarme rejoined triumphantly, “situated in the very
+room which you occupy at this moment.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is a mistake, my friend,” the cynical wretch retorted, undaunted. “I do
+not occupy this room. I do not lodge in this hotel at all.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then how came you to be here?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I came on a visit to a friend who happened to be out when I arrived. I found a
+pleasant fire here, and I sat down to warm myself. Your noisy and unwarranted
+irruption into this room has so bewildered me that I no longer know whether I
+am standing on my head or on my heels.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We’ll show you soon enough what you are standing on, my fine fellow,” the
+gendarme riposted with breezy, cheerfulness. “Allons!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I must say that the pampered minion of the law arose splendidly to the
+occasion. He seized the miscreant by the arm and took him downstairs, there to
+confront him with the proprietress of the establishment, while I&mdash;with
+marvellous presence of mind&mdash;took possession of Carissimo and hid him as
+best I could beneath my coat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the hall below a surprise and a disappointment were in store for me. I had
+reached the bottom of the stairs when the shrill feminine accents of Mme. the
+proprietress struck unpleasantly on my ear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No! no! I tell you!” she was saying. “This man is not my lodger. He never came
+here with a dog. There,” she added volubly, and pointing an unwashed finger at
+Carissimo who was struggling and growling in my arms, “there is the dog. A
+gentleman brought him with him last Wednesday, when he inquired if he could
+have a room here for a few nights. Number twenty-five happened to be vacant,
+and I have no objection to dogs. I let the gentleman have the room, and he paid
+me twenty sous in advance when he took possession and told me he would keep the
+room three nights.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The gentleman? What gentleman?” the gendarme queried, rather inanely I
+thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My lodger,” the woman replied. “He is out for the moment, but he will be back
+presently I make no doubt. The dog is his. . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is he like?” the minion of the law queried abruptly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who? the dog?” she retorted impudently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, no! Your lodger.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once more the unwashed finger went up and pointed straight at me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He described him well enough just now; thin and slouchy in his ways. He has
+lank, yellow hair, a nose perpetually crimson&mdash;with the cold no
+doubt&mdash;and pale, watery eyes. . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Theodore,” I exclaimed mentally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bewildered, the gendarme pointed to his prisoner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But this man . . . ?” he queried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why,” the proprietress replied. “I have seen Monsieur twice, or was it three
+times? He would visit number twenty-five now and then.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I will not weary you with further accounts of the close examination to which
+the representative of the law subjected the personnel of the squalid hotel. The
+concierge and the man of all work did indeed confirm what the proprietress
+said, and whilst my friend the gendarme &mdash;puzzled and
+floundering&mdash;was scratching his head in complete bewilderment, I thought
+that the opportunity had come for me to slip quietly out by the still open door
+and make my way as fast as I could to the sumptuous abode in the Faubourg St.
+Germain, where the gratitude of Mme. de Nolé, together with five thousand
+francs, were even now awaiting me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After Madame the proprietress had identified Carissimo, I had once more
+carefully concealed him under my coat. I was ready to seize my opportunity,
+after which I would be free to deal with the matter of Theodore’s amazing
+disappearance. Unfortunately just at this moment the little brute gave a yap,
+and the minion of the law at once interposed and took possession of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The dog belongs to the police now, Sir,” he said sternly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fatuous jobbernowl wanted his share of the reward, you see.
+</p>
+
+<h3>4.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Having been forced thus to give up Carissimo, and with him all my hopes of a
+really substantial fortune, I was determined to make the red-polled miscreant
+suffer for my disappointment, and the minions of the law sweat in the exercise
+of their duty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I demanded Theodore! My friend, my comrade, my right hand! I had seen him not
+ten minutes ago, carrying in his arms this very dog, whom I had subsequently
+found inside a wall cupboard beside a blood-stained coat. Where was Theodore?
+Pointing an avenging finger at the red-headed reprobate, I boldly accused him
+of having murdered my friend with a view to robbing him of the reward offered
+for the recovery of the dog.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This brought a new train of thought into the wooden pates of the gendarmes. A
+quartet of them had by this time assembled within the respectable precincts of
+the Hôtel des Cadets. One of them&mdash;senior to the others&mdash;at once
+dispatched a younger comrade to the nearest commissary of police for advice and
+assistance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he ordered us all into the room pompously labelled “Réception,” and there
+proceeded once more to interrogate us all, making copious notes in his
+leather-bound book all the time, whilst I, moaning and lamenting the loss of my
+faithful friend and man of all work, loudly demanded the punishment of his
+assassin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Theodore’s coat, his hat, the blood-stained rag, had all been brought down from
+No. 25 and laid out upon the table ready for the inspection of M. the
+Commissary of Police.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That gentleman arrived with two private agents, armed with full powers and
+wrapped in the magnificent imperturbability of the law. The gendarme had
+already put him <i>au fait</i> of the events, and as soon as he was seated
+behind the table upon which reposed the “pièces de conviction,” he in his turn
+proceeded to interrogate the ginger-pated miscreant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But strive how he might, M. the Commissary elicited no further information from
+him than that which we all already possessed. The man gave his name as Aristide
+Nicolet. He had no fixed abode. He had come to visit his friend who lodged in
+No. 25 in the Hôtel des Cadets. Not finding him at home he had sat by the fire
+and had waited for him. He knew absolutely nothing of the dog and absolutely
+nothing of the whereabouts of Theodore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We’ll soon see about that!” asserted M. the Commissary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He ordered a perquisition of every room and every corner of the hotel, Madame
+the proprietress loudly lamenting that she and her respectable house would
+henceforth be disgraced for ever. But the thieves&mdash;whoever they
+were&mdash;were clever. Not a trace of any illicit practice was found on the
+premises&mdash;and not a trace of Theodore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had he indeed been murdered? The thought now had taken root in my mind. For the
+moment I had even forgotten Carissimo and my vanished five thousand francs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, Sir! Aristide Nicolet was marched off to the depot&mdash;still protesting
+his innocence. The next day he was confronted with Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé,
+who could not say more than that he might have formed part of the gang who had
+jostled her on the Quai Voltaire, whilst the servant who had taken the missive
+from him failed to recognize him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carissimo was restored to the arms of his loving mistress, but the reward for
+his recovery had to be shared between the police and myself: three thousand
+francs going to the police who apprehended the thief, and two thousand to me
+who had put them on the track.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not a fortune, Sir, but I had to be satisfied. But in the meanwhile the
+disappearance of Theodore had remained an unfathomable mystery. No amount of
+questionings and cross-questionings, no amount of confrontations and
+perquisitions, had brought any new matter to light. Aristide Nicolet persisted
+in his statements, as did the proprietress and the concierge of the Hôtel des
+Cadets in theirs. Theodore had undoubtedly occupied room No. 25 in the hotel
+during the three days while I was racking my brain as to what had become of
+him. I equally undoubtedly saw him for a few moments running up the Rue Beaune
+with Carissimo’s tail projecting beneath his coat. Then he entered the open
+doorway of the hotel, and henceforth his whereabouts remained a baffling
+mystery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beyond his coat and hat, the stained rag and the dog himself, there was not the
+faintest indication of what became of him after that. The concierge vowed that
+he did not enter the hotel&mdash;Aristide Nicolet vowed that he did not enter
+No. 25. But then the dog was in the cupboard, and so were the hat and coat; and
+even the police were bound to admit that in the short space of time between my
+last glimpse of Theodore and the gendarme’s entry into room 25 it would be
+impossible for the most experienced criminal on earth to murder a man, conceal
+every trace of the crime, and so to dispose of the body as to baffle the most
+minute inquiry and the most exhaustive search.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes when I thought the whole matter out I felt that I was growing crazy.
+</p>
+
+<h3>5.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Thus about a week or ten days went by and I had just come reluctantly to the
+conclusion that there must be some truth in the old mediaeval legends which
+tell us that the devil runs away with his elect from time to time, when I
+received a summons from M. the Commissary of Police to present myself at his
+bureau.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was pleasant and urbane as usual, but to my anxious query after Theodore he
+only gave me the old reply: “No trace of him can be found.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he added: “We must therefore take it for granted, my good M. Ratichon,
+that your man of all work is&mdash;of his own free will&mdash;keeping out of
+the way. The murder theory is untenable; we have had to abandon it. The total
+disappearance of the body is an unanswerable argument against it. Would you
+care to offer a reward for information leading to the recovery of your missing
+friend?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I hesitated. I certainly was not prepared to pay anyone for finding Theodore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Think it over, my good M. Ratichon,” rejoined M. le Commissaire pleasantly.
+“But in the meanwhile I must tell you that we have decided to set Aristide
+Nicolet free. There is not a particle of evidence against him either in the
+matter of the dog or of that of your friend. Mme. de Nolé’s servants cannot
+swear to his identity, whilst you have sworn that you last saw the dog in your
+man’s arms. That being so, I feel that we have no right to detain an innocent
+man.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, Sir, what could I say? I knew well enough that there was not a tittle of
+solid evidence against the man Nicolet, nor had I the power to move the police
+of His Majesty the King from their decision. In my heart of hearts I had the
+firm conviction that the ginger-polled ruffian knew all about Carissimo and all
+about the present whereabouts of that rascal Theodore. But what could I say,
+Sir? What could I do?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went home that night to my lodgings at Passy more perplexed than ever I had
+been in my life before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning I arrived at my office soon after nine. The problem had
+presented itself to me during the night of finding a new man of all work who
+would serve me on the same terms as that ungrateful wretch Theodore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I mounted the stairs with a heavy step and opened the outer door of my
+apartment with my private key; and then, Sir, I assure you that for one brief
+moment I felt that my knees were giving way under me and that I should
+presently measure my full length on the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There, sitting at the table in my private room, was Theodore. He had donned one
+of the many suits of clothes which I always kept at the office for purposes of
+my business, and he was calmly consuming a luscious sausage which was to have
+been part of my dinner today, and finishing a half-bottle of my best Bordeaux.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He appeared wholly unconscious of his enormities, and when I taxed him with his
+villainies and plied him with peremptory questions he met me with a dogged
+silence and a sulky attitude which I have never seen equalled in all my life.
+He flatly denied that he had ever walked the streets of Paris with a dog under
+his arm, or that I had ever chased him up the Rue Beaune. He denied ever having
+lodged in the Hôtel des Cadets, or been acquainted with its proprietress, or
+with a red-polled, hunchback miscreant named Aristide Nicolet. He denied that
+the coat and hat found in room No. 25 were his; in fact, he denied everything,
+and with an impudence, Sir, which was past belief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he put the crown to his insolence when he finally demanded two hundred
+francs from me: his share in the sum paid to me by Mme. de Nolé for the
+recovery of her dog. He demanded this, Sir, in the name of justice and of
+equity, and even brandished our partnership contract in my face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was so irate at his audacity, so disgusted that presently I felt that I could
+not bear the sight of him any longer. I turned my back on him and walked out of
+my own private room, leaving him there still munching my sausage and drinking
+my Bordeaux.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was going through the antechamber with a view to going out into the street
+for a little fresh air when something in the aspect of the chair-bedstead on
+which that abominable brute Theodore had apparently spent the night attracted
+my attention. I turned over one of the cushions, and with a cry of rage which I
+took no pains to suppress I seized upon what I found lying beneath: a blue
+linen blouse, Sir, a peaked cap, a ginger-coloured wig and beard!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The villain! The abominable mountebank! The wretch! The . . . I was wellnigh
+choking with wrath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the damning pieces of conviction in my hand, I rushed back into the inner
+room. Already my cry of indignation had aroused the vampire from his orgy. He
+stood before me sheepish, grinning, and taunted me, Sir&mdash;taunted me for my
+blindness in not recognizing him under the disguise of the so-called Aristide
+Nicolet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a disguise which he had kept by him in case of an emergency when first
+he decided to start business as a dog thief. Carissimo had been his first
+serious venture and but for my interference it would have been a wholly
+successful one. He had worked the whole thing out with marvellous cleverness,
+being greatly assisted by Madame Sand, the proprietress of the Hôtel des
+Cadets, who was a friend of his mother’s. The lady, it seems, carried on a
+lucrative business of the same sort herself, and she undertook to furnish him
+with the necessary confederates for the carrying out of his plan. The proceeds
+of the affair were to be shared equally between himself and Madame; the
+confederates, who helped to jostle Mme. de Nolé whilst her dog was being
+stolen, were to receive five francs each for their trouble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he met me at the corner of the Rue Beaune he was on his way to the Rue
+Guénégaud, hoping to exchange Carissimo for five thousand francs. When he met
+me, however, he felt that the best thing to do for the moment was to seek
+safety in flight. He had only just time to run back to the hotel to warn Mme.
+Sand of my approach and beg her to detain me at any cost. Then he flew up the
+stairs, changed into his disguise, Carissimo barking all the time furiously.
+Whilst he was trying to pacify the dog, the latter bit him severely in the arm,
+drawing a good deal of blood&mdash;the crimson scar across his face was a last
+happy inspiration which put the finishing touch to his disguise and to the
+hoodwinking of the police and of me. He had only just time to staunch the blood
+from his arm and to thrust his own clothes and Carissimo into the wall cupboard
+when the gendarme and I burst in upon him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could only gasp. For one brief moment the thought rushed through my mind that
+I would denounce him to the police for . . . for . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But that was just the trouble. Of what could I accuse him? Of murdering himself
+or of stealing Mme. de Nolé’s dog? The commissary would hardly listen to such a
+tale . . . and it would make me seem ridiculous. . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I gave Theodore the soundest thrashing he ever had in his life, and fifty
+francs to keep his mouth shut.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But did I not tell you that he was a monster of ingratitude?
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0005"></a>
+CHAPTER V. &mdash; THE TOYS</h2>
+
+<h3>1.</h3>
+
+<p>
+You are right, Sir, I very seldom speak of my halcyon days&mdash;those days
+when the greatest monarch the world has ever known honoured me with his
+intimacy and confidence. I had my office in the Rue St. Roch then, at the top
+of a house just by the church, and not a stone’s throw from the palace, and I
+can tell you, Sir, that in those days ministers of state, foreign ambassadors,
+aye! and members of His Majesty’s household, were up and down my staircase at
+all hours of the day. I had not yet met Theodore then, and fate was wont to
+smile on me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for M. le Duc d’Otrante, Minister of Police, he would send to me or for me
+whenever an intricate case required special acumen, resourcefulness and
+secrecy. Thus in the matter of the English files&mdash;have I told you of it
+before? No? Well, then, you shall hear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Those were the days, Sir, when the Emperor’s Berlin Decrees were going to sweep
+the world clear of English commerce and of English enterprise. It was not a
+case of paying heavy duty on English goods, or a still heavier fine if you
+smuggled; it was total prohibition, and hanging if you were caught bringing so
+much as a metre of Bradford cloth or half a dozen Sheffield files into the
+country. But you know how it is, Sir: the more strict the law the more ready
+are certain lawless human creatures to break it. Never was smuggling so rife as
+it was in those days&mdash;I am speaking now of 1810 or 11&mdash;never was it
+so daring or smugglers so reckless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. le Duc d’Otrante had his hands full, I can tell you. It had become a matter
+for the secret police; the coastguard or customs officials were no longer able
+to deal with it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then one day Hypolite Leroux came to see me. I knew the man well&mdash;a keen
+sleuthhound if ever there was one&mdash;and well did he deserve his name, for
+he was as red as a fox.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ratichon,” he said to me, without preamble, as soon as he had seated himself
+opposite to me, and I had placed half a bottle of good Bordeaux and a couple of
+glasses on the table. “I want your help in the matter of these English files.
+We have done all that we can in our department. M. le Duc has doubled the
+customs personnel on the Swiss frontier, the coastguard is both keen and
+efficient, and yet we know that at the present moment there are thousands of
+English files used in this country, even inside His Majesty’s own armament
+works. M. le Duc d’Otrante is determined to put an end to the scandal. He has
+offered a big reward for information which will lead to the conviction of one
+or more of the chief culprits, and I am determined to get that
+reward&mdash;with your help, if you will give it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is the reward?” I asked simply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Five thousand francs,” he replied. “Your knowledge of English and Italian is
+what caused me to offer you a share in this splendid enterprise&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s no good lying to me, Leroux,” I broke in quietly, “if we are going to
+work amicably together.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He swore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The reward is ten thousand francs.” I made the shot at a venture, knowing my
+man well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I swear that it is not,” he asserted hotly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Swear again,” I retorted, “for I’ll not deal with you for less than five
+thousand.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did swear again and protested loudly. But I was firm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have another glass of wine,” I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After which he gave in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The affair was bound to be risky. Smugglers of English goods were determined
+and desperate men who were playing for high stakes and risking their necks on
+the board. In all matters of smuggling a knowledge of foreign languages was an
+invaluable asset. I spoke Italian well and knew some English. I knew my worth.
+We both drank a glass of cognac and sealed our bond then and there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After which Leroux drew his chair closer to my desk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Listen, then,” he said. “You know the firm of Fournier Frères, in the Rue
+Colbert?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“By name, of course. Cutlers and surgical instrument makers by appointment to
+His Majesty. What about them?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“M. le Duc has had his eyes on them for some time.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fournier Frères!” I ejaculated. “Impossible! A more reputable firm does not
+exist in France.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know, I know,” he rejoined impatiently. “And yet it is a curious fact that
+M. Aristide Fournier, the junior partner, has lately bought for himself a house
+at St. Claude.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At St. Claude?” I ejaculated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” he responded dryly. “Very near to Gex, what?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I shrugged my shoulders, for indeed the circumstances did appear somewhat
+strange.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Do you know Gex, my dear Sir? Ah, it is a curious and romantic spot. It has
+possibilities, both natural and political, which appear to have been expressly
+devised for the benefit of the smuggling fraternity. Nestling in the midst of
+the Jura mountains, it is outside the customs zone of the Empire. So you see
+the possibilities, do you not? Gex soon became the picturesque warehouse of
+every conceivable kind of contraband goods. On one side of it there was the
+Swiss frontier, and the Swiss Government was always willing to close one eye in
+the matter of customs provided its palm was sufficiently greased by the
+light-fingered gentry. No difficulty, therefore, as you see, in getting
+contraband goods&mdash;even English ones&mdash;as far as Gex.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here they could be kept hidden until a fitting opportunity occurred for
+smuggling them into France, opportunities for which the Jura, with their narrow
+defiles and difficult mountain paths, afforded magnificent scope. St. Claude,
+of which Leroux had just spoken as the place where M. Aristide Fournier had
+recently bought himself a house, is in France, only a few kilometres from the
+neutral zone of Gex. It seemed a strange spot to choose for a wealthy and
+fashionable member of Parisian bourgeois society, I was bound to admit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But,” I mused, “one cannot go to Gex without a permit from the police.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not by road,” Leroux assented. “But you will own that there are means
+available to men who are young and vigorous like M. Fournier, who moreover, I
+understand, is an accomplished mountaineer. You know Gex, of course?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had crossed the Jura once, in my youth, but was not very intimately familiar
+with the district. Leroux had a carefully drawn-out map of it in his pocket;
+this he laid out before me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“These two roads,” he began, tracing the windings of a couple of thin red lines
+on the map with the point of his finger, “are the only two made ones that lead
+in and out of the district. Here is the Valserine,” he went on, pointing to a
+blue line, “which flows from north to south, and both the roads wind over
+bridges that span the river close to our frontier. The French customs stations
+are on our side of those bridges. But, besides those two roads, the frontier
+can, of course, be crossed by one or other of the innumerable mountain tracks
+which are only accessible to pedestrians or mules. That is where our customs
+officials are powerless, for the tracks are precipitous and offer unlimited
+cover to those who know every inch of the ground. Several of them lead directly
+into St. Claude, at some considerable distance from the customs stations, and
+it is these tracks which are being used by M. Aristide Fournier for the
+felonious purpose of trading with the enemy&mdash;on this I would stake my
+life. But I mean to be even with him, and if I get the help which I require
+from you, I am convinced that I can lay him by the heels.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am your man,” I concluded simply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very well,” he resumed. “Are you prepared to journey with me to Gex?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“When do you start?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To-day.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall be ready.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave a deep sigh of satisfaction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then listen to my plan,” he said. “We’ll journey together as far as St.
+Claude; from there you will push on to Gex, and take up your abode in the city,
+styling yourself an interpreter. This will give you the opportunity of mixing
+with some of the smuggling fraternity, and it will be your duty to keep both
+your eyes and ears open. I, on the other hand, will take up my quarters at
+Mijoux, the French customs station, which is on the frontier, about half a
+dozen kilometres from Gex. Every day I’ll arrange to meet you, either at the
+latter place or somewhere half-way, and hear what news you may have to tell me.
+And mind, Ratichon,” he added sternly, “it means running straight, or the
+reward will slip through our fingers.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I chose to ignore the coarse insinuation, and only riposted quietly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I must have money on account. I am a poor man, and will be out of pocket by
+the transaction from the hour I start for Gex to that when you pay me my fair
+share of the reward.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By way of a reply he took out a case from his pocket. I saw that it was bulging
+over with banknotes, which confirmed me in my conviction both that he was
+actually an emissary of the Minister of Police and that I could have demanded
+an additional thousand francs without fear of losing the business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll give you five hundred on account,” he said as he licked his ugly thumb
+preparatory to counting out the money before me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Make it a thousand,” I retorted; “and call it ‘additional,’ not ‘on account.’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He tried to argue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am not keen on the business,” I said with calm dignity, “so if you think
+that I am asking too much&mdash;there are others, no doubt, who would do the
+work for less.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a bold move. But it succeeded. Leroux laughed and shrugged his
+shoulders. Then he counted out ten hundred-franc notes and laid them out upon
+the desk. But before I could touch them he laid his large bony hands over the
+lot and, looking me straight between the eyes, he said with earnest
+significance:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“English files are worth as much as twenty francs apiece in the market.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fournier Frères would not take the risks which they are doing for a
+consignment of less than ten thousand.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I doubt if they would,” I rejoined blandly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It will be your business to find out how and when the smugglers propose to get
+their next consignment over the frontier.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Exactly.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And to communicate any information you may have obtained to me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And to keep an eye on the valuable cargo, of course?” I concluded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” he said roughly, “an eye. But hands off, understand, my good Ratichon,
+or there’ll be trouble.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not wait to hear my indignant protest. He had risen to his feet, and had
+already turned to go. Now he stretched his great coarse hand out to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All in good part, eh?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I took his hand. He meant no harm, did old Leroux. He was just a common, vulgar
+fellow who did not know a gentleman when he saw one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And we parted the best of friends.
+</p>
+
+<h3>2.</h3>
+
+<p>
+A week later I was at Gex. At St. Claude I had parted from Leroux, and then
+hired a chaise to take me to my destination. It was a matter of fifteen
+kilometres by road over the frontier of the customs zone and through the most
+superb scenery I had ever seen in my life. We drove through narrow gorges, on
+each side of which the mountain heights rose rugged and precipitous to
+incalculable altitudes above. From time to time only did I get peeps of almost
+imperceptible tracks along the declivities, tracks on which it seemed as if
+goats alone could obtain a footing. Once&mdash;hundreds of feet above
+me&mdash;I spied a couple of mules descending what seemed like a sheer
+perpendicular path down the mountain side. The animals appeared to be heavily
+laden, and I marvelled what forbidden goods lay hidden within their packs and
+whether in the days that were to come I too should be called upon to risk my
+life on those declivities following in the footsteps of the reckless and
+desperate criminals whom it was my duty to pursue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I confess that at the thought, and with those pictures of grim nature before
+me, I felt an unpleasant shiver coursing down my spine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing of importance occurred during the first fortnight of my sojourn at Gex.
+I was installed in moderately comfortable, furnished rooms in the heart of the
+city, close to the church and market square. In one of my front windows,
+situated on the ground floor, I had placed a card bearing the inscription:
+“Aristide Barrot, Interpreter,” and below, “Anglais, Allemand, Italien.” I had
+even had a few clients&mdash;conversations between the local police and some
+poor wretches caught in the act of smuggling a few yards of Swiss silk or a
+couple of cream cheeses over the French frontier, and sent back to Gex to be
+dealt with by the local authorities.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Leroux had found lodgings at Mijoux, and twice daily he walked over to Gex to
+consult with me. We met, mornings and evenings, at the café restaurant of the
+Crâne Chauve, an obscure little tavern situated on the outskirts of the city.
+He was waxing impatient at what he called my supineness, for indeed so far I
+had had nothing to report.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no sign of M. Aristide Fournier. No one in Gex appeared to know
+anything about him, though the proprietor of the principal hotel in the town
+did recollect having had a visitor of that name once or twice during the past
+year. But, of course, during this early stage of my stay in the town it was
+impossible for me to believe anything that I was told. I had not yet succeeded
+in winning the confidence of the inhabitants, and it was soon pretty evident to
+me that the whole countryside was engaged in the perilous industry of
+smuggling. Everyone from the mayor downwards did a bit of a deal now and again
+in contraband goods. In ordinary cases it only meant fines if one was caught,
+or perhaps imprisonment for repeated offenses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But four or five days after my arrival at Gex I saw three fellows handed over
+to the police of the department. They had been caught in the act of trying to
+ford the Valserine with half a dozen pack-mules laden with English cloth. They
+were hanged at St. Claude two days later.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I can assure you, Sir, that the news of this summary administration of justice
+sent another cold shiver down my spine, and I marvelled if indeed Leroux’s
+surmises were correct and if a respectable tradesman like Aristide Fournier
+would take such terrible risks even for the sake of heavy gains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had been in Gex just a fortnight when the weather, which hitherto had been
+splendid, turned to squalls and storms. We were then in the second week of
+September. A torrential rain had fallen the whole of one day, during which I
+had only been out in order to meet Leroux, as usual, at the Café du Crâne
+Chauve. I had just come home from our evening meeting&mdash;it was then ten
+o’clock&mdash;and I was preparing to go comfortably to bed, when I was startled
+by a violent ring at the front-door bell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had only just time to wonder if this belated visitor desired to see me or my
+worthy landlady, Mme. Bournon, when her heavy footsteps resounded along the
+passage. The next moment I heard my name spoken peremptorily by a harsh voice,
+and Mme. Bournon’s reply that M. Aristide Barrot was indeed within. A few
+seconds later she ushered my nocturnal visitor into my room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was wrapped in a dark mantle from head to foot, and he wore a wide-brimmed
+hat pulled right over his eyes. He did not remove either as he addressed me
+without further preamble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are an interpreter, Sir?” he queried, speaking very rapidly and in sharp
+commanding tones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At your service,” I replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My name is Ernest Berty. I want you to come with me at once to my house. I
+require your services as intermediary between myself and some men who have come
+to see me on business. These men whom I wish you to see are Russians,” he
+added, I fancied as an afterthought, “but they speak English fluently.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I suppose that I looked just as I felt&mdash;somewhat dubious owing to the
+lateness of the hour and the darkness of the night, not to speak of the
+abominable weather, for he continued with marked impatience:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is imperative that you should come at once. Though my house is at some
+little distance from here, I have a chaise outside which will also bring you
+back, and,” he added significantly, “I will pay you whatever you demand.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is very late,” I demurred, “the weather&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Your fee, man!” he broke in roughly, “and let’s get on!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Five hundred francs,” I said at a venture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come!” was his curt reply. “I will give you the money as we drive along.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wished I had made it a thousand; apparently my services were worth a great
+deal to him. However, I picked up my mantle and my hat, and within a few
+seconds was ready to go. I shouted up to Mme. Bournon that I would not be home
+for a couple of hours, but that as I had my key I need not disturb her when I
+returned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once outside the door I almost regretted my ready acquiescence in this
+nocturnal adventure. The rain was beating down unmercifully, and at first I saw
+no sign of a vehicle; but in answer to my visitor’s sharp command I followed
+him down the street as far as the market square, at the corner of which I spied
+the dim outline of a carriage and a couple of horses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without wasting too many words, M. Ernest Berty bundled me into the carriage,
+and very soon we were on the way. The night was impenetrably dark and the
+chaise more than ordinarily rickety. I had but little opportunity to ascertain
+which way we were going. A small lanthorn fixed opposite to me in the interior
+of the carriage, and flickering incessantly before my eyes, made it still more
+impossible for me to see anything outside the narrow window. My companion sat
+beside me, silent and absorbed. After a while I ventured to ask him which way
+we were driving.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Through the town,” he replied curtly. “My house is just outside Divonne.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, Divonne is, as I knew, quite close to the Swiss frontier. It is a matter
+of seven or eight kilometres&mdash;an hour’s drive at the very least in this
+supremely uncomfortable vehicle. I tried to induce further conversation, but
+made no headway against my companion’s taciturnity. However, I had little cause
+for complaint in another direction. After the first quarter of an hour, and
+when we had left the cobblestones of the city behind us, he drew a bundle of
+notes from his pocket, and by the flickering light of the lanthorn he counted
+out ten fifty-franc notes and handed them without another word to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The drive was unspeakably wearisome; but after a while I suppose that the
+monotonous rumbling of the wheels and the incessant patter of the rain against
+the window-panes lulled me into a kind of torpor. Certain it is that
+presently&mdash;much sooner than I had anticipated&mdash;the chaise drew up
+with a jerk, and I was roused to full consciousness by hearing M. Berty’s voice
+saying curtly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Here we are! Come with me!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was stiff, Sir, and I was shivering&mdash;not so much with cold as with
+excitement. You will readily understand that all my faculties were now on the
+qui vive. Somehow or other during the wearisome drive by the side of my
+close-tongued companion my mind had fastened on the certitude that my adventure
+of this night bore a close connexion to the firm of Fournier Frères and to the
+English files which were causing so many sleepless nights to M. le Duc
+d’Otrante, Minister of Police.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But nothing in my manner, as I stepped out of the carriage under the porch of
+the house which loomed dark and massive out of the surrounding gloom, betrayed
+anything of what I felt. Outwardly I was just a worthy bourgeois, an
+interpreter by profession, and delighted at the remunerative work so
+opportunely put in my way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The house itself appeared lonely as well as dark. M. Berty led the way across a
+narrow passage, at the end of which there was a door which he pushed open,
+saying in his usual abrupt manner: “Go in there and wait. I’ll send for you
+directly.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he closed the door on me, and I heard his footsteps recrossing the
+corridor and presently ascending some stairs. I was left alone in a small,
+sparsely furnished room, dimly lighted by an oil lamp which hung down from the
+ceiling. There was a table in the middle of the room, a square of carpet on the
+floor, and a couple of chairs beside a small iron stove. I noticed that the
+single window was closely shuttered and barred. I sat down and waited. At first
+the silence around me was only broken by the pattering of the rain against the
+shutters and the soughing of the wind down the iron chimney pipe, but after a
+little while my senses, which by this time had become super-acute, were
+conscious of various noises within the house itself: footsteps overhead, a
+confused murmur of voices, and anon the unmistakable sound of a female voice
+raised as if in entreaty or in complaint.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Somehow a vague feeling of alarm possessed itself of my nervous system. I began
+to realise my position&mdash;alone, a stranger in a house as to whose situation
+I had not the remotest idea, and among a set of men who, if my surmises were
+correct, were nothing less than a gang of determined and dangerous criminals.
+The voices, especially the female one, were now sounding more clear. I tiptoed
+to the door, and very gently opened it. There was indeed no mistaking the tone
+of desperate pleading which came from some room above and through &amp; woman’s
+lips. I even caught the words: “Oh, don’t! Oh, don’t! Not again!” repeated at
+intervals with pitiable insistence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mastering my not unnatural anxiety, I opened the door a little farther and
+slipped out into the passage, all my instincts of chivalry towards beauty in
+distress aroused by those piteous cries. Forgetful of every possible danger and
+of all prudence, I had already darted down the corridor, determined to do my
+duty as a gentleman as soon as I had ascertained whence had come those cries of
+anguish, when I heard the frou-frou of skirts and a rapid patter of small feet
+down the stairs. The next moment a radiant vision, all white muslin, fair curls
+and the scent of violets, descended on me from above, a soft hand closed over
+mine and drew me, unresisting, back into the room from whence I had just come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bewildered, I gazed on the winsome apparition before me, and beheld a young
+girl, slender as a lily, dressed in a soft, clinging gown which made her appear
+more slender still, her fair hair arranged in a tangle of unruly curls round
+the dainty oval of her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was exquisite, Sir! And the slenderness of her! You cannot imagine it! She
+looked like a young sapling bending to the gale. But what cut me to the heart
+was the look of terror and of misery in her face. She clasped her hands
+together and the tears gathered in her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go, Sir, go at once!” she murmured under her breath, speaking very rapidly.
+“Do not waste a minute, I beg of you! As you value your life, go before it is
+too late!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But, Mademoiselle,” I stammered; for indeed her words and appearance had
+roused all my worst fears, but also all my instincts of the sleuth-hound
+scenting his quarry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t argue, I beg of you,” continued the lovely creature, who indeed seemed
+the prey of overwhelming emotions&mdash;fear, horror, pity. “When he comes back
+do not let him find you here. I’ll explain, I’ll know what to say, only I
+entreat you&mdash;go!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir, I have many faults, but cowardice does not happen to be one of them, and
+the more the angel pleaded the more determined was I to see this business
+through. I was, of course, quite convinced by now that I was on the track of M.
+Aristide Fournier and the English files, and I was not going to let five
+thousand francs and the gratitude of the Minister of Police slip through my
+fingers so easily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mademoiselle,” I rejoined as calmly as I could, “let me assure you that though
+your anxiety for me is like manna to a starving man, I have no fears for my own
+safety. I have come here in the capacity of a humble interpreter; I certainly
+am not worth putting out of the way. Moreover, I have been paid for my
+services, and these I will render to my employer to the best of my
+capabilities.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, but you don’t know,” she retorted, not departing one jot from her attitude
+of terror and of entreaty, “you don’t understand. This house, Monsieur,” she
+added in a hoarse whisper, “is nothing but a den of criminals wherein no honest
+man or woman is safe.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pardon, Mademoiselle,” I riposted as lightly and as gallantly as I could, “I
+see before me the living proof that angels, at any rate, dwell therein.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Alas! Sir,” she rejoined, with a heart-rending sigh, “if you mean me, I am
+only to be pitied. My dear mother and I are naught but slaves to the will of my
+brother, who uses us as tools for his nefarious ends.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But . . .” I stammered, horrified beyond speech at the vista of villainy which
+her words had opened up before me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My mother, Sir,” she said simply, “is old and ailing; she is dying of anguish
+at sight of her son’s misdeeds. I would not, could not leave her, yet I would
+give my life to see her free from that miscreant’s clutches!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My whole soul was stirred to its depths by the intensity of passion which rang
+through this delicate creature’s words. What weird and awesome mystery of
+iniquity and of crime lay hid, I wondered, between these walls? In what tragedy
+had I thus accidentally become involved while fulfilling my prosaic duty in the
+interest of His Majesty’s exchequer? As in a flash it suddenly came to me that
+perhaps I could serve both this lovely creature and the Emperor better by going
+out of the house now, and lying hidden all the night through somewhere in its
+vicinity until in daylight I could locate its exact situation. Then I could
+communicate with Leroux at once and procure the apprehension of this
+Berty&mdash;or Fournier&mdash;who apparently was a desperate criminal. Already
+a bold plan was taking shape in my brain, and with my mind’s eye I had measured
+the distance which separated me from the front door and safety when, in the
+distance, I heard heavy footsteps slowly descending the stairs. I looked at my
+lovely companion, and saw her eyes gradually dilating with increased horror.
+She gave a smothered cry, pressed her handkerchief to her lips, then she
+murmured hoarsely, “Too late!” and fled precipitately from the room, leaving me
+a prey to mingled emotions such as I had never experienced before.
+</p>
+
+<h3>3.</h3>
+
+<p>
+A moment or two later M. Ernest Berty, or whatever his real name may have been,
+entered the room. Whether he had encountered his exquisite sister on the
+corridor or the stairs, I could not tell; his face, in the dim light of the
+hanging lamp, looked impenetrable and sinister.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This way, M. Barrot,” he said curtly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just for one brief moment the thought occurred to me to throw myself upon him
+with my whole weight&mdash;which was considerable&mdash;and make a wild dash
+for the front door. But it was more than probable that I should be intercepted
+and brought back, after which no doubt I would be an object of suspicion to
+these rascals and my life would not be worth an hour’s purchase. With the young
+girl’s warnings ringing in my ears, I felt that my one chance of safety and of
+circumventing these criminals lay in my seeming ingenuousness and complete
+guileless-ness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I assumed a perfect professional manner and followed my companion up the
+stairs. He ushered me into a room just above the one where I had been waiting
+up to now. Three men dressed in rough clothes were sitting at a table on which
+stood a couple of tankards and four empty pewter mugs. My employer offered me a
+glass of ale, which I declined. Then we got to work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the first words which M. Berty uttered I knew that all my surmises had been
+correct. Whether he himself was M. Aristide Fournier, or another partner of
+that firm, or some other rascal engaged in nefarious doings, I could not know;
+certain it was that through the medium of cipher words and phrases which he
+thought were unintelligible to me, and which he ordered me to interpret into
+English, he was giving directions to the three men with regard to the convoying
+of contraband cargo over the frontier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was much talk of “toys” and “babies”&mdash;the latter were to take a walk
+in the mountains and to avoid the “thorns”; the “toys” were to be securely
+fastened and well protected against water. It was obviously a case of mules and
+of the goods, the “thorns” being the customs officials. By the time that we had
+finished I was absolutely convinced in my mind that the cargo was one of
+English files or razors, for it was evidently extraordinarily valuable and not
+at all bulky, seeing that two “babies” were to carry all the “toys” for a
+considerable distance. The men, too, were obviously English. I tried the few
+words of Russian that I knew on them, and their faces remained perfectly blank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, indeed, I was on the track of M. Aristide Fournier, and of one of the most
+important hauls of enemy goods which had ever been made in France. Not only
+that. I had also before me one of the most brutish criminals it had ever been
+my misfortune to come across. A bully, a fiend of cruelty. In very truth my
+fertile brain was seething with plans for eventually laying that abominable
+ruffian by the heels: hanging would be a merciful punishment for such a
+miscreant. Yes, indeed, five thousand francs&mdash;a goodly sum in those days,
+Sir&mdash;was practically assured me. But over and above mere lucre there was
+the certainty that in a few days’ time I should see the light of gratitude
+shining out of a pair of lustrous blue eyes, and a winning smile chasing away
+the look of fear and of sorrow from the sweetest face I had seen for many a
+day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Despite the turmoil that was raging in my brain, however, I flatter myself that
+my manner with the rascals remained consistently calm, businesslike,
+indifferent to all save to the work in hand. The soi-disant Ernest Berty spoke
+invariably in French, either dictating his orders or seeking information, and I
+made verbal translation into English of all that he said. The séance lasted
+close upon an hour, and presently I gathered that the affair was terminated and
+that I could consider myself dismissed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was about to take my leave, having apparently completed my work, when M.
+Ernest Berty called me back with a curt command.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“One moment, M. Barrot,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At Monsieur’s service,” I responded blandly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“As you see,” he continued, “these fellows do not know a word of French. All
+along the way which they will have to traverse they will meet friendly
+outposts, who will report to them on the condition of the roads and warn them
+of any danger that might be ahead. Their ignorance of our language may be a
+source of infinite peril to them. They need an interpreter to accompany them
+over the mountains.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He paused for a moment or two, then added abruptly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Would you care to go? The matter is important,” he went on quietly, “and I am
+willing to pay you. It means a couple of nights’ journey&mdash;a halt in the
+mountains during the day&mdash;and there will be ten thousand francs for you if
+the ‘toys’ reach St. Claude safely.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I suppose that something in my face betrayed the eagerness which I felt. Here
+was indeed the finger of Providence pointing to the best means of undoing this
+abominable criminal. Not that I intended to risk my neck for any ten thousand
+francs he chose to offer me, but as the trusted guide of his ingenuous “babies”
+I could convoy them&mdash;not to St. Claude, as he blandly believed, but
+straight into the arms of Leroux and the customs officials.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then that is understood,” he said in his usual dictatorial manner, taking my
+consent for granted. “Ten thousand francs. And you will accompany these
+gentlemen and their ‘babies’ as far as St. Claude?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am a poor man, Sir,” I responded meekly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course you are,” he broke in roughly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then from a number of papers which lay upon the table, he selected one which he
+held out to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you know St. Cergues?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” I replied. “It is a short walk from Gex.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This,” he added, pointing to a paper which I had taken from him, “is a plan of
+the village and of the Pass of Cergues close by. Study it carefully. At some
+point some way up the pass, which I have marked with a cross, I and my men with
+the ‘babies’ will be waiting for you to-morrow evening at eight o’clock. You
+cannot possibly fail to find the spot, for the plan is very accurate and very
+minute, and it is less than five hundred metres from the last house at the
+entrance of the pass. I shall escort the men until then, and hand them over
+into your charge for the mountain journey. Is that clear?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perfectly.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very well, then; you may go. The carriage is outside the door. You know your
+way.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dismissed me with a curt nod, and the next two minutes saw me outside this
+house of mystery and installed inside the ramshackle vehicle on my way back to
+my lodgings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was worn out with fatigue and excitement, and I imagine that I slept most of
+the way. Certain it is that the journey home was not nearly so long as the
+outward one had been. The rain was still coming down heavily, but I cared
+nothing about the weather, nothing about fatigue. My path to fame and fortune
+had been made easier for me than in my wildest dreams I would have dared to
+hope. In the morning I would see Leroux and make final arrangements for the
+capture of those impudent smugglers, and I thought the best way would be for
+him to meet me and the “babies” and the “toys” at the very outset of our
+journey, as I did not greatly relish the idea of crossing lonely and dangerous
+mountain paths in the company of these ruffians.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I reached home without adventure. The vehicle drew up just outside my lodgings,
+and I was about to alight when my eyes were attracted by something white which
+lay on the front seat of the carriage, conspicuously placed so that the light
+from the inside lanthorn fell full upon it. I had been too tired and too dazed,
+I suppose, to notice the thing before, but now, on closer inspection, I saw
+that it was a note, and that it was addressed to me: “M. Aristide Barrot,
+Interpreter,” and below my name were the words: “Very urgent.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I took the note feeling a thrill of excitement running through my veins at its
+touch. I alighted, and the vehicle immediately disappeared into the night. I
+had only caught one glimpse of the horses, and none at all of the coachman.
+Then I went straight into my room, and by the light of the table lamp I
+unfolded and read the mysterious note. It bore no signature, but at the first
+words I knew that the writer was none other than the lovely young creature who
+had appeared to me like an angel of innocence in the midst of that den of
+thieves.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+“Monsieur,” she had written in a hand which had clearly been trembling with
+agitation, “you are good, you are kind; I entreat you to be merciful. My dear
+mother, whom I worship, is sick with terror and misery. She will die if she
+remains any longer under the sway of that inhuman monster who, alas! is my own
+brother. And if I lose her I shall die, too, for I should no longer have anyone
+to stand between me and his cruelties.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dear mother has some relations living at St. Claude. She would have gone to
+them before now, but my brother keeps us both virtual prisoners here, and we
+have no means of arranging for such a perilous journey for ourselves. Now, by
+the most extraordinary stroke of good fortune, my brother will be absent all
+day to-morrow and the following night. My dear mother and I feel that God
+Himself is showing us the way to our release.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will you, can you help us, dear M. Barrot? Mother and I will be at Gex
+to-morrow at one hour after sundown. We will lie perdu in the little Taverne du
+Roi de Rome, where, if you come to us, you will find us waiting anxiously. If
+you can do nothing to help us, we must return broken-hearted to our hated
+prison; but something in my heart tells me that you can help us. All that we
+want is a vehicle of some sort and the escort of a brave man like yourself as
+far as St. Claude, where our relatives will thank you on their knees for your
+kindness and generosity to two helpless, miserable, unprotected women, and I
+will kiss your hands in unbounded gratitude and devotion.”
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+It were impossible, Monsieur, to tell you of the varied emotions which filled
+my heart when I had perused that heart-rending appeal. All my instincts of
+chivalry were aroused. I was determined to do my duty to these helpless ladies
+as a man and as a gallant knight. Even before I finally went to bed I had
+settled in my mind what I meant to do. Fortunately it was quite possible for me
+to reconcile my duties to my Emperor and those which I owed to myself in the
+matter of the reward for the apprehension of the smugglers, with my burning
+desire to be the saviour and protector of the lovely creature whose beauty had
+inflamed my impressionable heart, and to have my hands kissed by her in
+gratitude and devotion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning Leroux and I were deep in our plans, whilst we sipped our
+coffee outside the Crâne Chauve. He was beside himself with joy and excitement
+at the prospective haul, which would, of course, redound enormously to his
+credit, even though the success of the whole undertaking would be due to my
+acumen, my resourcefulness and my pluck. Fortunately I found him not only ready
+but eager to render me what assistance he could in the matter of the two ladies
+who had thrown themselves so entirely on my protection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We might get valuable information out of them,” he remarked. “In the excess of
+their gratitude they may betray many more secrets and nefarious doings of the
+firm of Fournier Frères.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Which further proves,” I remarked, “how deeply you and Monsieur le Ministre of
+Police are indebted to me over this affair.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not argue the point. Indeed, we were both of us far too much excited to
+waste words in useless bickerings. Our plans for the evening were fairly
+simple. We both pored over the map which Fournier-Berty had given me, until we
+felt that we could reach blindfolded the spot which had been marked with a
+cross. We then arranged that Leroux should betake himself thither with a strong
+posse of gendarmes during the day, and lie hidden in the vicinity until such
+time as I myself appeared upon the scene, identified my friends of the night
+before, parleyed with them for a minute or two, and finally retired, leaving
+the law in all its majesty, as represented by Leroux, to deal with the rascals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the meantime I also mapped out for myself my own share in this night’s
+adventurous work. I had hired a vehicle to take me as far as St. Cergues; here
+I intended to leave it at the local inn, and then proceed on foot up the
+mountain pass to the appointed spot. As soon as I had seen the smugglers safely
+in the hands of Leroux and the gendarmes, I would make my way back to St.
+Cergues as rapidly as I could, step into my vehicle, drive like the wind back
+to Gex, and place myself at the disposal of my fair angel and her afflicted
+mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Leroux promised me that at the customs station on the French frontier the
+officials would look after me and the ladies, and that a pair of fresh horses
+would be ready to take us straight on to St. Claude, which, if all was well, we
+could then reach by daybreak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having settled all these matters we parted company, he to arrange his own
+affairs with the Commissary of Police and the customs officials, and I to await
+with as much patience as I could the hour when I could start for St. Cergues.
+</p>
+
+<h3>4.</h3>
+
+<p>
+The night&mdash;just as I anticipated&mdash;promised to be very dark. A thin
+drizzle, which wetted the unfortunate pedestrian to the marrow, had replaced
+the torrential rain of the previous day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Twilight was closing in very fast. In the late autumn afternoon I drove to St.
+Cergues, after which I left the chaise in the village and boldly started to
+walk up the mountain pass. I had studied the map so carefully that I was quite
+sure of my way, but though my appointment with the rascals was for eight
+o’clock, I wished to reach the appointed spot before the last flicker of grey
+light had disappeared from the sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon I had left the last house well behind me. Boldly I plunged into the narrow
+path. The loneliness of the place was indescribable. Every step which I took on
+the stony track seemed to rouse the echoes of the grim heights which rose
+precipitously on either side of me, and in my mind I felt aghast at the
+extraordinary courage of those men who&mdash;like Aristide Fournier and his
+gang&mdash;chose to affront such obvious and manifold dangers as these frowning
+mountain regions held for them for the sake of paltry lucre.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had walked, according to my reckoning, just upon five hundred metres through
+the gorge, when on ahead I perceived the flicker of lights which appeared to be
+moving to and fro. The silence and loneliness no longer seemed to be absolute.
+A few metres from where I was men were living and breathing, plotting and
+planning, unconscious of the net which the unerring hand of a skilful fowler
+had drawn round them and their misdeeds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next moment I was challenged by a peremptory “Halt!” Recognition followed.
+M. Ernest Berty, or Aristide Fournier, whichever he was, acknowledged with a
+few words my punctuality, whilst through the gloom I took rapid stock of his
+little party. I saw the vague outline of three men and a couple of mules which
+appeared to be heavily laden. They were assembled on a flat piece of ground
+which appeared like a roofless cavern carved out of the mountain side. The
+walls of rock around them afforded them both cover and refuge. They seemed in
+no hurry to start. They had the long night before them, so one of them remarked
+in English.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, presently M. Fournier-Berty gave the signal for the start to be made,
+he himself preparing to take leave of his men. Just at that moment my ears
+caught the welcome sound of the tramping of feet, and before any of the rascals
+there could realise what was happening, their way was barred by Leroux and his
+gendarmes, who loudly gave the order, “Hands up, in the name of the Emperor!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was only conscious of a confused murmur of voices, of the click of firearms,
+of words of command passing to and fro, and of several violent oaths uttered in
+the not unfamiliar voice of M. Aristide Fournier. But already I had spied
+Leroux. I only exchanged a few words with him, for indeed my share of the
+evening’s work was done as far as he was concerned, and I made haste to retrace
+my steps through the darkness and the rain along the lonely mountain path
+toward the goal where chivalry and manly ardour beckoned to me from afar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I found my vehicle waiting for me at St. Cergues, and by the promise of an
+additional pourboire, I succeeded in making the driver whip up his horses to
+some purpose. Less than an hour later we drew up at Gex outside the little inn,
+pretentiously called Le Roi de Rome. On alighting I was met by the proprietress
+who, in answer to my inquiry after two ladies who had arrived that afternoon,
+at once conducted me upstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Already my mind was busy conjuring up visions of the fair lady of yester-eve.
+The landlady threw open a door and ushered me into a small room which reeked of
+stale food and damp clothes. I stepped in and found myself face to face with a
+large and exceedingly ugly old woman who rose with difficulty from the sofa as
+I entered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“M. Aristide Barrot,” she said as soon as the landlady had closed the door
+behind me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At your service, Madame,” I stammered. “But&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was indeed almost aghast. Never in my life had I seen anything so grotesque
+as this woman. To begin with she was more than ordinarily stout and
+unwieldy&mdash;indeed, she appeared like a veritable mountain of flesh; but
+what was so disturbing to my mind was that she was nothing but a hideous
+caricature of her lovely daughter, whose dainty features she grotesquely
+recalled. Her face was seamed and wrinkled, her white hair was plastered down
+above her yellow forehead. She wore an old-fashioned bonnet tied under her
+chin, and her huge bulk was draped in a large-patterned cashmere shawl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You expected to see my dear daughter beside me, my good M. Barrot,” she said
+after a while speaking with remarkable gentleness and dignity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I confess, Madame&mdash;” I murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah! the darling has sacrificed herself for my sake. We found to-day that
+though my son was out of the way, he had set his abominable servants to watch
+over us. Soon we realized that we could not both get away. It meant one of us
+staying behind to act the part of unconcern and to throw dust in the eyes of
+our jailers. My daughter&mdash;ah! she is an angel, Monsieur&mdash;feared that
+the disappointment and my son’s cruelty, when he returned on the morrow and
+found that he had been tricked, would seriously endanger my life. She decided
+that I must go and that she would remain.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But, Madame&mdash;” I protested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know, Monsieur,” she rejoined with the same calm dignity which already had
+commanded my respect, “I know that you think me a selfish old woman; but my
+Angèle&mdash;she is an angel, of a truth!&mdash;made all the arrangements, and
+I could not help but obey her. But have no fears for her safety, Monsieur. My
+son would not dare lay hands on her as often as he has done on me. Angèle will
+be brave, and our relations at St. Claude will, directly we arrive, make
+arrangements to go and fetch her and bring her back to me. My brother is an
+influential man; he would never have allowed my son to martyrize me and Angèle
+had he known what we have had to endure.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course I could not then tell her that all her fears for herself and the
+lovely Angèle could now be laid to rest. Her ruffianly son was even now being
+conveyed by Leroux and his gendarmes to the frontier, where the law would take
+its course. I was indeed not sorry for him. I was not sorry to think that he
+would end his evil life upon the guillotine or the gallows. I was only grieved
+for Angèle who would spend a night and a day, perhaps more, in agonized
+suspense, knowing nothing of the events which at one great swoop would free her
+and her beloved mother from the tyranny of a hated brother and send him to
+expiate his crimes. Not only did I grieve, Sir, for the tender victim of that
+man’s brutality, but I trembled for her safety. I did not know what minions or
+confederates Fournier-Berty had left in the lonely house yonder, or under what
+orders they were in case he did not return from his nocturnal expedition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indeed for the moment I felt so agitated at thought of that beautiful angel’s
+peril that I looked down with anger and scorn at the fat old woman who ought to
+have remained beside her daughter to comfort and to shield her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was on the point of telling her everything, and dragging her back to her post
+of duty which she should never have relinquished. Fortunately my sense of what
+I owed to my own professional dignity prevented my taking such a step. It was
+clearly not for me to argue. My first duty was to stand by this helpless woman
+in distress, who had been committed to my charge, and to convey her safely to
+St. Claude. After which I could see to it that Mademoiselle Angèle was brought
+along too as quickly as influential relatives could contrive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the meanwhile I derived some consolation from the thought that at any rate
+for the next four and twenty hours the lovely creature would be safe. No news
+of the arrest of Aristide Fournier could possibly reach the lonely house until
+I myself could return thither and take her under my protection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I said nothing; but with perfect gallantry, just as if fat Mme. Fournier had
+been a young and beautiful woman, I begged her to give herself the trouble of
+mounting into the carriage which was waiting for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It took time and trouble, Sir, to hoist that mass of solid flesh into the
+vehicle, and the driver grumbled not a little at the unexpected weight.
+However, his horses were powerful, wiry, mountain ponies, and we made headway
+through the darkness and along the smooth, departmental road at moderate speed.
+I may say that it was a miserably uncomfortable journey for me, sitting, as I
+was forced to do, on the narrow front seat of the carriage, without support for
+my head or room for my legs. But Madame’s bulk filled the whole of the back
+seat, and it never seemed to enter her head that I too might like the use of a
+cushion. However, even the worst moments and the weariest journeys must come to
+an end, and we reached the frontier in the small hours of the morning. Here we
+found the customs officials ready to render us any service we might require.
+Leroux had not failed to order the fresh relay of horses, and whilst these were
+being put to, the polite officers of the station gave Madame and myself some
+excellent coffee. Beyond the formal: “Madame has nothing to declare for His
+Majesty’s customs?” and my companion’s equally formal: “Nothing, Monsieur,
+except my personal belongings,” they did not ply us with questions, and after
+half an hour’s halt we again proceeded on our way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We reached St. Claude at daybreak, and following Madame’s directions, the
+driver pulled up in front of a large house in the Avenue du Jura. Again there
+was the same difficulty in hoisting the unwieldy lady out of the vehicle, but
+this time, in response to my vigorous pull at the outside bell, the concierge
+and another man came out of the house, and very respectfully they approached
+Madame and conveyed her into the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While they did so she apparently gave them some directions about myself, for
+anon the concierge returned, and with extreme politeness told me that Madame
+Fournier greatly hoped that I would stay in St. Claude a day or two as she had
+the desire to see me again very soon. She also honoured me with an invitation
+to dine with her that same evening at seven of the clock. This was the first
+time, I noticed, that the name Fournier was actually used in connexion with any
+of the people with whom I had become so dramatically involved. Not that I had
+ever doubted the identity of the ruffianly Ernest Berty; still it was very
+satisfactory to have my surmises confirmed. I concluded that the fine house in
+the Avenue du Jura belonged to Mme. Fournier’s brother, and I vaguely wondered
+who he was. The invitation to dinner had certainly been given in her name, and
+the servants had received her with a show of respect which suggested that she
+was more than a guest in her brother’s house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Be that as it may, I betook myself for the nonce to the Hôtel des Moines in the
+centre of the town and killed time for the rest of the day as best I could. For
+one thing I needed rest after the emotions and the fatigue of the past
+forty-eight hours. Remember, Sir, I had not slept for two nights and had spent
+the last eight hours on the narrow front seat of a jolting chaise. So I had a
+good rest in the afternoon, and at seven o’clock I presented myself once more
+at the house in the Avenue du Jura.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My intention was to retire early to bed after spending an agreeable evening
+with the family, who would no doubt overwhelm me with their gratitude, and at
+daybreak I would drive back to Gex after I had heard all the latest news from
+Leroux.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I confess that it was with a pardonable feeling of agitation that I tugged at
+the wrought-iron bell-pull on the perron of the magnificent mansion in the
+Avenue du Jura. To begin with I felt somewhat rueful at having to appear before
+ladies at this hour in my travelling clothes, and then, you will admit, Sir,
+that it was a somewhat awkward predicament for a man of highly sensitive
+temperament to meet on terms of equality a refined if stout lady whose son he
+had just helped to send to the gallows. Fortunately there was no likelihood of
+Mme. Fournier being as yet aware of this unpleasant fact: even if she did know
+at this hour that her son’s illicit adventure had come to grief, she could not
+possibly in her mind connect me with his ill-fortune. So I allowed the
+sumptuous valet to take my hat and coat and I followed him with as calm a
+demeanour as I could assume up the richly carpeted stairs. Obviously the
+relatives of Mme. Fournier were more than well to do. Everything in the house
+showed evidences of luxury, not to say wealth. I was ushered into an elegant
+salon wherein every corner showed traces of dainty feminine hands. There were
+embroidered silk cushions upon the sofa, lace covers upon the tables, whilst a
+work basket, filled with a riot of many coloured silks, stood invitingly open.
+And through the apartment, Sir, a scent of violets lingered and caressed my
+nostrils, reminding me of a beauteous creature in distress whom it had been my
+good fortune to succour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had waited less than five minutes when I heard a swift, elastic step
+approaching through the next room, and a second or so later, before I had time
+to take up an appropriate posture, the door was thrown open and the exquisite
+vision of my waking dreams&mdash;the beautiful Angèle&mdash; stood smiling
+before me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mademoiselle,” I stammered somewhat clumsily, for of a truth I was hardly able
+to recover my breath, and surprise had well nigh robbed me of speech, “how
+comes it that you are here?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She only smiled in reply, the most adorable smile I had ever seen on any human
+face, so full of joy, of mischief&mdash;aye, of triumph, was it. I asked after
+Madame. Again she smiled, and said Madame was in her room, resting from the
+fatigues of her journey. I had scarce recovered from my initial surprise when
+another&mdash;more complete still&mdash;confronted me. This was the appearance
+of Monsieur Aristide Fournier, whom I had fondly imagined already expiating his
+crimes in a frontier prison, but who now entered, also smiling, also extremely
+pleasant, who greeted me as if we were lifelong friends, and who then&mdash;I
+scarce could believe my eyes&mdash;placed his arm affectionately round his
+sister’s waist, while she turned her sweet face up to his and gave him a
+fond&mdash;nay, a loving look. A loving look to him who was a brute and a bully
+and a miscreant amenable to the gallows! True his appearance was completely
+changed: his eyes were bright and kindly, his mouth continued to smile, his
+manner was urbane in the extreme when he finally introduced himself to me as:
+“Aristide Fournier, my dear Monsieur Ratichon, at your service.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knew my name, he knew who I was! whilst I . . . I had to pass my hand once
+or twice over my forehead and to close and reopen my eyes several times, for,
+of a truth, it all seemed like a dream. I tried to stammer out a question or
+two, but I could only gasp, and the lovely Angèle appeared highly amused at my
+distress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let us dine,” she said gaily, “after which you may ask as many questions as
+you like.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In very truth I was in no mood for dinner. Puzzlement and anxiety appeared to
+grip me by the throat and to choke me. It was all very well for the beautiful
+creature to laugh and to make merry. She had cruelly deceived me, played upon
+the chords of my sensitive heart for purposes which no doubt would presently be
+made clear, but in the meanwhile since the smuggling of the English files had
+been successful&mdash;as it apparently was&mdash;what had become of Leroux and
+his gendarmes?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What tragedy had been enacted in the narrow gorge of St. Cergues, and what, oh!
+what had become of my hopes of that five thousand francs for the apprehension
+of the smugglers, promised me by Leroux? Can you wonder that for the moment the
+very thought of dinner was abhorrent to me? But only for the moment. The next a
+sumptuous valet had thrown open the folding-doors, and down the vista of the
+stately apartment I perceived a table richly laden with china and glass and
+silver, whilst a distinctly savoury odour was wafted to my nostrils.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We will not answer a single question,” the fair Angèle reiterated with
+adorable determination, “until after we have dined.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What, Sir, would you have done in my place? I believe that never until this
+hour had Hector Ratichon reached to such a sublimity of manner. I bowed with
+perfect dignity in token of obedience to the fair creature, Sir; then without a
+word I offered her my arm. She placed her hand upon it, and I conducted her to
+the dining-room, whilst Aristide Fournier, who at this hour should have been on
+a fair way to being hanged, followed in our wake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah! it seemed indeed a lovely dream: one that lasted through an excellent and
+copious dinner, and which turned to delightful reality when, over a final glass
+of succulent Madeira, Monsieur Aristide Fournier slowly counted out one hundred
+notes, worth one hundred francs each, and presented these to me with a gracious
+nod.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Your fee, Monsieur,” he said, “and allow me to say that never have I paid out
+so large a sum with such a willing hand.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I have done nothing,” I murmured from out the depths of my bewilderment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mademoiselle Angèle and Monsieur Fournier looked at one another, and, no doubt,
+I presented a very comical spectacle; for both of them burst into an
+uncontrollable fit of laughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Indeed, Monsieur,” quoth Monsieur Fournier as soon as he could speak
+coherently, “you have done everything that you set out to do and done it with
+perfect chivalry. You conveyed ‘the toys’ safely over the frontier as far as
+St. Claude.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But how?” I stammered, “how?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again Mademoiselle Angèle laughed, and through the ripples of her laughter came
+her merry words:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Maman was very fat, was she not, my good Monsieur Ratichon? Did you not think
+she was extraordinarily like me?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I caught the glance in her eyes, and they were literally glowing with mischief.
+Then all of a sudden I understood. She had impersonated a fat mother, covered
+her lovely face with lines, worn a disfiguring wig and an antiquated bonnet,
+and round her slender figure she had tucked away thousands of packages of
+English files. I could only gasp. Astonishment, not to say admiration, at her
+pluck literally took my breath away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But, Monsieur Berty?” I murmured, my mind in a turmoil, my thoughts running
+riot through my brain. “The Englishmen, the mules, the packs?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Monsieur Berty, as you see, stands before you now in the person of Monsieur
+Fournier,” she replied. “The Englishmen were three faithful servants who threw
+dust not only in your eyes, my dear M. Ratichon, but in those of the customs
+officials, while the packs contained harmless personal luggage which was taken
+by your friend and his gendarmes to the customs station at Mijoux, and there,
+after much swearing, equally solemnly released with many apologies to M.
+Fournier, who was allowed to proceed unmolested on his way, and who arrived
+here safely this afternoon, whilst Maman divested herself of her fat and once
+more became the slender Mme. Aristide Fournier, at your service.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She bobbed me a dainty curtsy, and I could only try and hide the pain which
+this last cruel stab had inflicted on my heart. So she was not “Mademoiselle”
+after all, and henceforth it would even be wrong to indulge in dreams of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the ten thousand francs crackled pleasantly in my breast pocket, and when I
+finally took leave of Monsieur Aristide Fournier and his charming wife, I was
+an exceedingly happy man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Leroux never forgave me. Of what he suspected me I do not know, or if he
+suspected me at all. He certainly must have known about fat Maman from the
+customs officials who had given us coffee at Mijoux.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he never mentioned the subject to me at all, nor has he spoken to me since
+that memorable night. To one of his colleagues he once said that no words in
+his vocabulary could possibly be adequate to express his feelings.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0006"></a>
+CHAPTER VI. &mdash; HONOUR AMONG &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</h2>
+
+<h3>1.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Ah, my dear Sir, it is easy enough to despise our profession, but believe me
+that all the finer qualities&mdash;those of loyalty and of truth&mdash;are
+essential, not only to us, but to our subordinates, if we are to succeed in
+making even a small competence out of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now let me give you an instance. Here was I, Hector Ratichon, settled in Paris
+in that eventful year 1816 which saw the new order of things finally swept
+aside and the old order resume its triumphant sway, which saw us all, including
+our God-given King Louis XVIII, as poor as the proverbial church mice and as
+eager for a bit of comfort and luxury as a hungry dog is for a bone; the year
+which saw the army disbanded and hordes of unemployed and unemployable men
+wandering disconsolate and half starved through the country seeking in vain for
+some means of livelihood, while the Allied troops, well fed and well clothed,
+stalked about as if the sacred soil of France was so much dirt under their
+feet; the year, my dear Sir, during which more intrigues were hatched and more
+plots concocted than in any previous century in the whole history of France. We
+were all trying to make money, since there was so precious little of it about.
+Those of us who had brains succeeded, and then not always.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, I had brains&mdash;I do not boast of them; they are a gift from
+Heaven&mdash;but I had them, and good looks, too, and a general air of
+strength, coupled with refinement, which was bound to appeal to anyone needing
+help and advice, and willing to pay for both, and yet&mdash;but you shall
+judge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You know my office in the Rue Daunou, you have been in it&mdash;plainly
+furnished; but, as I said, these were not days of luxury. There was an
+antechamber, too, where that traitor, blackmailer and thief, Theodore, my
+confidential clerk in those days, lodged at my expense and kept importunate
+clients at bay for what was undoubtedly a liberal salary&mdash;ten per cent, on
+all the profits of the business&mdash;and yet he was always complaining, the
+ungrateful, avaricious brute!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, Sir, on that day in September&mdash;it was the tenth, I
+remember&mdash;1816, I must confess that I was feeling exceedingly dejected.
+Not one client for the last three weeks, half a franc in my pocket, and nothing
+but a small quarter of Strasburg patty in the larder. Theodore had eaten most
+of it, and I had just sent him out to buy two sous’ worth of stale bread
+wherewith to finish the remainder. But after that? You will admit, Sir, that a
+less buoyant spirit would not have remained so long undaunted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was just cursing that lout Theodore inwardly, for he had been gone half an
+hour, and I strongly suspected him of having spent my two sous on a glass of
+absinthe, when there was a ring at the door, and I, Hector Ratichon, the
+confidant of kings and intimate counsellor of half the aristocracy in the
+kingdom, was forced to go and open the door just like a common lackey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But here the sight which greeted my eyes fully compensated me for the temporary
+humiliation, for on the threshold stood a gentleman who had wealth written
+plainly upon his fine clothes, upon the dainty linen at his throat and wrists,
+upon the quality of his rich satin necktie and the perfect set of his fine
+cloth pantaloons, which were of an exquisite shade of dove-grey. When, then,
+the apparition spoke, inquiring with just a sufficiency of aristocratic hauteur
+whether M. Hector Ratichon were in, you cannot be surprised, my dear Sir, that
+my dejection fell from me like a cast-off mantle and that all my usual urbanity
+of manner returned to me as I informed the elegant gentleman that M. Ratichon
+was even now standing before him, and begged him to take the trouble to pass
+through into my office.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This he did, and I placed a chair in position for him. He sat down, having
+previously dusted the chair with a graceful sweep of his lace-edged
+handkerchief. Then he raised a gold-rimmed eyeglass to his right eye with a
+superlatively elegant gesture, and surveyed me critically for a moment or two
+ere he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am told, my good M. Ratichon, that you are a trustworthy fellow, and one who
+is willing to undertake a delicate piece of business for a moderate
+honorarium.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Except for the fact that I did not like the word “moderate,” I was enchanted
+with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Rumour for once has not lied, Monsieur,” I replied in my most attractive
+manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” he rejoined&mdash;I won’t say curtly, but with businesslike brevity,
+“for all purposes connected with the affair which I desire to treat with you my
+name, as far as you are concerned, shall be Jean Duval. Understand?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perfectly, Monsieur le Marquis,” I replied with a bland smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a wild guess, but I don’t think that I underestimated my new client’s
+rank, for he did not wince.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know Mlle. Mars?” he queried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The actress?” I replied. “Perfectly.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She is playing in <i>Le Rêve</i> at the Theatre Royal just now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She is.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In the first and third acts of the play she wears a gold bracelet set with
+large green stones.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I noticed it the other night. I had a seat in the parterre, I may say.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I want that bracelet,” broke in the soi-disant Jean Duval unceremoniously.
+“The stones are false, the gold strass. I admire Mlle. Mars immensely. I
+dislike seeing her wearing false jewellery. I wish to have the bracelet copied
+in real stones, and to present it to her as a surprise on the occasion of the
+twenty-fifth performance of <i>Le Rêve</i>. It will cost me a king’s ransom,
+and her, for the time being, an infinite amount of anxiety. She sets great
+store by the valueless trinket solely because of the merit of its design, and I
+want its disappearance to have every semblance of a theft. All the greater will
+be the lovely creature’s pleasure when, at my hands, she will receive an
+infinitely precious jewel the exact counterpart in all save its intrinsic value
+of the trifle which she had thought lost.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It all sounded deliciously romantic. A flavour of the past century&mdash;before
+the endless war and abysmal poverty had killed all chivalry in us&mdash;clung
+to this proposed transaction. There was nothing of the roturier, nothing of a
+Jean Duval, in this polished man of the world who had thought out this subtle
+scheme for ingratiating himself in the eyes of his lady fair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I murmured an appropriate phrase, placing my services entirely at M. le
+Marquis’s disposal, and once more he broke in on my polished diction with that
+brusquerie which betrayed the man accustomed to be silently obeyed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mlle. Mars wears the bracelet,” he said, “during the third act of <i>Le
+Rêve</i>. At the end of the act she enters her dressing-room, and her maid
+helps her to change her dress. During this entr’acte Mademoiselle with her own
+hands puts by all the jewellery which she has to wear during the more gorgeous
+scenes of the play. In the last act&mdash;the finale of the tragedy&mdash;she
+appears in a plain stuff gown, whilst all her jewellery reposes in the small
+iron safe in her dressing-room. It is while Mademoiselle is on the stage during
+the last act that I want you to enter her dressing-room and to extract the
+bracelet out of the safe for me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I, M. le Marquis?” I stammered. “I, to steal a&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Firstly, M.&mdash;er&mdash;er&mdash;Ratichon, or whatever your confounded name
+may be,” interposed my client with inimitable hauteur, “understand that my name
+is Jean Duval, and if you forget this again I shall be under the necessity of
+laying my cane across your shoulders and incidentally to take my business
+elsewhere. Secondly, let me tell you that your affectations of outraged probity
+are lost on me, seeing that I know all about the stolen treaty which&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Enough, M. Jean Duval,” I said with a dignity equal, if not greater, than his
+own; “do not, I pray you, misunderstand me. I am ready to do you service. But
+if you will deign to explain how I am to break open an iron safe inside a
+crowded building and extract therefrom a trinket, without being caught in the
+act and locked up for house-breaking and theft, I shall be eternally your
+debtor.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The extracting of the trinket is your affair,” he rejoined dryly. “I will give
+you five hundred francs if you bring the bracelet to me within fourteen days.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But&mdash;” I stammered again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Your task will not be such a difficult one after all. I will give you the
+duplicate key of the safe.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dived into the breast pocket of his coat, and drew from it a somewhat large
+and clumsy key, which he placed upon my desk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I managed to get that easily enough,” he said nonchalantly, “a couple of
+nights ago, when I had the honour of visiting Mademoiselle in her
+dressing-room. A piece of wax in my hand, Mademoiselle’s momentary absorption
+in her reflection while her maid was doing her hair, and the impression of the
+original key was in my possession. But between taking a model of the key and
+the actual theft of the bracelet out of the safe there is a wide gulf which a
+gentleman cannot bridge over. Therefore, I choose to employ you,
+M.&mdash;er&mdash;er&mdash;Ratichon, to complete the transaction for me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“For five hundred francs?” I queried blandly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is a fair sum,” he argued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Make it a thousand,” I rejoined firmly, “and you shall have the bracelet
+within fourteen days.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He paused a moment in order to reflect; his steel-grey eyes, cool and
+disdainful, were fixed searchingly on my face. I pride myself on the way that I
+bear that kind of scrutiny, so even now I looked bland and withal purposeful
+and capable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very well,” he said, after a few moments, and he rose from his chair as he
+spoke; “it shall be a thousand francs, M.&mdash;er&mdash;er&mdash;Ratichon, and
+I will hand over the money to you in exchange for the bracelet&mdash;but it
+must be done within fourteen days, remember.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I tried to induce him to give me a small sum on account. I was about to take
+terrible risks, remember; housebreaking, larceny, theft&mdash;call it what you
+will, it meant the <i>police correctionelle</i> and a couple of years in New
+Orleans for sure. He finally gave me fifty francs, and once more threatened to
+take his business elsewhere, so I had to accept and to look as urbane and
+dignified as I could.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was out of the office and about to descend the stairs when a thought struck
+me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where and how can I communicate with M. Jean Duval,” I asked, “when my work is
+done?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will call here,” he replied, “at ten o’clock of every morning that follows a
+performance of <i>Le Rêve</i>. We can complete our transaction then across your
+office desk.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next moment he was gone. Theodore passed him on the stairs and asked me,
+with one of his impertinent leers, whether we had a new client and what we
+might expect from him. I shrugged my shoulders. “A new client!” I said
+disdainfully. “Bah! Vague promises of a couple of louis for finding out if
+Madame his wife sees more of a certain captain of the guards than Monsieur the
+husband cares about.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Theodore sniffed. He always sniffs when financial matters are on the tapis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Anything on account?” he queried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A paltry ten francs,” I replied, “and I may as well give you your share of it
+now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I tossed a franc to him across the desk. By the terms of my contract with him,
+you understand, he was entitled to ten per cent, of every profit accruing from
+the business in lieu of wages, but in this instance do you not think that I was
+justified in looking on one franc now, and perhaps twenty when the transaction
+was completed, as a more than just honorarium for his share in it? Was I not
+taking all the risks in this delicate business? Would it be fair for me to give
+him a hundred francs for sitting quietly in the office or sipping absinthe at a
+neighbouring bar whilst I risked New Orleans&mdash;not to speak of the gallows?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave me a strange look as he picked up the silver franc, spat on it for
+luck, bit it with his great yellow teeth to ascertain if it were counterfeit or
+genuine, and finally slipped it into his pocket, and shuffled out of the office
+whistling through his teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An abominably low, deceitful creature, that Theodore, you will see anon. But I
+won’t anticipate.
+</p>
+
+<h3>2.</h3>
+
+<p>
+The next performance of <i>Le Rêve</i> was announced for the following evening,
+and I started on my campaign. As you may imagine, it did not prove an easy
+matter. To obtain access through the stage-door to the back of the theatre was
+one thing&mdash;a franc to the doorkeeper had done the trick&mdash;to mingle
+with the scene-shifters, to talk with the supers, to take off my hat with every
+form of deep respect to the principals had been equally simple.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had even succeeded in placing a bouquet on the dressing-table of the great
+tragedienne on my second visit to the theatre. Her dressing-room door had been
+left ajar during that memorable fourth act which was to see the consummation of
+my labours. I had the bouquet in my hand, having brought it expressly for that
+purpose. I pushed open the door, and found myself face to face with a young
+though somewhat forbidding damsel, who peremptorily demanded what my business
+might be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In order to minimise the risk of subsequent trouble, I had assumed the disguise
+of a middle-aged Angliche&mdash;red side-whiskers, florid complexion, a
+ginger-coloured wig plastered rigidly over the ears towards the temples, high
+stock collar, nankeen pantaloons, a patch over one eye and an eyeglass fixed in
+the other. My own sainted mother would never have known me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With becoming diffidence I explained in broken French that my deep though
+respectful admiration of Mlle. Mars had prompted me to lay a floral tribute at
+her feet. I desired nothing more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The damsel eyed me coldly, though at the moment I was looking quite my best,
+diffident yet courteous, a perfect gentleman of the old regime. Then she took
+the bouquet from me and put it down on the dressing-table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I fancied that she smiled, not unkindly, and I ventured to pass the time of
+day. She replied not altogether disapprovingly. She sat down by the
+dressing-table and took up some needlework which she had obviously thrown aside
+on my arrival. Close by, on the floor, was a solid iron chest with huge
+ornamental hinges and a large escutcheon over the lock. It stood about a foot
+high and perhaps a couple of feet long.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was nothing else in the room that suggested a receptacle for jewellery;
+this, therefore, was obviously the safe which contained the bracelet. At the
+self-same second my eyes alighted on a large and clumsy-looking key which lay
+upon the dressing-table, and my hand at once wandered instinctively to the
+pocket of my coat and closed convulsively on the duplicate one which the
+soi-disant Jean Duval had given me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I talked eloquently for a while. The damsel answered in monosyllables, but she
+sat unmoved at needlework, and after ten minutes or so I was forced to beat a
+retreat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I returned to the charge at the next performance of <i>Le Rêve</i>, this time
+with a box of bonbons for the maid instead of the bouquet for the mistress. The
+damsel was quite amenable to a little conversation, quite willing that I should
+dally in her company. She munched the bonbons and coquetted a little with me.
+But she went on stolidly with her needlework, and I could see that nothing
+would move her out of that room, where she had obviously been left in charge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I bethought me of Theodore. I realised that I could not carry this affair
+through successfully without his help. So I gave him a further five
+francs&mdash;as I said to him it was out of my own savings&mdash;and I assured
+him that a certain M. Jean Duval had promised me a couple of hundred francs
+when the business which he had entrusted to me was satisfactorily concluded. It
+was for this business&mdash;so I explained&mdash;that I required his help, and
+he seemed quite satisfied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His task was, of course, a very easy one. What a contrast to the risk I was
+about to run! Twenty-five francs, my dear Sir, just for knocking at the door of
+Mlle. Mars’ dressing-room during the fourth act, whilst I was engaged in
+conversation with the attractive guardian of the iron safe, and to say in
+well-assumed, breathless tones:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mademoiselle Mars has been taken suddenly unwell on the stage. Will her maid
+go to her at once?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was some little distance from the dressing-room to the wings&mdash;down a
+flight of ill-lighted stone stairs which demanded cautious ascent and descent.
+Theodore had orders to obstruct the maid during her progress as much as he
+could without rousing her suspicions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I reckoned that she would be fully three minutes going, questioning, finding
+out that the whole thing was a hoax, and running back to the
+dressing-room&mdash;three minutes in which to open the chest, extract the
+bracelet and, incidentally, anything else of value there might be close to my
+hand. Well, I had thought of that eventuality, too; one must think of
+everything, you know&mdash;that is where genius comes in. Then, if possible,
+relock the safe, so that the maid, on her return, would find everything
+apparently in order and would not, perhaps, raise the alarm until I was safely
+out of the theatre.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It could be done&mdash;oh, yes, it could be done&mdash;with a minute to spare!
+And to-morrow at ten o’clock M. Jean Duval would appear, and I would not part
+with the bracelet until a thousand francs had passed from his pocket into mine.
+I must get Theodore out of the house, by the way, before the arrival of M.
+Duval.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A thousand francs! I had not seen a thousand francs all at once for years. What
+a dinner I would have tomorrow! There was a certain little restaurant in the
+Rue des Pipots where they concocted a cassolette of goose liver and pork chops
+with haricot beans which . . . ! I only tell you that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How I got through the rest of that day I cannot tell you. The evening found
+me&mdash;quite an habitué now&mdash;behind the stage of the Theatre Royal,
+nodding to one or two acquaintances, most of the people looking on me with
+grave respect and talking of me as the eccentric milor. I was supposed to be
+pining for an introduction to the great tragedienne, who, very exclusive as
+usual, had so far given me the cold shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ten minutes after the rise of the curtain on the fourth act I was in the
+dressing-room, presenting the maid with a gold locket which I had bought from a
+cheapjack’s barrow for five and twenty francs&mdash;almost the last of the
+fifty which I had received from M. Duval on account. The damsel was eyeing the
+locket somewhat disdainfully and giving me grudging thanks for it when there
+came a hurried knock at the door. The next moment Theodore poked his ugly face
+into the room. He, too, had taken the precaution of assuming an excellent
+disguise&mdash;peaked cap set aslant over one eye, grimy face, the blouse of a
+scene-shifter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mlle. Mars,” he gasped breathlessly; “she has been taken ill&mdash;on the
+stage&mdash;very suddenly. She is in the wings&mdash;asking for her maid. They
+think she will faint.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The damsel rose, visibly frightened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll come at once,” she said, and without the slightest flurry she picked up
+the key of the safe and slipped it into her pocket. I fancied that she gave me
+a look as she did this. Oh, she was a pearl among Abigails! Then she pointed
+unceremoniously to the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Milor!” was all she said, but of course I understood. I had no idea that
+English milors could be thus treated by pert maidens. But what cared I for
+social amenities just then? My hand had closed over the duplicate key of the
+safe, and I walked out of the room in the wake of the damsel. Theodore had
+disappeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once in the passage, the girl started to run. A second or two later I heard the
+patter of her high-heeled shoes down the stone stairs. I had not a moment to
+lose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To slip back into the dressing-room was but an instant’s work. The next I was
+kneeling in front of the chest. The key fitted the lock accurately; one turn,
+and the lid flew open.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chest was filled with a miscellaneous collection of theatrical properties
+all lying loose&mdash;showy necklaces, chains, pendants, all of them obviously
+false; but lying beneath them, and partially hidden by the meretricious
+ornaments, were one or two boxes covered with velvet such as jewellers use. My
+keen eyes noted these at once. I was indeed in luck! For the moment, however,
+my hand fastened on a leather case which reposed on the top in one corner, and
+which very obviously, from its shape, contained a bracelet. My hands did not
+tremble, though I was quivering with excitement. I opened the case. There,
+indeed, was the bracelet&mdash;the large green stones, the magnificent gold
+setting, the whole jewel dazzlingly beautiful. If it were real&mdash;the
+thought flashed through my mind&mdash;it would be indeed priceless. I closed
+the case and put it on the dressing-table beside me. I had at least another
+minute to spare&mdash;sixty seconds wherein to dive for those velvet-covered
+boxes which&mdash; My hand was on one of them when a slight noise caused me
+suddenly to turn and to look behind me. It all happened as quickly as a flash
+of lightning. I just saw a man disappearing through the door. One glance at the
+dressing-table showed me the whole extent of my misfortune. The case containing
+the bracelet had gone, and at that precise moment I heard a commotion from the
+direction of the stairs and a woman screaming at the top of her voice: “Thief!
+Stop thief!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, Sir, I brought upon the perilous situation that presence of mind for
+which the name of Hector Ratichon will for ever remain famous. Without a single
+flurried movement, I slipped one of the velvet-covered cases which I still had
+in my hand into the breast pocket of my coat, I closed down the lid of the iron
+chest and locked it with the duplicate key, and I went out of the room, closing
+the door behind me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The passage was dark. The damsel was running up the stairs with a couple of
+stage hands behind her. She was explaining to them volubly, and to the
+accompaniment of sundry half-hysterical little cries, the infamous hoax to
+which she had fallen a victim. You might think, Sir, that here was I caught
+like a rat in a trap, and with that velvet-covered case in my breast pocket by
+way of damning evidence against me!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not at all, Sir! Not at all! Not so is Hector Ratichon, the keenest secret
+agent France has ever known, the confidant of kings, brought to earth by an
+untoward move of fate. Even before the damsel and the stage hands had reached
+the top of the stairs and turned into the corridor, which was on my left, I had
+slipped round noiselessly to my right and found shelter in a narrow doorway,
+where I was screened by the surrounding darkness and by a projection of the
+frame. While the three of them made straight for Mademoiselle’s dressing-room,
+and spent some considerable time there in uttering varied ejaculations when
+they found the place and the chest to all appearances untouched, I slipped out
+of my hiding-place, sped rapidly along the corridor, and was soon half-way down
+the stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here my habitual composure in the face of danger stood me in good stead. It
+enabled me to walk composedly and not too hurriedly through the crowd behind
+the scenes&mdash;supers, scene-shifters, principals, none of whom seemed to be
+aware as yet of the hoax practised on Mademoiselle Mars’ maid; and I reckon
+that I was out of the stage door exactly five minutes after Theodore had called
+the damsel away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I was minus the bracelet, and in my mind there was the firm conviction that
+that traitor Theodore had played me one of his abominable tricks. As I said,
+the whole thing had occurred as quickly as a flash of lightning, but even so my
+keen, experienced eyes had retained the impression of a peaked cap and the
+corner of a blue blouse as they disappeared through the dressing-room door.
+</p>
+
+<h3>3.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Tact, wariness and strength were all required, you must admit, in order to deal
+with the present delicate situation. I was speeding along the Rue de Richelieu
+on my way to my office. My intention was to spend the night there, where I had
+a chair-bedstead on which I had oft before slept soundly after a day’s hard
+work, and anyhow it was too late to go to my lodgings at Passy at this hour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Moreover, Theodore slept in the antechamber of the office, and I was more
+firmly convinced than ever that it was he who had stolen the bracelet.
+“Blackleg! Thief! Traitor!” I mused. “But thou hast not done with Hector
+Ratichon yet.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the meanwhile I bethought me of the velvet-covered box in my breast pocket,
+and of the ginger-coloured hair and whiskers that I was still wearing, and
+which might prove an unpleasant “piece de conviction” in case the police were
+after the stolen bracelet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a view to examining the one and getting rid of the other, I turned into
+the Square Louvois, which, as usual, was very dark and wholly deserted. Here I
+took off my wig and whiskers and threw them over the railings into the garden.
+Then I drew the velvet-covered box from my pocket, opened it, and groped for
+its contents. Imagine my feelings, my dear Sir, when I realised that the case
+was empty! Fate was indeed against me that night. I had been fooled and cheated
+by a traitor, and had risked New Orleans and worse for an empty box.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment I must confess that I lost that imperturbable sang-froid which is
+the admiration of all my friends, and with a genuine oath I flung the case over
+the railings in the wake of the milor’s hair and whiskers. Then I hurried home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Theodore had not returned. He did not come in until the small hours of the
+morning, and then he was in a state that I can only describe, with your
+permission, as hoggish. He could hardly speak. I had him at my mercy. Neither
+tact nor wariness was required for the moment. I stripped him to his skin; he
+only laughed like an imbecile. His eyes had a horrid squint in them; he was
+hideous. I found five francs in one of his pockets, but neither in his clothes
+nor on his person did I find the bracelet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What have you done with it?” I cried, for by this time I was maddened with
+rage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know what you are talking about!” he stammered thickly, as he tottered
+towards his bed. “Give me back my five francs, you thief!” the brutish creature
+finally blurted out ere he fell into a hog-like sleep.
+</p>
+
+<h3>4.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Desperate evils need desperate remedies. I spent the rest of the night thinking
+hard. By the time that dawn was breaking my mind was made up. Theodore’s
+stertorous breathing assured me that he was still insentient. I was muscular in
+those days, and he a meagre, attenuated, drink-sodden creature. I lifted him
+out of his bed in the antechamber and carried him into mine in the office. I
+found a coil of rope, and strapped him tightly in the chair-bedstead so that he
+could not move. I tied a scarf round his mouth so that he could not scream.
+Then, at six o’clock, when the humbler eating-houses begin to take down their
+shutters, I went out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had Theodore’s five francs in my pocket, and I was desperately hungry. I
+spent ten sous on a cup of coffee and a plate of fried onions and haricot
+beans, and three francs on a savoury pie, highly flavoured with garlic, and a
+quarter-bottle of excellent cognac. I drank the coffee and ate the onions and
+the beans, and I took the pie and cognac home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I placed a table close to the chair-bedstead and on it I disposed the pie and
+the cognac in such a manner that the moment Theodore woke his eyes were bound
+to alight on them. Then I waited. I absolutely ached to have a taste of that
+pie myself, it smelt so good, but I waited.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Theodore woke at nine o’clock. He struggled like a fool, but he still appeared
+half dazed. No doubt he thought that he was dreaming. Then I sat down on the
+edge of the bed and cut myself off a large piece of the pie. I ate it with
+marked relish in front of Theodore, whose eyes nearly started out of their
+sockets. Then I brewed myself a cup of coffee. The mingled odour of coffee and
+garlic filled the room. It was delicious. I thought that Theodore would have a
+fit. The veins stood out on his forehead and a kind of gurgle came from behind
+the scarf round his mouth. Then I told him he could partake of the pie and
+coffee if he told me what he had done with the bracelet. He shook his head
+furiously, and I left the pie, the cognac and the coffee on the table before
+him and went into the antechamber, closing the office door behind me, and
+leaving him to meditate on his treachery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What I wanted to avoid above everything was the traitor meeting M. Jean Duval.
+He had the bracelet&mdash;of that I was as convinced as that I was alive. But
+what could he do with a piece of false jewellery? He could not dispose of it,
+save to a vendor of theatrical properties, who no doubt was well acquainted
+with the trinket and would not give more than a couple of francs for what was
+obviously stolen property. After all, I had promised Theodore twenty francs; he
+would not be such a fool as to sell that birthright for a mess of pottage and
+the sole pleasure of doing me a bad turn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no doubt in my mind that he had put the thing away somewhere in what
+he considered a safe place pending a reward being offered by Mlle. Mars for the
+recovery of the bracelet. The more I thought of this the more convinced I was
+that that was, indeed, his proposed plan of action&mdash;oh, how I loathed the
+blackleg!&mdash;and mine henceforth would be to dog his every footstep and
+never let him out of my sight until I forced him to disgorge his ill-gotten
+booty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At ten o’clock M. Jean Duval arrived, as was his wont, supercilious and brusque
+as usual. I was just explaining to him that I hoped to have excellent news for
+him after the next performance of <i>Le Rêve</i> when there was a peremptory
+ring at the bell. I went to open the door, and there stood a police inspector
+in uniform with a sheaf of papers in his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, I am not over-fond of our Paris police; they poke their noses in where
+they are least wanted. Their incompetence favours the machinations of rogues
+and frustrates the innocent ambitions of the just. However, in this instance
+the inspector looked amiable enough, though his manner, I must say, was, as
+usual, unpleasantly curt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Here, Ratichon,” he said, “there has been an impudent theft of a valuable
+bracelet out of Mademoiselle Mars’ dressing-room at the Theatre Royal last
+night. You and your mate frequent all sorts of places of ill-fame; you may hear
+something of the affair.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I chose to ignore the insult, and the inspector detached a paper from the sheaf
+which he held and threw it across the table to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There is a reward of two thousand five hundred francs,” he said, “for the
+recovery of the bracelet. You will find on that paper an accurate description
+of the jewel. It contains the celebrated Maroni emerald, presented to the
+ex-Emperor by the Sultan, and given by him to Mlle. Mars.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whereupon he turned unceremoniously on his heel and went, leaving me face to
+face with the man who had so shamefully tried to swindle me. I turned, and
+resting my elbow on the table and my chin in my hand, I looked mutely on the
+soi-disant Jean Duval and equally mutely pointed with an accusing finger to the
+description of the famous bracelet which he had declared to me was merely
+strass and base metal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he had the impudence to turn on me before I could utter a syllable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where is the bracelet?” he demanded. “You consummate liar, you! Where is it?
+You stole it last night! What have you done with it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I extracted, at your request,” I replied with as much dignity as I could
+command, “a piece of theatrical jewellery, which you stated to me to be
+worthless, out of an iron chest, the key of which you placed in my hands. I . .
+.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Enough of this rubbish!” he broke in roughly. “You have the bracelet. Give it
+me now, or . . .”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He broke off and looked somewhat alarmed in the direction of the office door,
+from the other side of which there had just come a loud crash, followed by
+loud, if unintelligible, vituperation. What had happened I could not guess; all
+that I could do was to carry off the situation as boldly as I dared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You shall have the bracelet, Sir,” I said in my most suave manner. “You shall
+have it, but not unless you will pay me three thousand francs for it. I can get
+two thousand five hundred by taking it straight to Mlle. Mars.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And be taken up by the police for stealing it,” he retorted. “How will you
+explain its being in your possession?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I did not blanch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is my affair,” I replied. “Will you give me three thousand francs for it?
+It is worth sixty thousand francs to a clever thief like you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You hound!” he cried, livid with rage, and raised his cane as if he would
+strike me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Aye, it was cleverly done, M. Jean Duval, whoever you may be. I know that the
+gentleman-thief is a modern product of the old regime, but I did not know that
+the fraternity could show such a fine specimen as yourself. Pay Hector Ratichon
+a thousand francs for stealing a bracelet for you worth sixty! Indeed, M. Jean
+Duval, you deserved to succeed!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again he shook his cane at me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you touch me,” I declared boldly, “I shall take the bracelet at once to
+Mlle. Mars.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He bit his lip and made a great effort to pull himself together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I haven’t three thousand francs by me,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go, fetch the money,” I retorted, “and I’ll fetch the bracelet.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He demurred for a while, but I was firm, and after he had threatened to thrash
+me, to knock me down, and to denounce me to the police, he gave in and went to
+fetch the money.
+</p>
+
+<h3>5.</h3>
+
+<p>
+When I remembered Theodore&mdash;Theodore, whom only a thin partition wall had
+separated from the full knowledge of the value of his ill-gotten
+treasure!&mdash;I could have torn my hair out by the roots with the magnitude
+of my rage. He, the traitor, the blackleg, was about to triumph, where I,
+Hector Ratichon, had failed! He had but to take the bracelet to Mlle. Mars
+himself and obtain the munificent reward whilst I, after I had taken so many
+risks and used all the brains and tact wherewith Nature had endowed me, would
+be left with the meagre remnants of the fifty francs which M. Jean Duval had so
+grudgingly thrown to me. Twenty-five francs for a gold locket, ten francs for a
+bouquet, another ten for bonbons, and five for gratuities to the
+stage-doorkeeper! Make the calculation, my good Sir, and see what I had left.
+If it had not been for the five francs which I had found in Theodore’s pocket
+last night, I would at this moment not only have been breakfastless, but also
+absolutely penniless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As it was, my final hope&mdash;and that a meagre one&mdash;was to arouse one
+spark of honesty in the breast of the arch-traitor, and either by cajolery or
+threats, to induce him to share his ill-gotten spoils with me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had left him snoring and strapped to the chair-bedstead, and when I opened
+the office door I was marvelling in my mind whether I could really bear to see
+him dying slowly of starvation with that savoury pie tantalizingly under his
+nose. The crash which I had heard a few minutes ago prepared me for a change of
+scene. Even so, I confess that the sight which I beheld glued me to the
+threshold. There sat Theodore at the table, finishing the last morsel of pie,
+whilst the chair-bedstead lay in a tangled heap upon the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I cannot tell you how nasty he was to me about the whole thing, although I
+showed myself at once ready to forgive him all his lies and his treachery, and
+was at great pains to explain to him how I had given up my own bed and strapped
+him into it solely for the benefit of his health, seeing that at the moment he
+was threatened with delirium tremens.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He would not listen to reason or to the most elementary dictates of friendship.
+Having poured the vials of his bilious temper over my devoted head, he became
+as perverse and as obstinate as a mule. With the most consummate impudence I
+ever beheld in any human being, he flatly denied all knowledge of the bracelet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whilst I talked he stalked past me into the ante-chamber, where he at once
+busied himself in collecting all his goods and chattels. These he stuffed into
+his pockets until he appeared to be bulging all over his ugly-body; then he
+went to the door ready to go out. On the threshold he turned and gave me a
+supercilious glance over his shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Take note, my good Ratichon,” he said, “that our partnership is dissolved as
+from to-morrow, the twentieth day of September.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“As from this moment, you infernal scoundrel!” I cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he did not pause to listen, and slammed the door in my face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For two or three minutes I remained quite still, whilst I heard the shuffling
+footsteps slowly descending the corridor. Then I followed him, quietly,
+surreptitiously, as a fox will follow its prey. He never turned round once, but
+obviously he knew that he was being followed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I will not weary you, my dear Sir, with the details of the dance which he led
+me in and about Paris during the whole of that memorable day. Never a morsel
+passed my lips from breakfast to long after sundown. He tried every trick known
+to the profession to throw me off the scent. But I stuck to him like a leech.
+When he sauntered I sauntered; when he ran I ran; when he glued his nose to the
+window of an eating house I halted under a doorway close by; when he went to
+sleep on a bench in the Luxembourg Gardens I watched over him as a mother over
+a babe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Towards evening&mdash;it was an hour after sunset and the street-lamps were
+just being lighted&mdash;he must have thought that he had at last got rid of
+me; for, after looking carefully behind him, he suddenly started to walk much
+faster and with an amount of determination which he had lacked hitherto. I
+marvelled if he was not making for the Rue Daunou, where was situated the
+squalid tavern of ill-fame which he was wont to frequent. I was not mistaken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I tracked the traitor to the corner of the street, and saw him disappear
+beneath the doorway of the Taverne des Trois Tigres. I resolved to follow. I
+had money in my pocket&mdash;about twenty-five sous&mdash;and I was mightily
+thirsty. I started to run down the street, when suddenly Theodore came rushing
+back out of the tavern, hatless and breathless, and before I succeeded in
+dodging him he fell into my arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My money!” he said hoarsely. “I must have my money at once! You thief! You . .
+.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once again my presence of mind stood me in good stead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pull yourself together, Theodore,” I said with much dignity, “and do not make
+a scene in the open street.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Theodore was not at all prepared to pull himself together. He was livid
+with rage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I had five francs in my pocket last night!” he cried. “You have stolen them,
+you abominable rascal!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And you stole from me a bracelet worth three thousand francs to the firm,” I
+retorted. “Give me that bracelet and you shall have your money back.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t,” he blurted out desperately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How do you mean, you can’t?” I exclaimed, whilst a horrible fear like an icy
+claw suddenly gripped at my heart. “You haven’t lost it, have you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Worse!” he cried, and fell up against me in semi-unconsciousness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I shook him violently. I bellowed in his ear, and suddenly, after that one
+moment of apparent unconsciousness, he became, not only wide awake, but as
+strong as a lion and as furious as a bull. We closed in on one another. He
+hammered at me with his fists, calling me every kind of injurious name he could
+think of, and I had need of all my strength to ward off his attacks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a few moments no one took much notice of us. Fracas and quarrels outside
+the drinking-houses in the mean streets of Paris were so frequent these days
+that the police did not trouble much about them. But after a while Theodore
+became so violent that I was forced to call vigorously for help. I thought he
+meant to murder me. People came rushing out of the tavern, and someone very
+officiously started whistling for the gendarmes. This had the effect of
+bringing Theodore to his senses. He calmed down visibly, and before the crowd
+had had time to collect round us we had both sauntered off, walking in apparent
+amity side by side down the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But at the first corner Theodore halted, and this time he confined himself to
+gripping me by the arm with one hand whilst with the other he grasped one of
+the buttons of my coat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That five francs,” he said in a hoarse, half-choked voice. “I must have that
+five francs! Can’t you see that I can’t have that bracelet till I have my five
+francs wherewith to redeem it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To redeem it!” I gasped. I was indeed glad then that he held me by the arm,
+for it seemed to me as if I was falling down a yawning abyss which had opened
+at my feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Theodore, and his voice sounded as if it came from a great distance
+and through cotton-wool,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I knew that you would be after that bracelet like a famished hyena after a
+bone, so I tied it securely inside the pocket of the blouse I was wearing, and
+left this with Legros, the landlord of the Trois Tigres. It was a good blouse;
+he lent me five francs on it. Of course, he knew nothing about the bracelet
+then. But he only lends money to clients in this manner on the condition that
+it is repaid within twenty-four hours. I have got to pay him back before eight
+o’clock this evening or he will dispose of the blouse as he thinks best. It is
+close on eight o’clock now. Give me back my five francs, you confounded thief,
+before Legros has time to discover the bracelet! We’ll share the reward, I
+promise you. Faith of an honest man. You liar, you cheat, you&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What was the use of talking? I had not got five francs. I had spent ten sous in
+getting myself some breakfast, and three francs in a savoury pie flavoured with
+garlic and in a quarter of a bottle of cognac. I groaned aloud. I had exactly
+twenty-five sous left.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We went back to the tavern hoping against hope that Legros had not yet turned
+out the pockets of the blouse, and that we might induce him, by threat or
+cajolery or the usurious interest of twenty-five sous, to grant his client a
+further twenty-four hours wherein to redeem the pledge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One glance at the interior of the tavern, however, told us that all our hopes
+were in vain. Legros, the landlord, was even then turning the blouse over and
+over, whilst his hideous hag of a wife was talking to the police inspector, who
+was showing her the paper that announced the offer of two thousand five hundred
+francs for the recovery of a valuable bracelet, the property of Mlle. Mars, the
+distinguished tragedienne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We only waited one minute with our noses glued against the windows of the Trois
+Tigres, just long enough to see Legros extracting the leather case from the
+pocket of the blouse, just long enough to hear the police inspector saying
+peremptorily:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You, Legros, ought to be able to let the police know who stole the bracelet.
+You must know who left that blouse with you last night.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then we both fled incontinently down the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, Sir, was I not right when I said that honour and loyalty are the essential
+qualities in our profession? If Theodore had not been such a liar and such a
+traitor, he and I, between us, would have been richer by three thousand francs
+that day.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0007"></a>
+CHAPTER VII. &mdash; AN OVER-SENSITIVE HEART</h2>
+
+<h3>1.</h3>
+
+<p>
+No doubt, Sir, that you have noticed during the course of our conversations
+that Nature has endowed me with an over-sensitive heart. I feel keenly, Sir,
+very keenly. Blows dealt me by Fate, or, as has been more often the case, by
+the cruel and treacherous hand of man, touch me on the raw. I suffer acutely. I
+am highly strung. I am one of those rare beings whom Nature pre-ordained for
+love and for happiness. I am an ideal family man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What? You did not know that I was married? Indeed, Sir, I am. And though Madame
+Ratichon does not perhaps fulfil all my ideals of exquisite womanhood,
+nevertheless she has been an able and willing helpmate during these last years
+of comparative prosperity. Yes, you see me fairly prosperous now. My industry,
+my genius&mdash;if I may so express myself&mdash;found their reward at last.
+You will be the first to acknowledge&mdash;you, the confidant of my life’s
+history&mdash;that that reward was fully deserved. I worked for it, toiled and
+thought and struggled, up to the last; and had Fate been just, rather than
+grudging, I should have attained that ideal which would have filled my cup of
+happiness to the brim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, anyway, the episode connected with my marriage did mark the close of my
+professional career, and is therefore worthy of record. Since that day,
+Sir&mdash;a happy one for me, a blissful one for Mme. Ratichon&mdash;I have
+been able, thanks to the foresight of an all-wise Providence, to gratify my
+bucolic tastes. I live now, Sir, amidst my flowers, with my dog and my canary
+and Mme. Ratichon, smiling with kindly indulgence on the struggles and the
+blunders of my younger colleagues, oft consulted by them in matters that
+require special tact and discretion. I sit and dream now beneath the shade of a
+vine-clad arbour of those glorious days of long ago, when kings and emperors
+placed the destiny of their inheritance in my hands, when autocrats and
+dictators came to me for assistance and advice, and the name of Hector Ratichon
+stood for everything that was most astute and most discreet. And if at times a
+gentle sigh of regret escapes my lips, Mme. Ratichon&mdash;whose thinness is
+ever my despair, for I admire comeliness, Sir, as being more womanly&mdash;Mme.
+Ratichon, I say, comes to me with the gladsome news that dinner is served; and
+though she is not all that I could wish in the matter of the culinary arts, yet
+she can fry a cutlet passably, and one of her brothers is a wholesale wine
+merchant of excellent reputation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was soon after my connexion with that abominable Marquis de Firmin-Latour
+that I first made the acquaintance of the present Mme. Ratichon, under somewhat
+peculiar circumstances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I remember it was on the first day of April in the year 1817 that M.
+Rochez&mdash;Fernand Rochez was his exact name&mdash;came to see me at my
+office in the Rue Daunou, and the date proved propitious, as you will presently
+see. How M. Rochez came to know of my gifts and powers, I cannot tell you. He
+never would say. He had heard of me through a friend, was all that he
+vouchsafed to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Theodore had shown him in. Ah! have I not mentioned the fact that I had
+forgiven Theodore his lies and his treachery, and taken him back to my bosom
+and to my board? My sensitive heart had again got the better of my prudence,
+and Theodore was installed once more in the antechamber of my apartments in the
+Rue Daunou, and was, as heretofore, sharing with me all the good things that I
+could afford. So there he was on duty on that fateful first of April which was
+destined to be the turning-point of my destiny. And he showed M. de Rochez in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At once I knew my man&mdash;the type, I mean. Immaculately dressed, scented and
+befrilled, haughty of manner and nonchalant of speech, M. Rochez had the word
+“adventurer” writ all over his well-groomed person. He was young, good-looking,
+his nails were beautifully polished, his pantaloons fitted him without a
+wrinkle. These were of a soft putty shade; his coat was bottle-green, and his
+hat of the latest modish shape. A perfect exquisite, in fact.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he came to the point without much preamble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“M.&mdash;er&mdash;Ratichon,” he said, “I have heard of you through a friend,
+who tells me that you are the most unscrupulous scoundrel he has ever come
+across.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sir&mdash;!” I began, rising from my seat in indignant protest at the coarse
+insult. But with an authoritative gesture he checked the flow of my
+indignation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No comedy, I pray you, Sir,” he said. “We are not at the Theatre Molière, but,
+I presume, in an office where business is transacted both briefly and with
+discretion.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At your service, Monsieur,” I replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then listen, will you?” he went on curtly, “and pray do not interrupt. Only
+speak in answer to a question from me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I bowed my head in silence. Thus must the proud suffer when they happen to be
+sparsely endowed with riches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You have no doubt heard of Mlle. Goldberg,” M. Rochez continued after a
+moment’s pause, “the lovely daughter of the rich usurer in the Rue des
+Médecins.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had heard of Mlle. Goldberg. Her beauty and her father’s wealth were reported
+to be fabulous. I indicated my knowledge of the beautiful lady by a mute
+inclination of the head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I love Mlle. Goldberg,” my client resumed, “and I have reason for the belief
+that I am not altogether indifferent to her. Glances, you understand, from eyes
+as expressive as those of the exquisite Jewess speak more eloquently than
+words.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had forbidden me to speak, so I could only express concurrence in the
+sentiments which he expressed by a slight elevation of my left eyebrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am determined to win the affections of Mlle. Goldberg,” M. Rochez went on
+glibly, “and equally am I determined to make her my wife.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A very natural determination,” I remarked involuntarily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My only trouble with regard to pressing my court is the fact that my lovely
+Leah is never allowed outside her father’s house, save in his company or that
+of his sister&mdash;an old maid of dour mien and sour disposition, who acts the
+part of a duenna with dog-like tenacity. Over and over again have I tried to
+approach the lady of my heart, only to be repelled or roughly rebuked for my
+insolence by her irascible old aunt.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are not the first lover, Sir,” I remarked drily, “who hath seen obstacles
+thus thrown in his way, and&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“One moment, M.&mdash;er&mdash;Ratichon,” he broke in sharply. “I have not
+finished. I will not attempt to describe my feelings to you. I have been
+writhing&mdash;yes, writhing!&mdash;in face of those obstacles of which you
+speak so lightly, and for a long time I have been cudgelling my brains as to
+the possible means whereby I might approach my divinity unchecked. Then one day
+I bethought me of you&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of me, Sir?” I ejaculated, sorely puzzled. “Why of me?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“None of my friends,” he replied nonchalantly, “would care to undertake so
+scrubby a task as I would assign to you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I pray you to be more explicit,” I retorted with unimpaired dignity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once more he paused. Obviously he was a born mountebank, and he calculated all
+his effects to a nicety.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You, M.&mdash;er&mdash;Ratichon,” he said curtly at last, “will have to take
+the duenna off my hands.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was beginning to understand. So I let him prattle on the while my busy brain
+was already at work evolving the means to render this man service, which in its
+turn I expected to be amply repaid. Thus I cannot repeat exactly all that he
+said, for I was only listening with half an ear. But the substance of it all
+was this: I was to pose as the friend of M. Fernand Rochez, and engage the
+attention of Mlle. Goldberg senior the while he paid his court to the lovely
+Leah. It was not a repellent task altogether, because M. Rochez’s suggestion
+opened a vista of pleasant parties at open-air cafés, with foaming tankards of
+beer, on warm afternoons the while the young people sipped sirops and fed on
+love. My newly found friend was pleased to admit that my personality and
+appearance would render my courtship of the elderly duenna a comparatively easy
+one. She would soon, he declared, fall a victim to my charms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After which the question of remuneration came in, and over this we did not
+altogether agree. Ultimately I decided to accept an advance of two hundred
+francs and a new suit of clothes, which I at once declared was indispensable
+under the circumstances, seeing that in my well-worn coat I might have the
+appearance of a fortune-hunter in the eyes of the suspicious old dame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Within my mind I envisaged the possibility of touching M. Rochez for a further
+two hundred francs if and when opportunity arose.
+</p>
+
+<h3>2.</h3>
+
+<p>
+The formal introduction took place on the boulevards one fine afternoon shortly
+after that. Mlle. Leah was walking under the trees with her duenna when
+we&mdash;M. Rochez and I&mdash;came face to face with them. My friend raised
+his hat, and I did likewise. Mademoiselle Leah blushed and the ogre frowned.
+Sir, she was an ogre!&mdash;bony and angular and hook-nosed, with thin lips
+that closed with a snap, and cold grey eyes that sent a shiver down your spine!
+Rochez introduced me to her, and I made myself exceedingly agreeable to her,
+while my friend succeeded in exchanging two or three whispered words with his
+inamorata.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But we did not get very far that day. Mlle. Goldberg senior soon marched her
+lovely charge away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah, Sir, she was lovely indeed! And in my heart I not only envied Rochez his
+good fortune but I also felt how entirely unworthy he was of it. Nor did the
+beautiful Leah give me the impression of being quite so deeply struck with his
+charms as he would have had me believe. Indeed, it struck me during those few
+minutes that I stood dutifully talking to her duenna that the fair young Jewess
+cast more than one approving glance in my direction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Be that as it may, the progress of our respective courtships, now that the ice
+was broken, took on a more decided turn. At first it only amounted to meetings
+on the boulevards and a cursory greeting, but soon Mlle. Goldberg senior,
+delighted with my conversation, would deliberately turn to walk with me under
+the trees the while Fernand Rochez followed by the side of his adored. A week
+later the ladies accepted my friend’s offer to sit under the awning of the Café
+Bourbon and to sip sirops, whilst we indulged in tankards of foaming “blondes.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Within a fortnight, Sir&mdash;I may say it without boasting&mdash;I had Mlle.
+Goldberg senior in the hollow of my hand. On the boulevards, as soon as she
+caught sight of me, her dour face would be wreathed in smiles, a row of large
+yellow teeth would appear between her thin lips, and her cold, grey eyes would
+soften with a glance of welcome which more than ever sent a cold shudder down
+my spine. While we four were together, either promenading or sitting at
+open-air cafés in the cool of the evening, the old duenna had eyes and ears
+only for me, and if my friend Rochez did not get on with his own courtship as
+fast as he would have wished the fault rested entirely with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For he did <i>not</i> get on with his courtship, and that was a fact. The fair
+Leah was very sweet, very coy, greatly amused, I fancy, at her aunt’s obvious
+infatuation for me, and not a little flattered at the handsome M. Rochez’s
+attentions to herself. But there it all ended. And whenever I questioned Rochez
+on the subject, he flew into a temper and consigned all middle-aged Jewesses to
+perdition, and all the lovely and young ones to a comfortable kind of Hades to
+which he alone amongst the male sex would have access. From which I gathered
+that I was not wrong in my surmises, that the fair Leah had been smitten by my
+personality and my appearance rather than by those of my friend, and that he
+was suffering the pangs of an insane jealousy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This, of course, he never would admit. All that he told me one day was that
+Leah, with the characteristic timidity of her race, refused to marry him unless
+she could obtain her father’s consent to the union. Old Goldberg, duly
+approached on the matter, flatly forbade his daughter to have anything further
+to do with that fortune-hunter, that parasite, that beggarly
+pick-thank&mdash;such, Sir, were but a few complimentary epithets which he
+hurled with great volubility at his daughter’s absent suitor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was from Mlle. Goldberg, senior, that my friend and I had the details of
+that stormy interview between father and daughter; after which, she declared
+that interviews between the lovers would necessarily become very difficult of
+arrangement. From which you will gather that the worthy soul, though she was as
+ugly as sin, was by this time on the side of the angels. Indeed, she was more
+than that. She professed herself willing to aid and abet them in every way she
+could. This Rochez confided to me, together with his assurance that he was
+determined to take his Fate into his own hands and, since the beautiful Leah
+would not come to him of her own accord, to carry her off by force.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah, my dear Sir, those were romantic days, you must remember! Days when men
+placed the possession of the woman they loved above every treasure, every
+consideration upon earth. Ah, romance! Romance, Sir, was the breath of our
+nostrils, the blood in our veins! Imagine how readily we all fell in with my
+friend’s plans. I, of course, was the moving spirit in it all; mine was the
+genius which was destined to turn gilded romance into grim reality. Yes, grim!
+For you shall see! . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mlle. Goldberg, senior, who appropriately enough was named Sarah, gave us the
+clue how to proceed, after which my genius worked alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You must know that old Goldberg’s house in the Rue des Médecins&mdash;a large
+apartment house in which he occupied a few rooms on the ground floor behind his
+shop&mdash;backed on to a small uncultivated garden which ended in a tall brick
+wall, the meeting-place of all the felines in the neighbourhood, and in which
+there was a small postern gate, now disused. This gate gave on a narrow
+cul-de-sac&mdash;grandiloquently named Passage Corneille&mdash;which was
+flanked on the opposite side by the tall boundary wall of an adjacent convent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That cul-de-sac was marked out from the very first in my mind as our objective.
+Around and about it, as it were, did I build the edifice of my schemes, aided
+by the ever-willing Sarah. The old maid threw herself into the affair with
+zest, planning and contriving like a veritable strategist; and I must admit
+that she was full of resource and invention. We were now in mid-May and
+enjoying a spell of hot summer weather. This gave the inventive Sarah the
+excuse for using the back garden as a place wherein to sit in the cool of the
+evening in the company of her niece.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah, you see the whole thing now at a glance, do you not? The postern gate, the
+murky night, the daring lover, the struggling maiden, the willing accomplices.
+The actors were all there, ready for the curtain to be rung up on the
+palpitating drama.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then it was that a brilliant idea came into my brain. It was born on the very
+day that I realized with indisputable certainty that the lovely Leah was not in
+reality in love with Rochez. He fatuously believed that she was ready to fall
+into his arms, that only maidenly timidity held her back, and that the moment
+she had been snatched from her father’s house and found herself in the arms of
+her adoring lover, she would turn to him in the very fullness of love and
+confidence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I knew better. I had caught a look now and again&mdash;an undefinable
+glance, which told me the whole pitiable tale. She did not love Rochez; and in
+the drama which we were preparing to enact the curtain would fall on his
+rapture and her unhappiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah, Sir! imagine what my feelings were when I realized this! This fair girl,
+against whom we were all conspiring like so many traitors, was still ignorant
+of the fatal brink on which she stood. She chatted and coquetted and smiled,
+little dreaming that in a very few days her happiness would be wrecked and she
+would be linked for life to a man whom she could never love. Rochez’s idea, of
+course, was primarily to get hold of her fortune. I had already ascertained for
+him, through the ever-willing Sarah, that this fortune came from Leah’s
+grandfather, who had left a sum of two hundred thousand francs on trust for her
+children, she to enjoy the income for her life. There certainly was a clause in
+the will whereby the girl would forfeit that fortune if she married without her
+father’s consent; but according to Rochez’s plans this could scarcely be
+withheld once she had been taken forcibly away from home, held in durance, and
+with her reputation hopelessly compromised. She could then pose as an injured
+victim, throw herself at her father’s feet, and beg him to give that consent
+without which she would for ever remain an outcast of society, a pariah amongst
+her kind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A pretty piece of villainous combination, you will own! And I, Sir, was to lend
+a hand in this abomination!&mdash;nay, I was to be the chief villain in the
+drama! It was I who, even now, was spending the hours of the night, when I
+might have been dreaming sentimental dreams, in oiling the lock of the postern
+gate which was to give us access into papa Goldberg’s garden. It was I who,
+under cover of darkness and guided by that old jade Sarah, was to sneak into
+that garden on the appointed night and forcibly seize the unsuspecting maiden
+and carry her to the carriage which Rochez would have in readiness for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You see what a coward he was! It was a criminal offence in those days,
+punishable with deportation to New Caledonia, to abduct a young lady from her
+parents’ house; and Rochez left me the dirty work to do in case the girl
+screamed and attracted the police. Now you will tell me if I was not justified
+in doing what I did, and I will abide by your judgment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was to take all the risks, remember!&mdash;New Caledonia, the police, the
+odium attached to so foul a deed; and do you know for what? For a paltry
+thousand francs, which with much difficulty I had induced Rochez&mdash;nay,
+forced him!&mdash;to hand over to me in anticipation of what I was about to
+accomplish for his sake. A thousand francs! Did this miserliness not
+characterize the man? Was it to such a scrubby knave that I, at risk of my life
+and of my honour, would hand over that jewel amongst women, that pearl above
+price?&mdash;a lady with a personal fortune amounting to two hundred thousand
+francs?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No, Sir; I would not! Then and there I vowed that I would not! Mine were to be
+all the risks; then mine should be the reward! What Rochez meant to do, that I
+could too, and with far greater reason. The lovely Leah did at times frown on
+Fernand; but she invariably smiled on me. She would fall into my arms far more
+readily than into his, and papa Goldberg would be equally forced to give his
+consent to her marriage with me as with that self-seeking carpet-knight whom he
+abhorred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Needless to say, I kept my own counsel, and did not speak of my project even to
+Sarah. To all appearances I was to be the mere tool in this affair, the
+unfortunate cat employed to snatch the roast chestnuts out of the fire for the
+gratification of a mealy-mouthed monkey.
+</p>
+
+<h3>3.</h3>
+
+<p>
+The appointed day and hour were at hand. Fernand Rochez had engaged a barouche
+which was to take him and his lovely victim to a little house at Auteuil, which
+he had rented for the purpose. There the lovers were to lie perdu until such
+time as papa Goldberg had relented and the marriage could be duly solemnized in
+the synagogue of the Rue des Halles. Sarah had offered in the meanwhile to do
+all that in her power lay to soften the old man’s heart and to bring about the
+happy conclusion of the romantic adventure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the latter we had chosen the night of May 23rd. It was a moonless night,
+and the Passage Corneille, from whence I was to operate, was most usefully
+dark. Sarah Goldberg had, according to convention, left the postern gate on the
+latch, and at ten o’clock precisely I made my way up the cul-de-sac and
+cautiously turned the handle of the door. I confess that my heart beat somewhat
+uncomfortably in my bosom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had left Rochez and his barouche in the Rue des Pipots, about a hundred
+metres from the angle of the Passage Corneille, and it was along those hundred
+metres of a not altogether unfrequented street that he expected me presently to
+carry a possibly screaming and struggling burden in the very teeth of a
+gendarmerie always on the look-out for exciting captures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No, Sir; that was not to be! And it was with a resolute if beating heart that I
+presently felt the postern gate yielding to the pressure of my hand. The
+neighbouring church clock of St. Sulpice had just finished striking ten. I
+pushed open the gate and tip-toed across the threshold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the garden the boughs of a dilapidated old ash tree were soughing in the
+wind above my head, whilst from the top of the boundary wall the yarring and
+yowling of beasts of the feline species grated unpleasantly on my ear. I could
+not see my hand before my eyes, and had just stretched it out in order to guide
+my footsteps when it was seized with a kindly yet firm pressure, whilst a voice
+murmured softly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hush!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who is it?” I whispered in response.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is I&mdash;Sarah!” the voice replied. “Everything is all right, but Leah is
+unsuspecting. I am sure that if she suspected anything she would not set foot
+outside the door.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What shall we do?” I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wait here a moment quietly,” Sarah rejoined, speaking in a rapid whisper,
+“under cover of this wall. Within the next few minutes Leah will come out of
+the house. I have left my knitting upon a garden chair, and I will ask her to
+run out and fetch it. That will be your opportunity. The chair is in the angle
+of the wall, there,” she added, pointing to her right, “not three paces from
+where you are standing now. Leah has a white dress on. She will have to stoop
+in order to pick up the knitting. I have taken the precaution to entangle the
+wool in the leg of the chair, so she will be some few seconds entirely at your
+mercy. Have you a shawl?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had, of course, provided myself with one. A shawl is always a necessary
+adjunct to such adventures. Breathlessly, silently, I intimated to my kind
+accomplice that I would obey her behests and that I was prepared for every
+eventuality. The next moment her hold upon my hand relaxed, she gave another
+quickly-whispered “Hush!” and disappeared into the night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a second or two after that my ear caught the soft sound of her retreating
+footsteps, then nothing more. To say that I felt anxious and ill at ease was
+but to put it mildly. I was face to face with an adventure which might cost me
+at least five years’ acute discomfort in New Caledonia, but which might also
+bring me as rich a reward as could befall any man of modest ambitions: a lovely
+wife and a comfortable fortune. My whole life seemed to be hanging on a thread,
+and my overwrought senses seemed almost to catch the sound of the
+spinning-wheel of Fate weaving the web of my destiny.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A moment or two later I again caught the distinct sound of a gentle footfall
+upon the soft earth. My eyes by now were somewhat accustomed to the gloom. It
+was very dark, you understand; but through the darkness I saw something white
+moving slowly toward me. Then my heart thumped more furiously than ever before.
+I dared not breathe. I saw the lovely Leah approaching, or, rather, I felt her
+approach, for it was too dark to see. She moved in the direction which Sarah
+had indicated to me as being the place where stood the garden chair with the
+knitting upon it. I grasped the shawl. I was ready.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another few seconds of agonising suspense went by. The fair Leah had ceased to
+move. Undoubtedly she was engaged in disentangling the wool from the leg of the
+chair. That was my opportunity. More stealthy than any cat, I tiptoed toward
+the chair&mdash;and, indeed, at that moment I blessed the sudden yowl set up by
+some feline in its wrath which rent the still night air and effectually drowned
+any sound which I might make.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There, not three paces away from me, was the dim outline of the young girl’s
+form vaguely discernible in the gloom&mdash;a white mass, almost motionless,
+against a background of inky blackness. With a quick intaking of my breath I
+sprang forward, the shawl outspread in my hand, and with a quick dexterous
+gesture I threw it over her head, and the next second had her, faintly
+struggling, in my arms. She was as light as a feather, and I was as strong as a
+giant. Think of it, Sir! There was I, alone in the darkness, holding in my
+arms, together with a lovely form, a fortune of two hundred thousand francs!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of that fool Fernand Rochez I did not trouble to think. He had a barouche
+waiting <i>up</i> the Rue des Pipots, a hundred metres from the corner of the
+Passage Corneille, but I had a chaise and pair of horses waiting <i>down</i>
+that same street, and that now was my objective. Yes, Sir! I had arranged the
+whole thing! But I had done it for mine own advantage, not for that of the
+miserly friend who had been too great a coward to risk his own skin for the
+sake of his beloved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The guerdon was mine, and I was determined this time that no traitor or ingrate
+should filch from me the reward of my labours. With the thousand francs which
+Rochez had given me for my services I had engaged the chaise and horses, paid
+the coachman lavishly, and secured a cosy little apartment for my future wife
+in a pleasant hostelry I knew of at Suresnes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had taken the precaution to leave the wicket-gate on the latch. With my foot
+I pushed it open, and, keeping well under the cover of the tall convent wall, I
+ran swiftly to the corner of the Rue des Pipots. Here I paused a moment.
+Through the silence of the night my ear caught the faint sound of horses
+snorting and harness jingling in the distance, both sides from where I stood;
+but of gendarmes or passers-by there was no sign. Gathering up the full measure
+of my courage and holding my precious burden closer to my heart, I ran quickly
+down the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Within the next few seconds I had the seemingly inanimate maiden safely
+deposited in the inside of the barouche and myself sitting by her side. The
+driver cracked his whip, and whilst I, happy but exhausted, was mopping my
+streaming forehead the chaise rattled gaily along the uneven pavements of the
+great city in the direction of Suresnes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What that fool Rochez was doing I could not definitely ascertain. I looked
+through the vasistas of the coach, but could see nothing in pursuit of us. Then
+I turned my full attention to my lovely companion. It was pitch dark inside the
+carriage, you understand; only from time to time, as we drove past an
+overhanging street lanthorn, I caught a glimpse of that priceless bundle beside
+me, which lay there so still and so snug, still wrapped up in the shawl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With cautious, loving fingers I undid its folds. Under cover of the darkness
+the sweet and modest creature, released of her bonds, turned for an instant to
+me, and for a few, very few, happy seconds I held her in my arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have no fear, fair one,” I murmured in her ear. “It is I, Hector Ratichon, who
+adores you and who cannot live without you! Forgive me for this seeming
+violence, which was prompted by an undying passion, and remember that to me you
+are as sacred as a divinity until the happy hour when I can proclaim you to the
+world as my beloved wife!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I pressed her against my heart, and my lips imprinted a delicate kiss upon her
+forehead. After which, with chaste decorum, she once more turned away from me,
+covered her face and head with the shawl, and drew back into the remote corner
+of the carriage, where she remained, silent and absorbed, no doubt, in the
+contemplation of her happiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I respected her silence, and I, too, fell to meditating upon my good fortune.
+Here was I, Sir, within sight of a haven wherein I could live through the
+twilight of my days in comfort and in peace, a beautiful young wife, a modest
+fortune! I had never in my wildest dreams envisaged a Fate more fair. The
+little house at Chantilly which I coveted, the plot of garden, the espalier
+peaches&mdash;all, all would be mine now! It seemed indeed too good to be true!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The very next moment I was rudely awakened from those golden dreams by a loud
+clatter, and stern voices shouting the ominous word, “Halt!” The carriage drew
+up with such a jerk that I was flung off my seat against the front window and
+my nose seriously bruised. A faint cry of terror came from the precious bundle
+beside me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have no fear, my beloved,” I whispered hurriedly. “Your own Hector will
+protect you!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Already the door of the carriage had been violently torn open; the next moment
+a gruff voice called out peremptorily:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“By order of the Chief Commissary of Police!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was dumbfounded. In what manner had the Chief Commissary of Police been
+already apprised of this affair? The whole thing was, of course, a swift and
+vengeful blow dealt to me by that cowardly Rochez. But how, in the name of
+thunder, had he got to work so quickly? But, of course, there was no time now
+for reflection. The gruff voice was going on more peremptorily and more
+insistently:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is Hector Ratichon here?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was dumb. My throat had closed up, and I could not have uttered a sound to
+save my life. The police had even got my name quite straight!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now then, Ratichon,” that same irascible voice continued, “get out of there!
+In the name of the law I charge you with the abduction of a defenceless female,
+and my orders are to bring you forthwith before the Chief Commissary of
+Police.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then it was, Sir, that bliss once more re-entered my soul. I had just felt a
+small hand pressing something crisp into mine, whilst a soft voice whispered in
+my ear:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Give him this, and tell him to let you go in peace. Say that I am Mademoiselle
+Goldberg, your promised wife.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The feel of that crackling note in my hand at once restored my courage.
+Covering the lovely creature beside me with a protecting arm, I replied boldly
+to the minion of the law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This lady,” I said, “is my affianced wife. You, Sir Gendarme, are overstepping
+your powers. I demand that you let us proceed in peace.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My orders are&mdash;” the gendarme resumed; but already my sensitive ear had
+detected a faint wavering in the gruffness of his voice. The hectoring tone had
+gone out of it. I could not see him, of course, but somehow I felt that his
+attitude had become less arrogant and his glance more shifty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This gentleman has spoken the truth,” now came in soft, dulcet tones from
+under the shawl that wrapped the head of my beloved. “I am Mlle. Goldberg, M.
+le Gendarme, and I am travelling with M. Hector Ratichon entirely of my own
+free will, since I have promised him that I would be his wife.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah!” the gendarme ejaculated, obviously mollified.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If Mademoiselle is the fiancée of Monsieur, and is acting of her own free
+will&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is not for you to interfere, eh, my friend?” I broke in jocosely. “You will
+now let us proceed in peace, and for your trouble you will no doubt accept this
+token of my consideration.” And, groping in the darkness, I found the rough
+hand of the gendarme, and speedily pressed into it the crisp note which my
+adored one had given to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah!” he said, with very obvious gratification. “If Monsieur Ratichon will
+assure me that Mademoiselle here is indeed his affianced wife, then indeed it
+is not a case of abduction, and&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Abduction!” I retorted, flaring up in righteous indignation. “Who dares to use
+the word in connexion with this lovely lady? Mademoiselle Goldberg, I swear,
+will be Madame Ratichon within the next four and twenty hours. And the sooner
+you, Sir Gendarme, allow us to proceed on our way the less pain will you cause
+to this distressed and virtuous damsel.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This settled the whole affair quite comfortably. The gendarme shut the carriage
+door with a bang, and at my request gave the order to the driver to proceed.
+The latter once again cracked his whip, and once again the cumbrous vehicle,
+after an awkward lurch, rattled on its way along the cobblestones of the
+sleeping city.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once more I was alone with the priceless treasure by my side&mdash;alone and
+happy&mdash;more happy, I might say, than I had been before. Had not my adored
+one openly acknowledged her love for me and her desire to stand with me at the
+hymeneal altar? To put it vulgarly&mdash;though vulgarity in every form is
+repellent to me&mdash;she had burnt her boats. She had allowed her name to be
+coupled with mine in the presence of the minions of the law. What, after that,
+could her father do but give his consent to a union which alone would save his
+only child’s reputation from the cruelty of waggish tongues?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No doubt, Sir, that I was happy. True, that when the uncouth gendarme finally
+slammed to the door of our carriage and we restarted on our way, my ears had
+been unpleasantly tickled by the sound of prolonged and ribald
+laughter&mdash;laughter which sounded strangely and unpleasantly familiar. But
+after a few seconds’ serious reflection I dismissed the matter from my
+thoughts. If, as indeed I gravely suspected, it was Fernand Rochez who had
+striven thus to put a spoke in the wheel of my good fortune, he would certainly
+not have laughed when I drove triumphantly away with my conquered bride by my
+side. And, of course, my ears <i>must</i> have deceived me when they caught the
+sound of a girl’s merry laugh mingling with the more ribald one of the man.
+</p>
+
+<h3>4.</h3>
+
+<p>
+I have paused purposely, Sir, ere I embark upon the narration of the final
+stage of this, my life’s adventure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chaise was bowling along the banks of the river toward Suresnes. Presently
+the driver struck to his right and plunged into the fastnesses of the Bois de
+Boulogne. For a while, therefore, we were in utter darkness. My lovely
+companion neither moved nor spoke. Somewhere in the far distance a church clock
+struck eleven. One whole hour had gone by since first I had embarked on this
+great undertaking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was excited, feverish. The beautiful Leah’s silence and tranquillity grated
+upon my nerves. I could not understand how she could remain there so placid
+when her whole life’s happiness had so suddenly, so unexpectedly, been assured.
+I became more and more fidgety as time went on. Soon I felt that I could no
+longer hold myself in proper control. Being of an impulsive disposition, this
+tranquil acceptance of so great a joy became presently intolerable, and, unable
+to restrain my ardour any longer, I seized that passive bundle of loveliness in
+my arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have no fear,” I murmured once again, as I pressed her to my heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But my admonition was obviously unnecessary. The beautiful Leah showed not the
+slightest sign of fear. She rested her head against my shoulder and put one arm
+around my neck. I was in raptures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just then the vehicle swung out of the Bois and once more rattled upon the
+cobblestones. This time we were nearing Suresnes. A vague light, emanating from
+the lanthorns at the bridge-head, was already faintly visible ahead of us. Soon
+it grew brighter. The next moment we passed immediately beneath the lanthorns.
+The interior of the carriage was flooded with light . . . and, Sir, I gave a
+gasp of unadulterated dismay! The being whom I held in my arms, whose face was
+even at that moment raised up to my own, was not the lovely Leah! It was Sarah,
+Sir! Sarah Goldberg, the dour, angular aunt, whose yellow teeth gleamed for one
+brief moment through her thin lips as she threw me one of those glances of
+amorous welcome which invariably sent a cold shiver down my spine. Sarah
+Goldberg! I scarce could believe my eyes, and for a moment did indeed think
+that the elusive, swiftly-vanished light of the bridge-head lanthorns had
+played my excited senses a weird and cruel trick. But no! The very next second
+proved my disillusionment. Sarah spoke to me!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She spoke to me and laughed! Ah, she was happy, Sir! Happy in that she had
+completely and irrevocably tricked me! That traitor Fernand Rochez was up to
+the neck in the plot which had saddled me for ever with an ugly, elderly wife
+of dour mien and no fortune, while he and the lovely Leah were spinning the
+threads of perfect love at the other end of Paris and laughing their fill at my
+discomfiture. Think, Sir, what I suffered during those few brief minutes while
+the coach lurched through the narrow streets of Suresnes, and I had perforce to
+listen to the protestations of undying love from this unprepossessing female!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That love, she vowed, was her excuse, and everything, she asserted, was fair in
+love and war. She knew that after Rochez had attained his heart’s desire and
+carried off the lady of his choice&mdash;which he had successfully done half an
+hour before I myself made my way up the Passage Corneille&mdash;I would pass
+out of her life for ever. This she could not endure. Life at once would become
+intolerable. And, aided and abetted by Rochez and Leah, she had planned and
+contrived my mystification and won me by foul means, since she could not do so
+by fair; and it seemed as if her volubility then was the forecast of what my
+life with her would be in the future. Talk! Talk! Talk! She never ceased!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She told me the whole story of the abominable conspiracy against my liberty.
+Her brother, M. Goldberg, she explained, had determined upon remarriage. She,
+Sarah, felt that henceforth she would be in the way of everybody; she would
+have no home. Leah married to Rochez; a new and young Mme. Goldberg ruling in
+the old house of the Rue des Médecins! Ah, it was unthinkable!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I, Sir&mdash;I, Hector Ratichon&mdash;had, it appears, by my polite manners
+and prepossessing ways, induced this dour old maid to believe that she was not
+altogether indifferent to me. Ah, how I cursed my own charms, when I realised
+whither they had led me! It seems that it was that fickle jade Leah who first
+imagined the whole execrable plot. Rochez was to entrust me with the task of
+carrying off his beloved, and thus I would be tricked in the darkness into
+abducting Mlle. Goldberg senior from her home. Then some friends of Rochez
+arranged to play the comedy of false gendarmes, and again I was tricked into
+acknowledging Sarah as my affianced wife before independent witnesses. After
+that I could no longer repudiate mine honourable intentions, for if I did, then
+I should be arraigned before the law on a criminal charge of abduction. In this
+comedy of false gendarmes Rochez himself and the heartless Leah had joined with
+zest and laughed over my discomfiture, whilst the friends who played their
+rôles to such perfection had a paltry hundred francs each as the price of this
+infamous trick. Now my doom was sealed, and all that was left for me to do was
+to think disconsolately over my future.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I did bitterly reproach Sarah for her treachery and tried to still her
+protestations of love by pointing out to her that I had absolutely no fortune,
+and could only offer her a life of squalor, not to say of what. But this she
+knew, and vowed that penury by my side would make her happier than luxury
+beside any other man. Ah, Sir, ‘tis given to few men to arouse such selfless
+passion in a woman’s heart, and it hath oft been my dream in the past one day
+thus to be adored for myself alone!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But for the moment I was too deeply angered to listen placidly to Sarah’s vows
+of undying affection. My nerves were irritated by her fulsome adulation;
+indeed, I could not bear the sight of her nor yet the sound of her voice. You
+may imagine how thankful I was when the chaise came at last to a halt outside
+the humble little hostelry where I had engaged the room which I had so fondly
+hoped would have been occupied by the lovely and fickle Leah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I bundled Mlle. Goldberg senior into the house, and here again I had to endure
+galling mortification in the shape of sidelong glances cast at me and my future
+bride by the landlord of the hostelry and his ill-bred daughter. When I engaged
+the room I had very foolishly told them that it would be occupied by a lovely
+lady who had consented to be my wife, and that she would remain here in happy
+seclusion until such time as all arrangements for our wedding were complete.
+The humiliation of these vulgar people’s irony seemed like the last straw which
+overweighed my forbearance. The room and pension I had already paid two days in
+advance, so I had nothing more to say either to the ribald landlord or to Mlle.
+Goldberg senior. I was bitterly angered against her, and refused her the solace
+of a kindly look or of an encouraging pressure from my hand, even though she
+waited for both with the pathetic patience of an old spaniel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I re-entered the coach, which was to take me back to mine own humble lodgings
+in Passy. Here at least I was alone&mdash;alone with my gloomy thoughts. My
+heart was full of wrath against the woman who had so basely tricked me, and I
+viewed with dismay amounting almost to despair the prospect of spending the
+rest of my life in her company. That night I slept but little, nor yet the
+following night, or the night after that. Those days I spent in seclusion,
+thankful for my solitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Twice each day did Mlle. Goldberg come to my lodgings. In the foolish past I
+had somewhat injudiciously acquainted her of where I lived. Now she came and
+asked to be allowed to see me, but invariably did I refuse thus to gratify her.
+I felt that time alone would perhaps soften my feelings a little towards her.
+In the meanwhile I must commend her discretion and delicacy of procedure. She
+did not in any way attempt to molest me. When she was told by
+Theodore&mdash;whom I employed during the day to guard me against unwelcome
+visitors&mdash;that I refused to see her, she invariably went away without
+demur, nor did she refer in any way, either with adjurations or threats, to the
+impending wedding. Indeed, Sir, she was a lady of vast discretion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the third day, however, I received a visit from M. Goldberg himself. I could
+not refuse to see him. Indeed, he would not be denied, but roughly pushed
+Theodore aside, who tried to hinder him. He had come armed with a riding-whip,
+and nothing but mine own innate dignity saved me from outrage. He came, Sir,
+with a marriage licence for his sister and me in one pocket and with a
+denunciation to the police against me for abduction in another. He gave me the
+choice. What could I do, Sir? I was like a helpless babe in the hands of
+unscrupulous brigands!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marriage licence was for the following day&mdash;at the mairie of the
+eighth arrondissement first, and in the synagogue of the Rue des Halles
+afterwards. I chose the marriage licence. What could I do, Sir? I was helpless!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of my wedding day I have but a dim recollection. It was all hustle and bustle;
+from the mairie to the synagogue, and thence to the house of M. Goldberg in the
+Rue des Médecins. I must say that the old usurer received me and my bride with
+marked amiability. He was, I gathered, genuinely pleased that his sister had
+found happiness and a home by the side of an honourable man, seeing that he
+himself was on the point of contracting a fresh alliance with a Jewish lady of
+unsurpassed loveliness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of Rochez and Leah we saw nothing that day, and from one or two words which M.
+Goldberg let fall I concluded that he was greatly angered against his daughter
+because of her marriage with a fortune-hunting adventurer, who, he weirdly
+hinted, had already found quick and exemplary punishment for his crime. I was
+sincerely glad to hear this, even though I could not get M. Goldberg to explain
+in what that exemplary punishment consisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The climax came at six o’clock of that eventful afternoon, at the hour when I,
+with the newly-enthroned Mme. Ratichon on my arm, was about to take leave of M.
+Goldberg. I must admit that at that moment my heart was overflowing with
+bitterness. I had been led like a lamb to the slaughter; I had been made to
+look foolish and absurd in the midst of this Israelite community which I
+despised; I was saddled for the rest of my life with an unprepossessing elderly
+wife, who could do naught for me but share the penury, the hard crusts, the
+onion pies with me and Theodore. The only advantage I might ever derive from
+her was that she would darn my stockings, sew the buttons on my vests, and
+goffer the frills of my shirts!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was this not enough to turn any man’s naturally sweet disposition to gall? No
+doubt my mobile face betrayed something of the bitterness of my thoughts, for
+M. Goldberg at one moment slapped me vigorously on the back and bade me be of
+good cheer, as things were not so bad as I imagined. I was on the point of
+asking him what he meant when I saw another gentleman advancing toward me. His
+face, which was sallow and oily, bore a kind of obsequious smile; his clothes
+were of rusty black, and his features were markedly Jewish in character. He had
+some law papers under his arm, and he was perpetually rubbing his thin, bony
+hands together as if he were for ever washing them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Monsieur Hector Ratichon,” he said unctuously, “it is with much gratification
+that I bring you the joyful news.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Joyful news!&mdash;to me! Ah, Sir, the words struck at first with cruel irony
+upon mine ear. But not so a second later, for the Jewish gentleman went on
+speaking, and what he said appeared to my reeling senses like songs of angels
+from paradise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first I could not grasp his full meaning. A moment ago I had been in the
+depths of despair, and now&mdash;now&mdash;a whole vista of beatitude opened
+out before me! What the worthy Israelite said was that, by the terms of
+Grandpapa Goldberg’s will, if Leah married without her father’s consent,
+one-half of the fortune destined for her would revert to her aunt, Sarah
+Goldberg, now Madame Hector Ratichon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Can you wonder that I could scarce believe my ears? One-half that fortune meant
+that a hundred thousand francs would now become mine! M. Goldberg had already
+made it very clear to his daughter and to Rochez that he would never give his
+consent to their marriage, and, as this was now consummated, they had already
+forfeited one-half of the grandfather’s fortune in favour of my Sarah. That was
+the exemplary punishment which they were to suffer for their folly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But their folly&mdash;aye! and their treachery&mdash;had become my joy. In this
+moment of heavenly rapture I was speechless, but I turned to Sarah with loving
+arms outstretched, and the next instant she nestled against my heart like a
+joyful if elderly bird.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What is said of a people, Sir, is also true of the individual. Happy he who
+hath no history. Since that never-to-be-forgotten hour my life has run its
+simple, uneventful course here in this quiet corner of our beautiful France,
+with my pony and my dog and my chickens, and Mme. Ratichon to minister to my
+creature comforts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I bought this little property, Sir, soon after my marriage, and my office in
+the Rue Daunou knows me no more. You like the house, Sir? Ah, yes! And the
+garden? . . . After déjeuner you must see my prize chickens. Theodore will show
+them to you. You did not know Theodore was here? Well, yes! He lives with us.
+Madame Ratichon finds him useful about the house, and, not being used to
+luxuries, he is on the whole pleasantly contented.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah, here comes Madame Ratichon to tell us that the déjeuner is served! This
+way, Sir, under the porch. . . . After you!
+</p>
+
+<h3>THE END</h3>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Castles in the Air, by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Castles in the Air
+
+Author: Baroness Emmuska Orczy
+
+Release Date: May 28, 2004 [EBook #12461]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASTLES IN THE AIR ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jim Tinsley <jtinsley@pobox.com>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+In presenting this engaging rogue to my readers, I feel that I owe
+them, if not an apology, at least an explanation for this attempt at
+enlisting sympathy in favour of a man who has little to recommend him
+save his own unconscious humour. In very truth my good friend Ratichon
+is an unblushing liar, thief, a forger--anything you will; his vanity
+is past belief, his scruples are non-existent. How he escaped a
+convict settlement it is difficult to imagine, and hard to realize
+that he died--presumably some years after the event recorded in the
+last chapter of his autobiography--a respected member of the
+community, honoured by that same society which should have raised a
+punitive hand against him. Yet this I believe to be the case. At any
+rate, in spite of close research in the police records of the period,
+I can find no mention of Hector Ratichon. "Heureux le peuple qui n'a
+pas d'histoire" applies, therefore, to him, and we must take it that
+Fate and his own sorely troubled country dealt lightly with him.
+
+Which brings me back to my attempt at an explanation. If Fate dealt
+kindly, why not we? Since time immemorial there have been worse
+scoundrels unhung than Hector Ratichon, and he has the saving grace--
+which few possess--of unruffled geniality. Buffeted by Fate, sometimes
+starving, always thirsty, he never complains; and there is all through
+his autobiography what we might call an "Ah, well!" attitude about his
+outlook on life. Because of this, and because his very fatuity makes
+us smile, I feel that he deserves forgiveness and even a certain
+amount of recognition.
+
+The fragmentary notes, which I have only very slightly modified, came
+into my hands by a happy chance one dull post-war November morning in
+Paris, when rain, sleet and the north wind drove me for shelter under
+the arcades of the Od�on, and a kindly vendor of miscellaneous printed
+matter and mouldy MSS. allowed me to rummage amongst a load of old
+papers which he was about to consign to the rubbish heap. I imagine
+that the notes were set down by the actual person to whom the genial
+Hector Ratichon recounted the most conspicuous events of his chequered
+career, and as I turned over the torn and musty pages, which hung
+together by scraps of mouldy thread, I could not help feeling the
+humour--aye! and the pathos--of that drabby side of old Paris which
+was being revealed to me through the medium of this rogue's
+adventures. And even as, holding the fragments in my hand, I walked
+home that morning through the rain something of that same quaint
+personality seemed once more to haunt the dank and dreary streets of
+the once dazzling Ville Lumi�re. I seemed to see the shabby
+bottle-green coat, the nankeen pantaloons, the down-at-heel shoes of
+this "confidant of Kings"; I could hear his unctuous, self-satisfied
+laugh, and sensed his furtive footstep whene'er a gendarme came into
+view. I saw his ruddy, shiny face beaming at me through the sleet and
+the rain as, like a veritable squire of dames, he minced his steps
+upon the boulevard, or, like a reckless smuggler, affronted the grave
+dangers of mountain fastnesses upon the Juras; and I was quite glad to
+think that a life so full of unconscious humour had not been cut short
+upon the gallows. And I thought kindly of him, for he had made me
+smile.
+
+There is nothing fine about him, nothing romantic; nothing in his
+actions to cause a single thrill to the nerves of the most
+unsophisticated reader. Therefore, I apologize in that I have not held
+him up to a just obloquy because of his crimes, and I ask indulgence
+for his turpitudes because of the laughter which they provoke.
+
+EMMUSKA ORCZY. _Paris, 1921_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CASTLES IN THE AIR
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A ROLAND FOR HIS OLIVER
+
+
+
+1.
+
+My name is Ratichon--Hector Ratichon, at your service, and I make so
+bold as to say that not even my worst enemy would think of minimizing
+the value of my services to the State. For twenty years now have I
+placed my powers at the disposal of my country: I have served the
+Republic, and was confidential agent to Citizen Robespierre; I have
+served the Empire, and was secret factotum to our great Napol�on; I
+have served King Louis--with a brief interval of one hundred days--
+for the past two years, and I can only repeat that no one, in the
+whole of France, has been so useful or so zealous in tracking
+criminals, nosing out conspiracies, or denouncing traitors as I have
+been.
+
+And yet you see me a poor man to this day: there has been a
+persistently malignant Fate which has worked against me all these
+years, and would--but for a happy circumstance of which I hope anon to
+tell you--have left me just as I was, in the matter of fortune, when I
+first came to Paris and set up in business as a volunteer police agent
+at No. 96 Rue Daunou.
+
+My apartment in those days consisted of an antechamber, an outer
+office where, if need be, a dozen clients might sit, waiting their
+turn to place their troubles, difficulties, anxieties before the
+acutest brain in France, and an inner room wherein that same acute
+brain--mine, my dear Sir--was wont to ponder and scheme. That
+apartment was not luxuriously furnished--furniture being very dear in
+those days--but there were a couple of chairs and a table in the outer
+office, and a cupboard wherein I kept the frugal repast which served
+me during the course of a long and laborious day. In the inner office
+there were more chairs and another table, littered with papers:
+letters and packets all tied up with pink tape (which cost three sous
+the metre), and bundles of letters from hundreds of clients, from the
+highest and the lowest in the land, you understand, people who wrote
+to me and confided in me to-day as kings and emperors had done in the
+past. In the antechamber there was a chair-bedstead for Theodore to
+sleep on when I required him to remain in town, and a chair on which
+he could sit.
+
+And, of course, there was Theodore!
+
+Ah! my dear Sir, of him I can hardly speak without feeling choked with
+the magnitude of my emotion. A noble indignation makes me dumb.
+Theodore, sir, has ever been the cruel thorn that times out of number
+hath wounded my over-sensitive heart. Think of it! I had picked him
+out of the gutter! No! no! I do not mean this figuratively! I mean
+that, actually and in the flesh, I took him up by the collar of his
+tattered coat and dragged him out of the gutter in the Rue Blanche,
+where he was grubbing for trifles out of the slime and mud. He was
+frozen, Sir, and starved--yes, starved! In the intervals of picking
+filth up out of the mud he held out a hand blue with cold to the
+passers-by and occasionally picked up a sou. When I found him in that
+pitiable condition he had exactly twenty centimes between him and
+absolute starvation.
+
+And I, Sir Hector Ratichon, the confidant of two kings, three
+autocrats and an emperor, took that man to my bosom--fed him, clothed
+him, housed him, gave him the post of secretary in my intricate,
+delicate, immensely important business--and I did this, Sir, at a
+salary which, in comparison with his twenty centimes, must have seemed
+a princely one to him.
+
+His duties were light. He was under no obligation to serve me or to be
+at his post before seven o'clock in the morning, and all that he had
+to do then was to sweep out the three rooms, fetch water from the well
+in the courtyard below, light the fire in the iron stove which stood
+in my inner office, shell the haricots for his own mess of pottage,
+and put them to boil. During the day his duties were lighter still. He
+had to run errands for me, open the door to prospective clients, show
+them into the outer office, explain to them that his master was
+engaged on affairs relating to the kingdom of France, and generally
+prove himself efficient, useful and loyal--all of which qualities he
+assured me, my dear Sir, he possessed to the fullest degree. And I
+believed him, Sir; I nurtured the scorpion in my over-sensitive bosom!
+I promised him ten per cent. on all the profits of my business, and
+all the remnants from my own humble repasts--bread, the skins of
+luscious sausages, the bones from savoury cutlets, the gravy from the
+tasty carrots and onions. You would have thought that his gratitude
+would become boundless, that he would almost worship the benefactor
+who had poured at his feet the full cornucopia of comfort and luxury.
+Not so! That man, Sir, was a snake in the grass--a serpent--a
+crocodile! Even now that I have entirely severed my connexion with
+that ingrate, I seem to feel the wounds, like dagger-thrusts, which he
+dealt me with so callous a hand. But I have done with him--done, I
+tell you! How could I do otherwise than to send him back to the gutter
+from whence I should never have dragged him? My goodness, he repaid
+with an ingratitude so black that you, Sir, when you hear the full
+story of his treachery, will exclaim aghast.
+
+Ah, you shall judge! His perfidy commenced less than a week after I
+had given him my third best pantaloons and three sous to get his hair
+cut, thus making a man of him. And yet, you would scarcely believe it,
+in the matter of the secret documents he behaved toward me like a
+veritable Judas!
+
+Listen, my dear Sir.
+
+I told you, I believe, that I had my office in the Rue Daunou. You
+understand that I had to receive my clients--many of whom were of
+exalted rank---in a fashionable quarter of Paris. But I actually lodged
+in Passy--being fond of country pursuits and addicted to fresh air--in a
+humble hostelry under the sign of the "Grey Cat"; and here, too,
+Theodore had a bed. He would walk to the office a couple of hours before
+I myself started on the way, and I was wont to arrive as soon after ten
+o'clock of a morning as I could do conveniently.
+
+On this memorable occasion of which I am about to tell you--it was
+during the autumn of 1815--I had come to the office unusually early,
+and had just hung my hat and coat in the outer room, and taken my seat
+at my desk in the inner office, there to collect my thoughts in
+preparation for the grave events which the day might bring forth,
+when, suddenly, an ill-dressed, dour-looking individual entered the
+room without so much as saying, "By your leave," and after having
+pushed Theodore--who stood by like a lout--most unceremoniously to one
+side. Before I had time to recover from my surprise at this unseemly
+intrusion, the uncouth individual thrust Theodore roughly out of the
+room, slammed the door in his face, and having satisfied himself that
+he was alone with me and that the door was too solid to allow of
+successful eavesdropping, he dragged the best chair forward--the one,
+sir, which I reserve for lady visitors.
+
+He threw his leg across it, and, sitting astride, he leaned his elbows
+over the back and glowered at me as if he meant to frighten me.
+
+"My name is Charles Saurez," he said abruptly, "and I want your
+assistance in a matter which requires discretion, ingenuity and
+alertness. Can I have it?"
+
+I was about to make a dignified reply when he literally threw the next
+words at me: "Name your price, and I will pay it!" he said.
+
+What could I do, save to raise my shoulders in token that the matter
+of money was one of supreme indifference to me, and my eyebrows in a
+manner of doubt that M. Charles Saurez had the means wherewith to
+repay my valuable services? By way of a rejoinder he took out from the
+inner pocket of his coat a greasy letter-case, and with his
+exceedingly grimy fingers extracted therefrom some twenty banknotes,
+which a hasty glance on my part revealed as representing a couple of
+hundred francs.
+
+"I will give you this as a retaining fee," he said, "if you will
+undertake the work I want you to do; and I will double the amount
+when you have carried the work out successfully."
+
+Four hundred francs! It was not lavish, it was perhaps not altogether
+the price I would have named, but it was very good, these hard times.
+You understand? We were all very poor in France in that year 1815 of
+which I speak.
+
+I am always quite straightforward when I am dealing with a client who
+means business. I pushed aside the litter of papers in front of me,
+leaned my elbows upon my desk, rested my chin in my hands, and said
+briefly:
+
+"M. Charles Saurez, I listen!"
+
+He drew his chair a little closer and dropped his voice almost to a
+whisper.
+
+"You know the Chancellerie of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?" he
+asked.
+
+"Perfectly," I replied.
+
+"You know M. de Marsan's private office? He is chief secretary to M.
+de Talleyrand."
+
+"No," I said, "but I can find out."
+
+"It is on the first floor, immediately facing the service staircase,
+and at the end of the long passage which leads to the main staircase."
+
+"Easy to find, then," I remarked.
+
+"Quite. At this hour and until twelve o'clock, M. de Marsan will be
+occupied in copying a document which I desire to possess. At eleven
+o'clock precisely there will be a noisy disturbance in the corridor
+which leads to the main staircase. M. de Marsan, in all probability,
+will come out of his room to see what the disturbance is about. Will
+you undertake to be ready at that precise moment to make a dash from
+the service staircase into the room to seize the document, which no
+doubt will be lying on the top of the desk, and bring it to an address
+which I am about to give you?"
+
+"It is risky," I mused.
+
+"Very," he retorted drily, "or I'd do it myself, and not pay you four
+hundred francs for your trouble."
+
+"Trouble!" I exclaimed, with withering sarcasm.
+
+"Trouble, you call it? If I am caught, it means penal
+servitude--New Caledonia, perhaps--"
+
+"Exactly," he said, with the same irritating calmness; "and if you
+succeed it means four hundred francs. Take it or leave it, as you
+please, but be quick about it. I have no time to waste; it is past
+nine o'clock already, and if you won't do the work, someone else
+will."
+
+For a few seconds longer I hesitated. Schemes, both varied and
+wild, rushed through my active brain: refuse to take this risk, and
+denounce the plot to the police; refuse it, and run to warn M. de
+Marsan; refuse it, and-- I had little time for reflection. My uncouth
+client was standing, as it were, with a pistol to my throat--with a
+pistol and four hundred francs! The police might perhaps give me half
+a louis for my pains, or they might possibly remember an unpleasant
+little incident in connexion with the forgery of some Treasury bonds
+which they have never succeeded in bringing home to me--one never
+knows! M. de Marsan might throw me a franc, and think himself generous
+at that!
+
+All things considered, then, when M. Charles Saurez suddenly said,
+"Well?" with marked impatience, I replied, "Agreed," and within five
+minutes I had two hundred francs in my pocket, with the prospect of
+two hundred more during the next four and twenty hours. I was to have
+a free hand in conducting my own share of the business, and M. Charles
+Saurez was to call for the document at my lodgings at Passy on the
+following morning at nine o'clock.
+
+
+
+2.
+
+I flatter myself that I conducted the business with remarkable skill.
+At precisely ten minutes to eleven I rang at the Chancellerie of the
+Ministry for Foreign Affairs. I was dressed as a respectable
+commissionnaire, and I carried a letter and a small parcel addressed
+to M. de Marsan. "First floor," said the concierge curtly, as soon as
+he had glanced at the superscription on the letter. "Door faces top of
+the service stairs."
+
+I mounted and took my stand some ten steps below the landing, keeping
+the door of M. de Marsan's room well in sight. Just as the bells of
+Notre Dame boomed the hour I heard what sounded like a furious
+altercation somewhere in the corridor just above me. There was much
+shouting, then one or two cries of "Murder!" followed by others of
+"What is it?" and "What in the name of ------ is all this infernal row
+about?" Doors were opened and banged, there was a general running and
+rushing along that corridor, and the next minute the door in front of
+me was opened also, and a young man came out, pen in hand, and
+shouting just like everybody else:
+
+"What the ------ is all this infernal row about?"
+
+"Murder, help!" came from the distant end of the corridor, and M. de
+Marsan--undoubtedly it was he--did what any other young man under the
+like circumstances would have done: he ran to see what was happening
+and to lend a hand in it, if need be. I saw his slim figure
+disappearing down the corridor at the very moment that I slipped into
+his room. One glance upon the desk sufficed: there lay the large
+official-looking document, with the royal signature affixed thereto,
+and close beside it the copy which M. de Marsan had only half
+finished--the ink on it was still wet. Hesitation, Sir, would have
+been fatal. I did not hesitate; not one instant. Three seconds had
+scarcely elapsed before I picked up the document, together with M. de
+Marsan's half-finished copy of the same, and a few loose sheets of
+Chancellerie paper which I thought might be useful. Then I slipped the
+lot inside my blouse. The bogus letter and parcel I left behind me, and
+within two minutes of my entry into the room I was descending the
+service staircase quite unconcernedly, and had gone past the concierge's
+lodge without being challenged. How thankful I was to breathe once more
+the pure air of heaven. I had spent an exceedingly agitated five
+minutes, and even now my anxiety was not altogether at rest. I dared not
+walk too fast lest I attracted attention, and yet I wanted to put the
+river, the Pont Neuf, and a half dozen streets between me and the
+Chancellerie of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. No one who has not gone
+through such an exciting adventure as I have just recorded can conceive
+what were my feelings of relief and of satisfaction when I at last found
+myself quietly mounting the stairs which led to my office on the top
+floor of No. 96 Rue Daunou.
+
+
+
+3.
+
+Now, I had not said anything to Theodore about this affair. It was
+certainly arranged between us when he entered my service as
+confidential clerk and doorkeeper that in lieu of wages, which I could
+not afford to pay him, he would share my meals with me and have a bed
+at my expense in the same house at Passy where I lodged; moreover, I
+would always give him a fair percentage on the profits which I derived
+from my business. The arrangement suited him very well. I told you
+that I picked him out of the gutter, and I heard subsequently that he
+had gone through many an unpleasant skirmish with the police in his
+day, and if I did not employ him no one else would.
+
+After all, he did earn a more or less honest living by serving me. But
+in this instance, since I had not even asked for his assistance, I
+felt that, considering the risks of New Caledonia and a convict ship
+which I had taken, a paltry four hundred francs could not by any
+stretch of the imagination rank as a "profit" in a business--and
+Theodore was not really entitled to a percentage, was he?
+
+So when I returned I crossed the ante-chamber and walked past him with
+my accustomed dignity; nor did he offer any comment on my get-up. I
+often affected a disguise in those days, even when I was not engaged
+in business, and the dress and get-up of a respectable commissionnaire
+was a favourite one with me. As soon as I had changed I sent him out
+to make purchases for our luncheon--five sous' worth of stale bread,
+and ten sous' worth of liver sausage, of which he was inordinately
+fond. He would take the opportunity on the way of getting moderately
+drunk on as many glasses of absinthe as he could afford. I saw him go
+out of the outer door, and then I set to work to examine the precious
+document.
+
+Well, one glance was sufficient for me to realize its incalculable
+value! Nothing more or less than a Treaty of Alliance between King
+Louis XVIII of France and the King of Prussia in connexion with
+certain schemes of naval construction. I did not understand the whole
+diplomatic verbiage, but it was pretty clear to my unsophisticated
+mind that this treaty had been entered into in secret by the two
+monarchs, and that it was intended to prejudice the interests both of
+Denmark and of Russia in the Baltic Sea.
+
+I also realized that both the Governments of Denmark and Russia would
+no doubt pay a very considerable sum for the merest glance at this
+document, and that my client of this morning was certainly a secret
+service agent--otherwise a spy--of one of those two countries, who
+did not choose to take the very severe risks which I had taken this
+morning, but who would, on the other hand, reap the full reward of the
+daring coup, whilst I was to be content with four hundred francs!
+
+Now, I am a man of deliberation as well as of action, and at this
+juncture--feeling that Theodore was still safely out of the way--I
+thought the whole matter over quietly, and then took what precautions
+I thought fit for the furthering of my own interests.
+
+To begin with, I set to work to make a copy of the treaty on my own
+account. I have brought the study of calligraphy to a magnificent
+degree of perfection, and the writing on the document was easy enough
+to imitate, as was also the signature of our gracious King Louis and
+of M. de Talleyrand, who had countersigned it.
+
+If you remember, I had picked up two or three loose sheets of paper
+off M. de Marsan's desk; these bore the arms of the Chancellerie of
+Foreign Affairs stamped upon them, and were in every way identical
+with that on which the original document had been drafted. When I had
+finished my work I flattered myself that not the greatest calligraphic
+expert could have detected the slightest difference between the
+original and the copy which I had made.
+
+The work took me a long time. When at last I folded up the papers and
+slipped them once more inside my blouse it was close upon two. I
+wondered why Theodore had not returned with our luncheon, but on going
+to the little anteroom which divides my office from the outer door,
+great was my astonishment to see him lolling there on the rickety
+chair which he affectioned, and half asleep. I had some difficulty in
+rousing him. Apparently he had got rather drunk while he was out, and
+had then returned and slept some of his booze off, without thinking
+that I might be hungry and needing my luncheon.
+
+"Why didn't you let me know you had come back?" I asked curtly, for
+indeed I was very cross with him.
+
+"I thought you were busy," he replied, with what I thought looked like
+a leer.
+
+I have never really cared for Theodore, you understand.
+
+However, I partook of our modest luncheon with him in perfect amity
+and brotherly love, but my mind was busy all the time. I began to
+wonder if Theodore suspected something; if so, I knew that I could not
+trust him. He would try and ferret things out, and then demand a share
+in my hard-earned emoluments to which he was really not entitled. I
+did not feel safe with that bulky packet of papers on me, and I felt
+that Theodore's bleary eyes were perpetually fixed upon the bulge in
+the left-hand side of my coat. At one moment he looked so strange that
+I thought he meant to knock me down.
+
+So my mind was quickly made up.
+
+After luncheon I would go down to my lodgings at Passy, and I knew of
+a snug little hiding-place in my room there where the precious
+documents would be quite safe until such time as I was to hand
+them--or one of them--to M. Charles Saurez.
+
+This plan I put into execution, and with remarkable ingenuity too.
+
+While Theodore was busy clearing up the debris of our luncheon, I not
+only gave him the slip, but as I went out I took the precaution of
+locking the outer door after me, and taking the key away in my pocket.
+I thus made sure that Theodore could not follow me. I then walked to
+Passy--a matter of two kilometres--and by four o'clock I had the
+satisfaction of stowing the papers safely away under one of the tiles
+in the flooring of my room, and then pulling the strip of carpet in
+front of my bed snugly over the hiding-place.
+
+Theodore's attic, where he slept, was at the top of the house, whilst
+my room was on the ground floor, and so I felt that I could now go
+back quite comfortably to my office in the hope that more remunerative
+work and more lavish clients would come my way before nightfall.
+
+
+
+4.
+
+It was a little after five o'clock when I once more turned the key in
+the outer door of my rooms in the Rue Daunou.
+
+Theodore did not seem in the least to resent having been locked in for
+two hours. I think he must have been asleep most of the time.
+Certainly I heard a good deal of shuffling when first I reached the
+landing outside the door; but when I actually walked into the
+apartment with an air of quiet unconcern Theodore was sprawling on the
+chair-bedstead, with eyes closed, a nose the colour of beetroot, and
+emitting sounds through his thin, cracked lips which I could not, Sir,
+describe graphically in your presence.
+
+I took no notice of him, however, even though, as I walked past him, I
+saw that he opened one bleary eye and watched my every movement. I
+went straight into my private room and shut the door after me. And
+here, I assure you, my dear Sir, I literally fell into my favourite
+chair, overcome with emotion and excitement. Think what I had gone
+through! The events of the last few hours would have turned any brain
+less keen, less daring than that of Hector Ratichon. And here was I,
+alone at last, face to face with the future. What a future, my dear
+Sir! Fate was smiling on me at last. At last I was destined to reap a
+rich reward for all the skill, the energy, the devotion, which up to
+this hour I had placed at the service of my country and my King--or my
+Emperor, as the case might be--without thought of my own advantage.
+Here was I now in possession of a document--two documents--each one
+of which was worth at least a thousand francs to persons whom I could
+easily approach. One thousand francs! Was I dreaming? Five thousand
+would certainly be paid by the Government whose agent M. Charles
+Saurez admittedly was for one glance at that secret treaty which would
+be so prejudicial to their political interests; whilst M. de Marsan
+himself would gladly pay another five thousand for the satisfaction of
+placing the precious document intact before his powerful and irascible
+uncle.
+
+Ten thousand francs! How few were possessed of such a sum in these
+days! How much could be done with it! I would not give up business
+altogether, of course, but with my new capital I would extend it and,
+there was a certain little house, close to Chantilly, a house with a
+few acres of kitchen garden and some fruit trees, the possession of
+which would render me happier than any king. . . . I would marry! Oh,
+yes! I would certainly marry--found a family. I was still young, my
+dear Sir, and passably good looking. In fact there was a certain young
+widow, comely and amiable, who lived not far from Passy, who had on
+more than one occasion given me to understand that I was more than
+passably good looking. I had always been susceptible where the fair sex
+was concerned, and now . . . oh, now! I could pick and choose! The comely
+widow had a small fortune of her own, and there were others! . . .
+
+Thus I dreamed on for the better part of an hour, until, soon after
+six o'clock, there was a knock at the outer door and I heard
+Theodore's shuffling footsteps crossing the small anteroom. There was
+some muttered conversation, and presently my door was opened and
+Theodore's ugly face was thrust into the room.
+
+"A lady to see you," he said curtly.
+
+Then, he dropped his voice, smacked his lips, and winked with one eye.
+"Very pretty," he whispered, "but has a young man with her whom she
+calls Arthur. Shall I send them in?"
+
+I then and there made up my mind that I would get rid of Theodore now
+that I could afford to get a proper servant. My business would in
+future be greatly extended; it would become very important, and I was
+beginning to detest Theodore. But I said "Show the lady in!" with
+becoming dignity, and a few moments later a beautiful woman entered my
+room.
+
+I was vaguely conscious that a creature of my own sex walked in behind
+her, but of him I took no notice. I rose to greet the lady and invited
+her to sit down, but I had the annoyance of seeing the personage whom
+deliberately she called "Arthur" coming familiarly forward and leaning
+over the back of her chair.
+
+I hated him. He was short and stout and florid, with an
+impertinent-looking moustache, and hair that was very smooth and oily
+save for two tight curls, which looked like the horns of a young goat,
+on each side of the centre parting. I hated him cordially, and had to
+control my feelings not to show him the contempt which I felt for his
+fatuousness and his air of self-complacency. Fortunately the beautiful
+being was the first to address me, and thus I was able to ignore the
+very presence of the detestable man.
+
+"You are M. Ratichon, I believe," she said in a voice that was dulcet
+and adorably tremulous, like the voice of some sweet, shy young thing
+in the presence of genius and power.
+
+"Hector Ratichon," I replied calmly. "Entirely at your service,
+Mademoiselle." Then I added, with gentle, encouraging kindliness,
+"Mademoiselle...?"
+
+"My name is Geoffroy," she replied, "Madeleine Geoffroy."
+
+She raised her eyes--such eyes, my dear Sir!--of a tender, luscious
+grey, fringed with lashes and dewy with tears. I met her glance.
+Something in my own eyes must have spoken with mute eloquence of my
+distress, for she went on quickly and with a sweet smile. "And this,"
+she said, pointing to her companion, "is my brother, Arthur Geoffroy."
+
+An exclamation of joyful surprise broke from my lips, and I beamed and
+smiled on M. Arthur, begged him to be seated, which he refused, and
+finally I myself sat down behind my desk. I now looked with unmixed
+benevolence on both my clients, and then perceived that the lady's
+exquisite face bore unmistakable signs of recent sorrow.
+
+"And now, Mademoiselle," I said, as soon as I had taken up a position
+indicative of attention and of encouragement, "will you deign to tell
+me how I can have the honour to serve you?"
+
+"Monsieur," she began in a voice that trembled with emotion, "I have
+come to you in the midst of the greatest distress that any human being
+has ever been called upon to bear. It was by the merest accident that
+I heard of you. I have been to the police; they cannot--will not--act
+without I furnish them with certain information which it is not in my
+power to give them. Then when I was half distraught with despair, a
+kindly agent there spoke to me of you. He said that you were attached
+to the police as a voluntary agent, and that they sometimes put work
+in your way which did not happen to be within their own scope. He also
+said that sometimes you were successful."
+
+"Nearly always, Mademoiselle," I broke in firmly and with much
+dignity. "Once more I beg of you to tell me in what way I may have the
+honour to serve you."
+
+"It is not for herself, Monsieur," here interposed M. Arthur, whilst a
+blush suffused Mlle. Geoffroy's lovely face, "that my sister desires
+to consult you, but for her fianc� M. de Marsan, who is very ill
+indeed, hovering, in fact, between life and death. He could not come
+in person. The matter is one that demands the most profound secrecy."
+
+"You may rely on my discretion, Monsieur," I murmured, without
+showing, I flatter myself, the slightest trace of that astonishment
+which, at mention of M. de Marsan's name, had nearly rendered me
+speechless.
+
+"M. de Marsan came to see me in utmost distress, Monsieur," resumed
+the lovely creature. "He had no one in whom he could--or rather
+dared--confide. He is in the Chancellerie for Foreign Affairs. His
+uncle M. de Talleyrand thinks a great deal of him and often entrusts
+him with very delicate work. This morning he gave M. de Marsan a
+valuable paper to copy--a paper, Monsieur, the importance of which it
+were impossible to overestimate. The very safety of this country, the
+honour of our King, are involved in it. I cannot tell you its exact
+contents, and it is because I would not tell more about it to the
+police that they would not help me in any way, and referred me to you.
+How could they, said the chief Commissary to me, run after a document
+the contents of which they did not even know? But you will be
+satisfied with what I have told you, will you not, my dear M.
+Ratichon?" she continued, with a pathetic quiver in her voice and a
+look of appeal in her eyes which St. Anthony himself could not have
+resisted, "and help me to regain possession of that paper, the final
+loss of which would cost M. de Marsan his life."
+
+To say that my feeling of elation of a while ago had turned to one of
+supreme beatitude would be to put it very mildly indeed. To think that
+here was this lovely being in tears before me, and that it lay in my
+power to dry those tears with a word and to bring a smile round those
+perfect lips, literally made my mouth water in anticipation--for I am
+sure that you will have guessed, just as I did in a moment, that the
+valuable document of which this adorable being was speaking, was
+snugly hidden away under the flooring of my room in Passy. I hated
+that unknown de Marsan. I hated this Arthur who leaned so familiarly
+over her chair, but I had the power to render her a service beside
+which their lesser claims on her regard would pale.
+
+However, I am not the man to act on impulse, even at a moment like
+this. I wanted to think the whole matter over first, and . . .
+well . . . I had made up my mind to demand five thousand francs when
+I handed the document over to my first client to-morrow morning. At
+any rate, for the moment I acted--if I may say so--with great
+circumspection and dignity.
+
+"I must presume, Mademoiselle," I said in my most business-like
+manner, "that the document you speak of has been stolen."
+
+"Stolen, Monsieur," she assented whilst the tears once more gathered
+in her eyes, "and M. de Marsan now lies at death's door with a
+terrible attack of brain fever, brought on by shock when he discovered
+the loss."
+
+"How and when was it stolen?" I asked.
+
+"Some time during the morning," she replied. "M. de Talleyrand gave
+the document to M. de Marsan at nine o'clock, telling him that he
+wanted the copy by midday. M. de Marsan set to work at once, laboured
+uninterruptedly until about eleven o'clock, when a loud altercation,
+followed by cries of 'Murder!' and of 'Help!' and proceeding from the
+corridor outside his door, caused him to run out of the room in order
+to see what was happening. The altercation turned out to be between
+two men who had pushed their way into the building by the main
+staircase, and who became very abusive to the gendarme who ordered
+them out. The men were not hurt; nevertheless they screamed as if they
+were being murdered. They took to their heels quickly enough, and I
+don't know what has become of them, but . . ."
+
+"But," I concluded blandly, "whilst M. de Marsan was out of the room
+the precious document was stolen."
+
+"It was, Monsieur," exclaimed Mlle. Geoffroy piteously. "You will
+find it for us . . . will you not?"
+
+Then she added more calmly: "My brother and I are offering ten
+thousand francs reward for the recovery of the document."
+
+I did not fall off my chair, but I closed my eyes. The vision which
+the lovely lady's words had conjured up dazzled me.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I said with solemn dignity, "I pledge you my word of
+honour that I will find the document for you and lay it at your feet
+or die in your service. Give me twenty hours, during which I will move
+heaven and earth to discover the thief. I will go at once to the
+Chancellerie and collect what evidence I can. I have worked under M.
+de Robespierre, Mademoiselle, under the great Napol�on, and under the
+illustrious Fouch�! I have never been known to fail, once I have set
+my mind upon a task."
+
+"In that case you will earn your ten thousand francs, my friend," said
+the odious Arthur drily, "and my sister and M. de Marsan will still be
+your debtors. Are there any questions you would like to ask before we
+go?"
+
+"None," I said loftily, choosing to ignore his sneering manner. "If
+Mademoiselle deigns to present herself here to-morrow at two o'clock I
+will have news to communicate to her."
+
+You will admit that I carried off the situation in a becoming manner.
+Both Mademoiselle and Arthur Geoffroy gave me a few more details in
+connexion with the affair. To these details I listened with well
+simulated interest. Of course, they did not know that there were no
+details in connexion with this affair that I did not know already. My
+heart was actually dancing within my bosom. The future was so
+entrancing that the present appeared like a dream; the lovely being
+before me seemed like an angel, an emissary from above come to tell me
+of the happiness which was in store for me. The house near
+Chantilly--the little widow--the kitchen garden--the magic words went
+on hammering in my brain. I longed now to be rid of my visitors, to be
+alone once more, so as to think out the epilogue of this glorious
+adventure. Ten thousand francs was the reward offered me by this
+adorable creature! Well, then, why should not M. Charles Saurez, on
+his side, pay me another ten thousand for the same document, which was
+absolutely undistinguishable from the first?
+
+Ten thousand, instead of two hundred which he had the audacity to
+offer me!
+
+Seven o'clock had struck before I finally bowed my clients out of the
+room. Theodore had gone. The lazy lout would never stay as much as
+five minutes after his appointed time, so I had to show the adorable
+creature and her fat brother out of the premises myself. But I did not
+mind that. I flatter myself that I can always carry off an awkward
+situation in a dignified manner. A brief allusion to the inefficiency
+of present-day servants, a jocose comment on my own simplicity of
+habits, and the deed was done. M. Arthur Geoffroy and Mademoiselle
+Madeleine his sister were half-way down the stairs. A quarter of an
+hour later I was once more out in the streets of Paris. It was a
+beautiful, balmy night. I had two hundred francs in my pocket and
+there was a magnificent prospect of twenty thousand francs before me!
+I could afford some slight extravagance. I had dinner at one of the
+fashionable restaurants on the quay, and I remained some time out on
+the terrace sipping my coffee and liqueur, dreaming dreams such as I
+had never dreamed before. At ten o'clock I was once more on my way to
+Passy.
+
+
+
+5.
+
+When I turned the corner of the street and came is sight of the
+squalid house where I lodged, I felt like a being from another world.
+Twenty thousand francs--a fortune!--was waiting for me inside those
+dingy walls. Yes, twenty thousand, for by now I had fully made up my
+mind. I had two documents concealed beneath the floor of my
+bedroom--one so like the other that none could tell them apart. One of
+these I would restore to the lovely being who had offered me ten
+thousand francs for it, and the other I would sell to my first and
+uncouth client for another ten thousand francs!
+
+Four hundred! Bah! Ten thousand shall you pay for the treaty, my
+friend of the Danish or Russian Secret Service! Ten thousand!--it is
+worth that to you!
+
+In that happy frame of mind I reached the front door of my dingy
+abode. Imagine my surprise on being confronted with two agents of
+police, each with fixed bayonet, who refused to let me pass.
+
+"But I lodge here," I said.
+
+"Your name?" queried one of the men. "Hector Ratichon," I
+replied. Whereupon they gave me leave to enter.
+
+It was very mysterious. My heart beat furiously. Fear for the safety
+of my precious papers held me in a death-like grip. I ran straight to
+my room, locked the door after me, and pulled the curtains together in
+front of the window. Then, with hands that trembled as if with ague, I
+pulled aside the strip of carpet which concealed the hiding-place of
+what meant a fortune to me.
+
+I nearly fainted with joy; the papers were there--quite safely. I took
+them out and replaced them inside my coat.
+
+Then I ran up to see if Theodore was in. I found him in bed. He told
+me that he had left the office whilst my visitors were still with me,
+as he felt terribly sick. He had been greatly upset when, about an
+hour ago, the maid-of-all-work had informed him that the police were
+in the house, that they would allow no one--except the persons lodging
+in the house--to enter it, and no one, once in, would be allowed to
+leave. How long these orders would hold good Theodore did not know.
+
+I left him moaning and groaning and declaring that he felt very ill,
+and I went in quest of information. The corporal in command of the
+gendarmes was exceedingly curt with me at first, but after a time he
+unbent and condescended to tell me that my landlord had been denounced
+for permitting a Bonapartiste club to hold its sittings in his house.
+So far so good. Such denunciations were very frequent these days, and
+often ended unpleasantly for those concerned, but the affair had
+obviously nothing to do with me. I felt that I could breathe again.
+But there was still the matter of the consigne. If no one, save the
+persons who lodged in the house, would be allowed to enter it, how
+would M. Charles Saurez contrive to call for the stolen document and,
+incidentally, to hand me over the ten thousand francs I was hoping for?
+And if no one, once inside the house, would be allowed to leave it,
+how could I meet Mlle. Geoffroy to-morrow at two o'clock in my office
+and receive ten thousand francs from her in exchange for the precious
+paper?
+
+Moreover the longer the police stayed in this house and poked their
+noses about in affairs that concerned hardworking citizens like
+myself--why--the greater the risk would be of the matter of the stolen
+document coming to light.
+
+It was positively maddening.
+
+I never undressed that night, but just lay down on my bed, thinking.
+The house was very still at times, but at others I could hear the
+tramp of the police agents up and down the stairs and also outside my
+window. The latter gave on a small, dilapidated back garden which had
+a wooden fence at the end of it. Beyond it were some market gardens
+belonging to a M. Lorraine. It did not take me very long to realize
+that that way lay my fortune of twenty thousand francs. But for the
+moment I remained very still. My plan was already made. At about
+midnight I went to the window and opened it cautiously. I had heard no
+noise from that direction for some time, and I bent my ear to listen.
+
+Not a sound! Either the sentry was asleep, or he had gone on his
+round, and for a few moments the way was free. Without a moment's
+hesitation I swung my leg over the sill.
+
+Still no sound. My heart beat so fast that I could almost hear it. The
+night was very dark. A thin mist-like drizzle was falling; in fact the
+weather conditions were absolutely perfect for my purpose. With utmost
+wariness I allowed myself to drop from the window-ledge on to the soft
+ground below.
+
+If I was caught by the sentry I had my answer ready: I was going to
+meet my sweetheart at the end of the garden. It is an excuse which
+always meets with the sympathy of every true-hearted Frenchman. The
+sentry would, of course, order me back to my room, but I doubt if he
+would ill-use me; the denunciation was against the landlord, not
+against me.
+
+Still not a sound. I could have danced with joy. Five minutes more and
+I would be across the garden and over that wooden fence, and once more
+on my way to fortune. My fall from the window had been light, as my
+room was on the ground floor; but I had fallen on my knees, and now,
+as I picked myself up, I looked up, and it seemed to me as if I saw
+Theodore's ugly face at his attic window. Certainly there was a light
+there, and I may have been mistaken as to Theodore's face being
+visible. The very next second the light was extinguished and I was
+left in doubt.
+
+But I did not pause to think. In a moment I was across the garden, my
+hands gripped the top of the wooden fence, I hoisted myself up--with
+some difficulty, I confess--but at last I succeeded. I threw my leg
+over and gently dropped down on the other side.
+
+Then suddenly two rough arms encircled my waist, and before I could
+attempt to free myself a cloth was thrown over my head, and I was
+lifted up and carried away, half suffocated and like an insentient
+bundle.
+
+When the cloth was removed from my face I was half sitting, half
+lying, in an arm-chair in a strange room which was lighted by an oil
+lamp that hung from the ceiling above. In front of me stood M. Arthur
+Geoffroy and that beast Theodore.
+
+M. Arthur Geoffroy was coolly folding up the two valuable papers for
+the possession of which I had risked a convict ship and New Caledonia,
+and which would have meant affluence for me for many days to come.
+
+It was Theodore who had removed the cloth from my face. As soon as I
+had recovered my breath I made a rush for him, for I wanted to
+strangle him. But M. Arthur Geoffroy was too quick and too strong for
+me. He pushed me back into the chair.
+
+"Easy, easy, M. Ratichon," he said pleasantly; "do not vent your wrath
+upon this good fellow. Believe me, though his actions may have
+deprived you of a few thousand francs, they have also saved you from
+lasting and biting remorse. This document, which you stole from M. de
+Marsan and so ingeniously duplicated, involved the honour of our King
+and our country, as well as the life of an innocent man. My sister's
+fianc� would never have survived the loss of the document which had
+been entrusted to his honour."
+
+"I would have returned it to Mademoiselle to-morrow," I murmured.
+
+"Only one copy of it, I think," he retorted; "the other you would have
+sold to whichever spy of the Danish or Russian Governments happened to
+have employed you in this discreditable business."
+
+"How did you know?" I said involuntarily.
+
+"Through a very simple process of reasoning, my good M. Ratichon," he
+replied blandly. "You are a very clever man, no doubt, but the
+cleverest of us is at times apt to make a mistake. You made two, and I
+profited by them. Firstly, after my sister and I left you this
+afternoon, you never made the slightest pretence of making inquiries
+or collecting information about the mysterious theft of the document.
+I kept an eye on you throughout the evening. You left your office and
+strolled for a while on the quays; you had an excellent dinner at the
+Restaurant des Anglais; then you settled down to your coffee and
+liqueur. Well, my good M. Ratichon, obviously you would have been more
+active in the matter if you had not known exactly where and when and
+how to lay your hands upon the document, for the recovery of which my
+sister had offered you ten thousand francs."
+
+I groaned. I had not been quite so circumspect as I ought to have
+been, but who would have thought--
+
+"I have had something to do with police work in my day," continued M.
+Geoffroy blandly, "though not of late years; but my knowledge of their
+methods is not altogether rusty and my powers of observation are not
+yet dulled. During my sister's visit to you this afternoon I noticed
+the blouse and cap of a commissionnaire lying in a bundle in a corner
+of your room. Now, though M. de Marsan has been in a burning fever
+since he discovered his loss, he kept just sufficient presence of mind
+at the moment to say nothing about that loss to any of the
+Chancellerie officials, but to go straight home to his apartments in
+the Rue Royale and to send for my sister and for me. When we came to
+him he was already partly delirious, but he pointed to a parcel and a
+letter which he had brought away from his office. The parcel proved to
+be an empty box and the letter a blank sheet of paper; but the most
+casual inquiry of the concierge at the Chancellerie elicited the fact
+that a commissionaire had brought these things in the course of the
+morning. That was your second mistake, my good M. Ratichon; not a very
+grave one, perhaps, but I have been in the police, and somehow, the
+moment I caught sight of that blouse and cap in your office, I could
+not help connecting it with the commissionnaire who had brought a
+bogus parcel and letter to my future brother-in-law a few minutes
+before that mysterious and unexplained altercation took place in the
+corridor."
+
+Again I groaned. I felt as a child in the hands of that horrid
+creature who seemed to be dissecting all the thoughts which had run
+riot through my mind these past twenty hours.
+
+"It was all very simple, my good M. Ratichon," now concluded my
+tormentor still quite amiably. "Another time you will have to be more
+careful, will you not? You will also have to bestow more confidence upon
+your partner or servant. Directly I had seen that commissionnaire's
+blouse and cap, I set to work to make friends with M. Theodore. When my
+sister and I left your office in the Rue Daunou, we found him waiting
+for us at the bottom of the stairs. Five francs loosened his tongue: he
+suspected that you were up to some game in which you did not mean him to
+have a share; he also told us that you had spent two hours in laborious
+writing, and that you and he both lodged at a dilapidated little inn,
+called the 'Grey Cat,' in Passy. I think he was rather disappointed that
+we did not shower more questions, and therefore more emoluments, upon
+him. Well, after I had denounced this house to the police as a
+Bonapartiste club, and saw it put under the usual consigne, I bribed the
+corporal of the gendarmerie in charge of it to let me have Theodore's
+company for the little job I had in hand, and also to clear the back
+garden of sentries so as to give you a chance and the desire to escape.
+All the rest you know. Money will do many things, my good M. Ratichon,
+and you see how simple it all was. It would have been still more simple
+if the stolen document had not been such an important one that the very
+existence of it must be kept a secret even from the police. So I could
+not have you shadowed and arrested as a thief in the usual manner!
+However, I have the document and its ingenious copy, which is all that
+matters. Would to God," he added with a suppressed curse, "that I could
+get hold equally easily of the Secret Service agent to whom you, a
+Frenchman, were going to sell the honour of your country!"
+
+Then it was that--though broken in spirit and burning with thoughts of
+the punishment I would mete out to Theodore--my full faculties
+returned to me, and I queried abruptly:
+
+"What would you give to get him?"
+
+"Five hundred francs," he replied without hesitation. "Can you find
+him?"
+
+"Make it a thousand," I retorted, "and you shall have him."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Will you give me five hundred francs now," I insisted, "and another
+five hundred when you have the man, and I will tell you?"
+
+"Agreed," he said impatiently.
+
+But I was not to be played with by him again. I waited in silence
+until he had taken a pocket-book from the inside of his coat and
+counted out five hundred francs, which he kept in his hand.
+
+"Now--" he commanded.
+
+"The man," I then announced calmly, "will call on me for the document
+at my lodgings at the hostelry of the 'Grey Cat' to-morrow morning at
+nine o'clock."
+
+"Good," rejoined M. Geoffroy. "We shall be there."
+
+He made no demur about giving me the five hundred francs, but half my
+pleasure in receiving them vanished when I saw Theodore's bleary eyes
+fixed ravenously upon them.
+
+"Another five hundred francs," M. Geoffroy went on quietly, "will be
+yours as soon as the spy is in our hands."
+
+I did get that further five hundred of course, for M. Charles Saurez
+was punctual to the minute, and M. Geoffroy was there with the police
+to apprehend him. But to think that I might have had twenty
+thousand--!
+
+And I had to give Theodore fifty francs on the transaction, as he
+threatened me with the police when I talked of giving him the sack.
+
+But we were quite good friends again after that until-- But you
+shall judge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A FOOL'S PARADISE
+
+
+
+1.
+
+Ah! my dear Sir, I cannot tell you how poor we all were in France in
+that year of grace 1816--so poor, indeed, that a dish of roast pork
+was looked upon as a feast, and a new gown for the wife an unheard-of
+luxury.
+
+The war had ruined everyone. Twenty-two years! and hopeless
+humiliation and defeat at the end of it. The Emperor handed over to
+the English; a Bourbon sitting on the throne of France; crowds of
+foreign soldiers still lording it all over the country--until the
+country had paid its debts to her foreign invaders, and thousands of
+our own men still straggling home through Germany and Belgium--the
+remnants of Napol�on's Grand Army--ex-prisoners of war, or scattered
+units who had found their weary way home at last, shoeless, coatless,
+half starved and perished from cold and privations, unfit for
+housework, for agriculture, or for industry, fit only to follow their
+fallen hero, as they had done through a quarter of a century, to
+victory and to death.
+
+With me, Sir, business in Paris was almost at a standstill. I, who had
+been the confidential agent of two kings, three democrats and one
+emperor; I, who had held diplomatic threads in my hands which had
+caused thrones to totter and tyrants to quake, and who had brought
+more criminals and intriguers to book than any other man alive--I now
+sat in my office in the Rue Daunou day after day with never a client
+to darken my doors, even whilst crime and political intrigue were more
+rife in Paris than they had been in the most corrupt days of the
+Revolution and the Consulate.
+
+I told you, I think, that I had forgiven Theodore his abominable
+treachery in connexion with the secret naval treaty, and we were the
+best of friends--that is, outwardly, of course. Within my inmost heart
+I felt, Sir, that I could never again trust that shameless
+traitor--that I had in very truth nurtured a serpent in my bosom. But
+I am proverbially tender-hearted. You will believe me or not, I simply
+could not turn that vermin out into the street. He deserved it! Oh,
+even he would have admitted when he was quite sober, which was not
+often, that I had every right to give him the sack, to send him back
+to the gutter whence he had come, there to grub once more for scraps
+of filth and to stretch a half-frozen hand to the charity of the
+passers by.
+
+But I did not do it, Sir. No, I did not do it. I kept him on at the
+office as my confidential servant; I gave him all the crumbs that fell
+from mine own table, and he helped himself to the rest. I made as
+little difference as I could in my intercourse with him. I continued
+to treat him almost as an equal. The only difference I did make in our
+mode of life was that I no longer gave him bed and board at the
+hostelry where I lodged in Passy, but placed the chair-bedstead in the
+anteroom of the office permanently at his disposal, and allowed him
+five sous a day for his breakfast.
+
+But owing to the scarcity of business that now came my way, Theodore
+had little or nothing to do, and he was in very truth eating his head
+off, and with that, grumble, grumble all the time, threatening to
+leave me, if you please, to leave my service for more remunerative
+occupation. As if anyone else would dream of employing such an
+out-at-elbows mudlark--a jail-bird, Sir, if you'll believe me.
+
+Thus the Spring of 1816 came along. Spring, Sir, with its beauty and
+its promises, and the thoughts of love which come eternally in the
+minds of those who have not yet wholly done with youth. Love, Sir! I
+dreamed of it on those long, weary afternoons in April, after I had
+consumed my scanty repast, and whilst Theodore in the anteroom was
+snoring like a hog. At even, when tired out and thirsty, I would sit
+for a while outside a humble caf� on the outer boulevards, I watched
+the amorous couples wander past me on their way to happiness. At night
+I could not sleep, and bitter were my thoughts, my revilings against a
+cruel fate that had condemned me--a man with so sensitive a heart and
+so generous a nature--to the sorrows of perpetual solitude.
+
+That, Sir, was my mood, when on a never-to-be-forgotten afternoon
+toward the end of April, I sat mooning disconsolately in my private
+room and a timid rat-tat at the outer door of the apartment roused
+Theodore from his brutish slumbers. I heard him shuffling up to the
+door, and I hurriedly put my necktie straight and smoothed my hair,
+which had become disordered despite the fact that I had only indulged
+in a very abstemious d�jeuner.
+
+When I said that the knock at my door was in the nature of a timid
+rat-rat I did not perhaps describe it quite accurately. It was timid,
+if you will understand me, and yet bold, as coming from one who might
+hesitate to enter and nevertheless feels assured of welcome. Obviously
+a client, I thought.
+
+Effectively, Sir, the next moment my eyes were gladdened by the sight
+of a lovely woman, beautifully dressed, young, charming, smiling but
+to hide her anxiety, trustful, and certainly wealthy.
+
+The moment she stepped into the room I knew that she was wealthy;
+there was an air of assurance about her which only those are able to
+assume who are not pestered with creditors. She wore two beautiful
+diamond rings upon her hands outside her perfectly fitting glove, and
+her bonnet was adorned with flowers so exquisitely fashioned that a
+butterfly would have been deceived and would have perched on it with
+delight.
+
+Her shoes were of the finest kid, shiny at the toes like tiny mirrors,
+whilst her dainty ankles were framed in the filmy lace frills of her
+pantalets.
+
+Within the wide brim of her bonnet her exquisite face appeared like a
+rosebud nestling in a basket. She smiled when I rose to greet her,
+gave me a look that sent my susceptible heart a-flutter and caused me
+to wish that I had not taken that bottle-green coat of mine to the
+Mont de Pi�t� only last week. I offered her a seat, which she took,
+arranging her skirts about her with inimitable grace.
+
+"One moment," I added, as soon as she was seated, "and I am entirely
+at your service."
+
+I took up pen and paper--an unfinished letter which I always keep
+handy for the purpose--and wrote rapidly. It always looks well for a
+lawyer or an _agent confidentiel_ to keep a client waiting for a moment
+or two while he attends to the enormous pressure of correspondence
+which, if allowed to accumulate for five minutes, would immediately
+overwhelm him. I signed and folded the letter, threw it with a
+nonchalant air into a basket filled to the brim with others of equal
+importance, buried my face in my hands for a few seconds as if to
+collect my thoughts, and finally said:
+
+"And now, Mademoiselle, will you deign to tell me what procures me the
+honour of your visit?"
+
+The lovely creature had watched my movements with obvious impatience,
+a frown upon her exquisite brow. But now she plunged straightway into
+her story.
+
+"Monsieur," she said with that pretty, determined air which became her
+so well, "my name is Estelle Bachelier. I am an orphan, an heiress,
+and have need of help and advice. I did not know to whom to apply.
+Until three months ago I was poor and had to earn my living by working
+in a milliner's shop in the Rue St. Honor�. The concierge in the house
+where I used to lodge is my only friend, but she cannot help me for
+reasons which will presently be made clear to you. She told me,
+however, that she had a nephew named Theodore, who was clerk to M.
+Ratichon, advocate and confidential agent. She gave me your address;
+and as I knew no one else I determined to come and consult you."
+
+I flatter myself, that though my countenance is exceptionally mobile,
+I possess marvellous powers for keeping it impassive when necessity
+arises. In this instance, at mention of Theodore's name, I showed
+neither surprise nor indignation. Yet you will readily understand that
+I felt both. Here was that man, once more revealed as a traitor.
+Theodore had an aunt of whom he had never as much as breathed a word.
+He had an aunt, and that aunt a concierge--_ipso facto_, if I may so
+express it, a woman of some substance, who, no doubt, would often have
+been only too pleased to extend hospitality to the man who had so
+signally befriended her nephew; a woman, Sir, who was undoubtedly
+possessed of savings which both reason and gratitude would cause her
+to invest in an old-established and substantial business run by a
+trustworthy and capable man, such, for instance, as the bureau of a
+confidential agent in a good quarter of Paris, which, with the help of
+a little capital, could be rendered highly lucrative and beneficial to
+all those, concerned.
+
+I determined then and there to give Theodore a piece of my mind and to
+insist upon an introduction to his aunt. After which I begged the
+beautiful creature to proceed.
+
+"My father, Monsieur," she continued, "died three months ago, in
+England, whither he had emigrated when I was a mere child, leaving my
+poor mother to struggle along for a livelihood as best she could. My
+mother died last year, Monsieur, and I have hard a hard life; and now
+it seems that my father made a fortune in England and left it all to
+me."
+
+I was greatly interested in her story.
+
+"The first intimation I had of it, Monsieur, was three months ago,
+when I had a letter from an English lawyer in London telling me that
+my father, Jean Paul Bachelier--that was his name, Monsieur--had died
+out there and made a will leaving all his money, about one hundred
+thousand francs, to me."
+
+"Yes, yes!" I murmured, for my throat felt parched and my eyes dim.
+
+Hundred thousand francs! Ye gods!
+
+"It seems," she proceeded demurely, "that my father put it in his will
+that the English lawyers were to pay me the interest on the money
+until I married or reached the age of twenty-one. Then the whole of
+the money was to be handed over to me."
+
+I had to steady myself against the table or I would have fallen over
+backwards! This godlike creature, to whom the sum of one hundred
+thousand francs was to be paid over when she married, had come to me
+for help and advice! The thought sent my brain reeling! I am so
+imaginative!
+
+"Proceed, Mademoiselle, I pray you," I contrived to say with dignified
+calm.
+
+"Well, Monsieur, as I don't know a word of English, I took the letter
+to Mr. Farewell, who is the English traveller for Madame C�cile, the
+milliner for whom I worked. He is a kind, affable gentleman and was
+most helpful to me. He was, as a matter of fact, just going over to
+England the very next day. He offered to go and see the English
+lawyers for me, and to bring me back all particulars of my dear
+father's death and of my unexpected fortune."
+
+"And," said I, for she had paused a moment, "did Mr. Farewell go to
+England on your behalf?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur. He went and returned about a fortnight later. He had
+seen the English lawyers, who confirmed all the good news which was
+contained in their letter. They took, it seems, a great fancy to Mr.
+Farewell, and told him that since I was obviously too young to live
+alone and needed a guardian to look after my interests, they would
+appoint him my guardian, and suggested that I should make my home with
+him until I was married or had attained the age of twenty-one. Mr.
+Farewell told me that though this arrangement might be somewhat
+inconvenient in his bachelor establishment, he had been unable to
+resist the entreaties of the English lawyers, who felt that no one was
+more fitted for such onerous duties than himself, seeing that he was
+English and so obviously my friend."
+
+"The scoundrel! The blackguard!" I exclaimed in an unguarded outburst
+of fury. . . .
+
+"Your pardon, Mademoiselle," I added more calmly, seeing that the
+lovely creature was gazing at me with eyes full of astonishment not
+unmixed with distrust, "I am anticipating. Am I to understand, then,
+that you have made your home with this Mr. Farewell?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur, at number sixty-five Rue des Pyramides."
+
+"Is he a married man?" I asked casually.
+
+"He is a widower, Monsieur."
+
+"Middle-aged?"
+
+"Quite elderly, Monsieur."
+
+I could have screamed with joy. I was not yet forty myself.
+
+"Why!" she added gaily, "he is thinking of retiring from business--he
+is, as I said, a commercial traveller--in favour of his nephew, M.
+Adrien Cazal�s."
+
+Once more I had to steady myself against the table. The room swam
+round me. One hundred thousand francs!--a lovely creature!--an
+unscrupulous widower!--an equally dangerous young nephew. I rose and
+tottered to the window. I flung it wide open--a thing I never do save
+at moments of acute crises.
+
+The breath of fresh air did me good. I returned to my desk, and was
+able once more to assume my habitual dignity and presence of mind.
+
+"In all this, Mademoiselle," I said in my best professional manner, "I
+do not gather how I can be of service to you."
+
+"I am coming to that, Monsieur," she resumed after a slight moment of
+hesitation, even as an exquisite blush suffused her damask cheeks.
+"You must know that at first I was very happy in the house of my new
+guardian. He was exceedingly kind to me, though there were times
+already when I fancied . . ."
+
+She hesitated--more markedly this time--and the blush became deeper on
+her cheeks. I groaned aloud.
+
+"Surely he is too old," I suggested.
+
+"Much too old," she assented emphatically.
+
+Once more I would have screamed with joy had not a sharp pang, like a
+dagger-thrust, shot through my heart.
+
+"But the nephew, eh?" I said as jocosely, as indifferently as I could.
+"Young M. Cazal�s? What?"
+
+"Oh!" she replied with perfect indifference. "I hardly ever see him."
+
+Unfortunately it were not seemly for an avocat and the _agent
+confidentiel_ of half the Courts of Europe to execute the measures of
+a polka in the presence of a client, or I would indeed have jumped up
+and danced with glee. The happy thoughts were hammering away in my
+mind: "The old one is much too old--the young one she never sees!" and
+I could have knelt down and kissed the hem of her gown for the
+exquisite indifference with which she had uttered those magic words:
+"Oh! I hardly ever see him!"--words which converted my brightest hopes
+into glowing possibilities.
+
+But, as it was, I held my emotions marvellously in check, and with
+perfect sang-froid once more asked the beauteous creature how I could
+be of service to her in her need.
+
+"Of late, Monsieur," she said, as she raised a pair of limpid, candid
+blue eyes to mine, "my position in Mr. Farewell's house has become
+intolerable. He pursues me with his attentions, and he has become
+insanely jealous. He will not allow me to speak to anyone, and has
+even forbidden M. Cazal�s, his own nephew, the house. Not that I care
+about that," she added with an expressive shrug of the shoulders.
+
+"He has forbidden M. Cazal�s the house," rang like a paean in my ear.
+"Not that she cares about that! Tra la, la, la, la, la!" What I
+actually contrived to say with a measured and judicial air was:
+
+"If you deign to entrust me with the conduct of your affairs, I would
+at once communicate with the English lawyers in your name and suggest
+to them the advisability of appointing another guardian. . . . I would
+suggest, for instance . . . er . . . that I . . ."
+
+"How can you do that, Monsieur?" she broke in somewhat impatiently,
+"seeing that I cannot possibly tell you who these lawyers are?"
+
+"Eh?" I queried, gasping.
+
+"I neither know their names nor their residence in England."
+
+Once more I gasped. "Will you explain?" I murmured.
+
+"It seems, Monsieur, that while my dear mother lived she always
+refused to take a single sou from my father, who had so basely
+deserted her. Of course, she did not know that he was making a fortune
+over in England, nor that he was making diligent inquiries as to her
+whereabouts when he felt that he was going to die. Thus, he discovered
+that she had died the previous year and that I was working in the
+atelier of Madame C�cile, the well-known milliner. When the English
+lawyers wrote to me at that address they, of course, said that they
+would require all my papers of identification before they paid any
+money over to me, and so, when Mr. Farewell went over to England, he
+took all my papers with him and . . ."
+
+She burst into tears and exclaimed piteously:
+
+"Oh! I have nothing now, Monsieur--nothing to prove who I am! Mr.
+Farewell took everything, even the original letter which the English
+lawyers wrote to me."
+
+"Farewell," I urged, "can be forced by the law to give all your papers
+up to you."
+
+"Oh! I have nothing now, Monsieur--he threatened to destroy all my
+papers unless I promised to become his wife! And I haven't the least
+idea how and where to find the English lawyers. I don't remember
+either their name or their address; and if I did, how could I prove my
+identity to their satisfaction? I don't know a soul in Paris save a
+few irresponsible millinery apprentices and Madame C�cile, who, no
+doubt, is hand in glove with Mr. Farewell. I am all alone in the world
+and friendless. . . . I have come to you, Monsieur, in my distress . . .
+and you will help me, will you not?"
+
+She looked more adorable in grief than she had ever done before.
+
+To tell you that at this moment visions floated in my mind, before
+which Dante's visions of Paradise would seem pale and tame, were but
+to put it mildly. I was literally soaring in heaven. For you see I am
+a man of intellect and of action. No sooner do I see possibilities
+before me than my brain soars in an empyrean whilst conceiving daring
+plans for my body's permanent abode in elysium. At this present
+moment, for instance--to name but a few of the beatific visions which
+literally dazzled me with their radiance--I could see my fair client
+as a lovely and blushing bride by my side, even whilst Messieurs X.
+and X., the two still unknown English lawyers, handed me a heavy bag
+which bore the legend "One hundred thousand francs." I could see . . .
+But I had not the time now to dwell on these ravishing dreams. The
+beauteous creature was waiting for my decision. She had placed her
+fate in my hands; I placed my hand on my heart.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I said solemnly, "I will be your adviser and your
+friend. Give me but a few days' grace, every hour, every minute of
+which I will spend in your service. At the end of that time I will not
+only have learned the name and address of the English lawyers, but I
+will have communicated with them on your behalf, and all your papers
+proving your identity will be in your hands. Then we can come to a
+decision with regard to a happier and more comfortable home for you.
+In the meanwhile I entreat you to do nothing that may precipitate Mr.
+Farewell's actions. Do not encourage his advances, but do not repulse
+them, and above all keep me well informed of everything that goes on
+in his house."
+
+She spoke a few words of touching gratitude, then she rose, and with a
+gesture of exquisite grace she extracted a hundred-franc note from her
+reticule and placed it upon my desk.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I protested with splendid dignity, "I have done
+nothing as yet."
+
+"Ah! but you will, Monsieur," she entreated in accents that completed
+my subjugation to her charms. "Besides, you do not know me! How could
+I expect you to work for me and not to know if, in the end, I should
+repay you for all your trouble? I pray you to take this small sum
+without demur. Mr. Farewell keeps me well supplied with pocket money.
+There will be another hundred for you when you place the papers in my
+hands."
+
+I bowed to her, and, having once more assured her of my unswerving
+loyalty to her interests, I accompanied her to the door, and anon saw
+her graceful figure slowly descend the stairs and then disappear along
+the corridor.
+
+Then I went back to my room, and was only just in time to catch
+Theodore calmly pocketing the hundred-franc note which my fair client
+had left on the table. I secured the note and I didn't give him a
+black eye, for it was no use putting him in a bad temper when there
+was so much to do.
+
+
+
+2.
+
+That very same evening I interviewed the concierge at No. 65 Rue des
+Pyramides. From him I learned that Mr. Farewell lived on a very small
+income on the top floor of the house, that his household consisted of
+a housekeeper who cooked and did the work of the apartment for him,
+and an odd-job man who came every morning to clean boots, knives, draw
+water and carry up fuel from below. I also learned that there was a
+good deal of gossip in the house anent the presence in Mr. Farewell's
+bachelor establishment of a young and beautiful girl, whom he tried to
+keep a virtual prisoner under his eye.
+
+The next morning, dressed in a shabby blouse, alpaca cap, and trousers
+frayed out round the ankles, I--Hector Ratichon, the confidant of
+kings--was lounging under the porte-cochere of No. 65 Rue des
+Pyramides. I was watching the movements of a man, similarly attired to
+myself, as he crossed and recrossed the courtyard to draw water from
+the well or to fetch wood from one of the sheds, and then disappeared
+up the main staircase.
+
+A casual, tactful inquiry of the concierge assured me that that man
+was indeed in the employ of Mr. Farewell.
+
+I waited as patiently and inconspicuously as I could, and at ten
+o'clock I saw that my man had obviously finished his work for the
+morning and had finally come down the stairs ready to go home. I
+followed him.
+
+I will not speak of the long halt in the cabaret du Chien Noir, where
+he spent an hour and a half in the company of his friends, playing
+dominoes and drinking eau-de-vie whilst I had perforce to cool my
+heels outside. Suffice it to say that I did follow him to his house
+just behind the fish-market, and that half an hour later, tired out
+but triumphant, having knocked at his door, I was admitted into the
+squalid room which he occupied.
+
+He surveyed me with obvious mistrust, but I soon reassured him.
+
+"My friend Mr. Farewell has recommended you to me," I said with my
+usual affability. "I was telling him just awhile ago that I needed a
+man to look after my office in the Rue Daunou of a morning, and he
+told me that in you I would find just the man I wanted."
+
+"Hm!" grunted the fellow, very sullenly I thought. "I work for
+Farewell in the mornings. Why should he recommend me to you? Am I not
+giving satisfaction?"
+
+"Perfect satisfaction," I rejoined urbanely; "that is just the point.
+Mr. Farewell desires to do you a good turn seeing that I offered to
+pay you twenty sous for your morning's work instead of the ten which
+you are getting from him."
+
+I saw his eyes glisten at mention of the twenty sous.
+
+"I'd best go and tell him then that I am taking on your work," he
+said; and his tone was no longer sullen now.
+
+"Quite unnecessary," I rejoined. "I arranged everything with Mr.
+Farewell before I came to you. He has already found someone else to do
+his work, and I shall want you to be at my office by seven o'clock
+to-morrow morning. And," I added, for I am always cautious and
+judicious, and I now placed a piece of silver in his hand, "here are
+the first twenty sous on account."
+
+He took the money and promptly became very civil, even obsequious. He
+not only accompanied me to the door, but all the way down the stairs,
+and assured me all the time that he would do his best to give me
+entire satisfaction.
+
+I left my address with him, and sure enough, he turned up at the
+office the next morning at seven o'clock precisely.
+
+Theodore had had my orders to direct him in his work, and I was left
+free to enact the second scene of the moving drama in which I was
+determined to play the hero and to ring down the curtain to the sound
+of the wedding bells.
+
+
+
+3.
+
+I took on the work of odd-job man at 65 Rue des Pyramides. Yes, I!
+Even I, who had sat in the private room of an emperor discussing the
+destinies of Europe.
+
+But with a beautiful bride and one hundred thousand francs as my goal
+I would have worked in a coal mine or on the galleys for such a
+guerdon.
+
+The task, I must tell you, was terribly irksome to a man of my
+sensibilities, endowed with an active mind and a vivid imagination.
+The dreary monotony of fetching water and fuel from below and
+polishing the boots of that arch-scoundrel Farewell would have made a
+less stout spirit quail. I had, of course, seen through the
+scoundrel's game at once. He had rendered Estelle quite helpless by
+keeping all her papers of identification and by withholding from her
+all the letters which, no doubt, the English lawyers wrote to her from
+time to time. Thus she was entirely in his power. But, thank heaven!
+only momentarily, for I, Hector Ratichon, argus-eyed, was on the
+watch. Now and then the monotony of my existence and the hardship of
+my task were relieved by a brief glimpse of Estelle or a smile of
+understanding from her lips; now and then she would contrive to murmur
+as she brushed past me while I was polishing the scoundrel's study
+floor, "Any luck yet?" And this quiet understanding between us gave me
+courage to go on with my task.
+
+After three days I had conclusively made up my mind that Mr. Farewell
+kept his valuable papers in the drawer of the bureau in the study.
+After that I always kept a lump of wax ready for use in my pocket. On
+the fifth day I was very nearly caught trying to take an impression of
+the lock of the bureau drawer. On the seventh I succeeded, and took
+the impression over to a locksmith I knew of, and gave him an order to
+have a key made to fit it immediately. On the ninth day I had the key.
+
+Then commenced a series of disappointments and of unprofitable days
+which would have daunted one less bold and less determined. I don't
+think that Farewell ever suspected me, but it is a fact that never
+once did he leave me alone in his study whilst I was at work there
+polishing the oak floor. And in the meanwhile I could see how he was
+pursuing my beautiful Estelle with his unwelcome attentions. At times
+I feared that he meant to abduct her; his was a powerful personality
+and she seemed like a little bird fighting against the fascination of
+a serpent. Latterly, too, an air of discouragement seemed to dwell
+upon her lovely face. I was half distraught with anxiety, and once or
+twice, whilst I knelt upon the hard floor, scrubbing and polishing as
+if my life depended on it, whilst he--the unscrupulous scoundrel--sat
+calmly at his desk, reading or writing, I used to feel as if the next
+moment I must attack him with my scrubbing-brush and knock him down
+senseless whilst I ransacked his drawers. My horror of anything
+approaching violence saved me from so foolish a step.
+
+Then it was that in the hour of my blackest despair a flash of genius
+pierced through the darkness of my misery. For some days now Madame
+Dupont, Farewell's housekeeper, had been exceedingly affable to me.
+Every morning now, when I came to work, there was a cup of hot coffee
+waiting for me, and, when I left, a small parcel of something
+appetizing for me to take away.
+
+"Hallo!" I said to myself one day, when, over a cup of coffee, I
+caught sight of her small, piggy eyes leering at me with an
+unmistakable expression of admiration. "Does salvation lie where I
+least expected it?"
+
+For the moment I did nothing more than wink at the fat old thing, but
+the next morning I had my arm round her waist--a metre and a quarter,
+Sir, where it was tied in the middle--and had imprinted a kiss upon
+her glossy cheek. What that love-making cost me I cannot attempt to
+describe. Once Estelle came into the kitchen when I was staggering
+under a load of a hundred kilos sitting on my knee. The reproachful
+glance which she cast at me filled my soul with unspeakable sorrow.
+
+But I was working for her dear sake; working that I might win her in
+the end.
+
+A week later Mr. Farewell was absent from home for the evening.
+Estelle had retired to her room, and I was a welcome visitor in the
+kitchen, where Madame Dupont had laid out a regular feast for me. I
+had brought a couple of bottles of champagne with me and, what with
+the unaccustomed drink and the ogling and love-making to which I
+treated her, a hundred kilos of foolish womanhood was soon hopelessly
+addled and incapable. I managed to drag her to the sofa, where she
+remained quite still, with a beatific smile upon her podgy face, her
+eyes swimming in happy tears.
+
+I had not a moment to lose. The very next minute I was in the study
+and with a steady hand was opening the drawers of the bureau and
+turning over the letters and papers which I found therein.
+
+Suddenly an exclamation of triumph escaped my lips.
+
+I held a packet in my hand on which was written in a clear hand: "The
+papers of Mlle. Estelle Bachelier." A brief examination of the packet
+sufficed. It consisted of a number of letters written in English,
+which language I only partially understand, but they all bore the same
+signature, "John Pike and Sons, solicitors," and the address was at
+the top, "168 Cornhill, London." It also contained my Estelle's birth
+certificate, her mother's marriage certificate, and her police
+registration card.
+
+I was rapt in the contemplation of my own ingenuity in having thus
+brilliantly attained my goal, when a stealthy noise in the next room
+roused me from my trance and brought up vividly to my mind the awful
+risks which I was running at this moment. I turned like an animal at
+bay to see Estelle's beautiful face peeping at me through the
+half-open door.
+
+"Hist!" she whispered. "Have you got the papers?"
+
+I waved the packet triumphantly. She, excited and adorable, stepped
+briskly into the room.
+
+"Let me see," she murmured excitedly.
+
+But I, emboldened by success, cried gaily:
+
+"Not till I have received compensation for all that I have done and
+endured."
+
+"Compensation?"
+
+"In the shape of a kiss."
+
+Oh! I won't say that she threw herself in my arms then and there. No,
+no! She demurred. All young girls, it seems, demur under the
+circumstances; but she was adorable, coy and tender in turns, pouting
+and coaxing, and playing like a kitten till she had taken the papers
+from me and, with a woman's natural curiosity, had turned the English
+letters over and over, even though she could not read a word of them.
+
+Then, Sir, in the midst of her innocent frolic and at the very moment
+when I was on the point of snatching the kiss which she had so
+tantalizingly denied me, we heard the opening and closing of the front
+door.
+
+Mr. Farewell had come home, and there was no other egress from the
+study save the sitting-room, which in its turn had no other egress but
+the door leading into the very passage where even now Mr. Farewell was
+standing, hanging up his hat and cloak on the rack.
+
+
+
+4.
+
+We stood hand in hand--Estelle and I--fronting the door through which
+Mr. Farewell would presently appear.
+
+"To-night we fly together," I declared.
+
+"Where to?" she whispered.
+
+"Can you go to the woman at your former lodgings?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Then I will take you there to-night. To-morrow we will be married
+before the Procureur du Roi; in the evening we leave for England."
+
+"Yes, yes!" she murmured.
+
+"When he comes in I'll engage him in conversation," I continued
+hurriedly. "You make a dash for the door and run downstairs as fast as
+you can. I'll follow as quickly as may be and meet you under the
+porte-cochere."
+
+She had only just time to nod assent when the door which gave on the
+sitting-room was pushed open, and Farewell, unconscious at first of
+our presence, stepped quietly into the room.
+
+"Estelle," he cried, more puzzled than angry when he suddenly caught
+sight of us both, "what are you doing here with that lout?"
+
+I was trembling with excitement--not fear, of course, though Farewell
+was a powerful-looking man, a head taller than I was. I stepped boldly
+forward, covering the adored one with my body.
+
+"The lout," I said with calm dignity, "has frustrated the machinations
+of a knave. To-morrow I go to England in order to place Mademoiselle
+Estelle Bachelier under the protection of her legal guardians,
+Messieurs Pike and Sons, solicitors, of London."
+
+He gave a cry of rage, and before I could retire to some safe
+entrenchment behind the table or the sofa, he was upon me like a mad
+dog. He had me by the throat, and I had rolled backwards down on to
+the floor, with him on the top of me, squeezing the breath out of me
+till I verily thought that my last hour had come. Estelle had run out
+of the room like a startled hare. This, of course, was in accordance
+with my instructions to her, but I could not help wishing then that
+she had been less obedient and somewhat more helpful.
+
+As it was, I was beginning to feel a mere worm in the grip of that
+savage scoundrel, whose face I could perceive just above me, distorted
+with passion, whilst hoarse ejaculations escaped his trembling lips:
+
+"You meddlesome fool! You oaf! You toad! This for your
+interference!" he added as he gave me a vigorous punch on the head.
+
+I felt my senses reeling. My head was swimming, my eyes no longer
+could see distinctly. It seemed as if an unbearable pressure upon my
+chest would finally squeeze the last breath out of my body.
+
+I was trying to remember the prayers I used to murmur at my mother's
+knee, for verily I thought that I was dying, when suddenly, through my
+fading senses, came the sound of a long, hoarse cry, whilst the floor
+was shaken as with an earthquake. The next moment the pressure on my
+chest seemed to relax. I could hear Farewell's voice uttering language
+such as it would be impossible for me to put on record; and through it
+all hoarse and convulsive cries of: "You shan't hurt him--you limb of
+Satan, you!"
+
+Gradually strength returned to me. I could see as well as hear, and
+what I saw filled me with wonder and with pride. Wonder at Ma'ame
+Dupont's pluck! Pride in that her love for me had given such power to
+her mighty arms! Aroused from her slumbers by the sound of the
+scuffle, she had run to the study, only to find me in deadly peril of
+my life. Without a second's hesitation she had rushed on Farewell,
+seized him by the collar, pulled him away from me, and then thrown the
+whole weight of her hundred kilos upon him, rendering him helpless.
+
+Ah, woman! lovely, selfless woman! My heart a prey to remorse, in that
+I could not remain in order to thank my plucky deliverer, I
+nevertheless finally struggled to my feet and fled from the apartment
+and down the stairs, never drawing breath till I felt Estelle's hand
+resting confidingly upon my arm.
+
+
+
+5.
+
+I took her to the house where she used to lodge, and placed her under
+the care of the kind concierge who was Theodore's aunt. Then I, too,
+went home, determined to get a good night's rest. The morning would be
+a busy one for me. There would be the special licence to get, the cure
+of St. Jacques to interview, the religious ceremony to arrange for,
+and the places to book on the stagecoach for Boulogne _en route_ for
+England--and fortune.
+
+I was supremely happy and slept the sleep of the just. I was up
+betimes and started on my round of business at eight o'clock the next
+morning. I was a little troubled about money, because when I had paid
+for the licence and given to the cure the required fee for the
+religious service and ceremony, I had only five francs left out of the
+hundred which the adored one had given me. However, I booked the seats
+on the stage-coach and determined to trust to luck. Once Estelle was
+my wife, all money care would be at an end, since no power on earth
+could stand between me and the hundred thousand francs, the happy goal
+for which I had so ably striven.
+
+The marriage ceremony was fixed for eleven o'clock, and it was just
+upon ten when, at last, with a light heart and springy step, I ran up
+the dingy staircase which led to the adored one's apartments. I
+knocked at the door. It was opened by a young man, who with a smile
+courteously bade me enter. I felt a little bewildered--and slightly
+annoyed. My Estelle should not receive visits from young men at this
+hour. I pushed past the intruder in the passage and walked boldly into
+the room beyond.
+
+Estelle was sitting upon the sofa, her eyes bright, her mouth smiling,
+a dimple in each cheek. I approached her with outstretched arms, but
+she paid no heed to me, and turned to the young man, who had followed
+me into the room.
+
+"Adrien," she said, "this is kind M. Ratichon, who at risk of his life
+obtained for us all my papers of identification and also the valuable
+name and address of the English lawyers."
+
+"Monsieur," added the young man as he extended his hand to me,
+"Estelle and I will remain eternally your debtors."
+
+I struck at the hand which he had so impudently held out to me and
+turned to Estelle with my usual dignified calm, but with wrath
+expressed in every line of my face.
+
+"Estelle," I said, "what is the meaning of this?"
+
+"Oh," she retorted with one of her provoking smiles, "you must not
+call me Estelle, you know, or Adrien will smack your face. We are
+indeed grateful to you, my good M. Ratichon," she continued more
+seriously, "and though I only promised you another hundred francs when
+your work for me was completed, my husband and I have decided to give
+you a thousand francs in view of the risks which you ran on our
+behalf."
+
+"Your husband!" I stammered.
+
+"I was married to M. Adrien Cazal�s a month ago," she said, "but we
+had perforce to keep our marriage a secret, because Mr. Farewell once
+vowed to me that unless I became his wife he would destroy all my
+papers of identification, and then--even if I ever succeeded in
+discovering who were the English lawyers who had charge of my father's
+money--I could never prove it to them that I and no one else was
+entitled to it. But for you, dear M. Ratichon," added the cruel and
+shameless one, "I should indeed never have succeeded."
+
+In the midst of this overwhelming cataclysm I am proud to say that I
+retained mastery over my rage and contrived to say with perfect calm:
+
+"But why have deceived me, Mademoiselle? Why have kept your marriage a
+secret from me? Was I not toiling and working and risking my life for
+you?"
+
+"And would you have worked quite so enthusiastically for me," queried
+the false one archly, "if I had told you everything?"
+
+I groaned. Perhaps she was right. I don't know.
+
+I took the thousand francs and never saw M. and Mme. Cazal�s again.
+
+But I met Ma'ame Dupont by accident soon after. She has left Mr.
+Farewell's service.
+
+She still weighs one hundred kilos.
+
+I often call on her of an evening.
+
+Ah, well!
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ON THE BRINK
+
+
+
+1.
+
+You would have thought that after the shameful way in which Theodore
+treated me in the matter of the secret treaty that I would then and
+there have turned him out of doors, sent him back to grub for scraps
+out of the gutter, and hardened my heart once and for all against that
+snake in the grass whom I had nurtured in my bosom.
+
+But, as no doubt you have remarked ere this, I have been burdened by
+Nature with an over-sensitive heart. It is a burden, my dear Sir, and
+though I have suffered inexpressibly under it, I nevertheless agree
+with the English poet, George Crabbe, whose works I have read with a
+great deal of pleasure and profit in the original tongue, and who
+avers in one of his inimitable "Tales" that it is "better to love
+amiss than nothing to have loved."
+
+Not that I loved Theodore, you understand? But he and I had shared so
+many ups and downs together of late that I was loath to think of him
+as reduced to begging his bread in the streets. Then I kept him by me,
+for I thought that he might at times be useful to me in my business.
+
+I kept him to my hurt, as you will presently see.
+
+In those days--I am now speaking of the time immediately following the
+Restoration of our beloved King Louis XVIII to the throne of his
+forbears--Parisian society was, as it were, divided into two distinct
+categories: those who had become impoverished by the revolution and
+the wars of the Empire, and those who had made their fortunes thereby.
+Among the former was M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, a handsome young
+officer of cavalry; and among the latter was one Mauruss Mosenstein, a
+usurer of the Jewish persuasion, whose wealth was reputed in millions,
+and who had a handsome daughter biblically named Rachel, who a year
+ago had become Madame la Marquise de Firmin-Latour.
+
+From the first moment that this brilliant young couple appeared upon
+the firmament of Parisian society I took a keen interest in all their
+doings. In those days, you understand, it was in the essence of my
+business to know as much as possible of the private affairs of people
+in their position, and instinct had at once told me that in the case
+of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour such knowledge might prove very
+remunerative.
+
+Thus I very soon found out that M. le Marquis had not a single louis
+of his own to bless himself with, and that it was Papa Mosenstein's
+millions that kept up the young people's magnificent establishment in
+the Rue de Grammont.
+
+I also found out that Mme. la Marquise was some dozen years older than
+Monsieur, and that she had been a widow when she married him. There
+were rumours that her first marriage had not been a happy one. The
+husband, M. le Compte de Naquet, had been a gambler and a spendthrift,
+and had dissipated as much of his wife's fortune as he could lay his
+hands on, until one day he went off on a voyage to America, or
+goodness knows where, and was never heard of again. Mme. la Comtesse,
+as she then was, did not grieve over her loss; indeed, she returned to
+the bosom of her family, and her father--a shrewd usurer, who had
+amassed an enormous fortune during the wars--succeeded, with the aid
+of his apparently bottomless moneybags, in having his first son-in-law
+declared deceased by Royal decree, so as to enable the beautiful
+Rachel to contract another, yet more brilliant alliance, as far as
+name and lineage were concerned, with the Marquis de Firmin-Latour.
+
+Indeed, I learned that the worthy Israelite's one passion was the
+social advancement of his daughter, whom he worshipped. So, as soon as
+the marriage was consummated and the young people were home from their
+honeymoon, he fitted up for their use the most extravagantly sumptuous
+apartment Paris had ever seen. Nothing seemed too good or too
+luxurious for Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour. He desired her to cut
+a brilliant figure in Paris society--nay, to be the Ville Lumiere's
+brightest and most particular star. After the town house he bought a
+chateau in the country, horses and carriages, which he placed at the
+disposal of the young couple; he kept up an army of servants for them,
+and replenished their cellars with the choicest wines. He threw money
+about for diamonds and pearls which his daughter wore, and paid all
+his son-in-law's tailors' and shirt-makers' bills. But always the
+money was his, you understand? The house in Paris was his, so was the
+chateau on the Loire; he lent them to his daughter. He lent her the
+diamonds, and the carriages, and the boxes at the opera and the
+Fran�ais. But here his generosity ended. He had been deceived in his
+daughter's first husband; some of the money which he had given her had
+gone to pay the gambling debts of an unscrupulous spendthrift. He was
+determined that this should not occur again. A man might spend his
+wife's money--indeed, the law placed most of it at his disposal in
+those days--but he could not touch or mortgage one sou that belonged
+to his father-in-law. And, strangely enough, Mme. la Marquise de
+Firmin-Latour acquiesced and aided her father in his determination.
+Whether it was the Jewish blood in her, or merely obedience to old
+Mosenstein's whim, it were impossible to say. Certain it is that out
+of the lavish pin-money which her father gave her as a free gift from
+time to time, she only doled out a meagre allowance to her husband,
+and although she had everything she wanted, M. le Marquis on his side
+had often less than twenty francs in his pocket.
+
+A very humiliating position, you will admit, Sir, for a dashing young
+cavalry officer. Often have I seen him gnawing his finger-nails with
+rage when, at the end of a copious dinner in one of the fashionable
+restaurants--where I myself was engaged in a business capacity to
+keep an eye on possibly light-fingered customers--it would be Mme. la
+Marquise who paid the bill, even gave the pourboire to the waiter. At
+such times my heart would be filled with pity for his misfortunes,
+and, in my own proud and lofty independence, I felt that I did not
+envy him his wife's millions.
+
+Of course, he borrowed from every usurer in the city for as long as
+they would lend him any money; but now he was up to his eyes in debt,
+and there was not a Jew inside France who would have lent him one
+hundred francs.
+
+You see, his precarious position was as well known as were his
+extravagant tastes and the obstinate parsimoniousness of M.
+Mosenstein.
+
+But such men as M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, you understand, Sir,
+are destined by Nature first and by fortuitous circumstances
+afterwards to become the clients of men of ability like myself. I knew
+that sooner or later the elegant young soldier would be forced to seek
+the advice of someone wiser than himself, for indeed his present
+situation could not last much longer. It would soon be "sink" with
+him, for he could no longer "swim."
+
+And I was determined that when that time came he should turn to me as
+the drowning man turns to the straw.
+
+So where M. le Marquis went in public I went, when possible. I was
+biding my time, and wisely too, as you will judge.
+
+
+
+2.
+
+Then one day our eyes met: not in a fashionable restaurant, I may tell
+you, but in a discreet one situated on the slopes of Montmartre. I was
+there alone, sipping a cup of coffee after a frugal dinner. I had
+drifted in there chiefly because I had quite accidentally caught sight
+of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour walking arm-in-arm up the Rue Lepic
+with a lady who was both youthful and charming--a well-known dancer at
+the opera. Presently I saw him turn into that discreet little
+restaurant, where, in very truth, it was not likely that Mme. la
+Marquise would follow him. But I did. What made me do it, I cannot
+say; but for some time now it had been my wish to make the personal
+acquaintance of M. de Firmin-Latour, and I lost no opportunity which
+might help me to attain this desire.
+
+Somehow the man interested me. His social and financial position was
+peculiar, you will admit, and here, methought, was the beginning of an
+adventure which might prove the turning-point in his career and . . .
+my opportunity. I was not wrong, as you will presently see. Whilst
+silently eating my simple dinner, I watched M. de Firmin-Latour.
+
+He had started the evening by being very gay; he had ordered champagne
+and a succulent meal, and chatted light-heartedly with his companion,
+until presently three young women, flashily dressed, made noisy
+irruption into the restaurant.
+
+M. de Firmin-Latour's friend hailed them, introduced them to him, and
+soon he was host, not to one lady, but to four, and instead of two
+dinners he had to order five, and more champagne, and then
+dessert--peaches, strawberries, bonbons, liqueurs, flowers, and what
+not, until I could see that the bill which presently he would be
+called upon to pay would amount to far more than his quarterly
+allowance from Mme. la Marquise, far more, presumably, than he had in
+his pocket at the present moment.
+
+My brain works with marvellous rapidity, as you know. Already I had
+made up my mind to see the little comedy through to the end, and I
+watched with a good deal of interest and some pity the clouds of
+anxiety gathering over M. de Firmin-Latour's brow.
+
+The dinner party lasted some considerable time; then the inevitable
+cataclysm occurred. The ladies were busy chattering and rouging their
+lips when the bill was presented. They affected to see and hear
+nothing: it is a way ladies have when dinner has to be paid for; but I
+saw and heard everything. The waiter stood by, silent and obsequious
+at first, whilst M. le Marquis hunted through all his pockets. Then
+there was some whispered colloquy, and the waiter's attitude lost
+something of its correct dignity. After that the proprietor was
+called, and the whispered colloquy degenerated into altercation,
+whilst the ladies--not at all unaware of the situation--giggled
+amongst themselves. Finally, M. le Marquis offered a promissory note,
+which was refused.
+
+Then it was that our eyes met. M. de Firmin-Latour had flushed to the
+roots of his hair. His situation was indeed desperate, and my
+opportunity had come. With consummate sang-froid, I advanced towards
+the agitated group composed of M. le Marquis, the proprietor, and the
+head waiter. I glanced at the bill, the cause of all this turmoil,
+which reposed on a metal salver in the head waiter's hand, and with a
+brief:
+
+"If M. le Marquis will allow me . . ." I produced my pocket-book.
+
+The bill was for nine hundred francs.
+
+At first M. le Marquis thought that I was about to pay it--and so did
+the proprietor of the establishment, who made a movement as if he
+would lie down on the floor and lick my boots. But not so. To begin
+with, I did not happen to possess nine hundred francs, and if I did, I
+should not Have been fool enough to lend them to this young
+scapegrace. No! What I did was to extract from my notebook a card, one
+of a series which I always keep by me in case of an emergency like the
+present one. It bore the legend: "Comte Hercule de Montjoie,
+secr�taire particulier de M. le Duc d'Otrante," and below it the
+address, "Palais du Commissariat de Police, 12 Quai d'Orsay." This
+card I presented with a graceful flourish of the arm to the proprietor
+of the establishment, whilst I said with that lofty self-assurance
+which is one of my finest attributes and which I have never seen
+equalled:
+
+"M. le Marquis is my friend. I will be guarantee for this trifling
+amount."
+
+The proprietor and head waiter stammered excuses. Private secretary of
+M. le Duc d'Otrante! Think of it! It is not often that such personages
+deign to frequent the .restaurants of Montmartre. M. le Marquis, on
+the other hand, looked completely bewildered, whilst I, taking
+advantage of the situation, seized him familiarly by the arm, and
+leading him toward the door, I said with condescending urbanity:
+
+"One word with you, my dear Marquis. It is so long since we have met."
+
+I bowed to the ladies.
+
+"Mesdames," I said, and was gratified to see that they followed my
+dramatic exit with eyes of appreciation and of wonder. The proprietor
+himself offered me my hat, and a moment or two later M. de
+Firmin-Latour and I were out together in the Rue Lepic.
+
+"My dear Comte," he said as soon as he had recovered his breath, "how
+can I think you? . . ."
+
+"Not now, Monsieur, not now," I replied. "You have only just time to
+make your way as quickly as you can back to your palace in the Rue de
+Grammont before our friend the proprietor discovers the several
+mistakes which he has made in the past few minutes and vents his wrath
+upon your fair guests."
+
+"You are right," he rejoined lightly. "But I will have the pleasure to
+call on you to-morrow at the Palais du Commissariat."
+
+"Do no such thing, Monsieur le Marquis," I retorted with a pleasant
+laugh. "You would not find me there."
+
+"But--" he stammered.
+
+"But," I broke in with my wonted business-like and persuasive manner,
+"if you think that I have conducted this delicate affair for you with
+tact and discretion, then, in your own interest I should advise you to
+call on me at my private office, No. 96 Rue Daunou. Hector Ratichon,
+at your service."
+
+He appeared more bewildered than ever.
+
+"Rue Daunou," he murmured. "Ratichon!"
+
+"Private inquiry and confidential agent," I rejoined. "My brains are
+at your service should you desire to extricate yourself from the
+humiliating financial position in which it has been my good luck to
+find you, and yours to meet with me."
+
+With that I left him, Sir, to walk away or stay as he pleased. As for
+me, I went quickly down the street. I felt that the situation was
+absolutely perfect; to have spoken another word might have spoilt it.
+Moreover, there was no knowing how soon the proprietor of that humble
+hostelry would begin to have doubts as to the identity of the private
+secretary of M. le Duc d'Otrante. So I was best out of the way.
+
+
+
+3.
+
+The very next day M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour called upon me at my
+office in the Rue Daunou. Theodore let him in, and the first thing
+that struck me about him was his curt, haughty manner and the look of
+disdain wherewith he regarded the humble appointments of my business
+premises. He himself was magnificently dressed, I may tell you. His
+bottle-green coat was of the finest cloth and the most perfect cut I
+had ever seen. His kerseymere pantaloons fitted him without a wrinkle.
+He wore gloves, he carried a muff of priceless zibeline, and in his
+cravat there was a diamond the size of a broad bean.
+
+He also carried a malacca cane, which he deposited upon my desk, and a
+gold-rimmed spy-glass which, with a gesture of supreme affectation, he
+raised to his eye.
+
+"Now, M. Hector Ratichon," he said abruptly, "perhaps you will be good
+enough to explain."
+
+I had risen when he entered. But now I sat down again and coolly
+pointed to the best chair in the room.
+
+"Will you give yourself the trouble to sit down, M. le Marquis?" I
+riposted blandly.
+
+He called me names--rude names! but I took no notice of that . . . and
+he sat down.
+
+"Now!" he said once more.
+
+"What is it you desire to know, M. le Marquis?" I queried.
+
+"Why you interfered in my affairs last night?"
+
+"Do you complain?" I asked.
+
+"No," he admitted reluctantly, "but I don't understand your object."
+
+"My object was to serve you then," I rejoined quietly, "and later."
+
+"What do you mean by 'later'?"
+
+"To-day," I replied, "to-morrow; whenever your present position
+becomes absolutely unendurable."
+
+"It is that now," he said with a savage oath.
+
+"I thought as much," was my curt comment.
+
+"And do you mean to assert," he went on more earnestly, "that you can
+find a way out of it?"
+
+"If you desire it--yes!" I said.
+
+"How?"
+
+He drew his chair nearer to my desk, and I leaned forward, with my
+elbows on the table, the finger-tips of one hand in contact with those
+of the other.
+
+"Let us begin by reviewing the situation, shall we, Monsieur?" I
+began.
+
+"If you wish," he said curtly.
+
+"You are a gentleman of refined, not to say luxurious tastes, who
+finds himself absolutely without means to gratify them. Is that so?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"You have a wife and a father-in-law who, whilst lavishing costly
+treasures upon you, leave you in a humiliating dependence on them for
+actual money."
+
+Again he nodded approvingly.
+
+"Human nature," I continued with gentle indulgence, "being what it is,
+you pine after what you do not possess--namely, money. Houses,
+equipages, servants, even good food and wine, are nothing to you
+beside that earnest desire for money that you can call your own, and
+which, if only you had it, you could spend at your pleasure."
+
+"To the point, man, to the point!" he broke in impatiently.
+
+"One moment, M. le Marquis, and I have done. But first of all, with
+your permission, shall we also review the assets in your life which we
+will have to use in order to arrive at the gratification of your
+earnest wish?"
+
+"Assets? What do you mean?"
+
+"The means to our end. You want money; we must find the means to get
+it for you."
+
+"I begin to understand," he said, and drew his chair another inch or
+two closer to me.
+
+"Firstly, M. le Marquis," I resumed, and now my voice had become
+earnest and incisive, "firstly you have a wife, then you have a
+father-in-law whose wealth is beyond the dreams of humble people like
+myself, and whose one great passion in life is the social position of
+the daughter whom he worships. Now," I added, and with the tip of my
+little finger I touched the sleeve of my aristocratic client, "here at
+once is your first asset. Get at the money-bags of papa by threatening
+the social position of his daughter."
+
+Whereupon my young gentleman jumped to his feet and swore and abused
+me for a mudlark and a muckworm and I don't know what. He seized his
+malacca cane and threatened me with it, and asked me how the devil I
+dared thus to speak of Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour. He cursed,
+and he stormed and he raved of his sixteen quarterings and of my
+loutishness. He did everything in fact except walk out of the room.
+
+I let him go on quite quietly. It was part of his programme, and we
+had to go through the performance. As soon as he gave me the chance of
+putting in a word edgeways I rejoined quietly:
+
+"We are not going to hurt Madame la Marquise, Monsieur; and if you do
+not want the money, let us say no more about it."
+
+Whereupon he calmed down; after a while he sat down again, this time
+with his cane between his knees and its ivory knob between his teeth.
+
+"Go on," he said curtly.
+
+Nor did he interrupt me again whilst I expounded my scheme to him--one
+that, mind you, I had evolved during the night, knowing well that I
+should receive his visit during the day; and I flatter myself that no
+finer scheme for the bleeding of a parsimonious usurer was ever
+devised by any man.
+
+If it succeeded--and there was no reason why it should not--M. de
+Firmin-Latour would pocket a cool half-million, whilst I, sir, the
+brain that had devised the whole scheme, pronounced myself satisfied
+with the paltry emolument of one hundred thousand francs, out of
+which, remember, I should have to give Theodore a considerable sum.
+
+We talked it all over, M. le Marquis and I, the whole afternoon. I may
+tell you at once that he was positively delighted with the plan, and
+then and there gave me one hundred francs out of his own meagre purse
+for my preliminary expenses.
+
+The next morning we began work.
+
+I had begged M. le Marquis to find the means of bringing me a few
+scraps of the late M. le Comte de Naquet's--Madame la Marquise's
+first husband--handwriting. This, fortunately, he was able to do. They
+were a few valueless notes penned at different times by the deceased
+gentleman and which, luckily for us all, Madame had not thought it
+worth while to keep under lock and key.
+
+I think I told you before, did I not? what a marvellous expert I am in
+every kind of calligraphy, and soon I had a letter ready which was to
+represent the first fire in the exciting war which we were about to
+wage against an obstinate lady and a parsimonious usurer.
+
+My identity securely hidden under the disguise of a commissionnaire, I
+took that letter to Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour's sumptuous
+abode in the Rue de Grammont.
+
+M. le Marquis, you understand, had in the meanwhile been thoroughly
+primed in the r�le which he was to play; as for Theodore, I thought it
+best for the moment to dispense with his aid.
+
+The success of our first skirmish surpassed our expectations.
+
+Ten minutes after the letter had been taken upstairs to Mme. la
+Marquise, one of the maids, on going past her mistress's door, was
+startled to hear cries and moans proceeding from Madame's room. She
+entered and found Madame lying on the sofa, her face buried in the
+cushions, and sobbing and screaming in a truly terrifying manner. The
+maid applied the usual restoratives, and after a while Madame became
+more calm and at once very curtly ordered the maid out of the room.
+
+M. le Marquis, on being apprised of this mysterious happening, was
+much distressed; he hurried to his wife's apartments, and was as
+gentle and loving with her as he had been in the early days of their
+honeymoon. But throughout the whole of that evening, and, indeed, for
+the next two days, all the explanation that he could get from Madame
+herself was that she had a headache and that the letter which she had
+received that afternoon was of no consequence and had nothing to do
+with her migraine.
+
+But clearly the beautiful Rachel was extraordinarily agitated. At
+night she did not sleep, but would pace up and down her apartments in
+a state bordering on frenzy, which of course caused M. le Marquis a
+great deal of anxiety and of sorrow.
+
+Finally, on the Friday morning it seemed as if Madame could contain
+herself no longer. She threw herself into her husband's arms and
+blurted out the whole truth. M. le Comte de Naquet, her first husband,
+who had been declared drowned at sea, and therefore officially
+deceased by Royal decree, was not dead at all. Madame had received a
+letter from him wherein he told her that he had indeed suffered
+shipwreck, then untold misery on a desert island for three years,
+until he had been rescued by a passing vessel, and finally been able,
+since he was destitute, to work his way back to France and to Paris.
+Here he had lived for the past few months as best he could, trying to
+collect together a little money so as to render himself presentable
+before his wife, whom he had never ceased to love.
+
+Inquiries discreetly conducted had revealed the terrible truth, that
+Madame had been faithless to him, had light-heartedly assumed the
+death of her husband, and had contracted what was nothing less than a
+bigamous marriage. Now he, M. de Naquet, standing on his rights as
+Rachel Mosenstein's only lawful husband, demanded that she should
+return to him, and as a prelude to a permanent and amicable
+understanding, she was to call at three o'clock precisely on the
+following Friday at No. 96 Rue Daunou, where their reconciliation and
+reunion was to take place.
+
+The letter announcing this terrible news and making this preposterous
+demand she now placed in the hands of M. le Marquis, who at first was
+horrified and thunderstruck, and appeared quite unable to deal with
+the situation or to tender advice. For Madame it meant complete social
+ruin, of course, and she herself declared that she would never survive
+such a scandal. Her tears and her misery made the loving heart of M.
+le Marquis bleed in sympathy. He did all he could to console and
+comfort the lady, whom, alas! he could no longer look upon as his
+wife. Then, gradually, both he and she became more composed. It was
+necessary above all things to make sure that Madame was not being
+victimized by an impostor, and for this purpose M. le Marquis
+generously offered himself as a disinterested friend and adviser. He
+offered to go himself to the Rue Daunou at the hour appointed and to
+do his best to induce M. le Comte de Naquet--if indeed he existed--to
+forgo his rights on the lady who had so innocently taken on the name
+and hand of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour. Somewhat more calm, but
+still unconsoled, the beautiful Rachel accepted this generous offer. I
+believe that she even found five thousand francs in her privy purse
+which was to be offered to M. de Naquet in exchange for a promise
+never to worry Mme. la Marquise again with his presence. But this I
+have never been able to ascertain with any finality. Certain it is
+that when at three o'clock on that same afternoon M. de Firmin-Latour
+presented himself at my office, he did not offer me a share in any
+five thousand francs, though he spoke to me about the money, adding
+that he thought it would look well if he were to give it back to
+Madame, and to tell her that M. de Naquet had rejected so paltry a sum
+with disdain.
+
+I thought such a move unnecessary, and we argued about it rather
+warmly, and in the end he went away, as I say, without offering me any
+share in the emolument. Whether he did put his project into execution
+or not I never knew. He told me that he did. After that there followed
+for me, Sir, many days, nay, weeks, of anxiety and of strenuous work.
+Mme. la Marquise received several more letters from the supposititious
+M. de Naquet, any one of which would have landed me, Sir, in a vessel
+bound for New Caledonia. The discarded husband became more and more
+insistent as time went on, and finally sent an ultimatum to Madame
+saying that he was tired of perpetual interviews with M. le Marquis de
+Firmin-Latour, whose right to interfere in the matter he now wholly
+denied, and that he was quite determined to claim his lawful wife
+before the whole world.
+
+Madame la Marquise, in the meanwhile, had passed from one fit of
+hysterics into another. She denied her door to everyone and lived in
+the strictest seclusion in her beautiful apartment of the Rue de
+Grammont. Fortunately this all occurred in the early autumn, when the
+absence of such a society star from fashionable gatherings was not as
+noticeable as it otherwise would have been. But clearly we were
+working up for the climax, which occurred in the way I am about to
+relate.
+
+
+
+4.
+
+Ah, my dear Sir, when after all these years I think of my adventure
+with that abominable Marquis, righteous and noble indignation almost
+strikes me dumb. To think that with my own hands and brains I
+literally put half a million into that man's pocket, and that he
+repaid me with the basest ingratitude, almost makes me lose my faith
+in human nature. Theodore, of course, I could punish, and did so
+adequately; and where my chastisement failed, Fate herself put the
+finishing touch.
+
+But M. de Firmin-Latour . . .!
+
+However, you shall judge for yourself.
+
+As I told you, we now made ready for the climax; and that climax, Sir,
+I can only describe as positively gorgeous. We began by presuming that
+Mme. la Marquise had now grown tired of incessant demands for
+interviews and small doles of money, and that she would be willing to
+offer a considerable sum to her first and only lawful husband in
+exchange for a firm guarantee that he would never trouble her again as
+long as she lived.
+
+We fixed the sum at half a million francs, and the guarantee was to
+take the form of a deed duly executed by a notary of repute and signed
+by the supposititious Comte de Naquet. A letter embodying the demand
+and offering the guarantee was thereupon duly sent to Mme. la
+Marquise, and she, after the usual attack of hysterics, duly confided
+the matter to M. de Firmin-Latour.
+
+The consultation between husband and wife on the deplorable subject
+was touching in the extreme; and I will give that abominable Marquis
+credit for playing his r�le in a masterly manner. At first he declared
+to his dear Rachel that he did not know what to suggest, for in truth
+she had nothing like half a million on which she could lay her hands.
+To speak of this awful pending scandal to Papa Mosenstein was not to
+be thought of. He was capable of repudiating the daughter altogether
+who was bringing such obloquy upon herself and would henceforth be of
+no use to him as a society star.
+
+As for himself in this terrible emergency, he, of course, had less
+than nothing, or his entire fortune would be placed--if he had one--at
+the feet of his beloved Rachel. To think that he was on the point of
+losing her was more than he could bear, and the idea that she would
+soon become the talk of every gossip-monger in society, and mayhap be
+put in prison for bigamy, wellnigh drove him crazy.
+
+What could be done in this awful perplexity he for one could not
+think, unless indeed his dear Rachel were willing to part with some of
+her jewellery; but no! he could not think of allowing her to make such
+a sacrifice.
+
+Whereupon Madame, like a drowning man, or rather woman, catching at a
+straw, bethought her of her emeralds. They were historic gems, once
+the property of the Empress Marie-Th�r�se, and had been given to her
+on her second marriage by her adoring father. No, no! she would never
+miss them; she seldom wore them, for they were heavy and more valuable
+than elegant, and she was quite sure that at the Mont de Pi�t� they
+would lend her five hundred thousand francs on them. Then gradually
+they could be redeemed before papa had become aware of their temporary
+disappearance. Madame would save the money out of the liberal
+allowance she received from him for pin-money. Anything, anything was
+preferable to this awful doom which hung over her head.
+
+But even so M. le Marquis demurred. The thought of his proud and
+fashionable Rachel going to the Mont de Pi�t� to pawn her own jewels was
+not to be thought of. She would be seen, recognized, and the scandal
+would be as bad and worse than anything that loomed on the black horizon
+of her fate at this hour.
+
+What was to be done? What was to be done?
+
+Then M. le Marquis had a brilliant idea. He knew of a man, a very
+reliable, trustworthy man, attorney-at-law by profession, and
+therefore a man of repute, who was often obliged in the exercise of
+his profession to don various disguises when tracking criminals in the
+outlying quarters of Paris. M. le Marquis, putting all pride and
+dignity nobly aside in the interests of his adored Rachel, would
+borrow one of these disguises and himself go to the Mont de Pi�t� with
+the emeralds, obtain the five hundred thousand francs, and remit them
+to the man whom he hated most in all the world, in exchange for the
+aforementioned guarantee.
+
+Madame la Marquise, overcome with gratitude, threw herself, in the
+midst of a flood of tears, into the arms of the man whom she no longer
+dared to call her husband, and so the matter was settled for the
+moment. M. le Marquis undertook to have the deed of guarantee drafted
+by the same notary of repute whom he knew, and, if Madame approved of
+it, the emeralds would then be converted into money, and the interview
+with M. le Comte de Naquet fixed for Wednesday, October 10th, at some
+convenient place, subsequently to be determined on--in all
+probability at the bureau of that same ubiquitous attorney-at-law, M.
+Hector Ratichon, at 96 Rue Daunon.
+
+All was going on excellently well, as you observe. I duly drafted the
+deed, and M. de Firmin-Latour showed it to Madame for her approval. It
+was so simply and so comprehensively worded that she expressed herself
+thoroughly satisfied with it, whereupon M. le Marquis asked her to
+write to her shameful persecutor in order to fix the date and hour for
+the exchange of the money against the deed duly signed and witnessed.
+M. le Marquis had always been the intermediary for her letters, you
+understand, and for the small sums of money which she had sent from
+time to time to the factitious M. de Naquet; now he was to be
+entrusted with the final negotiations which, though at a heavy cost,
+would bring security and happiness once more in the sumptuous palace
+of the Rue de Grammont.
+
+Then it was that the first little hitch occurred. Mme. la
+Marquise--whether prompted thereto by a faint breath of suspicion, or
+merely by natural curiosity--altered her mind about the appointment.
+She decided that M. le Marquis, having pledged the emeralds, should
+bring the money to her, and she herself would go to the bureau of M.
+Hector Ratichon in the Rue Daunou, there to meet M. de Naquet, whom
+she had not seen for seven years, but who had once been very dear to
+her, and herself fling in his face the five hundred thousand francs,
+the price of his silence and of her peace of mind.
+
+At once, as you perceive, the situation became delicate. To have
+demurred, or uttered more than a casual word of objection, would in
+the case of M. le Marquis have been highly impolitic. He felt that at
+once, the moment he raised his voice in protest: and when Madame
+declared herself determined he immediately gave up arguing the point.
+
+The trouble was that we had so very little time wherein to formulate
+new plans. Monsieur was to go the very next morning to the Mont de
+Pi�t� to negotiate the emeralds, and the interview with the fabulous
+M. de Naquet was to take place a couple of hours later; and it was now
+three o'clock in the afternoon.
+
+As soon as M. de Firmin-Latour was able to leave his wife, he came
+round to my office. He appeared completely at his wits' end, not
+knowing what to do.
+
+"If my wife," he said, "insists on a personal interview with de
+Naquet, who does not exist, our entire scheme falls to the ground.
+Nay, worse! for I shall be driven to concoct some impossible
+explanation for the non-appearance of that worthy, and heaven only
+knows if I shall succeed in wholly allaying my wife's suspicions.
+
+"Ah!" he added with a sigh, "it is doubly hard to have seen fortune so
+near one's reach and then to see it dashed away at one fell swoop by
+the relentless hand of Fate."
+
+Not one word, you observe, of gratitude to me or of recognition of the
+subtle mind that had planned and devised the whole scheme.
+
+But, Sir, it is at the hour of supreme crises like the present one
+that Hector Ratichon's genius soars up to the empyrean. It became
+great, Sir; nothing short of great; and even the marvellous schemes of
+the Italian Macchiavelli paled before the ingenuity which I now
+displayed.
+
+Half an hour's reflection had sufficed. I had made my plans, and I had
+measured the full length of the terrible risks which I ran. Among
+these New Caledonia was the least. But I chose to take the risks, Sir;
+my genius could not stoop to measuring the costs of its flight. While
+M. de Firmin-Latour alternately raved and lamented I had already
+planned and contrived. As I say, we had very little time: a few hours
+wherein to render ourselves worthy of Fortune's smiles. And this is
+what I planned.
+
+You tell me that you were not in Paris during the year 1816 of which I
+speak. If you had been, you would surely recollect the sensation
+caused throughout the entire city by the disappearance of M. le
+Marquis de Firmin-Latour, one of the most dashing young officers in
+society and one of its acknowledged leaders. It was the 10th day of
+October. M. le Marquis had breakfasted in the company of Madame at
+nine o'clock. A couple of hours later he went out, saying he would be
+home for d�jeuner. Madame clearly expected him, for his place was
+laid, and she ordered the d�jeuner to be kept back over an hour in
+anticipation of his return. But he did not come. The afternoon wore on
+and he did not come. Madame sat down at two o'clock to d�jeuner alone.
+She told the major-domo that M. le Marquis was detained in town and
+might not be home for some time. But the major-domo declared that
+Madame's voice, as she told him this, sounded tearful and forced, and
+that she ate practically nothing, refusing one succulent dish after
+another.
+
+The staff of servants was thus kept on tenterhooks all day, and when
+the shadows of evening began to draw in, the theory was started in the
+kitchen that M. le Marquis had either met with an accident or been
+foully murdered. No one, however, dared speak of this to Madame la
+Marquise, who had locked herself up in her room in the early part of
+the afternoon, and since then had refused to see anyone. The
+major-domo was now at his wits' end. He felt that in a measure the
+responsibility of the household rested upon his shoulders. Indeed he
+would have taken it upon himself to apprise M. Mauruss Mosenstein of
+the terrible happenings, only that the worthy gentleman was absent
+from Paris just then.
+
+Mme. la Marquise remained shut up in her room until past eight
+o'clock. Then she ordered dinner to be served and made pretence of
+sitting down to it; but again the major-domo declared that she ate
+nothing, whilst subsequently the confidential maid who had undressed
+her vowed that Madame had spent the whole night walking up and down
+the room.
+
+Thus two agonizing days went by; agonizing they were to everybody.
+Madame la Marquise became more and more agitated, more and more
+hysterical as time went on, and the servants could not help but notice
+this, even though she made light of the whole affair, and desperate
+efforts to control herself. The heads of her household, the
+major-domo, the confidential maid, the chef de cuisine, did venture to
+drop a hint or two as to the possibility of an accident or of foul
+play, and the desirability of consulting the police; but Madame would
+not hear a word of it; she became very angry at the suggestion, and
+declared that she was perfectly well aware of M. le Marquis's
+whereabouts, that he was well and would return home almost
+immediately.
+
+As was only natural, tongues presently began to wag. Soon it was
+common talk in Paris that M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour had
+disappeared from his home and that Madame was trying to put a bold
+face upon the occurrence. There were surmises and there was gossip--
+oh! interminable and long-winded gossip! Minute circumstances in
+connexion with M. le Marquis's private life and Mme. la Marquise's
+affairs were freely discussed in the caf�s, the clubs and restaurants,
+and as no one knew the facts of the case, surmises soon became very
+wild.
+
+On the third day of M. le Marquis's disappearance Papa Mosenstein
+returned to Paris from Vichy, where he had just completed his annual
+cure. He arrived at Rue de Grammont at three o'clock in the afternoon,
+demanded to see Mme. la Marquise at once, and then remained closeted
+with her in her apartment for over an hour. After which he sent for
+the inspector of police of the section, with the result that that very
+same evening M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour was found locked up in an
+humble apartment on the top floor of a house in the Rue Daunou, not
+ten minutes' walk from his own house. When the police--acting on
+information supplied to them by M. Mauruss Mosenstein--forced their
+way into that apartment, they were horrified to find M. le Marquis de
+Firmin-Latour there, tied hand and foot with cords to a chair, his
+likely calls for help smothered by a woollen shawl wound loosely round
+the lower part of his face.
+
+He was half dead with inanition, and was conveyed speechless and
+helpless to his home in the Rue de Grammont, there, presumably, to be
+nursed back to health by Madame his wife.
+
+
+
+5.
+
+Now in all this matter, I ask you, Sir, who ran the greatest risk?
+Why, I--Hector Ratichon, of course--Hector Ratichon, in whose
+apartment M. de Firmin-Latour was discovered in a position bordering
+on absolute inanition. And the proof of this is, that that selfsame
+night I was arrested at my lodgings at Passy, and charged with robbery
+and attempted murder.
+
+It was a terrible predicament for a respectable citizen, a man of
+integrity and reputation, in which to find himself; but Papa
+Mosenstein was both tenacious and vindictive. His daughter, driven to
+desperation at last, and terrified that M. le Marquis had indeed been
+foully murdered by M. de Naquet, had made a clean breast of the whole
+affair to her father, and he in his turn had put the minions of the
+law in full possession of all the facts; and since M. le Comte de
+Naquet had vanished, leaving no manner of trace or clue of his person
+behind him, the police, needing a victim, fell back on an innocent
+man. Fortunately, Sir, that innocence clear as crystal soon shines
+through every calumny. But this was not before I had suffered terrible
+indignities and all the tortures which base ingratitude can inflict
+upon a sensitive heart.
+
+Such ingratitude as I am about to relate to you has never been
+equalled on this earth, and even after all these years, Sir, you see
+me overcome with emotion at the remembrance of it all. I was under
+arrest, remember, on a terribly serious charge, but, conscious of mine
+own innocence and of my unanswerable system of defence, I bore the
+preliminary examination by the juge d'instruc-tion with exemplary
+dignity and patience. I knew, you see, that at my very first
+confrontation with my supposed victim the latter would at once say:
+
+"Ah! but no! This is not the man who assaulted me."
+
+Our plan, which so far had been overwhelmingly successful, had been
+this.
+
+On the morning of the tenth, M. de Firmin-Latour having pawned the
+emeralds, and obtained the money for them, was to deposit that money
+in his own name at the bank of Raynal Fr�res and then at once go to
+the office in the Rue Daunou.
+
+There he would be met by Theodore, who would bind him comfortably but
+securely to a chair, put a shawl around his mouth and finally lock the
+door on him. Theodore would then go to his mother's and there remain
+quietly until I needed his services again.
+
+It had been thought inadvisable for me to be seen that morning
+anywhere in the neighbourhood of the Rue Daunou, but that perfidious
+reptile Theodore ran no risks in doing what he was told. To begin with
+he is a past master in the art of worming himself in and out of a
+house without being seen, and in this case it was his business to
+exercise a double measure of caution. And secondly, if by some unlucky
+chance the police did subsequently connect him with the crime, there
+was I, his employer, a man of integrity and repute, prepared to swear
+that the man had been in my company at the other end of Paris all the
+while that M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour was, by special arrangement,
+making use of my office in the Rue Daunou, which I had lent him for
+purposes of business.
+
+Finally it was agreed between us that when M. le Marquis would
+presently be questioned by the police as to the appearance of the man
+who had assaulted and robbed him, he would describe him as tall and
+blond, almost like an Angliche in countenance. Now I possess--as you
+see, Sir--all the finest characteristics of the Latin race, whilst
+Theodore looks like nothing on earth, save perhaps a cross between a
+rat and a monkey.
+
+I wish you to realize, therefore, that no one ran any risks in this
+affair excepting myself. I, as the proprietor of the apartment where
+the assault was actually supposed to have taken place, did run a very
+grave risk, because I could never have proved an alibi. Theodore was
+such a disreputable mudlark that his testimony on my behalf would have
+been valueless. But with sublime sacrifice I accepted these risks, and
+you will presently see, Sir, how I was repaid for my selflessness. I
+pined in a lonely prison-cell while these two limbs of Satan concocted
+a plot to rob me of my share in our mutual undertaking.
+
+Well, Sir, the day came when I was taken from my prison-cell for the
+purpose of being confronted with the man whom I was accused of having
+assaulted. As you will imagine, I was perfectly calm. According to our
+plan the confrontation would be the means of setting me free at once.
+I was conveyed to the house in the Rue de Grammont, and here I was
+kept waiting for some little time while the juge d'instruction went in
+to prepare M. le Marquis, who was still far from well. Then I was
+introduced into the sick-room. I looked about me with the perfect
+composure of an innocent man about to be vindicated, and calmly gazed
+on the face of the sick man who was sitting up in his magnificent bed,
+propped up with pillows.
+
+I met his glance firmly whilst M. le Juge d'instruction placed the
+question to him in a solemn and earnest tone:
+
+"M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, will you look at the prisoner before
+you and tell us whether you recognize in him the man who assaulted
+you?"
+
+And that perfidious Marquis, Sir, raised his eyes and looked me
+squarely--yes! squarely--in the face and said with incredible
+assurance:
+
+"Yes, Monsieur le Juge, that is the man! I recognize him."
+
+To me it seemed then as if a thunderbolt had crashed through the
+ceiling and exploded at my feet. I was like one stunned and dazed; the
+black ingratitude, the abominable treachery, completely deprived me of
+speech. I felt choked, as if some poisonous effluvia--the poison, Sir,
+of that man's infamy--had got into my throat. That state of inertia
+lasted, I believe, less than a second; the next I had uttered a hoarse
+cry of noble indignation.
+
+"You vampire, you!" I exclaimed. "You viper! You . . ."
+
+I would have thrown myself on him and strangled him with glee, but
+that the minions of the law had me by the arms and dragged me away out
+of the hateful presence of that traitor, despite my objurgations and
+my protestations of innocence. Imagine my feelings when I found myself
+once more in a prison-cell, my heart filled with unspeakable
+bitterness against that perfidious Judas. Can you wonder that it took
+me some time before I could collect my thoughts sufficiently to review
+my situation, which no doubt to the villain himself who had just
+played me this abominable trick must have seemed desperate indeed? Ah!
+I could see it all, of course! He wanted to> see me sent to New
+Caledonia, whilst he enjoyed the fruits of his unpardonable
+backsliding. In order to retain the miserable hundred thousand francs
+which he had promised me he did not hesitate to plunge up to the neck
+in this heinous conspiracy.
+
+Yes, conspiracy! for the very next day, when I was once more hailed
+before the juge d'instruction, another confrontation awaited me: this
+time with that scurvy rogue Theodore. He had been suborned by M. le
+Marquis to turn against the hand that fed him. What price he was paid
+for this Judas trick I shall never know, and all that I do know is
+that he actually swore before the juge d'instruction that M. le
+Marquis de Firmin-Latour called at my office in the late forenoon of
+the tenth of October; that I then ordered him--Theodore--to go out to
+get his dinner first, and then to go all the way over to Neuilly with
+a message to someone who turned out to be non-existent. He went on to
+assert that when he returned at six o'clock in the afternoon he found
+the office door locked, and I--his employer--presumably gone. This at
+first greatly upset him, because he was supposed to sleep on the
+premises, but seeing that there was nothing for it but to accept the
+inevitable, he went round to his mother's rooms at the back of the
+fish-market and remained there ever since, waiting to hear from me.
+
+That, Sir, was the tissue of lies which that jailbird had concocted
+for my undoing, knowing well that I could not disprove them because it
+had been my task on that eventful morning to keep an eye on M. le
+Marquis whilst he went to the Mont de Pi�t� first, and then to MM.
+Raynal Fr�res, the bankers where he deposited the money. For this
+purpose I had been obliged to don a disguise, which I had not
+discarded till later in the day, and thus was unable to disprove
+satisfactorily the monstrous lies told by that perjurer.
+
+Ah! I can see that sympathy for my unmerited misfortunes has filled
+your eyes with tears. No doubt in your heart you feel that my
+situation at that hour was indeed desperate, and that I--Hector
+Ratichon, the confidant of kings, the benefactor of the oppressed--did
+spend the next few years of my life in a penal settlement, where those
+arch-malefactors themselves should have been. But no, Sir! Fate may be
+a fickle jade, rogues may appear triumphant, but not for long, Sir,
+not for long! It is brains that conquer in the end . . . brains backed
+by righteousness and by justice.
+
+Whether I had actually foreseen the treachery of those two
+rattlesnakes, or whether my habitual caution and acumen alone prompted
+me to take those measures of precaution of which I am about to tell
+you, I cannot truthfully remember. Certain it is that I did take those
+precautions which ultimately proved to be the means of compensating me
+for most that I had suffered.
+
+It had been a part of the original plan that, on the day immediately
+following the tenth of October, I, in my own capacity as Hector
+Ratichon, who had been absent from my office for twenty-four hours,
+would arrive there in the morning, find the place locked, force an
+entrance into the apartment, and there find M. le Marquis in his
+pitiable plight. After which I would, of course, immediately notify
+the police of the mysterious occurrence.
+
+That had been the r�le which I had intended to play. M. le Marquis
+approved of it and had professed himself quite willing to endure a
+twenty-four-hours' martyrdom for the sake of half a million francs. But,
+as I have just had the honour to tell you, something which I will not
+attempt to explain prompted me at the last moment to modify my plan in
+one little respect. I thought it too soon to go back to the Rue Daunou
+within twenty-four hours of our well-contrived coup, and I did not
+altogether care for the idea of going myself to the police in order to
+explain to them that I had found a man gagged and bound in my office.
+The less one has to do with these minions of the law the better. Mind
+you, I had envisaged the possibility of being accused of assault and
+robbery, but I did not wish to take, as it were, the very first steps
+myself in that direction. You might call this a matter of sentiment or
+of prudence, as you wish.
+
+So I waited until the evening of the second day before I got the key
+from Theodore. Then before the concierge at 96 Rue Daunou had closed
+the porte-cochere for the night, I slipped into the house unobserved,
+ran up the stairs to my office and entered the apartment. I struck a
+light and made my way to the inner room where the wretched Marquis
+hung in the chair like a bundle of rags. I called to him, but he made
+no movement. As I had anticipated, he had fainted for want of food. Of
+course, I was very sorry for him, for his plight was pitiable, but he
+was playing for high stakes, and a little starvation does no man any
+harm. In his case there was half a million at the end of his brief
+martyrdom, which could, at worst, only last another twenty-four hours.
+I reckoned that Mme. la Marquise could not keep the secret of her
+husband's possible whereabouts longer than that, and in any event I was
+determined that, despite all risks, I would go myself to the police on
+the following day.
+
+In the meanwhile, since I was here and since M. le Marquis was
+unconscious, I proceeded then and there to take the precaution which
+prudence had dictated, and without which, seeing this man's treachery
+and Theodore's villainy, I should undoubtedly have ended my days as a
+convict. What I did was to search M. le Marquis's pockets for anything
+that might subsequently prove useful to me.
+
+I had no definite idea in the matter, you understand; but I had vague
+notions of finding the bankers' receipt for the half-million francs.
+
+Well, I did not find that, but I did find the receipt from the Mont de
+Pi�t� for a parure of emeralds on which half a million francs had been
+lent. This I carefully put away in my waistcoat pocket, but as there
+was nothing else I wished to do just then I extinguished the light and
+made my way cautiously out of the apartment and out of the house. No
+one had seen me enter or go out, and M. le Marquis had not stirred
+while I went through his pockets.
+
+
+6.
+
+That, Sir, was the precaution which I had taken in order to safeguard
+myself against the machinations of traitors. And see how right I was;
+see how hopeless would have been my plight at this hour when Theodore,
+too, turned against me like the veritable viper that he was. I never
+really knew when and under what conditions the infamous bargain was
+struck which was intended to deprive me of my honour and of my
+liberty, nor do I know what emolument Theodore was to receive for his
+treachery. Presumably the two miscreants arranged it all some time
+during that memorable morning of the tenth even whilst I was risking
+my life in their service.
+
+As for M. de Firmin-Latour, that worker of iniquity who, in order to
+save a paltry hundred thousand francs from the hoard which I had
+helped him to acquire, did not hesitate to commit such an abominable
+crime, he did not long remain in the enjoyment of his wealth or of his
+peace of mind.
+
+The very next day I made certain statements before M. le Juge
+d'instruction with regard to M. Mauruss Mosenstein, which caused the
+former to summon the worthy Israelite to his bureau, there to be
+confronted with me. I had nothing more to lose, since those execrable
+rogues had already, as it were, tightened the rope about my neck, but
+I had a great deal to gain--revenge above all, and perhaps the
+gratitude of M. Mosenstein for opening his eyes to the rascality of
+his son-in-law.
+
+In a stream of eloquent words which could not fail to carry
+conviction, I gave then and there in the bureau of the juge
+d'instruction my version of the events of the past few weeks, from the
+moment when M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour came to consult me on the
+subject of his wife's first husband, until the hour when he tried to
+fasten an abominable crime upon me. I told how I had been deceived by
+my own employ�, Theodore, a man whom I had rescued out of the gutter
+and loaded with gifts, how by dint of a clever disguise which would
+have deceived his own mother he had assumed the appearance and
+personality of M. le Comte de Naquet, first and only lawful lord of
+the beautiful Rachel Mosenstein. I told of the interviews in my
+office, my earnest desire to put an end to this abominable
+blackmailing by informing the police of the whole affair. I told of
+the false M. de Naquet's threats to create a gigantic scandal which
+would forever ruin the social position of the so-called Marquis de
+Firmin-Latour. I told of M. le Marquis's agonized entreaties, his
+prayers, supplications, that I would do nothing in the matter for the
+sake of an innocent lady who had already grievously suffered. I spoke
+of my doubts, my scruples, my desire to do what was just and what was
+right.
+
+A noble expose of the situation, Sir, you will admit. It left me hot
+and breathless. I mopped my head with a handkerchief and sank back,
+gasping, in the arms of the minions of the law. The juge d'instruction
+ordered my removal, not back to my prison-cell but into his own
+ante-room, where I presently collapsed upon a very uncomfortable bench
+and endured the additional humiliation of having a glass of water held
+to my lips. Water! when I had asked for a drink of wine as my throat
+felt parched after that lengthy effort at oratory.
+
+However, there I sat and waited patiently whilst, no doubt, M. le Juge
+d'Instruction and the noble Israelite were comparing notes as to their
+impression of my marvellous speech. I had not long to wait. Less than
+ten minutes later I was once more summoned into the presence of M. le
+Juge; and this time the minions of the law were ordered to remain in
+the antechamber. I thought this was of good augury; and I waited to
+hear M. le Juge give forth the order that would at once set me free.
+But it was M. Mosenstein who first addressed me, and in very truth
+surprise rendered me momentarily dumb when he did it thus:
+
+"Now then, you consummate rascal, when you have given up the receipt
+of the Mont de Pi�t� which you stole out of M. le Marquis's pocket you
+may go and carry on your rogueries elsewhere and call yourself
+mightily lucky to have escaped so lightly."
+
+I assure you, Sir, that a feather would have knocked me down. The
+coarse insult, the wanton injustice, had deprived me of the use of my
+limbs and of my speech. Then the juge d'instruction proceeded dryly:
+
+"Now then, Ratichon, you have heard what M. Mauruss Mosenstein has
+been good enough to say to you. He did it with my approval and
+consent. I am prepared to give an _ordonnance de non-lieu_ in your
+favour which will have the effect of at once setting you free if you
+will restore to this gentleman here the Mont de Pi�t� receipt which
+you appear to have stolen."
+
+"Sir," I said with consummate dignity in the face of this reiterated
+taunt, "I have stolen nothing--"
+
+M. le Juge's hand was already on the bell-pull.
+
+"Then," he said coolly, "I can ring for the gendarmes to take you back
+to the cells, and you will stand your trial for blackmail, theft,
+assault and robbery."
+
+I put up my hand with an elegant and perfectly calm gesture.
+
+"Your pardon, M. le Juge," I said with the gentle resignation of
+undeserved martyrdom, "I was about to say that when I re-visited my
+rooms in the Rue Daunou after a three days' absence, and found the
+police in possession, I picked up on the floor of my private room a
+white paper which on subsequent examination proved to be a receipt
+from the Mont de Pi�t� for some valuable gems, and made out in the
+name of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour."
+
+"What have you done with it, you abominable knave?" the irascible old
+usurer rejoined roughly, and I regret to say that he grasped his
+malacca cane with ominous violence.
+
+But I was not to be thus easily intimidated.
+
+"Ah! voil�, M. le Juge," I said with a shrug of the shoulders. "I have
+mislaid it. I do not know where it is."
+
+"If you do not find it," Mosenstein went on savagely, "you will find
+yourself on a convict ship before long."
+
+"In which case, no doubt," I retorted with suave urbanity, "the police
+will search my rooms where I lodge, and they will find the receipt
+from the Mont de Pi�t�, which I had mislaid. And then the gossip will
+be all over Paris that Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour had to pawn
+her jewels in order to satisfy the exigencies of her first and only
+lawful husband who has since mysteriously disappeared; and some people
+will vow that he never came back from the Antipodes, whilst others--by
+far the most numerous--will shrug their shoulders and sigh: 'One never
+knows!' which will be exceedingly unpleasant for Mme. la Marquise."
+
+Both M. Mauruss Mosenstein and the juge d'instruc-tion said a great
+deal more that afternoon. I may say that their attitude towards me and
+the language that they used were positively scandalous. But I had
+become now the master of the situation and I could afford to ignore
+their insults. In the end everything was settled quite amicably. I
+agreed to dispose of the receipt from the Mont de Pi�t� to M. Mauruss
+Mosenstein for the sum of two hundred francs, and for another hundred
+I would indicate to him the banking house where his precious
+son-in-law had deposited the half-million francs obtained for the
+emeralds. This latter information I would indeed have offered him
+gratuitously had he but known with what immense pleasure I thus put a
+spoke in that knavish Marquis's wheel of fortune.
+
+The worthy Israelite further agreed to pay me an annuity of two
+hundred francs so long as I kept silent upon the entire subject of
+Mme. la Marquise's first husband and of M. le Marquis's r�le in the
+mysterious affair of the Rue Daunou. For thus was the affair classed
+amongst the police records. No one outside the chief actors of the
+drama and M. le Juge d'Instruction ever knew the true history of how a
+dashing young cavalry officer came to be assaulted and left to starve
+for three days in the humble apartment of an attorney-at-law of
+undisputed repute. And no one outside the private bureau of M. le Juge
+d'Instruction ever knew what it cost the wealthy M. Mosenstein to have
+the whole affair "classed" and hushed up.
+
+As for me, I had three hundred francs as payment for work which I had
+risked my neck and my reputation to accomplish. Three hundred instead
+of the hundred thousand which I had so richly deserved: that, and a
+paltry two hundred francs a year, which was to cease the moment that
+as much as a rumour of the whole affair was breathed in public. As if
+I could help people talking!
+
+But M. le Marquis did not enjoy the fruits of his villainy, and I had
+again the satisfaction of seeing him gnaw his finger-nails with rage
+whenever the lovely Rachel paid for his dinner at fashionable
+restaurants. Indeed Papa Mosenstein tightened the strings of his
+money-bags even more securely than he had done in the past. Under
+threats of prosecution for theft and I know not what, he forced his
+son-in-law to disgorge that half-million which he had so pleasantly
+tucked away in the banking house of Raynal Fr�res, and I was indeed
+thankful that prudence had, on that memorable morning, suggested to me
+the advisability of dogging the Marquis's footsteps. I doubt not but
+what he knew whence had come the thunderbolt which had crushed his
+last hopes of an independent fortune, and no doubt too he does not
+cherish feelings of good will towards me.
+
+But this eventuality leaves me cold. He has only himself to thank for
+his misfortune. Everything would have gone well but for his treachery.
+We would have become affluent, he and I and Theodore. Theodore has
+gone to live with his mother, who has a fish-stall in the Halles; she
+gives him three sous a day for washing down the stall and selling the
+fish when it has become too odorous for the ordinary customers.
+
+And he might have had five hundred francs for himself and remained my
+confidential clerk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+CARISSIMO
+
+
+
+1.
+
+You must not think for a moment, my dear Sir, that I was ever actually
+deceived in Theodore. Was it likely that I, who am by temperament and
+habit accustomed to read human visages like a book, was it likely, I
+say, that I would fail to see craftiness in those pale, shifty eyes,
+deceit in the weak, slobbering mouth, intemperance in the whole aspect
+of the shrunken, slouchy figure which I had, for my subsequent sorrow,
+so generously rescued from starvation?
+
+Generous? I was more than generous to him. They say that the poor are
+the friends of the poor, and I told you how poor we were in those
+days! Ah! but poor! my dear Sir, you have no conception! Meat in Paris
+in the autumn of 1816 was 24 francs the kilo, and milk 1 franc the
+quarter litre, not to mention eggs and butter, which were delicacies
+far beyond the reach of cultured, well-born people like myself.
+
+And yet throughout that trying year I fed Theodore--yes, I fed him.
+He used to share onion pie with me whenever I partook of it, and he
+had haricot soup every day, into which I allowed him to boil the skins
+of all the sausages and the luscious bones of all the cutlets of which
+I happened to partake. Then think what he cost me in drink! Never
+could I leave a half or quarter bottle of wine but he would finish it;
+his impudent fingers made light of every lock and key. I dared not
+allow as much as a sou to rest in the pocket of my coat but he would
+ferret it out the moment I hung the coat up in the outer room and my
+back was turned for a few seconds. After a while I was forced--yes, I,
+Sir, who have spoken on terms of equality with kings--I was forced to
+go out and make my own purchases in the neighbouring provision shops.
+And why? Because if I sent Theodore and gave him a few sous wherewith
+to make these purchases, he would spend the money at the nearest
+cabaret in getting drunk on absinthe.
+
+He robbed me, Sir, shamefully, despite the fact that he had ten per
+cent, commission on all the profits of the firm. I gave him twenty
+francs out of the money which I had earned at the sweat of my brow in
+the service of Estelle Bachelier. Twenty francs, Sir! Reckoning two
+hundred francs as business profit on the affair, a generous provision
+you will admit! And yet he taunted me with having received a thousand.
+This was mere guesswork, of course, and I took no notice of his
+taunts: did the brains that conceived the business deserve no payment?
+Was my labour to be counted as dross?--the humiliation, the blows
+which I had to endure while he sat in hoggish content, eating and
+sleeping without thought for the morrow? After which he calmly
+pocketed the twenty francs to earn which he had not raised one finger,
+and then demanded more.
+
+No, no, my dear Sir, you will believe me or not, that man could not go
+straight. Times out of count he would try and deceive me, despite the
+fact that, once or twice, he very nearly came hopelessly to grief in
+the attempt.
+
+Now, just to give you an instance. About this time Paris was in the
+grip of a gang of dog-thieves as unscrupulous and heartless as they
+were daring. Can you wonder at it? with that awful penury about and a
+number of expensive "tou-tous" running about the streets under the
+very noses of the indigent proletariat? The ladies of the aristocracy
+and of the wealthy bourgeoisie had imbibed this craze for lap-dogs
+during their sojourn in England at the time of the emigration, and
+being women of the Latin race and of undisciplined temperament, they
+were just then carrying their craze to excess.
+
+As I was saying, this indulgence led to wholesale thieving. Tou-tous
+were abstracted from their adoring mistresses with marvellous
+adroitness; whereupon two or three days would elapse while the adoring
+mistress wept buckets full of tears and set the police of M. Fouch�,
+Duc d'Otrante, by the ears in search of her pet. The next act in the
+tragi-comedy would be an anonymous demand for money--varying in amount
+in accordance with the known or supposed wealth of the lady--and an
+equally anonymous threat of dire vengeance upon the tou-tou if the
+police were put upon the track of the thieves.
+
+You will ask me, no doubt, what all this had to do with Theodore.
+Well! I will tell you.
+
+You must know that of late he had become extraordinarily haughty and
+independent. I could not keep him to his work. His duties were to
+sweep the office--he did not do it; to light the fires--I had to light
+them myself every morning; to remain in the anteroom and show clients
+in--he was never at his post. In fact he was never there when I did
+want him: morning, noon and night he was out--gadding about and coming
+home, Sir, only to eat and sleep. I was seriously thinking of giving
+him the sack. And then one day he disappeared! Yes, Sir, disappeared
+completely as if the earth had swallowed him up. One morning--it was
+in the beginning of December and the cold was biting--I arrived at the
+office and found that his chair-bed which stood in the antechamber had
+not been slept in; in fact that it had not been made up overnight. In
+the cupboard I found the remnants of an onion pie, half a sausage, and
+a quarter of a litre of wine, which proved conclusively that he had
+not been in to supper.
+
+At first I was not greatly disturbed in my mind. I had found out quite
+recently that Theodore had some sort of a squalid home of his own
+somewhere behind the fish-market, together with an old and wholly
+disreputable mother who plied him with drink whenever he spent an
+evening with her and either he or she had a franc in their pocket.
+Still, after these bouts spent in the bosom of his family he usually
+returned to sleep them off at my expense in my office.
+
+I had unfortunately very little to do that day, so in the late
+afternoon, not having seen anything of Theodore all day, I turned my
+steps toward the house behind the fish-market where lived the mother
+of that ungrateful wretch.
+
+The woman's surprise when I inquired after her precious son was
+undoubtedly genuine. Her lamentations and crocodile tears certainly
+were not. She reeked of alcohol, and the one room which she inhabited
+was indescribably filthy. I offered her half a franc if she gave me
+authentic news of Theodore, knowing well that for that sum she would
+have sold him to the devil. But very obviously she knew nothing of his
+whereabouts, and I soon made haste to shake the dirt of her abode from
+my heels.
+
+I had become vaguely anxious.
+
+I wondered if he had been murdered somewhere down a back street, and
+if I should miss him very much.
+
+I did not think that I would.
+
+Moreover, no one could have any object in murdering Theodore. In his
+own stupid way he was harmless enough, and he certainly was not
+possessed of anything worth stealing. I myself was not over-fond of
+the man--but I should not have bothered to murder him.
+
+Still, I was undoubtedly anxious, and slept but little that night
+thinking of the wretch. When the following morning I arrived at my
+office and still could see no trace of him, I had serious thoughts of
+putting the law in motion on his behalf.
+
+Just then, however, an incident occurred which drove all thoughts of
+such an insignificant personage as Theodore from my mind.
+
+I had just finished tidying up the office when there came a peremptory
+ring at the outer door, repeated at intervals of twenty seconds or so.
+It meant giving a hasty glance all round to see that no fragments of
+onion pie or of cheap claret lingered in unsuspected places, and it
+meant my going, myself, to open the door to my impatient visitor.
+
+I did it, Sir, and then at the door I stood transfixed. I had seen
+many beautiful women in my day--great ladies of the Court, brilliant
+ladies of the Consulate, the Directorate and the Empire--but never in
+my life had I seen such an exquisite and resplendent apparition as the
+one which now sailed through the antechamber of my humble abode.
+
+Sir, Hector Ratichon's heart has ever been susceptible to the charms
+of beauty in distress. This lovely being, Sir, who now at my
+invitation entered my office and sank with perfect grace into the
+arm-chair, was in obvious distress. Tears hung on the fringe of her
+dark lashes, and the gossamer-like handkerchief which she held in her
+dainty hand was nothing but a wet rag. She gave herself exactly two
+minutes wherein to compose herself, after which she dried her eyes and
+turned the full artillery of her bewitching glance upon me.
+
+"Monsieur Ratichon," she began, even before I had taken my accustomed
+place at my desk and assumed that engaging smile which inspires
+confidence even in the most timorous; "Monsieur Ratichon, they tell me
+that you are so clever, and--oh! I am in such trouble."
+
+"Madame," I rejoined with noble simplicity, "you may trust me
+to do the impossible in order to be of service to you."
+
+Admirably put, you will admit. I have always been counted a master of
+appropriate diction, and I had been quick enough to note the plain
+band of gold which encircled the third finger of her dainty left hand,
+flanked though it was by a multiplicity of diamond, pearl and other
+jewelled rings.
+
+"You are kind, Monsieur Ratichon," resumed the beauteous creature more
+calmly. "But indeed you will require all the ingenuity of your
+resourceful brain in order to help me in this matter. I am struggling
+in the grip of a relentless fate which, if you do not help me, will
+leave me broken-hearted."
+
+"Command me, Madame," I riposted quietly.
+
+From out the daintiest of reticules the fair lady now extracted a very
+greasy and very dirty bit of paper, and handed it to me with the brief
+request: "Read this, I pray you, my good M. Ratichon." I took the
+paper. It was a clumsily worded, ill-written, ill-spelt demand for
+five thousand francs, failing which sum the thing which Madame had
+lost would forthwith be destroyed.
+
+I looked up, puzzled, at my fair client.
+
+"My darling Carissimo, my dear M. Ratichon," she said in reply to my
+mute query.
+
+"Carissimo?" I stammered, yet further intrigued.
+
+"My darling pet, a valuable creature, the companion of my lonely
+hours," she rejoined, once more bursting into tears. "If I lose him,
+my heart will inevitably break."
+
+I understood at last.
+
+"Madame has lost her dog?" I asked.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"It has been stolen by one of those expert dog thieves, who then levy
+blackmail on the unfortunate owner?"
+
+Again she nodded in assent.
+
+I read the dirty, almost illegible scrawl through more carefully this
+time. It was a clumsy notification addressed to Mme. la Comtesse de
+Nol� de St. Pris to the effect that her tou-tou was for the moment
+safe, and would be restored to the arms of his fond mistress provided
+the sum of five thousand francs was deposited in the hands of the
+bearer of the missive.
+
+Minute directions were then given as to where and how the money was to
+be deposited. Mme. la Comtesse de Nol� was, on the third day from this
+at six o'clock in the evening precisely, to go in person and alone to
+the angle of the Rue Gu�n�gaud and the Rue Mazarine, at the rear of
+the Institut.
+
+There two men would meet her, one of whom would have Carissimo in his
+arms; to the other she must hand over the money, whereupon the pet
+would at once be handed back to her. But if she failed to keep this
+appointment, or if in the meanwhile she made the slightest attempt to
+trace the writer of the missive or to lay a trap for his capture by
+the police, Carissimo would at once meet with a summary death.
+
+These were the usual tactics of experienced dog thieves, only that in
+this case the demand was certainly exorbitant. Five thousand francs!
+But even so . . . I cast a rapid and comprehensive glance on the
+brilliant apparition before me--the jewelled rings, the diamonds in
+the shell-like ears, the priceless fur coat--and with an expressive
+shrug of the shoulders I handed the dirty scrap of paper back to its
+fair recipient.
+
+"Alas, Madame," I said, taking care that she should not guess how much
+it cost me to give her such advice, "I am afraid that in such cases
+there is nothing to be done. If you wish to save your pet you will
+have to pay. . ."
+
+"Ah! but, Monsieur," she exclaimed tearfully, "you don't understand.
+Carissimo is all the world to me, and this is not the first time, nor
+yet the second, that he has been stolen from me. Three times, my good
+M. Ratichon, three times has he been stolen, and three times have I
+received such peremptory demands for money for his safe return; and
+every time the demand has been more and more exorbitant. Less than a
+month ago M. le Comte paid three thousand francs for his recovery."
+
+"Monsieur le Comte?" I queried.
+
+"My husband, Sir," she replied, with an exquisite air of hauteur.
+"M. le Comte de Nol� de St. Pris."
+
+"Ah, then," I continued calmly, "I fear me that Monsieur de Nol� de
+St. Pris will have to pay again."
+
+"But he won't!" she now cried out in a voice broken with sobs, and
+incontinently once more saturated her gossamer handkerchief with her
+tears.
+
+"Then I see nothing for it, Madame," I rejoined, much against my will
+with a slight touch of impatience, "I see nothing for it but that
+yourself . . ."
+
+"Ah! but, Monsieur," she retorted, with a sigh that would have melted
+a heart of stone, "that is just my difficulty. I cannot pay . . ."
+
+"Madame," I protested.
+
+"Oh! if I had money of my own," she continued, with an adorable
+gesture of impatience, "I would not worry. Mais voil�: I have not a
+silver franc of my own to bless myself with. M. le Comte is over
+generous. He pays all my bills without a murmur--he pays my
+dressmaker, my furrier; he loads me with gifts and dispenses charity
+on a lavish scale in my name. I have horses, carriages,
+servants--everything I can possibly want and more, but I never have
+more than a few hundred francs to dispose of. Up to now I have never
+for a moment felt the want of money. To-day, when Carissimo is being
+lost to me, I feel the entire horror of my position."
+
+"But surely, Madame," I urged, "M. le Comte . . ."
+
+"No, Monsieur," she replied. "M. le Comte has flatly refused this time
+to pay these abominable thieves for the recovery of Carissimo. He
+upbraids himself for having yielded to their demands on the three
+previous occasions. He calls these demands blackmailing, and vows that
+to give them money again is to encourage them in their nefarious
+practices. Oh! he has been cruel to me, cruel!--for the first time in
+my life, Monsieur, my husband has made me unhappy, and if I lose my
+darling now I shall indeed be broken-hearted."
+
+I was silent for a moment or two. I was beginning to wonder what part
+I should be expected to play in the tragedy which was being unfolded
+before me by this lovely and impecunious creature.
+
+"Madame la Comtesse," I suggested tentatively, after a while, "your
+jewellery . . . you must have a vast number which you seldom wear
+. . . five thousand francs is soon made up. . . ."
+
+You see, Sir, my hopes of a really good remunerative business had by
+now dwindled down to vanishing point. All that was left of them was a
+vague idea that the beautiful Comtesse would perhaps employ me as an
+intermediary for the sale of some of her jewellery, in which case . . .
+But already her next words disillusioned me even on that point.
+
+"No, Monsieur," she said; "what would be the use? Through one of the
+usual perverse tricks of fate, M. le Comte would be sure to inquire
+after the very piece of jewellery of which I had so disposed, and
+moreover . . ."
+
+"Moreover--yes, Mme. la Comtesse?"
+
+"Moreover, my husband is right," she concluded decisively. "If I give
+in to those thieves to-day and pay them five thousand francs, they
+would only set to work to steal Carissimo again and demand ten
+thousand francs from me another time."
+
+I was silent. What could I say? Her argument was indeed unanswerable.
+
+"No, my good M. Ratichon," she said very determinedly after a while.
+"I have quite decided that you must confound those thieves. They have
+given me three days' grace, as you see in their abominable letter. If
+after three days the money is not forthcoming, and if in the meanwhile
+I dare to set a trap for them or in any way communicate with the
+police, my darling Carissimo will be killed and my heart be broken."
+
+"Madame la Comtesse," I entreated, for of a truth I could not bear to
+see her cry again.
+
+"You must bring Carissimo back to me, M. Ratichon," she continued
+peremptorily, "before those awful three days have elapsed."
+
+"I swear that I will," I rejoined solemnly; but I must admit that I
+did it entirely on the spur of the moment, for of a truth I saw no
+prospect whatever of being able to accomplish what she desired.
+
+"Without my paying a single louis to those execrable thieves," the
+exquisite creature went on peremptorily,
+
+"It shall be done, Madame la Comtesse."
+
+"And let me tell you," she now added, with the sweetest and archest of
+smiles, "that if you succeed in this, M. le Comte de Nol� de St. Pris
+will gladly pay you the five thousand francs which he refuses to give
+to those miscreants."
+
+Five thousand francs! A mist swam before my eyes,
+
+"Mais, Madame la Comtesse . . ." I stammered.
+
+"Oh!" she added, with an adorable uptilting of her little chin, "I am
+not promising what I cannot fulfil. M. le Comte de Nol� only said
+this morning, apropos of dog thieves, that he would gladly give ten
+thousand francs to anyone who succeeded in ridding society of such
+pests."
+
+I could have knelt down on the hard floor, Sir, and . . .
+
+"Well then, Madame," was my ready rejoinder, "why not ten thousand
+francs to me?"
+
+She bit her coral lips . . . but she also smiled. I could see that
+my personality and my manners had greatly impressed her.
+
+"I will only be responsible for the first five thousand," she said
+lightly. "But, for the rest, I can confidently assure you that you
+will not find a miser in M. le Comte de Nol� de St. Pris."
+
+I could have knelt down on the hard floor, Sir, and kissed her
+exquisitely shod feet. Five thousand francs certain! Perhaps ten! A
+fortune, Sir, in those days! One that would keep me in comfort--nay,
+affluence, until something else turned up. I was swimming in the
+empyrean and only came rudely to earth when I recollected that I
+should have to give Theodore something for his share of the business.
+Ah! fortunately that for the moment he was comfortably out of the way!
+Thoughts that perhaps he had been murdered after all once more coursed
+through my brain: not unpleasantly, I'll admit. I would not have
+raised a finger to hurt the fellow, even though he had treated me with
+the basest ingratitude and treachery; but if someone else took the
+trouble to remove him, why indeed should I quarrel with fate?
+
+Back I came swiftly to the happy present. The lovely creature was
+showing me a beautifully painted miniature of Carissimo, a King
+Charles spaniel of no common type. This she suggested that I should
+keep by me for the present for purposes of identification. After this
+we had to go into the details of the circumstances under which she had
+lost her pet. She had been for a walk with him, it seems, along the
+Quai Voltaire, and was returning home by the side of the river, when
+suddenly a number of workmen in blouses and peaked caps came trooping
+out of a side street and obstructed her progress. She had Carissimo on
+the lead, and she at once admitted to me that at first she never
+thought of connecting this pushing and jostling rabble with any
+possible theft. She held her ground for awhile, facing the crowd: for
+a few moments she was right in the midst of it, and just then she felt
+the dog straining at the lead. She turned round at once with the
+intention of picking him up, when to her horror she saw that there was
+only a bundle of something weighty at the end of the lead, and that
+the dog had disappeared.
+
+The whole incident occurred, the lovely creature declared, within the
+space of thirty seconds; the next instant the crowd had scattered in
+several directions, the men running and laughing as they went. Mme. la
+Comtesse was left standing alone on the quay. Not a passer-by in
+sight, and the only gendarme visible, a long way down the Quai, had
+his back turned toward her. Nevertheless she ran and hied him, and
+presently he turned and, realizing that something was amiss, he too
+ran to meet her. He listened to her story, swore lustily, but shrugged
+his shoulders in token that the tale did not surprise him and that but
+little could be done. Nevertheless he at once summoned those of his
+colleagues who were on duty in the neighbourhood, and one of them went
+off immediately to notify the theft at the nearest commissariat of
+police. After which they all proceeded to a comprehensive scouring of
+the many tortuous sidestreets of the quartier; but, needless to say,
+there was no sign of Carissimo or of his abductors.
+
+That night my lovely client went home distracted.
+
+The following evening, when, broken-hearted, she wandered down the
+quays living over again the agonizing moments during which she lost
+her pet, a workman in a blue blouse, with a peaked cap pulled well
+over his eyes, lurched up against her and thrust into her hand the
+missive which she had just shown me. He then disappeared into the
+night, and she had only the vaguest possible recollection of his
+appearance.
+
+That, Sir, was the substance of the story which the lovely creature
+told me in a voice oft choked with tears. I questioned her very
+closely and in my most impressive professional manner as to the
+identity of any one man among the crowd who might have attracted her
+attention, but all that she could tell me was that she had a vague
+impression of a wizened hunchback with evil face, shaggy red beard
+and hair, and a black patch covering the left eye.
+
+
+
+2.
+
+Not much data to go on, you will, I think, admit, and I Can assure
+you, Sir, that had I not possessed that unbounded belief in myself
+which is the true hall-mark of genius, I would at the outset have felt
+profoundly discouraged.
+
+As it was, I found just the right words of consolation and of hope
+wherewith to bow my brilliant client out of my humble apartments, and
+then to settle down to deep and considered meditation. Nothing, Sir,
+is so conducive to thought as a long, brisk walk through the crowded
+streets of Paris. So I brushed my coat, put on my hat at a becoming
+angle, and started on my way.
+
+I walked as far as Suresnes, and I thought. After that, feeling
+fatigued, I sat on the terrace of the Caf� Bourbon, overlooking the
+river. There I sipped my coffee and thought. I walked back into Paris
+in the evening, and still thought, and thought, and thought. After
+that I had some dinner, washed down by an agreeable bottle of
+wine--did I mention that the lovely creature had given me a hundred
+francs on account?--then I went for a stroll along the Quai Voltaire,
+and I may safely say that there is not a single side and tortuous
+street in its vicinity that I did not explore from end to end during
+the course of that never to be forgotten evening.
+
+But still my mind remained in a chaotic condition. I had not succeeded
+in forming any plan. What a quandary, Sir! Oh! what a quandary! Here
+was I, Hector Ratichon, the confidant of kings, the right hand of two
+emperors, set to the task of stealing a dog--for that is what I should
+have to do--from an unscrupulous gang of thieves whose identity, abode
+and methods were alike unknown to me. Truly, Sir, you will own that
+this was a herculean task.
+
+Vaguely my thoughts reverted to Theodore. He might have been of good
+counsel, for he knew more about thieves than I did, but the ungrateful
+wretch was out of the way on the one occasion when he might have been
+of use to me who had done so much for him. Indeed, my reason told me
+that I need not trouble my head about Theodore. He had vanished; that
+he would come back presently was, of course, an indubitable fact;
+people like Theodore never vanish completely. He would come back and
+demand I know not what, his share, perhaps, in a business which was so
+promising even if it was still so vague.
+
+Five thousand francs! A round sum! If I gave Theodore five hundred
+the sum would at once appear meagre, unimportant. Four thousand five
+hundred francs!--it did not even _sound_ well to my mind.
+
+So I took care that Theodore vanished from my mental vision as
+completely as he had done for the last two days from my ken, and as
+there was nothing more that could be done that evening, I turned my
+weary footsteps toward my lodgings at Passy.
+
+All that night, Sir, I lay wakeful and tossing in my bed, alternately
+fuming and rejecting plans for the attainment of that golden goal--the
+recovery of Mme. de Nol�'s pet dog. And the whole of the next day I
+spent in vain quest. I visited every haunt of ill-fame known to me
+within the city. I walked about with a pistol in my belt, a hunk of
+bread and cheese in my pocket, and slowly growing despair in my heart.
+
+In the evening Mme. la Comtesse de Nol� called for news of Carissimo,
+and I could give her none. She cried, Sir, and implored, and her tears
+and entreaties got on to my nerves until I felt ready to fall into
+hysterics. One more day and all my chances of a bright and wealthy
+future would have vanished. Unless the money was forthcoming on the
+morrow, the dog would be destroyed, and with him my every hope of that
+five thousand francs. And though she still irradiated charm and luxury
+from her entire lovely person, I begged her not to come to the office
+again, and promised that as soon as I had any news to impart I would
+at once present myself at her house in the Faubourg St. Germain.
+
+That night I never slept one wink. Think of it, Sir! The next few
+hours were destined to see me either a prosperous man for many days to
+come, or a miserable, helpless, disappointed wretch. At eight o'clock
+I was at my office. Still no news of Theodore. I could now no longer
+dismiss him from my mind. Something had happened to him, I could have
+no doubt. This anxiety, added to the other more serious one, drove me
+to a state bordering on frenzy. I hardly knew what I was doing. I
+wandered all day up and down the Quai Voltaire, and the Quai des
+Grands Augustins, and in and around the tortuous streets till I was
+dog-tired, distracted, half crazy.
+
+I went to the Morgue, thinking to find there Theodore's dead body, and
+found myself vaguely looking for the mutilated corpse of Carissimo.
+Indeed, after a while Theodore and Carissimo became so inextricably
+mixed up in my mind that I could not have told you if I was seeking
+for the one or for the other and if Mme. la Comtesse de Nol� was now
+waiting to clasp her pet dog or my man-of-all-work to her exquisite
+bosom.
+
+She in the meanwhile had received a second, yet more peremptory,
+missive through the same channel as the previous one. A grimy deformed
+man, with ginger-coloured hair, and wearing a black patch over one
+eye, had been seen by one of the servants lolling down the street
+where Madame lived, and subsequently the concierge discovered that an
+exceedingly dirty scrap of paper had been thrust under the door of his
+lodge. The writer of the epistle demanded that Mme. la Comtesse should
+stand in person at six o'clock that same evening at the corner of the
+Rue Gu�n�gaud, behind the Institut de France. Two men, each wearing a
+blue blouse and peaked cap, would meet her there. She must hand over
+the money to one of them, whilst the other would have Carissimo in his
+arms. The missive closed with the usual threats that if the police
+were mixed up in the affair, or the money not forthcoming, Carissimo
+would be destroyed.
+
+Six o'clock was the hour fixed by these abominable thieves for the
+final doom of Carissimo. It was now close on five. In a little more
+than an hour my last hope of five or ten thousand francs and a smile
+of gratitude from a pair of lovely lips would have gone, never again
+to return. A great access of righteous rage seized upon me. I
+determined that those miserable thieves, whoever they were, should
+suffer for the disappointment which I was now enduring. If I was to
+lose five thousand francs, they at least should not be left free to
+pursue their evil ways. I would communicate with the police; the
+police should meet the miscreants at the corner of the Rue Gu�n�gaud.
+Carissimo would die; his lovely mistress would be brokenhearted. I
+would be left to mourn yet another illusion of a possible fortune, but
+they would suffer in gaol or in New Caledonia the consequences of all
+their misdeeds.
+
+Fortified by this resolution, I turned my weary footsteps in the
+direction of the gendarmerie where I intended to lodge my denunciation
+of those abominable thieves and blackmailers. The night was dark, the
+streets ill-lighted, the air bitterly cold. A thin drizzle, half rain,
+half snow, was descending, chilling me to the bone.
+
+I was walking rapidly along the river bank with my coat collar pulled
+up to my ears, and still instinctively peering up every narrow street
+which debouches on the quay. Then suddenly I spied Theodore. He was
+coming down the Rue Beaune, slouching along with head bent in his
+usual way. He appeared to be carrying something, not exactly heavy,
+but cumbersome, under his left arm. Within the next few minutes he
+would have been face to face with me, for I had come to a halt at the
+angle of the street, determined to have it out with the rascal then
+and there in spite of the cold and in spite of my anxiety about
+Carissimo.
+
+All of a sudden he raised his head and saw me, and in a second he
+turned on his heel and began to run up the street in the direction
+whence he had come. At once I gave chase. I ran after him--and then,
+Sir, he came for a second within the circle of light projected by a
+street lanthorn. But in that one second I had seen that which turned
+my frozen blood into liquid lava--a tail, Sir!--a dog's tail, fluffy
+and curly, projecting from beneath that recreant's left arm.
+
+A dog, Sir! a dog! Carissimo! the darling of Mme. la Comtesse de
+Nol�'s heart! Carissimo, the recovery of whom would mean five thousand
+francs into my pocket! Carissimo! I knew it! For me there existed but
+one dog in all the world; one dog and one spawn of the devil, one
+arch-traitor, one limb of Satan! Theodore!
+
+How he had come by Carissimo I had not time to con-conjecture. I
+called to him. I called his accursed name, using appellations which
+fell far short of those which he deserved. But the louder I called the
+faster he ran, and I, breathless, panting, ran after him, determined
+to run him to earth, fearful lest I should lose him in the darkness of
+the night. All down the Rue Beaune we ran, and already I could hear
+behind me the heavy and more leisured tramp of a couple of gendarmes
+who in their turn had started to give chase.
+
+I tell you, Sir, the sound lent wings to my feet. A chance--a last
+chance--was being offered me by a benevolent Fate to earn that five
+thousand francs, the keystone to my future fortune. If I had the
+strength to seize and hold Theodore until the gendarmes came up, and
+before he had time to do away with the dog, the five thousand francs
+could still be mine.
+
+So I ran, Sir, as I had never run before; the beads of perspiration
+poured down from my forehead; the breath came stertorous and hot from
+my heaving breast.
+
+Then suddenly Theodore disappeared!
+
+Disappeared, Sir, as if the earth had swallowed him up! A second ago I
+had seen him dimly, yet distinctly through the veil of snow and rain
+ahead of me, running with that unmistakable shuffling gait of his,
+hugging the dog closely under his arm. I had seen him--another effort
+and I might have touched him!--now the long and deserted street lay
+dark and mysterious before me, and behind me I could hear the measured
+tramp of the gendarmes and their peremptory call of "Halt, in the name
+of the King!"
+
+But not in vain, Sir, am I called Hector Ratichon; not in vain have
+kings and emperors reposed confidence in my valour and my presence of
+mind. In less time than it takes to relate I had already marked with
+my eye the very spot--down the street--where I had last seen Theodore.
+I hurried forward and saw at once that my surmise had been correct. At
+that very spot, Sir, there was a low doorway which gave on a dark and
+dank passage. The door itself was open. I did not hesitate. My life
+stood in the balance but I did not falter. I might be affronting
+within the next second or two a gang of desperate thieves, but I did
+not quake.
+
+I turned into that doorway, Sir; the next moment I felt a stunning
+blow between my eyes. I just remember calling out with all the
+strength of my lungs: "Police! Gendarmes! A moi!" Then nothing more.
+
+
+
+3.
+
+I woke with the consciousness of violent wordy warfare carried on
+around me. I was lying on the ground, and the first things I saw were
+three or four pairs of feet standing close together. Gradually out of
+the confused hubbub a few sentences struck my reawakened senses.
+
+"The man is drunk."
+
+"I won't have him inside the house."
+
+"I tell you this is a respectable house." This from a shrill feminine
+voice. "We've never had the law inside our doors before."
+
+By this time I had succeeded in raising myself on my elbow, and, by
+the dim light of a hanging lamp somewhere down the passage, I was
+pretty well able to take stock of my surroundings.
+
+The half-dozen bedroom candlesticks on a table up against the wall,
+the row of keys hanging on hooks fixed to a board above, the glass
+partition with the words "Concierge" and "R�ception" painted across
+it, all told me that this was one of those small, mostly squalid and
+disreputable lodging houses or hotels in which this quarter of Paris
+still abounds.
+
+The two gendarmes who had been running after me were arguing the
+matter of my presence here with the proprietor of the place and with
+the concierge.
+
+I struggled to my feet. Whereupon for the space of a solid two minutes
+I had to bear as calmly as I could the abuse and vituperation which
+the feminine proprietor of this "respectable house" chose to hurl at
+my unfortunate head. After which I obtained a hearing from the
+bewildered minions of the law. To them I gave as brief and succinct a
+narrative as I could of the events of the past three days. The theft
+of Carissimo--the disappearance of Theodore--my meeting him a while
+ago, with the dog under his arm--his second disappearance, this time
+within the doorway of this "respectable abode," and finally the blow
+which alone had prevented me from running the abominable thief to
+earth.
+
+The gendarmes at first were incredulous. I could see that they were
+still under the belief that my excitement was due to over-indulgence
+in alcoholic liquor, whilst Madame the proprietress called me an
+abominable liar for daring to suggest that she harboured thieves
+within her doors. Then suddenly, as if in vindication of my character,
+there came from a floor above the sound of a loud, shrill bark.
+
+"Carissimo!" I cried triumphantly. Then I added in a rapid whisper,
+"Mme. la Comtesse de Nol� is rich. She spoke of a big reward for the
+recovery of her pet."
+
+These happy words had the effect of stimulating the zeal of the
+gendarmes. Madame the proprietress grew somewhat confused and
+incoherent, and finally blurted it out that one of her lodgers--a
+highly respectable gentleman--did keep a dog, but that there was no
+crime in that surely.
+
+"One of your lodgers?" queried the representative of the law. "When
+did he come?"
+
+"About three days ago," she replied sullenly.
+
+"What room does he occupy?"
+
+"Number twenty-five on the third floor."
+
+"He came with his dog?" I interposed quickly, "a spaniel?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And your lodger, is he an ugly, slouchy creature--with hooked nose,
+bleary eyes and shaggy yellow hair?"
+
+But to this she vouchsafed no reply.
+
+Already the matter had passed out of my hands. One of the gendarmes
+prepared to go upstairs and bade me follow him, whilst he ordered his
+comrade to remain below and on no account to allow anyone to enter or
+leave the house. The proprietress and concierge were warned that if
+they interfered with the due execution of the law they would be
+severely dealt with; after which we went upstairs.
+
+For a while, as we ascended, we could hear the dog barking furiously,
+then, presently, just as we reached the upper landing, we heard a loud
+curse, a scramble, and then a piteous whine quickly smothered.
+
+My very heart stood still. The next moment, however, the gendarme had
+kicked open the door of No. 25, and I followed him into the room. The
+place looked dirty and squalid in the extreme--just the sort of place
+I should have expected Theodore to haunt. It was almost bare save for
+a table in the centre, a couple of rickety chairs, a broken-down
+bedstead and an iron stove in the corner. On the table a tallow candle
+was spluttering and throwing a very feeble circle of light around.
+
+At first glance I thought that the room was empty, then suddenly I
+heard another violent expletive and became aware of a man sitting
+close beside the iron stove. He turned to stare at us as we entered,
+but to my surprise it was not Theodore's ugly face which confronted
+us. The man sitting there alone in the room where I had expected to
+see Theodore and Carissimo had a shaggy beard of an undoubted ginger
+hue. He had on a blue blouse and a peaked cap; beneath his cap his
+lank hair protruded more decided in colour even than his beard. His
+head was sunk between his shoulders, and right across his face, from
+the left eyebrow over the cheek and as far as his ear, he had a
+hideous crimson scar, which told up vividly against the ghastly pallor
+of his face.
+
+But there was no sign of Theodore!
+
+At first my friend the gendarme was quite urbane. He asked very
+politely to see Monsieur's pet dog. Monsieur denied all knowledge of a
+dog, which denial only tended to establish his own guilt and the
+veracity of mine own narrative. The gendarme thereupon became more
+peremptory and the man promptly lost his temper.
+
+I, in the meanwhile, was glancing round the room and soon spied a wall
+cupboard which had obviously been deliberately screened by the
+bedstead. While my companion was bringing the whole majesty of the law
+to bear upon the miscreant's denegations I calmly dragged the bedstead
+aside and opened the cupboard door.
+
+An ejaculation from my quivering throat brought the gendarme to my
+side. Crouching in the dark recess of the wall cupboard was
+Carissimo--not dead, thank goodness! but literally shaking with
+terror. I pulled him out as gently as I could, for he was so
+frightened that he growled and snapped viciously at me. I handed him
+to the gendarme, for by the side of Carissimo I had seen something
+which literally froze my blood within my veins. It was Theodore's hat
+and coat, which he had been wearing when I chased him to this house of
+mystery and of ill-fame, and wrapped together with it was a rag all
+smeared with blood, whilst the same hideous stains were now distinctly
+visible on the door of the cupboard itself.
+
+I turned to the gendarme, who at once confronted the abominable
+malefactor with the obvious proofs of a horrible crime. But the
+depraved wretch stood by, Sir, perfectly calm and with a cynicism in
+his whole bearing which I had never before seen equalled!
+
+"I know nothing about that coat," he asserted with a shrug of the
+shoulders, "nor about the dog."
+
+The gendarme by this time was purple with fury.
+
+"Not know anything about the dog?" he exclaimed in a voice choked with
+righteous indignation. "Why, he . . . he barked!"
+
+But this indisputable fact in no way disconcerted the miscreant.
+
+"I heard a dog yapping," he said with consummate impudence, "but I
+thought he was in the next room. No wonder," he added coolly, "since
+he was in a wall cupboard."
+
+"A wall cupboard," the gendarme rejoined triumphantly, "situated in
+the very room which you occupy at this moment."
+
+"That is a mistake, my friend," the cynical wretch retorted,
+undaunted. "I do not occupy this room. I do not lodge in this hotel at
+all."
+
+"Then how came you to be here?"
+
+"I came on a visit to a friend who happened to be out when I arrived.
+I found a pleasant fire here, and I sat down to warm myself. Your
+noisy and unwarranted irruption into this room has so bewildered me
+that I no longer know whether I am standing on my head or on my
+heels."
+
+"We'll show you soon enough what you are standing on, my fine fellow,"
+the gendarme riposted with breezy, cheerfulness. "Allons!"
+
+I must say that the pampered minion of the law arose splendidly to the
+occasion. He seized the miscreant by the arm and took him downstairs,
+there to confront him with the proprietress of the establishment,
+while I--with marvellous presence of mind--took possession of
+Carissimo and hid him as best I could beneath my coat.
+
+In the hall below a surprise and a disappointment were in store for
+me. I had reached the bottom of the stairs when the shrill feminine
+accents of Mme. the proprietress struck unpleasantly on my ear.
+
+"No! no! I tell you!" she was saying. "This man is not my lodger. He
+never came here with a dog. There," she added volubly, and pointing an
+unwashed finger at Carissimo who was struggling and growling in my
+arms, "there is the dog. A gentleman brought him with him last
+Wednesday, when he inquired if he could have a room here for a few
+nights. Number twenty-five happened to be vacant, and I have no
+objection to dogs. I let the gentleman have the room, and he paid me
+twenty sous in advance when he took possession and told me he would
+keep the room three nights."
+
+"The gentleman? What gentleman?" the gendarme queried, rather inanely
+I thought.
+
+"My lodger," the woman replied. "He is out for the moment, but he
+will be back presently I make no doubt. The dog is his. . . ."
+
+"What is he like?" the minion of the law queried abruptly.
+
+"Who? the dog?" she retorted impudently.
+
+"No, no! Your lodger."
+
+Once more the unwashed finger went up and pointed straight at me.
+
+"He described him well enough just now; thin and slouchy in his ways.
+He has lank, yellow hair, a nose perpetually crimson--with the cold no
+doubt--and pale, watery eyes. . . ."
+
+"Theodore," I exclaimed mentally.
+
+Bewildered, the gendarme pointed to his prisoner.
+
+"But this man . . . ?" he queried.
+
+"Why," the proprietress replied. "I have seen Monsieur twice, or was
+it three times? He would visit number twenty-five now and then."
+
+I will not weary you with further accounts of the close examination to
+which the representative of the law subjected the personnel of the
+squalid hotel. The concierge and the man of all work did indeed
+confirm what the proprietress said, and whilst my friend the gendarme
+--puzzled and floundering--was scratching his head in complete
+bewilderment, I thought that the opportunity had come for me to slip
+quietly out by the still open door and make my way as fast as I could
+to the sumptuous abode in the Faubourg St. Germain, where the
+gratitude of Mme. de Nol�, together with five thousand francs, were
+even now awaiting me.
+
+After Madame the proprietress had identified Carissimo, I had once
+more carefully concealed him under my coat. I was ready to seize my
+opportunity, after which I would be free to deal with the matter of
+Theodore's amazing disappearance. Unfortunately just at this moment
+the little brute gave a yap, and the minion of the law at once
+interposed and took possession of him.
+
+"The dog belongs to the police now, Sir," he said sternly.
+
+The fatuous jobbernowl wanted his share of the reward, you see.
+
+
+
+4.
+
+Having been forced thus to give up Carissimo, and with him all my
+hopes of a really substantial fortune, I was determined to make the
+red-polled miscreant suffer for my disappointment, and the minions of
+the law sweat in the exercise of their duty.
+
+I demanded Theodore! My friend, my comrade, my right hand! I had seen
+him not ten minutes ago, carrying in his arms this very dog, whom I
+had subsequently found inside a wall cupboard beside a blood-stained
+coat. Where was Theodore? Pointing an avenging finger at the
+red-headed reprobate, I boldly accused him of having murdered my
+friend with a view to robbing him of the reward offered for the
+recovery of the dog.
+
+This brought a new train of thought into the wooden pates of the
+gendarmes. A quartet of them had by this time assembled within the
+respectable precincts of the H�tel des Cadets. One of them--senior to
+the others--at once dispatched a younger comrade to the nearest
+commissary of police for advice and assistance.
+
+Then he ordered us all into the room pompously labelled "R�ception,"
+and there proceeded once more to interrogate us all, making copious
+notes in his leather-bound book all the time, whilst I, moaning and
+lamenting the loss of my faithful friend and man of all work, loudly
+demanded the punishment of his assassin.
+
+Theodore's coat, his hat, the blood-stained rag, had all been brought
+down from No. 25 and laid out upon the table ready for the inspection
+of M. the Commissary of Police.
+
+That gentleman arrived with two private agents, armed with full powers
+and wrapped in the magnificent imperturbability of the law. The
+gendarme had already put him _au fait_ of the events, and as soon as
+he was seated behind the table upon which reposed the "pi�ces de
+conviction," he in his turn proceeded to interrogate the ginger-pated
+miscreant.
+
+But strive how he might, M. the Commissary elicited no further
+information from him than that which we all already possessed. The man
+gave his name as Aristide Nicolet. He had no fixed abode. He had come
+to visit his friend who lodged in No. 25 in the H�tel des Cadets. Not
+finding him at home he had sat by the fire and had waited for him. He
+knew absolutely nothing of the dog and absolutely nothing of the
+whereabouts of Theodore.
+
+"We'll soon see about that!" asserted M. the Commissary.
+
+He ordered a perquisition of every room and every corner of the hotel,
+Madame the proprietress loudly lamenting that she and her respectable
+house would henceforth be disgraced for ever. But the thieves--whoever
+they were--were clever. Not a trace of any illicit practice was found
+on the premises--and not a trace of Theodore.
+
+Had he indeed been murdered? The thought now had taken root in my
+mind. For the moment I had even forgotten Carissimo and my vanished
+five thousand francs.
+
+Well, Sir! Aristide Nicolet was marched off to the depot--still
+protesting his innocence. The next day he was confronted with Mme. la
+Comtesse de Nol�, who could not say more than that he might have
+formed part of the gang who had jostled her on the Quai Voltaire,
+whilst the servant who had taken the missive from him failed to
+recognize him.
+
+Carissimo was restored to the arms of his loving mistress, but the
+reward for his recovery had to be shared between the police and
+myself: three thousand francs going to the police who apprehended the
+thief, and two thousand to me who had put them on the track.
+
+It was not a fortune, Sir, but I had to be satisfied. But in the
+meanwhile the disappearance of Theodore had remained an unfathomable
+mystery. No amount of questionings and cross-questionings, no amount
+of confrontations and perquisitions, had brought any new matter to
+light. Aristide Nicolet persisted in his statements, as did the
+proprietress and the concierge of the H�tel des Cadets in theirs.
+Theodore had undoubtedly occupied room No. 25 in the hotel during the
+three days while I was racking my brain as to what had become of him.
+I equally undoubtedly saw him for a few moments running up the Rue
+Beaune with Carissimo's tail projecting beneath his coat. Then he
+entered the open doorway of the hotel, and henceforth his whereabouts
+remained a baffling mystery.
+
+Beyond his coat and hat, the stained rag and the dog himself, there
+was not the faintest indication of what became of him after that. The
+concierge vowed that he did not enter the hotel--Aristide Nicolet
+vowed that he did not enter No. 25. But then the dog was in the
+cupboard, and so were the hat and coat; and even the police were bound
+to admit that in the short space of time between my last glimpse of
+Theodore and the gendarme's entry into room 25 it would be impossible
+for the most experienced criminal on earth to murder a man, conceal
+every trace of the crime, and so to dispose of the body as to baffle
+the most minute inquiry and the most exhaustive search.
+
+Sometimes when I thought the whole matter out I felt that I was
+growing crazy.
+
+
+
+5.
+
+Thus about a week or ten days went by and I had just come reluctantly
+to the conclusion that there must be some truth in the old mediaeval
+legends which tell us that the devil runs away with his elect from
+time to time, when I received a summons from M. the Commissary of
+Police to present myself at his bureau.
+
+He was pleasant and urbane as usual, but to my anxious query after
+Theodore he only gave me the old reply: "No trace of him can be
+found."
+
+Then he added: "We must therefore take it for granted, my good M.
+Ratichon, that your man of all work is--of his own free will--keeping
+out of the way. The murder theory is untenable; we have had to abandon
+it. The total disappearance of the body is an unanswerable argument
+against it. Would you care to offer a reward for information leading
+to the recovery of your missing friend?"
+
+I hesitated. I certainly was not prepared to pay anyone for finding
+Theodore.
+
+"Think it over, my good M. Ratichon," rejoined M. le Commissaire
+pleasantly. "But in the meanwhile I must tell you that we have decided
+to set Aristide Nicolet free. There is not a particle of evidence
+against him either in the matter of the dog or of that of your friend.
+Mme. de Nol�'s servants cannot swear to his identity, whilst you have
+sworn that you last saw the dog in your man's arms. That being so, I
+feel that we have no right to detain an innocent man."
+
+Well, Sir, what could I say? I knew well enough that there was not a
+tittle of solid evidence against the man Nicolet, nor had I the power
+to move the police of His Majesty the King from their decision. In my
+heart of hearts I had the firm conviction that the ginger-polled
+ruffian knew all about Carissimo and all about the present whereabouts
+of that rascal Theodore. But what could I say, Sir? What could I do?
+
+I went home that night to my lodgings at Passy more perplexed than
+ever I had been in my life before.
+
+The next morning I arrived at my office soon after nine. The problem
+had presented itself to me during the night of finding a new man of
+all work who would serve me on the same terms as that ungrateful
+wretch Theodore.
+
+I mounted the stairs with a heavy step and opened the outer door of my
+apartment with my private key; and then, Sir, I assure you that for
+one brief moment I felt that my knees were giving way under me and
+that I should presently measure my full length on the floor.
+
+There, sitting at the table in my private room, was Theodore. He had
+donned one of the many suits of clothes which I always kept at the
+office for purposes of my business, and he was calmly consuming a
+luscious sausage which was to have been part of my dinner today, and
+finishing a half-bottle of my best Bordeaux.
+
+He appeared wholly unconscious of his enormities, and when I taxed him
+with his villainies and plied him with peremptory questions he met me
+with a dogged silence and a sulky attitude which I have never seen
+equalled in all my life. He flatly denied that he had ever walked the
+streets of Paris with a dog under his arm, or that I had ever chased
+him up the Rue Beaune. He denied ever having lodged in the H�tel des
+Cadets, or been acquainted with its proprietress, or with a
+red-polled, hunchback miscreant named Aristide Nicolet. He denied that
+the coat and hat found in room No. 25 were his; in fact, he denied
+everything, and with an impudence, Sir, which was past belief.
+
+But he put the crown to his insolence when he finally demanded two
+hundred francs from me: his share in the sum paid to me by Mme. de
+Nol� for the recovery of her dog. He demanded this, Sir, in the name
+of justice and of equity, and even brandished our partnership contract
+in my face.
+
+I was so irate at his audacity, so disgusted that presently I felt
+that I could not bear the sight of him any longer. I turned my back on
+him and walked out of my own private room, leaving him there still
+munching my sausage and drinking my Bordeaux.
+
+I was going through the antechamber with a view to going out into the
+street for a little fresh air when something in the aspect of the
+chair-bedstead on which that abominable brute Theodore had apparently
+spent the night attracted my attention. I turned over one of the
+cushions, and with a cry of rage which I took no pains to suppress I
+seized upon what I found lying beneath: a blue linen blouse, Sir, a
+peaked cap, a ginger-coloured wig and beard!
+
+The villain! The abominable mountebank! The wretch! The . . . I was
+wellnigh choking with wrath.
+
+With the damning pieces of conviction in my hand, I rushed back into
+the inner room. Already my cry of indignation had aroused the vampire
+from his orgy. He stood before me sheepish, grinning, and taunted me,
+Sir--taunted me for my blindness in not recognizing him under the
+disguise of the so-called Aristide Nicolet.
+
+It was a disguise which he had kept by him in case of an emergency
+when first he decided to start business as a dog thief. Carissimo had
+been his first serious venture and but for my interference it would
+have been a wholly successful one. He had worked the whole thing out
+with marvellous cleverness, being greatly assisted by Madame Sand, the
+proprietress of the H�tel des Cadets, who was a friend of his
+mother's. The lady, it seems, carried on a lucrative business of the
+same sort herself, and she undertook to furnish him with the necessary
+confederates for the carrying out of his plan. The proceeds of the
+affair were to be shared equally between himself and Madame; the
+confederates, who helped to jostle Mme. de Nol� whilst her dog was
+being stolen, were to receive five francs each for their trouble.
+
+When he met me at the corner of the Rue Beaune he was on his way to
+the Rue Gu�n�gaud, hoping to exchange Carissimo for five thousand
+francs. When he met me, however, he felt that the best thing to do for
+the moment was to seek safety in flight. He had only just time to run
+back to the hotel to warn Mme. Sand of my approach and beg her to
+detain me at any cost. Then he flew up the stairs, changed into his
+disguise, Carissimo barking all the time furiously. Whilst he was
+trying to pacify the dog, the latter bit him severely in the arm,
+drawing a good deal of blood--the crimson scar across his face was a
+last happy inspiration which put the finishing touch to his disguise
+and to the hoodwinking of the police and of me. He had only just time
+to staunch the blood from his arm and to thrust his own clothes and
+Carissimo into the wall cupboard when the gendarme and I burst in upon
+him.
+
+I could only gasp. For one brief moment the thought rushed through my
+mind that I would denounce him to the police for . . . for . . .
+
+But that was just the trouble. Of what could I accuse him? Of
+murdering himself or of stealing Mme. de Nol�'s dog? The commissary
+would hardly listen to such a tale . . . and it would make me seem
+ridiculous. . . .
+
+So I gave Theodore the soundest thrashing he ever had in his life, and
+fifty francs to keep his mouth shut.
+
+But did I not tell you that he was a monster of ingratitude?
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE TOYS
+
+
+
+1.
+
+You are right, Sir, I very seldom speak of my halcyon days--those days
+when the greatest monarch the world has ever known honoured me with
+his intimacy and confidence. I had my office in the Rue St. Roch then,
+at the top of a house just by the church, and not a stone's throw from
+the palace, and I can tell you, Sir, that in those days ministers of
+state, foreign ambassadors, aye! and members of His Majesty's
+household, were up and down my staircase at all hours of the day. I
+had not yet met Theodore then, and fate was wont to smile on me.
+
+As for M. le Duc d'Otrante, Minister of Police, he would send to me or
+for me whenever an intricate case required special acumen,
+resourcefulness and secrecy. Thus in the matter of the English
+files--have I told you of it before? No? Well, then, you shall hear.
+
+Those were the days, Sir, when the Emperor's Berlin Decrees were going
+to sweep the world clear of English commerce and of English
+enterprise. It was not a case of paying heavy duty on English goods,
+or a still heavier fine if you smuggled; it was total prohibition, and
+hanging if you were caught bringing so much as a metre of Bradford
+cloth or half a dozen Sheffield files into the country. But you know
+how it is, Sir: the more strict the law the more ready are certain
+lawless human creatures to break it. Never was smuggling so rife as it
+was in those days--I am speaking now of 1810 or 11--never was it so
+daring or smugglers so reckless.
+
+M. le Duc d'Otrante had his hands full, I can tell you. It had become
+a matter for the secret police; the coastguard or customs officials
+were no longer able to deal with it.
+
+Then one day Hypolite Leroux came to see me. I knew the man well--a
+keen sleuthhound if ever there was one--and well did he deserve his
+name, for he was as red as a fox.
+
+"Ratichon," he said to me, without preamble, as soon as he had seated
+himself opposite to me, and I had placed half a bottle of good
+Bordeaux and a couple of glasses on the table. "I want your help in
+the matter of these English files. We have done all that we can in our
+department. M. le Duc has doubled the customs personnel on the Swiss
+frontier, the coastguard is both keen and efficient, and yet we know
+that at the present moment there are thousands of English files used
+in this country, even inside His Majesty's own armament works. M. le
+Duc d'Otrante is determined to put an end to the scandal. He has
+offered a big reward for information which will lead to the conviction
+of one or more of the chief culprits, and I am determined to get that
+reward--with your help, if you will give it."
+
+"What is the reward?" I asked simply.
+
+"Five thousand francs," he replied. "Your knowledge of English and
+Italian is what caused me to offer you a share in this splendid
+enterprise--"
+
+"It's no good lying to me, Leroux," I broke in quietly, "if we are
+going to work amicably together."
+
+He swore.
+
+"The reward is ten thousand francs." I made the shot at a venture,
+knowing my man well.
+
+"I swear that it is not," he asserted hotly.
+
+"Swear again," I retorted, "for I'll not deal with you for less than
+five thousand."
+
+He did swear again and protested loudly. But I was firm.
+
+"Have another glass of wine," I said.
+
+After which he gave in.
+
+The affair was bound to be risky. Smugglers of English goods were
+determined and desperate men who were playing for high stakes and
+risking their necks on the board. In all matters of smuggling a
+knowledge of foreign languages was an invaluable asset. I spoke
+Italian well and knew some English. I knew my worth. We both drank a
+glass of cognac and sealed our bond then and there.
+
+After which Leroux drew his chair closer to my desk.
+
+"Listen, then," he said. "You know the firm of Fournier Fr�res, in
+the Rue Colbert?"
+
+"By name, of course. Cutlers and surgical instrument makers by
+appointment to His Majesty. What about them?"
+
+"M. le Duc has had his eyes on them for some time."
+
+"Fournier Fr�res!" I ejaculated. "Impossible! A more reputable firm
+does not exist in France."
+
+"I know, I know," he rejoined impatiently. "And yet it is a curious
+fact that M. Aristide Fournier, the junior partner, has lately bought
+for himself a house at St. Claude."
+
+"At St. Claude?" I ejaculated.
+
+"Yes," he responded dryly. "Very near to Gex, what?"
+
+I shrugged my shoulders, for indeed the circumstances did appear
+somewhat strange.
+
+Do you know Gex, my dear Sir? Ah, it is a curious and romantic spot.
+It has possibilities, both natural and political, which appear to have
+been expressly devised for the benefit of the smuggling fraternity.
+Nestling in the midst of the Jura mountains, it is outside the customs
+zone of the Empire. So you see the possibilities, do you not? Gex soon
+became the picturesque warehouse of every conceivable kind of
+contraband goods. On one side of it there was the Swiss frontier, and
+the Swiss Government was always willing to close one eye in the matter
+of customs provided its palm was sufficiently greased by the
+light-fingered gentry. No difficulty, therefore, as you see, in
+getting contraband goods--even English ones--as far as Gex.
+
+Here they could be kept hidden until a fitting opportunity occurred
+for smuggling them into France, opportunities for which the Jura, with
+their narrow defiles and difficult mountain paths, afforded
+magnificent scope. St. Claude, of which Leroux had just spoken as the
+place where M. Aristide Fournier had recently bought himself a house,
+is in France, only a few kilometres from the neutral zone of Gex. It
+seemed a strange spot to choose for a wealthy and fashionable member
+of Parisian bourgeois society, I was bound to admit.
+
+"But," I mused, "one cannot go to Gex without a permit from the
+police."
+
+"Not by road," Leroux assented. "But you will own that there are means
+available to men who are young and vigorous like M. Fournier, who
+moreover, I understand, is an accomplished mountaineer. You know Gex,
+of course?"
+
+I had crossed the Jura once, in my youth, but was not very intimately
+familiar with the district. Leroux had a carefully drawn-out map of it
+in his pocket; this he laid out before me.
+
+"These two roads," he began, tracing the windings of a couple of thin
+red lines on the map with the point of his finger, "are the only two
+made ones that lead in and out of the district. Here is the
+Valserine," he went on, pointing to a blue line, "which flows from
+north to south, and both the roads wind over bridges that span the
+river close to our frontier. The French customs stations are on our
+side of those bridges. But, besides those two roads, the frontier can,
+of course, be crossed by one or other of the innumerable mountain
+tracks which are only accessible to pedestrians or mules. That is
+where our customs officials are powerless, for the tracks are
+precipitous and offer unlimited cover to those who know every inch of
+the ground. Several of them lead directly into St. Claude, at some
+considerable distance from the customs stations, and it is these
+tracks which are being used by M. Aristide Fournier for the felonious
+purpose of trading with the enemy--on this I would stake my life. But
+I mean to be even with him, and if I get the help which I require from
+you, I am convinced that I can lay him by the heels."
+
+"I am your man," I concluded simply.
+
+"Very well," he resumed. "Are you prepared to journey with me to Gex?"
+
+"When do you start?"
+
+"To-day."
+
+"I shall be ready."
+
+He gave a deep sigh of satisfaction.
+
+"Then listen to my plan," he said. "We'll journey together as far as
+St. Claude; from there you will push on to Gex, and take up your abode
+in the city, styling yourself an interpreter. This will give you the
+opportunity of mixing with some of the smuggling fraternity, and it
+will be your duty to keep both your eyes and ears open. I, on the
+other hand, will take up my quarters at Mijoux, the French customs
+station, which is on the frontier, about half a dozen kilometres from
+Gex. Every day I'll arrange to meet you, either at the latter place or
+somewhere half-way, and hear what news you may have to tell me. And
+mind, Ratichon," he added sternly, "it means running straight, or the
+reward will slip through our fingers."
+
+I chose to ignore the coarse insinuation, and only riposted quietly:
+
+"I must have money on account. I am a poor man, and will be out of
+pocket by the transaction from the hour I start for Gex to that when
+you pay me my fair share of the reward."
+
+By way of a reply he took out a case from his pocket. I saw that it
+was bulging over with banknotes, which confirmed me in my conviction
+both that he was actually an emissary of the Minister of Police and
+that I could have demanded an additional thousand francs without fear
+of losing the business.
+
+"I'll give you five hundred on account," he said as he licked his ugly
+thumb preparatory to counting out the money before me.
+
+"Make it a thousand," I retorted; "and call it 'additional,' not 'on
+account.'"
+
+He tried to argue.
+
+"I am not keen on the business," I said with calm dignity, "so if you
+think that I am asking too much--there are others, no doubt, who would
+do the work for less."
+
+It was a bold move. But it succeeded. Leroux laughed and shrugged his
+shoulders. Then he counted out ten hundred-franc notes and laid them
+out upon the desk. But before I could touch them he laid his large
+bony hands over the lot and, looking me straight between the eyes, he
+said with earnest significance:
+
+"English files are worth as much as twenty francs apiece in the
+market."
+
+"I know."
+
+"Fournier Fr�res would not take the risks which they are doing for a
+consignment of less than ten thousand."
+
+"I doubt if they would," I rejoined blandly.
+
+"It will be your business to find out how and when the smugglers
+propose to get their next consignment over the frontier."
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"And to communicate any information you may have obtained to me."
+
+"And to keep an eye on the valuable cargo, of course?" I concluded.
+
+"Yes," he said roughly, "an eye. But hands off, understand, my good
+Ratichon, or there'll be trouble."
+
+He did not wait to hear my indignant protest. He had risen to his
+feet, and had already turned to go. Now he stretched his great coarse
+hand out to me.
+
+"All in good part, eh?"
+
+I took his hand. He meant no harm, did old Leroux. He was just a
+common, vulgar fellow who did not know a gentleman when he saw one.
+
+And we parted the best of friends.
+
+
+
+2.
+
+A week later I was at Gex. At St. Claude I had parted from Leroux, and
+then hired a chaise to take me to my destination. It was a matter of
+fifteen kilometres by road over the frontier of the customs zone and
+through the most superb scenery I had ever seen in my life. We drove
+through narrow gorges, on each side of which the mountain heights rose
+rugged and precipitous to incalculable altitudes above. From time to
+time only did I get peeps of almost imperceptible tracks along the
+declivities, tracks on which it seemed as if goats alone could obtain
+a footing. Once--hundreds of feet above me--I spied a couple of mules
+descending what seemed like a sheer perpendicular path down the
+mountain side. The animals appeared to be heavily laden, and I
+marvelled what forbidden goods lay hidden within their packs and
+whether in the days that were to come I too should be called upon to
+risk my life on those declivities following in the footsteps of the
+reckless and desperate criminals whom it was my duty to pursue.
+
+I confess that at the thought, and with those pictures of grim nature
+before me, I felt an unpleasant shiver coursing down my spine.
+
+Nothing of importance occurred during the first fortnight of my
+sojourn at Gex. I was installed in moderately comfortable, furnished
+rooms in the heart of the city, close to the church and market square.
+In one of my front windows, situated on the ground floor, I had placed
+a card bearing the inscription: "Aristide Barrot, Interpreter," and
+below, "Anglais, Allemand, Italien." I had even had a few
+clients--conversations between the local police and some poor wretches
+caught in the act of smuggling a few yards of Swiss silk or a couple
+of cream cheeses over the French frontier, and sent back to Gex to be
+dealt with by the local authorities.
+
+Leroux had found lodgings at Mijoux, and twice daily he walked over to
+Gex to consult with me. We met, mornings and evenings, at the caf�
+restaurant of the Cr�ne Chauve, an obscure little tavern situated on
+the outskirts of the city. He was waxing impatient at what he called
+my supineness, for indeed so far I had had nothing to report.
+
+There was no sign of M. Aristide Fournier. No one in Gex appeared to
+know anything about him, though the proprietor of the principal hotel
+in the town did recollect having had a visitor of that name once or
+twice during the past year. But, of course, during this early stage of
+my stay in the town it was impossible for me to believe anything that
+I was told. I had not yet succeeded in winning the confidence of the
+inhabitants, and it was soon pretty evident to me that the whole
+countryside was engaged in the perilous industry of smuggling.
+Everyone from the mayor downwards did a bit of a deal now and again in
+contraband goods. In ordinary cases it only meant fines if one was
+caught, or perhaps imprisonment for repeated offenses.
+
+But four or five days after my arrival at Gex I saw three fellows
+handed over to the police of the department. They had been caught in
+the act of trying to ford the Valserine with half a dozen pack-mules
+laden with English cloth. They were hanged at St. Claude two days
+later.
+
+I can assure you, Sir, that the news of this summary administration of
+justice sent another cold shiver down my spine, and I marvelled if
+indeed Leroux's surmises were correct and if a respectable tradesman
+like Aristide Fournier would take such terrible risks even for the
+sake of heavy gains.
+
+I had been in Gex just a fortnight when the weather, which hitherto
+had been splendid, turned to squalls and storms. We were then in the
+second week of September. A torrential rain had fallen the whole of
+one day, during which I had only been out in order to meet Leroux, as
+usual, at the Caf� du Cr�ne Chauve. I had just come home from our
+evening meeting--it was then ten o'clock--and I was preparing to go
+comfortably to bed, when I was startled by a violent ring at the
+front-door bell.
+
+I had only just time to wonder if this belated visitor desired to see
+me or my worthy landlady, Mme. Bournon, when her heavy footsteps
+resounded along the passage. The next moment I heard my name spoken
+peremptorily by a harsh voice, and Mme. Bournon's reply that M.
+Aristide Barrot was indeed within. A few seconds later she ushered my
+nocturnal visitor into my room.
+
+He was wrapped in a dark mantle from head to foot, and he wore a
+wide-brimmed hat pulled right over his eyes. He did not remove either
+as he addressed me without further preamble.
+
+"You are an interpreter, Sir?" he queried, speaking very rapidly and
+in sharp commanding tones.
+
+"At your service," I replied.
+
+"My name is Ernest Berty. I want you to come with me at once to my
+house. I require your services as intermediary between myself and some
+men who have come to see me on business. These men whom I wish you to
+see are Russians," he added, I fancied as an afterthought, "but they
+speak English fluently."
+
+I suppose that I looked just as I felt--somewhat dubious owing to the
+lateness of the hour and the darkness of the night, not to speak of
+the abominable weather, for he continued with marked impatience:
+
+"It is imperative that you should come at once. Though my house is at
+some little distance from here, I have a chaise outside which will
+also bring you back, and," he added significantly, "I will pay you
+whatever you demand."
+
+"It is very late," I demurred, "the weather--"
+
+"Your fee, man!" he broke in roughly, "and let's get on!"
+
+"Five hundred francs," I said at a venture.
+
+"Come!" was his curt reply. "I will give you the money as we drive
+along."
+
+I wished I had made it a thousand; apparently my services were worth a
+great deal to him. However, I picked up my mantle and my hat, and
+within a few seconds was ready to go. I shouted up to Mme. Bournon
+that I would not be home for a couple of hours, but that as I had my
+key I need not disturb her when I returned.
+
+Once outside the door I almost regretted my ready acquiescence in this
+nocturnal adventure. The rain was beating down unmercifully, and at
+first I saw no sign of a vehicle; but in answer to my visitor's sharp
+command I followed him down the street as far as the market square, at
+the corner of which I spied the dim outline of a carriage and a couple
+of horses.
+
+Without wasting too many words, M. Ernest Berty bundled me into the
+carriage, and very soon we were on the way. The night was impenetrably
+dark and the chaise more than ordinarily rickety. I had but little
+opportunity to ascertain which way we were going. A small lanthorn
+fixed opposite to me in the interior of the carriage, and flickering
+incessantly before my eyes, made it still more impossible for me to
+see anything outside the narrow window. My companion sat beside me,
+silent and absorbed. After a while I ventured to ask him which way we
+were driving.
+
+"Through the town," he replied curtly. "My house is just outside
+Divonne."
+
+Now, Divonne is, as I knew, quite close to the Swiss frontier. It is a
+matter of seven or eight kilometres--an hour's drive at the very
+least in this supremely uncomfortable vehicle. I tried to induce
+further conversation, but made no headway against my companion's
+taciturnity. However, I had little cause for complaint in another
+direction. After the first quarter of an hour, and when we had left
+the cobblestones of the city behind us, he drew a bundle of notes from
+his pocket, and by the flickering light of the lanthorn he counted out
+ten fifty-franc notes and handed them without another word to me.
+
+The drive was unspeakably wearisome; but after a while I suppose that
+the monotonous rumbling of the wheels and the incessant patter of the
+rain against the window-panes lulled me into a kind of torpor. Certain
+it is that presently--much sooner than I had anticipated--the chaise
+drew up with a jerk, and I was roused to full consciousness by hearing
+M. Berty's voice saying curtly:
+
+"Here we are! Come with me!"
+
+I was stiff, Sir, and I was shivering--not so much with cold as with
+excitement. You will readily understand that all my faculties were now
+on the qui vive. Somehow or other during the wearisome drive by the
+side of my close-tongued companion my mind had fastened on the
+certitude that my adventure of this night bore a close connexion to
+the firm of Fournier Fr�res and to the English files which were
+causing so many sleepless nights to M. le Duc d'Otrante, Minister of
+Police.
+
+But nothing in my manner, as I stepped out of the carriage under the
+porch of the house which loomed dark and massive out of the
+surrounding gloom, betrayed anything of what I felt. Outwardly I was
+just a worthy bourgeois, an interpreter by profession, and delighted
+at the remunerative work so opportunely put in my way.
+
+The house itself appeared lonely as well as dark. M. Berty led the way
+across a narrow passage, at the end of which there was a door which he
+pushed open, saying in his usual abrupt manner: "Go in there and wait.
+I'll send for you directly."
+
+Then he closed the door on me, and I heard his footsteps recrossing
+the corridor and presently ascending some stairs. I was left alone in
+a small, sparsely furnished room, dimly lighted by an oil lamp which
+hung down from the ceiling. There was a table in the middle of the
+room, a square of carpet on the floor, and a couple of chairs beside a
+small iron stove. I noticed that the single window was closely
+shuttered and barred. I sat down and waited. At first the silence
+around me was only broken by the pattering of the rain against the
+shutters and the soughing of the wind down the iron chimney pipe, but
+after a little while my senses, which by this time had become
+super-acute, were conscious of various noises within the house itself:
+footsteps overhead, a confused murmur of voices, and anon the
+unmistakable sound of a female voice raised as if in entreaty or in
+complaint.
+
+Somehow a vague feeling of alarm possessed itself of my nervous
+system. I began to realise my position--alone, a stranger in a house
+as to whose situation I had not the remotest idea, and among a set of
+men who, if my surmises were correct, were nothing less than a gang of
+determined and dangerous criminals. The voices, especially the female
+one, were now sounding more clear. I tiptoed to the door, and very
+gently opened it. There was indeed no mistaking the tone of desperate
+pleading which came from some room above and through & woman's lips. I
+even caught the words: "Oh, don't! Oh, don't! Not again!" repeated at
+intervals with pitiable insistence.
+
+Mastering my not unnatural anxiety, I opened the door a little farther
+and slipped out into the passage, all my instincts of chivalry towards
+beauty in distress aroused by those piteous cries. Forgetful of every
+possible danger and of all prudence, I had already darted down the
+corridor, determined to do my duty as a gentleman as soon as I had
+ascertained whence had come those cries of anguish, when I heard the
+frou-frou of skirts and a rapid patter of small feet down the stairs.
+The next moment a radiant vision, all white muslin, fair curls and the
+scent of violets, descended on me from above, a soft hand closed over
+mine and drew me, unresisting, back into the room from whence I had
+just come.
+
+Bewildered, I gazed on the winsome apparition before me, and beheld a
+young girl, slender as a lily, dressed in a soft, clinging gown which
+made her appear more slender still, her fair hair arranged in a tangle
+of unruly curls round the dainty oval of her face.
+
+She was exquisite, Sir! And the slenderness of her! You cannot imagine
+it! She looked like a young sapling bending to the gale. But what cut
+me to the heart was the look of terror and of misery in her face. She
+clasped her hands together and the tears gathered in her eyes.
+
+"Go, Sir, go at once!" she murmured under her breath, speaking very
+rapidly. "Do not waste a minute, I beg of you! As you value your life,
+go before it is too late!"
+
+"But, Mademoiselle," I stammered; for indeed her words and appearance
+had roused all my worst fears, but also all my instincts of the
+sleuth-hound scenting his quarry.
+
+"Don't argue, I beg of you," continued the lovely creature, who indeed
+seemed the prey of overwhelming emotions--fear, horror, pity. "When he
+comes back do not let him find you here. I'll explain, I'll know what
+to say, only I entreat you--go!"
+
+Sir, I have many faults, but cowardice does not happen to be one of
+them, and the more the angel pleaded the more determined was I to see
+this business through. I was, of course, quite convinced by now that I
+was on the track of M. Aristide Fournier and the English files, and I
+was not going to let five thousand francs and the gratitude of the
+Minister of Police slip through my fingers so easily.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I rejoined as calmly as I could, "let me assure you
+that though your anxiety for me is like manna to a starving man, I
+have no fears for my own safety. I have come here in the capacity of a
+humble interpreter; I certainly am not worth putting out of the way.
+Moreover, I have been paid for my services, and these I will render to
+my employer to the best of my capabilities."
+
+"Ah, but you don't know," she retorted, not departing one jot from her
+attitude of terror and of entreaty, "you don't understand. This house,
+Monsieur," she added in a hoarse whisper, "is nothing but a den of
+criminals wherein no honest man or woman is safe."
+
+"Pardon, Mademoiselle," I riposted as lightly and as gallantly as I
+could, "I see before me the living proof that angels, at any rate,
+dwell therein."
+
+"Alas! Sir," she rejoined, with a heart-rending sigh, "if you mean me,
+I am only to be pitied. My dear mother and I are naught but slaves to
+the will of my brother, who uses us as tools for his nefarious ends."
+
+"But . . ." I stammered, horrified beyond speech at the vista of
+villainy which her words had opened up before me.
+
+"My mother, Sir," she said simply, "is old and ailing; she is dying of
+anguish at sight of her son's misdeeds. I would not, could not leave
+her, yet I would give my life to see her free from that miscreant's
+clutches!"
+
+My whole soul was stirred to its depths by the intensity of passion
+which rang through this delicate creature's words. What weird and
+awesome mystery of iniquity and of crime lay hid, I wondered, between
+these walls? In what tragedy had I thus accidentally become involved
+while fulfilling my prosaic duty in the interest of His Majesty's
+exchequer? As in a flash it suddenly came to me that perhaps I could
+serve both this lovely creature and the Emperor better by going out of
+the house now, and lying hidden all the night through somewhere in its
+vicinity until in daylight I could locate its exact situation. Then I
+could communicate with Leroux at once and procure the apprehension of
+this Berty--or Fournier--who apparently was a desperate criminal.
+Already a bold plan was taking shape in my brain, and with my mind's
+eye I had measured the distance which separated me from the front door
+and safety when, in the distance, I heard heavy footsteps slowly
+descending the stairs. I looked at my lovely companion, and saw her
+eyes gradually dilating with increased horror. She gave a smothered
+cry, pressed her handkerchief to her lips, then she murmured hoarsely,
+"Too late!" and fled precipitately from the room, leaving me a prey to
+mingled emotions such as I had never experienced before.
+
+
+
+3.
+
+A moment or two later M. Ernest Berty, or whatever his real name may
+have been, entered the room. Whether he had encountered his exquisite
+sister on the corridor or the stairs, I could not tell; his face, in
+the dim light of the hanging lamp, looked impenetrable and sinister.
+
+"This way, M. Barrot," he said curtly.
+
+Just for one brief moment the thought occurred to me to throw myself
+upon him with my whole weight--which was considerable--and make a wild
+dash for the front door. But it was more than probable that I should
+be intercepted and brought back, after which no doubt I would be an
+object of suspicion to these rascals and my life would not be worth an
+hour's purchase. With the young girl's warnings ringing in my ears, I
+felt that my one chance of safety and of circumventing these criminals
+lay in my seeming ingenuousness and complete guileless-ness.
+
+I assumed a perfect professional manner and followed my companion up
+the stairs. He ushered me into a room just above the one where I had
+been waiting up to now. Three men dressed in rough clothes were
+sitting at a table on which stood a couple of tankards and four empty
+pewter mugs. My employer offered me a glass of ale, which I declined.
+Then we got to work.
+
+At the first words which M. Berty uttered I knew that all my surmises
+had been correct. Whether he himself was M. Aristide Fournier, or
+another partner of that firm, or some other rascal engaged in
+nefarious doings, I could not know; certain it was that through the
+medium of cipher words and phrases which he thought were
+unintelligible to me, and which he ordered me to interpret into
+English, he was giving directions to the three men with regard to the
+convoying of contraband cargo over the frontier.
+
+There was much talk of "toys" and "babies"--the latter were to take a
+walk in the mountains and to avoid the "thorns"; the "toys" were to be
+securely fastened and well protected against water. It was obviously a
+case of mules and of the goods, the "thorns" being the customs
+officials. By the time that we had finished I was absolutely convinced
+in my mind that the cargo was one of English files or razors, for it
+was evidently extraordinarily valuable and not at all bulky, seeing
+that two "babies" were to carry all the "toys" for a considerable
+distance. The men, too, were obviously English. I tried the few words
+of Russian that I knew on them, and their faces remained perfectly
+blank.
+
+Yes, indeed, I was on the track of M. Aristide Fournier, and of one of
+the most important hauls of enemy goods which had ever been made in
+France. Not only that. I had also before me one of the most brutish
+criminals it had ever been my misfortune to come across. A bully, a
+fiend of cruelty. In very truth my fertile brain was seething with
+plans for eventually laying that abominable ruffian by the heels:
+hanging would be a merciful punishment for such a miscreant. Yes,
+indeed, five thousand francs--a goodly sum in those days, Sir--was
+practically assured me. But over and above mere lucre there was the
+certainty that in a few days' time I should see the light of gratitude
+shining out of a pair of lustrous blue eyes, and a winning smile
+chasing away the look of fear and of sorrow from the sweetest face I
+had seen for many a day.
+
+Despite the turmoil that was raging in my brain, however, I flatter
+myself that my manner with the rascals remained consistently calm,
+businesslike, indifferent to all save to the work in hand. The
+soi-disant Ernest Berty spoke invariably in French, either dictating
+his orders or seeking information, and I made verbal translation into
+English of all that he said. The s�ance lasted close upon an hour, and
+presently I gathered that the affair was terminated and that I could
+consider myself dismissed.
+
+I was about to take my leave, having apparently completed my work,
+when M. Ernest Berty called me back with a curt command.
+
+"One moment, M. Barrot," he said.
+
+"At Monsieur's service," I responded blandly.
+
+"As you see," he continued, "these fellows do not know a word of
+French. All along the way which they will have to traverse they will
+meet friendly outposts, who will report to them on the condition of
+the roads and warn them of any danger that might be ahead. Their
+ignorance of our language may be a source of infinite peril to them.
+They need an interpreter to accompany them over the mountains."
+
+He paused for a moment or two, then added abruptly:
+
+"Would you care to go? The matter is important," he went on quietly,
+"and I am willing to pay you. It means a couple of nights' journey--a
+halt in the mountains during the day--and there will be ten thousand
+francs for you if the 'toys' reach St. Claude safely."
+
+I suppose that something in my face betrayed the eagerness which I
+felt. Here was indeed the finger of Providence pointing to the best
+means of undoing this abominable criminal. Not that I intended to risk
+my neck for any ten thousand francs he chose to offer me, but as the
+trusted guide of his ingenuous "babies" I could convoy them--not to
+St. Claude, as he blandly believed, but straight into the arms of
+Leroux and the customs officials.
+
+"Then that is understood," he said in his usual dictatorial manner,
+taking my consent for granted. "Ten thousand francs. And you will
+accompany these gentlemen and their 'babies' as far as St. Claude?"
+
+"I am a poor man, Sir," I responded meekly.
+
+"Of course you are," he broke in roughly.
+
+Then from a number of papers which lay upon the table, he selected one
+which he held out to me.
+
+"Do you know St. Cergues?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," I replied. "It is a short walk from Gex."
+
+"This," he added, pointing to a paper which I had taken from him, "is
+a plan of the village and of the Pass of Cergues close by. Study it
+carefully. At some point some way up the pass, which I have marked
+with a cross, I and my men with the 'babies' will be waiting for you
+to-morrow evening at eight o'clock. You cannot possibly fail to find
+the spot, for the plan is very accurate and very minute, and it is
+less than five hundred metres from the last house at the entrance of
+the pass. I shall escort the men until then, and hand them over into
+your charge for the mountain journey. Is that clear?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Very well, then; you may go. The carriage is outside the door. You
+know your way."
+
+He dismissed me with a curt nod, and the next two minutes saw me
+outside this house of mystery and installed inside the ramshackle
+vehicle on my way back to my lodgings.
+
+I was worn out with fatigue and excitement, and I imagine that I slept
+most of the way. Certain it is that the journey home was not nearly so
+long as the outward one had been. The rain was still coming down
+heavily, but I cared nothing about the weather, nothing about fatigue.
+My path to fame and fortune had been made easier for me than in my
+wildest dreams I would have dared to hope. In the morning I would see
+Leroux and make final arrangements for the capture of those impudent
+smugglers, and I thought the best way would be for him to meet me and
+the "babies" and the "toys" at the very outset of our journey, as I
+did not greatly relish the idea of crossing lonely and dangerous
+mountain paths in the company of these ruffians.
+
+I reached home without adventure. The vehicle drew up just outside my
+lodgings, and I was about to alight when my eyes were attracted by
+something white which lay on the front seat of the carriage,
+conspicuously placed so that the light from the inside lanthorn fell
+full upon it. I had been too tired and too dazed, I suppose, to notice
+the thing before, but now, on closer inspection, I saw that it was a
+note, and that it was addressed to me: "M. Aristide Barrot,
+Interpreter," and below my name were the words: "Very urgent."
+
+I took the note feeling a thrill of excitement running through my
+veins at its touch. I alighted, and the vehicle immediately
+disappeared into the night. I had only caught one glimpse of the
+horses, and none at all of the coachman. Then I went straight into my
+room, and by the light of the table lamp I unfolded and read the
+mysterious note. It bore no signature, but at the first words I knew
+that the writer was none other than the lovely young creature who had
+appeared to me like an angel of innocence in the midst of that den of
+thieves.
+
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+"Monsieur," she had written in a hand which had clearly been trembling
+with agitation, "you are good, you are kind; I entreat you to be
+merciful. My dear mother, whom I worship, is sick with terror and
+misery. She will die if she remains any longer under the sway of that
+inhuman monster who, alas! is my own brother. And if I lose her I
+shall die, too, for I should no longer have anyone to stand between me
+and his cruelties.
+
+"My dear mother has some relations living at St. Claude. She would
+have gone to them before now, but my brother keeps us both virtual
+prisoners here, and we have no means of arranging for such a perilous
+journey for ourselves. Now, by the most extraordinary stroke of good
+fortune, my brother will be absent all day to-morrow and the following
+night. My dear mother and I feel that God Himself is showing us the
+way to our release.
+
+"Will you, can you help us, dear M. Barrot? Mother and I will be at
+Gex to-morrow at one hour after sundown. We will lie perdu in the
+little Taverne du Roi de Rome, where, if you come to us, you will find
+us waiting anxiously. If you can do nothing to help us, we must return
+broken-hearted to our hated prison; but something in my heart tells me
+that you can help us. All that we want is a vehicle of some sort and
+the escort of a brave man like yourself as far as St. Claude, where
+our relatives will thank you on their knees for your kindness and
+generosity to two helpless, miserable, unprotected women, and I will
+kiss your hands in unbounded gratitude and devotion."
+
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+It were impossible, Monsieur, to tell you of the varied emotions which
+filled my heart when I had perused that heart-rending appeal. All my
+instincts of chivalry were aroused. I was determined to do my duty to
+these helpless ladies as a man and as a gallant knight. Even before I
+finally went to bed I had settled in my mind what I meant to do.
+Fortunately it was quite possible for me to reconcile my duties to my
+Emperor and those which I owed to myself in the matter of the reward
+for the apprehension of the smugglers, with my burning desire to be
+the saviour and protector of the lovely creature whose beauty had
+inflamed my impressionable heart, and to have my hands kissed by her
+in gratitude and devotion.
+
+The next morning Leroux and I were deep in our plans, whilst we sipped
+our coffee outside the Cr�ne Chauve. He was beside himself with joy
+and excitement at the prospective haul, which would, of course,
+redound enormously to his credit, even though the success of the whole
+undertaking would be due to my acumen, my resourcefulness and my
+pluck. Fortunately I found him not only ready but eager to render me
+what assistance he could in the matter of the two ladies who had
+thrown themselves so entirely on my protection.
+
+"We might get valuable information out of them," he remarked. "In the
+excess of their gratitude they may betray many more secrets and
+nefarious doings of the firm of Fournier Fr�res."
+
+"Which further proves," I remarked, "how deeply you and Monsieur le
+Ministre of Police are indebted to me over this affair."
+
+He did not argue the point. Indeed, we were both of us far too much
+excited to waste words in useless bickerings. Our plans for the
+evening were fairly simple. We both pored over the map which
+Fournier-Berty had given me, until we felt that we could reach
+blindfolded the spot which had been marked with a cross. We then
+arranged that Leroux should betake himself thither with a strong posse
+of gendarmes during the day, and lie hidden in the vicinity until such
+time as I myself appeared upon the scene, identified my friends of the
+night before, parleyed with them for a minute or two, and finally
+retired, leaving the law in all its majesty, as represented by Leroux,
+to deal with the rascals.
+
+In the meantime I also mapped out for myself my own share in this
+night's adventurous work. I had hired a vehicle to take me as far as
+St. Cergues; here I intended to leave it at the local inn, and then
+proceed on foot up the mountain pass to the appointed spot. As soon as
+I had seen the smugglers safely in the hands of Leroux and the
+gendarmes, I would make my way back to St. Cergues as rapidly as I
+could, step into my vehicle, drive like the wind back to Gex, and
+place myself at the disposal of my fair angel and her afflicted
+mother.
+
+Leroux promised me that at the customs station on the French frontier
+the officials would look after me and the ladies, and that a pair of
+fresh horses would be ready to take us straight on to St. Claude,
+which, if all was well, we could then reach by daybreak.
+
+Having settled all these matters we parted company, he to arrange his
+own affairs with the Commissary of Police and the customs officials,
+and I to await with as much patience as I could the hour when I could
+start for St. Cergues.
+
+
+
+4.
+
+The night--just as I anticipated--promised to be very dark. A thin
+drizzle, which wetted the unfortunate pedestrian to the marrow, had
+replaced the torrential rain of the previous day.
+
+Twilight was closing in very fast. In the late autumn afternoon I
+drove to St. Cergues, after which I left the chaise in the village and
+boldly started to walk up the mountain pass. I had studied the map so
+carefully that I was quite sure of my way, but though my appointment
+with the rascals was for eight o'clock, I wished to reach the
+appointed spot before the last flicker of grey light had disappeared
+from the sky.
+
+Soon I had left the last house well behind me. Boldly I plunged into
+the narrow path. The loneliness of the place was indescribable. Every
+step which I took on the stony track seemed to rouse the echoes of the
+grim heights which rose precipitously on either side of me, and in my
+mind I felt aghast at the extraordinary courage of those men who--like
+Aristide Fournier and his gang--chose to affront such obvious and
+manifold dangers as these frowning mountain regions held for them for
+the sake of paltry lucre.
+
+I had walked, according to my reckoning, just upon five hundred metres
+through the gorge, when on ahead I perceived the flicker of lights
+which appeared to be moving to and fro. The silence and loneliness no
+longer seemed to be absolute. A few metres from where I was men were
+living and breathing, plotting and planning, unconscious of the net
+which the unerring hand of a skilful fowler had drawn round them and
+their misdeeds.
+
+The next moment I was challenged by a peremptory "Halt!" Recognition
+followed. M. Ernest Berty, or Aristide Fournier, whichever he was,
+acknowledged with a few words my punctuality, whilst through the gloom
+I took rapid stock of his little party. I saw the vague outline of
+three men and a couple of mules which appeared to be heavily laden.
+They were assembled on a flat piece of ground which appeared like a
+roofless cavern carved out of the mountain side. The walls of rock
+around them afforded them both cover and refuge. They seemed in no
+hurry to start. They had the long night before them, so one of them
+remarked in English.
+
+However, presently M. Fournier-Berty gave the signal for the start to
+be made, he himself preparing to take leave of his men. Just at that
+moment my ears caught the welcome sound of the tramping of feet, and
+before any of the rascals there could realise what was happening,
+their way was barred by Leroux and his gendarmes, who loudly gave the
+order, "Hands up, in the name of the Emperor!"
+
+I was only conscious of a confused murmur of voices, of the click of
+firearms, of words of command passing to and fro, and of several
+violent oaths uttered in the not unfamiliar voice of M. Aristide
+Fournier. But already I had spied Leroux. I only exchanged a few words
+with him, for indeed my share of the evening's work was done as far as
+he was concerned, and I made haste to retrace my steps through the
+darkness and the rain along the lonely mountain path toward the goal
+where chivalry and manly ardour beckoned to me from afar.
+
+I found my vehicle waiting for me at St. Cergues, and by the promise
+of an additional pourboire, I succeeded in making the driver whip up
+his horses to some purpose. Less than an hour later we drew up at Gex
+outside the little inn, pretentiously called Le Roi de Rome. On
+alighting I was met by the proprietress who, in answer to my inquiry
+after two ladies who had arrived that afternoon, at once conducted me
+upstairs.
+
+Already my mind was busy conjuring up visions of the fair lady of
+yester-eve. The landlady threw open a door and ushered me into a small
+room which reeked of stale food and damp clothes. I stepped in and
+found myself face to face with a large and exceedingly ugly old woman
+who rose with difficulty from the sofa as I entered.
+
+"M. Aristide Barrot," she said as soon as the landlady had closed the
+door behind me.
+
+"At your service, Madame," I stammered. "But--"
+
+I was indeed almost aghast. Never in my life had I seen anything so
+grotesque as this woman. To begin with she was more than ordinarily
+stout and unwieldy--indeed, she appeared like a veritable mountain of
+flesh; but what was so disturbing to my mind was that she was nothing
+but a hideous caricature of her lovely daughter, whose dainty features
+she grotesquely recalled. Her face was seamed and wrinkled, her white
+hair was plastered down above her yellow forehead. She wore an
+old-fashioned bonnet tied under her chin, and her huge bulk was draped
+in a large-patterned cashmere shawl.
+
+"You expected to see my dear daughter beside me, my good M. Barrot,"
+she said after a while speaking with remarkable gentleness and
+dignity.
+
+"I confess, Madame--" I murmured.
+
+"Ah! the darling has sacrificed herself for my sake. We found to-day
+that though my son was out of the way, he had set his abominable
+servants to watch over us. Soon we realized that we could not both get
+away. It meant one of us staying behind to act the part of unconcern
+and to throw dust in the eyes of our jailers. My daughter--ah! she is
+an angel, Monsieur--feared that the disappointment and my son's
+cruelty, when he returned on the morrow and found that he had been
+tricked, would seriously endanger my life. She decided that I must go
+and that she would remain."
+
+"But, Madame--" I protested.
+
+"I know, Monsieur," she rejoined with the same calm dignity which
+already had commanded my respect, "I know that you think me a selfish
+old woman; but my Ang�le--she is an angel, of a truth!--made all the
+arrangements, and I could not help but obey her. But have no fears for
+her safety, Monsieur. My son would not dare lay hands on her as often
+as he has done on me. Ang�le will be brave, and our relations at St.
+Claude will, directly we arrive, make arrangements to go and fetch her
+and bring her back to me. My brother is an influential man; he would
+never have allowed my son to martyrize me and Ang�le had he known what
+we have had to endure."
+
+Of course I could not then tell her that all her fears for herself and
+the lovely Ang�le could now be laid to rest. Her ruffianly son was
+even now being conveyed by Leroux and his gendarmes to the frontier,
+where the law would take its course. I was indeed not sorry for him. I
+was not sorry to think that he would end his evil life upon the
+guillotine or the gallows. I was only grieved for Ang�le who would
+spend a night and a day, perhaps more, in agonized suspense, knowing
+nothing of the events which at one great swoop would free her and her
+beloved mother from the tyranny of a hated brother and send him to
+expiate his crimes. Not only did I grieve, Sir, for the tender victim
+of that man's brutality, but I trembled for her safety. I did not know
+what minions or confederates Fournier-Berty had left in the lonely
+house yonder, or under what orders they were in case he did not return
+from his nocturnal expedition.
+
+Indeed for the moment I felt so agitated at thought of that beautiful
+angel's peril that I looked down with anger and scorn at the fat old
+woman who ought to have remained beside her daughter to comfort and to
+shield her.
+
+I was on the point of telling her everything, and dragging her back to
+her post of duty which she should never have relinquished. Fortunately
+my sense of what I owed to my own professional dignity prevented my
+taking such a step. It was clearly not for me to argue. My first duty
+was to stand by this helpless woman in distress, who had been
+committed to my charge, and to convey her safely to St. Claude. After
+which I could see to it that Mademoiselle Ang�le was brought along too
+as quickly as influential relatives could contrive.
+
+In the meanwhile I derived some consolation from the thought that at
+any rate for the next four and twenty hours the lovely creature would
+be safe. No news of the arrest of Aristide Fournier could possibly
+reach the lonely house until I myself could return thither and take
+her under my protection.
+
+So I said nothing; but with perfect gallantry, just as if fat Mme.
+Fournier had been a young and beautiful woman, I begged her to give
+herself the trouble of mounting into the carriage which was waiting
+for her.
+
+It took time and trouble, Sir, to hoist that mass of solid flesh into
+the vehicle, and the driver grumbled not a little at the unexpected
+weight. However, his horses were powerful, wiry, mountain ponies, and
+we made headway through the darkness and along the smooth,
+departmental road at moderate speed. I may say that it was a miserably
+uncomfortable journey for me, sitting, as I was forced to do, on the
+narrow front seat of the carriage, without support for my head or room
+for my legs. But Madame's bulk filled the whole of the back seat, and
+it never seemed to enter her head that I too might like the use of a
+cushion. However, even the worst moments and the weariest journeys
+must come to an end, and we reached the frontier in the small hours of
+the morning. Here we found the customs officials ready to render us
+any service we might require. Leroux had not failed to order the fresh
+relay of horses, and whilst these were being put to, the polite
+officers of the station gave Madame and myself some excellent coffee.
+Beyond the formal: "Madame has nothing to declare for His Majesty's
+customs?" and my companion's equally formal: "Nothing, Monsieur,
+except my personal belongings," they did not ply us with questions,
+and after half an hour's halt we again proceeded on our way.
+
+We reached St. Claude at daybreak, and following Madame's directions,
+the driver pulled up in front of a large house in the Avenue du Jura.
+Again there was the same difficulty in hoisting the unwieldy lady out
+of the vehicle, but this time, in response to my vigorous pull at the
+outside bell, the concierge and another man came out of the house, and
+very respectfully they approached Madame and conveyed her into the
+house.
+
+While they did so she apparently gave them some directions about
+myself, for anon the concierge returned, and with extreme politeness
+told me that Madame Fournier greatly hoped that I would stay in St.
+Claude a day or two as she had the desire to see me again very soon.
+She also honoured me with an invitation to dine with her that same
+evening at seven of the clock. This was the first time, I noticed,
+that the name Fournier was actually used in connexion with any of the
+people with whom I had become so dramatically involved. Not that I had
+ever doubted the identity of the ruffianly Ernest Berty; still it was
+very satisfactory to have my surmises confirmed. I concluded that the
+fine house in the Avenue du Jura belonged to Mme. Fournier's brother,
+and I vaguely wondered who he was. The invitation to dinner had
+certainly been given in her name, and the servants had received her
+with a show of respect which suggested that she was more than a guest
+in her brother's house.
+
+Be that as it may, I betook myself for the nonce to the H�tel des
+Moines in the centre of the town and killed time for the rest of the
+day as best I could. For one thing I needed rest after the emotions
+and the fatigue of the past forty-eight hours. Remember, Sir, I had
+not slept for two nights and had spent the last eight hours on the
+narrow front seat of a jolting chaise. So I had a good rest in the
+afternoon, and at seven o'clock I presented myself once more at the
+house in the Avenue du Jura.
+
+My intention was to retire early to bed after spending an agreeable
+evening with the family, who would no doubt overwhelm me with their
+gratitude, and at daybreak I would drive back to Gex after I had heard
+all the latest news from Leroux.
+
+I confess that it was with a pardonable feeling of agitation that I
+tugged at the wrought-iron bell-pull on the perron of the magnificent
+mansion in the Avenue du Jura. To begin with I felt somewhat rueful at
+having to appear before ladies at this hour in my travelling clothes,
+and then, you will admit, Sir, that it was a somewhat awkward
+predicament for a man of highly sensitive temperament to meet on terms
+of equality a refined if stout lady whose son he had just helped to
+send to the gallows. Fortunately there was no likelihood of Mme.
+Fournier being as yet aware of this unpleasant fact: even if she did
+know at this hour that her son's illicit adventure had come to grief,
+she could not possibly in her mind connect me with his ill-fortune. So
+I allowed the sumptuous valet to take my hat and coat and I followed
+him with as calm a demeanour as I could assume up the richly carpeted
+stairs. Obviously the relatives of Mme. Fournier were more than well
+to do. Everything in the house showed evidences of luxury, not to say
+wealth. I was ushered into an elegant salon wherein every corner
+showed traces of dainty feminine hands. There were embroidered silk
+cushions upon the sofa, lace covers upon the tables, whilst a work
+basket, filled with a riot of many coloured silks, stood invitingly
+open. And through the apartment, Sir, a scent of violets lingered and
+caressed my nostrils, reminding me of a beauteous creature in distress
+whom it had been my good fortune to succour.
+
+I had waited less than five minutes when I heard a swift, elastic step
+approaching through the next room, and a second or so later, before I
+had time to take up an appropriate posture, the door was thrown open
+and the exquisite vision of my waking dreams--the beautiful Ang�le--
+stood smiling before me.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I stammered somewhat clumsily, for of a truth I was
+hardly able to recover my breath, and surprise had well nigh robbed me
+of speech, "how comes it that you are here?"
+
+She only smiled in reply, the most adorable smile I had ever seen on
+any human face, so full of joy, of mischief--aye, of triumph, was it.
+I asked after Madame. Again she smiled, and said Madame was in her
+room, resting from the fatigues of her journey. I had scarce recovered
+from my initial surprise when another--more complete still--confronted
+me. This was the appearance of Monsieur Aristide Fournier, whom I had
+fondly imagined already expiating his crimes in a frontier prison, but
+who now entered, also smiling, also extremely pleasant, who greeted me
+as if we were lifelong friends, and who then--I scarce could believe
+my eyes--placed his arm affectionately round his sister's waist, while
+she turned her sweet face up to his and gave him a fond--nay, a loving
+look. A loving look to him who was a brute and a bully and a miscreant
+amenable to the gallows! True his appearance was completely changed:
+his eyes were bright and kindly, his mouth continued to smile, his
+manner was urbane in the extreme when he finally introduced himself to
+me as: "Aristide Fournier, my dear Monsieur Ratichon, at your
+service."
+
+He knew my name, he knew who I was! whilst I . . . I had to pass my hand
+once or twice over my forehead and to close and reopen my eyes several
+times, for, of a truth, it all seemed like a dream. I tried to stammer
+out a question or two, but I could only gasp, and the lovely Ang�le
+appeared highly amused at my distress.
+
+"Let us dine," she said gaily, "after which you may ask as many
+questions as you like."
+
+In very truth I was in no mood for dinner. Puzzlement and anxiety
+appeared to grip me by the throat and to choke me. It was all very
+well for the beautiful creature to laugh and to make merry. She had
+cruelly deceived me, played upon the chords of my sensitive heart for
+purposes which no doubt would presently be made clear, but in the
+meanwhile since the smuggling of the English files had been
+successful--as it apparently was--what had become of Leroux and his
+gendarmes?
+
+What tragedy had been enacted in the narrow gorge of St. Cergues, and
+what, oh! what had become of my hopes of that five thousand francs for
+the apprehension of the smugglers, promised me by Leroux? Can you
+wonder that for the moment the very thought of dinner was abhorrent to
+me? But only for the moment. The next a sumptuous valet had thrown
+open the folding-doors, and down the vista of the stately apartment I
+perceived a table richly laden with china and glass and silver, whilst
+a distinctly savoury odour was wafted to my nostrils.
+
+"We will not answer a single question," the fair Ang�le reiterated
+with adorable determination, "until after we have dined."
+
+What, Sir, would you have done in my place? I believe that never until
+this hour had Hector Ratichon reached to such a sublimity of manner. I
+bowed with perfect dignity in token of obedience to the fair creature,
+Sir; then without a word I offered her my arm. She placed her hand
+upon it, and I conducted her to the dining-room, whilst Aristide
+Fournier, who at this hour should have been on a fair way to being
+hanged, followed in our wake.
+
+Ah! it seemed indeed a lovely dream: one that lasted through an
+excellent and copious dinner, and which turned to delightful reality
+when, over a final glass of succulent Madeira, Monsieur Aristide
+Fournier slowly counted out one hundred notes, worth one hundred
+francs each, and presented these to me with a gracious nod.
+
+"Your fee, Monsieur," he said, "and allow me to say that never have I
+paid out so large a sum with such a willing hand."
+
+"But I have done nothing," I murmured from out the depths of my
+bewilderment.
+
+Mademoiselle Ang�le and Monsieur Fournier looked at one another, and,
+no doubt, I presented a very comical spectacle; for both of them burst
+into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.
+
+"Indeed, Monsieur," quoth Monsieur Fournier as soon as he could speak
+coherently, "you have done everything that you set out to do and done
+it with perfect chivalry. You conveyed 'the toys' safely over the
+frontier as far as St. Claude."
+
+"But how?" I stammered, "how?"
+
+Again Mademoiselle Ang�le laughed, and through the ripples of her
+laughter came her merry words:
+
+"Maman was very fat, was she not, my good Monsieur Ratichon? Did you
+not think she was extraordinarily like me?"
+
+I caught the glance in her eyes, and they were literally glowing with
+mischief. Then all of a sudden I understood. She had impersonated a
+fat mother, covered her lovely face with lines, worn a disfiguring wig
+and an antiquated bonnet, and round her slender figure she had tucked
+away thousands of packages of English files. I could only gasp.
+Astonishment, not to say admiration, at her pluck literally took my
+breath away.
+
+"But, Monsieur Berty?" I murmured, my mind in a turmoil, my thoughts
+running riot through my brain. "The Englishmen, the mules, the packs?"
+
+"Monsieur Berty, as you see, stands before you now in the person of
+Monsieur Fournier," she replied. "The Englishmen were three faithful
+servants who threw dust not only in your eyes, my dear M. Ratichon,
+but in those of the customs officials, while the packs contained
+harmless personal luggage which was taken by your friend and his
+gendarmes to the customs station at Mijoux, and there, after much
+swearing, equally solemnly released with many apologies to M.
+Fournier, who was allowed to proceed unmolested on his way, and who
+arrived here safely this afternoon, whilst Maman divested herself of
+her fat and once more became the slender Mme. Aristide Fournier, at
+your service."
+
+She bobbed me a dainty curtsy, and I could only try and hide the pain
+which this last cruel stab had inflicted on my heart. So she was not
+"Mademoiselle" after all, and henceforth it would even be wrong to
+indulge in dreams of her.
+
+But the ten thousand francs crackled pleasantly in my breast pocket,
+and when I finally took leave of Monsieur Aristide Fournier and his
+charming wife, I was an exceedingly happy man.
+
+But Leroux never forgave me. Of what he suspected me I do not know, or
+if he suspected me at all. He certainly must have known about fat
+Maman from the customs officials who had given us coffee at Mijoux.
+
+But he never mentioned the subject to me at all, nor has he spoken to
+me since that memorable night. To one of his colleagues he once said
+that no words in his vocabulary could possibly be adequate to express
+his feelings.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+HONOUR AMONG ------
+
+
+
+1.
+
+Ah, my dear Sir, it is easy enough to despise our profession, but
+believe me that all the finer qualities--those of loyalty and of
+truth--are essential, not only to us, but to our subordinates, if we
+are to succeed in making even a small competence out of it.
+
+Now let me give you an instance. Here was I, Hector Ratichon, settled
+in Paris in that eventful year 1816 which saw the new order of things
+finally swept aside and the old order resume its triumphant sway,
+which saw us all, including our God-given King Louis XVIII, as poor as
+the proverbial church mice and as eager for a bit of comfort and
+luxury as a hungry dog is for a bone; the year which saw the army
+disbanded and hordes of unemployed and unemployable men wandering
+disconsolate and half starved through the country seeking in vain for
+some means of livelihood, while the Allied troops, well fed and well
+clothed, stalked about as if the sacred soil of France was so much
+dirt under their feet; the year, my dear Sir, during which more
+intrigues were hatched and more plots concocted than in any previous
+century in the whole history of France. We were all trying to make
+money, since there was so precious little of it about. Those of us who
+had brains succeeded, and then not always.
+
+Now, I had brains--I do not boast of them; they are a gift from
+Heaven--but I had them, and good looks, too, and a general air of
+strength, coupled with refinement, which was bound to appeal to anyone
+needing help and advice, and willing to pay for both, and yet--but you
+shall judge.
+
+You know my office in the Rue Daunou, you have been in it--plainly
+furnished; but, as I said, these were not days of luxury. There was an
+antechamber, too, where that traitor, blackmailer and thief, Theodore,
+my confidential clerk in those days, lodged at my expense and kept
+importunate clients at bay for what was undoubtedly a liberal
+salary--ten per cent, on all the profits of the business--and yet he
+was always complaining, the ungrateful, avaricious brute!
+
+Well, Sir, on that day in September--it was the tenth, I
+remember--1816, I must confess that I was feeling exceedingly
+dejected. Not one client for the last three weeks, half a franc in my
+pocket, and nothing but a small quarter of Strasburg patty in the
+larder. Theodore had eaten most of it, and I had just sent him out to
+buy two sous' worth of stale bread wherewith to finish the remainder.
+But after that? You will admit, Sir, that a less buoyant spirit would
+not have remained so long undaunted.
+
+I was just cursing that lout Theodore inwardly, for he had been gone
+half an hour, and I strongly suspected him of having spent my two sous
+on a glass of absinthe, when there was a ring at the door, and I,
+Hector Ratichon, the confidant of kings and intimate counsellor of
+half the aristocracy in the kingdom, was forced to go and open the
+door just like a common lackey.
+
+But here the sight which greeted my eyes fully compensated me for the
+temporary humiliation, for on the threshold stood a gentleman who had
+wealth written plainly upon his fine clothes, upon the dainty linen at
+his throat and wrists, upon the quality of his rich satin necktie and
+the perfect set of his fine cloth pantaloons, which were of an
+exquisite shade of dove-grey. When, then, the apparition spoke,
+inquiring with just a sufficiency of aristocratic hauteur whether M.
+Hector Ratichon were in, you cannot be surprised, my dear Sir, that my
+dejection fell from me like a cast-off mantle and that all my usual
+urbanity of manner returned to me as I informed the elegant gentleman
+that M. Ratichon was even now standing before him, and begged him to
+take the trouble to pass through into my office.
+
+This he did, and I placed a chair in position for him. He sat down,
+having previously dusted the chair with a graceful sweep of his
+lace-edged handkerchief. Then he raised a gold-rimmed eyeglass to his
+right eye with a superlatively elegant gesture, and surveyed me
+critically for a moment or two ere he said:
+
+"I am told, my good M. Ratichon, that you are a trustworthy fellow,
+and one who is willing to undertake a delicate piece of business for a
+moderate honorarium."
+
+Except for the fact that I did not like the word "moderate," I was
+enchanted with him.
+
+"Rumour for once has not lied, Monsieur," I replied in my most
+attractive manner.
+
+"Well," he rejoined--I won't say curtly, but with businesslike
+brevity, "for all purposes connected with the affair which I desire to
+treat with you my name, as far as you are concerned, shall be Jean
+Duval. Understand?"
+
+"Perfectly, Monsieur le Marquis," I replied with a bland smile.
+
+It was a wild guess, but I don't think that I underestimated my new
+client's rank, for he did not wince.
+
+"You know Mlle. Mars?" he queried.
+
+"The actress?" I replied. "Perfectly."
+
+"She is playing in _Le R�ve_ at the Theatre Royal just now."
+
+"She is."
+
+"In the first and third acts of the play she wears a gold bracelet set
+with large green stones."
+
+"I noticed it the other night. I had a seat in the parterre, I may
+say."
+
+"I want that bracelet," broke in the soi-disant Jean Duval
+unceremoniously. "The stones are false, the gold strass. I admire
+Mlle. Mars immensely. I dislike seeing her wearing false jewellery. I
+wish to have the bracelet copied in real stones, and to present it to
+her as a surprise on the occasion of the twenty-fifth performance of
+_Le R�ve_. It will cost me a king's ransom, and her, for the time
+being, an infinite amount of anxiety. She sets great store by the
+valueless trinket solely because of the merit of its design, and I
+want its disappearance to have every semblance of a theft. All the
+greater will be the lovely creature's pleasure when, at my hands, she
+will receive an infinitely precious jewel the exact counterpart in all
+save its intrinsic value of the trifle which she had thought lost."
+
+It all sounded deliciously romantic. A flavour of the past
+century--before the endless war and abysmal poverty had killed all
+chivalry in us--clung to this proposed transaction. There was nothing
+of the roturier, nothing of a Jean Duval, in this polished man of the
+world who had thought out this subtle scheme for ingratiating himself
+in the eyes of his lady fair.
+
+I murmured an appropriate phrase, placing my services entirely at M.
+le Marquis's disposal, and once more he broke in on my polished
+diction with that brusquerie which betrayed the man accustomed to be
+silently obeyed.
+
+"Mlle. Mars wears the bracelet," he said, "during the third act of _Le
+R�ve_. At the end of the act she enters her dressing-room, and her
+maid helps her to change her dress. During this entr'acte Mademoiselle
+with her own hands puts by all the jewellery which she has to wear
+during the more gorgeous scenes of the play. In the last act--the
+finale of the tragedy--she appears in a plain stuff gown, whilst all
+her jewellery reposes in the small iron safe in her dressing-room. It
+is while Mademoiselle is on the stage during the last act that I want
+you to enter her dressing-room and to extract the bracelet out of the
+safe for me."
+
+"I, M. le Marquis?" I stammered. "I, to steal a--"
+
+"Firstly, M.--er--er--Ratichon, or whatever your confounded name may
+be," interposed my client with inimitable hauteur, "understand that my
+name is Jean Duval, and if you forget this again I shall be under the
+necessity of laying my cane across your shoulders and incidentally to
+take my business elsewhere. Secondly, let me tell you that your
+affectations of outraged probity are lost on me, seeing that I know
+all about the stolen treaty which--"
+
+"Enough, M. Jean Duval," I said with a dignity equal, if not greater,
+than his own; "do not, I pray you, misunderstand me. I am ready to do
+you service. But if you will deign to explain how I am to break open
+an iron safe inside a crowded building and extract therefrom a
+trinket, without being caught in the act and locked up for
+house-breaking and theft, I shall be eternally your debtor."
+
+"The extracting of the trinket is your affair," he rejoined dryly. "I
+will give you five hundred francs if you bring the bracelet to me
+within fourteen days."
+
+"But--" I stammered again.
+
+"Your task will not be such a difficult one after all. I will give you
+the duplicate key of the safe."
+
+He dived into the breast pocket of his coat, and drew from it a
+somewhat large and clumsy key, which he placed upon my desk.
+
+"I managed to get that easily enough," he said nonchalantly, "a couple
+of nights ago, when I had the honour of visiting Mademoiselle in her
+dressing-room. A piece of wax in my hand, Mademoiselle's momentary
+absorption in her reflection while her maid was doing her hair, and
+the impression of the original key was in my possession. But between
+taking a model of the key and the actual theft of the bracelet out of
+the safe there is a wide gulf which a gentleman cannot bridge over.
+Therefore, I choose to employ you, M.--er--er--Ratichon, to complete
+the transaction for me."
+
+"For five hundred francs?" I queried blandly.
+
+"It is a fair sum," he argued.
+
+"Make it a thousand," I rejoined firmly, "and you shall have the
+bracelet within fourteen days."
+
+He paused a moment in order to reflect; his steel-grey eyes, cool and
+disdainful, were fixed searchingly on my face. I pride myself on the
+way that I bear that kind of scrutiny, so even now I looked bland and
+withal purposeful and capable.
+
+"Very well," he said, after a few moments, and he rose from his chair
+as he spoke; "it shall be a thousand francs, M.--er--er--Ratichon, and
+I will hand over the money to you in exchange for the bracelet--but it
+must be done within fourteen days, remember."
+
+I tried to induce him to give me a small sum on account. I was about
+to take terrible risks, remember; housebreaking, larceny, theft--call
+it what you will, it meant the _police correctionelle_ and a couple of
+years in New Orleans for sure. He finally gave me fifty francs, and
+once more threatened to take his business elsewhere, so I had to
+accept and to look as urbane and dignified as I could.
+
+He was out of the office and about to descend the stairs when a
+thought struck me.
+
+"Where and how can I communicate with M. Jean Duval," I asked, "when
+my work is done?"
+
+"I will call here," he replied, "at ten o'clock of every morning that
+follows a performance of _Le R�ve_. We can complete our transaction
+then across your office desk."
+
+The next moment he was gone. Theodore passed him on the stairs and
+asked me, with one of his impertinent leers, whether we had a new
+client and what we might expect from him. I shrugged my shoulders. "A
+new client!" I said disdainfully. "Bah! Vague promises of a couple of
+louis for finding out if Madame his wife sees more of a certain
+captain of the guards than Monsieur the husband cares about."
+
+Theodore sniffed. He always sniffs when financial matters are on the
+tapis.
+
+"Anything on account?" he queried.
+
+"A paltry ten francs," I replied, "and I may as well give you your
+share of it now."
+
+I tossed a franc to him across the desk. By the terms of my contract
+with him, you understand, he was entitled to ten per cent, of every
+profit accruing from the business in lieu of wages, but in this
+instance do you not think that I was justified in looking on one franc
+now, and perhaps twenty when the transaction was completed, as a more
+than just honorarium for his share in it? Was I not taking all the
+risks in this delicate business? Would it be fair for me to give him a
+hundred francs for sitting quietly in the office or sipping absinthe
+at a neighbouring bar whilst I risked New Orleans--not to speak of the
+gallows?
+
+He gave me a strange look as he picked up the silver franc, spat on it
+for luck, bit it with his great yellow teeth to ascertain if it were
+counterfeit or genuine, and finally slipped it into his pocket, and
+shuffled out of the office whistling through his teeth.
+
+An abominably low, deceitful creature, that Theodore, you will see
+anon. But I won't anticipate.
+
+
+
+2.
+
+The next performance of _Le R�ve_ was announced for the following
+evening, and I started on my campaign. As you may imagine, it did not
+prove an easy matter. To obtain access through the stage-door to the
+back of the theatre was one thing--a franc to the doorkeeper had done
+the trick--to mingle with the scene-shifters, to talk with the supers,
+to take off my hat with every form of deep respect to the principals
+had been equally simple.
+
+I had even succeeded in placing a bouquet on the dressing-table of the
+great tragedienne on my second visit to the theatre. Her dressing-room
+door had been left ajar during that memorable fourth act which was to
+see the consummation of my labours. I had the bouquet in my hand,
+having brought it expressly for that purpose. I pushed open the door,
+and found myself face to face with a young though somewhat forbidding
+damsel, who peremptorily demanded what my business might be.
+
+In order to minimise the risk of subsequent trouble, I had assumed the
+disguise of a middle-aged Angliche--red side-whiskers, florid
+complexion, a ginger-coloured wig plastered rigidly over the ears
+towards the temples, high stock collar, nankeen pantaloons, a patch
+over one eye and an eyeglass fixed in the other. My own sainted mother
+would never have known me.
+
+With becoming diffidence I explained in broken French that my deep
+though respectful admiration of Mlle. Mars had prompted me to lay a
+floral tribute at her feet. I desired nothing more.
+
+The damsel eyed me coldly, though at the moment I was looking quite my
+best, diffident yet courteous, a perfect gentleman of the old regime.
+Then she took the bouquet from me and put it down on the
+dressing-table.
+
+I fancied that she smiled, not unkindly, and I ventured to pass the
+time of day. She replied not altogether disapprovingly. She sat down
+by the dressing-table and took up some needlework which she had
+obviously thrown aside on my arrival. Close by, on the floor, was a
+solid iron chest with huge ornamental hinges and a large escutcheon
+over the lock. It stood about a foot high and perhaps a couple of feet
+long.
+
+There was nothing else in the room that suggested a receptacle for
+jewellery; this, therefore, was obviously the safe which contained the
+bracelet. At the self-same second my eyes alighted on a large and
+clumsy-looking key which lay upon the dressing-table, and my hand at
+once wandered instinctively to the pocket of my coat and closed
+convulsively on the duplicate one which the soi-disant Jean Duval had
+given me.
+
+I talked eloquently for a while. The damsel answered in monosyllables,
+but she sat unmoved at needlework, and after ten minutes or so I was
+forced to beat a retreat.
+
+I returned to the charge at the next performance of _Le R�ve_, this
+time with a box of bonbons for the maid instead of the bouquet for the
+mistress. The damsel was quite amenable to a little conversation,
+quite willing that I should dally in her company. She munched the
+bonbons and coquetted a little with me. But she went on stolidly with
+her needlework, and I could see that nothing would move her out of
+that room, where she had obviously been left in charge.
+
+Then I bethought me of Theodore. I realised that I could not carry
+this affair through successfully without his help. So I gave him a
+further five francs--as I said to him it was out of my own
+savings--and I assured him that a certain M. Jean Duval had promised
+me a couple of hundred francs when the business which he had entrusted
+to me was satisfactorily concluded. It was for this business--so I
+explained--that I required his help, and he seemed quite satisfied.
+
+His task was, of course, a very easy one. What a contrast to the risk
+I was about to run! Twenty-five francs, my dear Sir, just for knocking
+at the door of Mlle. Mars' dressing-room during the fourth act, whilst
+I was engaged in conversation with the attractive guardian of the iron
+safe, and to say in well-assumed, breathless tones:
+
+"Mademoiselle Mars has been taken suddenly unwell on the stage.
+Will her maid go to her at once?"
+
+It was some little distance from the dressing-room to the wings--down
+a flight of ill-lighted stone stairs which demanded cautious ascent
+and descent. Theodore had orders to obstruct the maid during her
+progress as much as he could without rousing her suspicions.
+
+I reckoned that she would be fully three minutes going, questioning,
+finding out that the whole thing was a hoax, and running back to the
+dressing-room--three minutes in which to open the chest, extract the
+bracelet and, incidentally, anything else of value there might be
+close to my hand. Well, I had thought of that eventuality, too; one
+must think of everything, you know--that is where genius comes in.
+Then, if possible, relock the safe, so that the maid, on her return,
+would find everything apparently in order and would not, perhaps,
+raise the alarm until I was safely out of the theatre.
+
+It could be done--oh, yes, it could be done--with a minute to spare!
+And to-morrow at ten o'clock M. Jean Duval would appear, and I would
+not part with the bracelet until a thousand francs had passed from his
+pocket into mine. I must get Theodore out of the house, by the way,
+before the arrival of M. Duval.
+
+A thousand francs! I had not seen a thousand francs all at once for
+years. What a dinner I would have tomorrow! There was a certain little
+restaurant in the Rue des Pipots where they concocted a cassolette of
+goose liver and pork chops with haricot beans which . . . ! I only
+tell you that.
+
+How I got through the rest of that day I cannot tell you. The evening
+found me--quite an habitu� now--behind the stage of the Theatre
+Royal, nodding to one or two acquaintances, most of the people looking
+on me with grave respect and talking of me as the eccentric milor. I
+was supposed to be pining for an introduction to the great
+tragedienne, who, very exclusive as usual, had so far given me the
+cold shoulder.
+
+Ten minutes after the rise of the curtain on the fourth act I was in
+the dressing-room, presenting the maid with a gold locket which I had
+bought from a cheapjack's barrow for five and twenty francs--almost
+the last of the fifty which I had received from M. Duval on account.
+The damsel was eyeing the locket somewhat disdainfully and giving me
+grudging thanks for it when there came a hurried knock at the door.
+The next moment Theodore poked his ugly face into the room. He, too,
+had taken the precaution of assuming an excellent disguise--peaked cap
+set aslant over one eye, grimy face, the blouse of a scene-shifter.
+
+"Mlle. Mars," he gasped breathlessly; "she has been taken ill--on the
+stage--very suddenly. She is in the wings--asking for her maid. They
+think she will faint."
+
+The damsel rose, visibly frightened.
+
+"I'll come at once," she said, and without the slightest flurry she
+picked up the key of the safe and slipped it into her pocket. I
+fancied that she gave me a look as she did this. Oh, she was a pearl
+among Abigails! Then she pointed unceremoniously to the door.
+
+"Milor!" was all she said, but of course I understood. I had no idea
+that English milors could be thus treated by pert maidens. But what
+cared I for social amenities just then? My hand had closed over the
+duplicate key of the safe, and I walked out of the room in the wake of
+the damsel. Theodore had disappeared.
+
+Once in the passage, the girl started to run. A second or two later
+I heard the patter of her high-heeled shoes down the stone stairs. I
+had not a moment to lose.
+
+To slip back into the dressing-room was but an instant's work. The
+next I was kneeling in front of the chest. The key fitted the lock
+accurately; one turn, and the lid flew open.
+
+The chest was filled with a miscellaneous collection of theatrical
+properties all lying loose--showy necklaces, chains, pendants, all of
+them obviously false; but lying beneath them, and partially hidden by
+the meretricious ornaments, were one or two boxes covered with velvet
+such as jewellers use. My keen eyes noted these at once. I was indeed
+in luck! For the moment, however, my hand fastened on a leather case
+which reposed on the top in one corner, and which very obviously, from
+its shape, contained a bracelet. My hands did not tremble, though I
+was quivering with excitement. I opened the case. There, indeed, was
+the bracelet--the large green stones, the magnificent gold setting,
+the whole jewel dazzlingly beautiful. If it were real--the thought
+flashed through my mind--it would be indeed priceless. I closed the
+case and put it on the dressing-table beside me. I had at least
+another minute to spare--sixty seconds wherein to dive for those
+velvet-covered boxes which-- My hand was on one of them when a slight
+noise caused me suddenly to turn and to look behind me. It all happened
+as quickly as a flash of lightning. I just saw a man disappearing
+through the door. One glance at the dressing-table showed me the whole
+extent of my misfortune. The case containing the bracelet had gone, and
+at that precise moment I heard a commotion from the direction of the
+stairs and a woman screaming at the top of her voice: "Thief! Stop
+thief!"
+
+Then, Sir, I brought upon the perilous situation that presence of mind
+for which the name of Hector Ratichon will for ever remain famous.
+Without a single flurried movement, I slipped one of the
+velvet-covered cases which I still had in my hand into the breast
+pocket of my coat, I closed down the lid of the iron chest and locked
+it with the duplicate key, and I went out of the room, closing the
+door behind me.
+
+The passage was dark. The damsel was running up the stairs with a
+couple of stage hands behind her. She was explaining to them volubly,
+and to the accompaniment of sundry half-hysterical little cries, the
+infamous hoax to which she had fallen a victim. You might think, Sir,
+that here was I caught like a rat in a trap, and with that
+velvet-covered case in my breast pocket by way of damning evidence
+against me!
+
+Not at all, Sir! Not at all! Not so is Hector Ratichon, the keenest
+secret agent France has ever known, the confidant of kings, brought to
+earth by an untoward move of fate. Even before the damsel and the
+stage hands had reached the top of the stairs and turned into the
+corridor, which was on my left, I had slipped round noiselessly to my
+right and found shelter in a narrow doorway, where I was screened by
+the surrounding darkness and by a projection of the frame. While the
+three of them made straight for Mademoiselle's dressing-room, and
+spent some considerable time there in uttering varied ejaculations
+when they found the place and the chest to all appearances untouched,
+I slipped out of my hiding-place, sped rapidly along the corridor, and
+was soon half-way down the stairs.
+
+Here my habitual composure in the face of danger stood me in good
+stead. It enabled me to walk composedly and not too hurriedly through
+the crowd behind the scenes--supers, scene-shifters, principals, none
+of whom seemed to be aware as yet of the hoax practised on
+Mademoiselle Mars' maid; and I reckon that I was out of the stage door
+exactly five minutes after Theodore had called the damsel away.
+
+But I was minus the bracelet, and in my mind there was the firm
+conviction that that traitor Theodore had played me one of his
+abominable tricks. As I said, the whole thing had occurred as quickly
+as a flash of lightning, but even so my keen, experienced eyes had
+retained the impression of a peaked cap and the corner of a blue
+blouse as they disappeared through the dressing-room door.
+
+
+
+3.
+
+Tact, wariness and strength were all required, you must admit, in
+order to deal with the present delicate situation. I was speeding
+along the Rue de Richelieu on my way to my office. My intention was to
+spend the night there, where I had a chair-bedstead on which I had oft
+before slept soundly after a day's hard work, and anyhow it was too
+late to go to my lodgings at Passy at this hour.
+
+Moreover, Theodore slept in the antechamber of the office, and I was
+more firmly convinced than ever that it was he who had stolen the
+bracelet. "Blackleg! Thief! Traitor!" I mused. "But thou hast not done
+with Hector Ratichon yet."
+
+In the meanwhile I bethought me of the velvet-covered box in my breast
+pocket, and of the ginger-coloured hair and whiskers that I was still
+wearing, and which might prove an unpleasant "piece de conviction" in
+case the police were after the stolen bracelet.
+
+With a view to examining the one and getting rid of the other, I
+turned into the Square Louvois, which, as usual, was very dark and
+wholly deserted. Here I took off my wig and whiskers and threw them
+over the railings into the garden. Then I drew the velvet-covered box
+from my pocket, opened it, and groped for its contents. Imagine my
+feelings, my dear Sir, when I realised that the case was empty! Fate
+was indeed against me that night. I had been fooled and cheated by a
+traitor, and had risked New Orleans and worse for an empty box.
+
+For a moment I must confess that I lost that imperturbable sang-froid
+which is the admiration of all my friends, and with a genuine oath I
+flung the case over the railings in the wake of the milor's hair and
+whiskers. Then I hurried home.
+
+Theodore had not returned. He did not come in until the small hours of
+the morning, and then he was in a state that I can only describe, with
+your permission, as hoggish. He could hardly speak. I had him at my
+mercy. Neither tact nor wariness was required for the moment. I
+stripped him to his skin; he only laughed like an imbecile. His eyes
+had a horrid squint in them; he was hideous. I found five francs in
+one of his pockets, but neither in his clothes nor on his person did I
+find the bracelet.
+
+"What have you done with it?" I cried, for by this time I was maddened
+with rage.
+
+"I don't know what you are talking about!" he stammered thickly, as he
+tottered towards his bed. "Give me back my five francs, you thief!"
+the brutish creature finally blurted out ere he fell into a hog-like
+sleep.
+
+
+
+4.
+
+Desperate evils need desperate remedies. I spent the rest of the night
+thinking hard. By the time that dawn was breaking my mind was made up.
+Theodore's stertorous breathing assured me that he was still
+insentient. I was muscular in those days, and he a meagre, attenuated,
+drink-sodden creature. I lifted him out of his bed in the antechamber
+and carried him into mine in the office. I found a coil of rope, and
+strapped him tightly in the chair-bedstead so that he could not move.
+I tied a scarf round his mouth so that he could not scream. Then, at
+six o'clock, when the humbler eating-houses begin to take down their
+shutters, I went out.
+
+I had Theodore's five francs in my pocket, and I was desperately
+hungry. I spent ten sous on a cup of coffee and a plate of fried
+onions and haricot beans, and three francs on a savoury pie, highly
+flavoured with garlic, and a quarter-bottle of excellent cognac. I
+drank the coffee and ate the onions and the beans, and I took the pie
+and cognac home.
+
+I placed a table close to the chair-bedstead and on it I disposed the
+pie and the cognac in such a manner that the moment Theodore woke his
+eyes were bound to alight on them. Then I waited. I absolutely ached
+to have a taste of that pie myself, it smelt so good, but I waited.
+
+Theodore woke at nine o'clock. He struggled like a fool, but he still
+appeared half dazed. No doubt he thought that he was dreaming. Then I
+sat down on the edge of the bed and cut myself off a large piece of
+the pie. I ate it with marked relish in front of Theodore, whose eyes
+nearly started out of their sockets. Then I brewed myself a cup of
+coffee. The mingled odour of coffee and garlic filled the room. It was
+delicious. I thought that Theodore would have a fit. The veins stood
+out on his forehead and a kind of gurgle came from behind the scarf
+round his mouth. Then I told him he could partake of the pie and
+coffee if he told me what he had done with the bracelet. He shook his
+head furiously, and I left the pie, the cognac and the coffee on the
+table before him and went into the antechamber, closing the office
+door behind me, and leaving him to meditate on his treachery.
+
+What I wanted to avoid above everything was the traitor meeting M.
+Jean Duval. He had the bracelet--of that I was as convinced as that I
+was alive. But what could he do with a piece of false jewellery? He
+could not dispose of it, save to a vendor of theatrical properties,
+who no doubt was well acquainted with the trinket and would not give
+more than a couple of francs for what was obviously stolen property.
+After all, I had promised Theodore twenty francs; he would not be such
+a fool as to sell that birthright for a mess of pottage and the sole
+pleasure of doing me a bad turn.
+
+There was no doubt in my mind that he had put the thing away somewhere
+in what he considered a safe place pending a reward being offered by
+Mlle. Mars for the recovery of the bracelet. The more I thought of
+this the more convinced I was that that was, indeed, his proposed plan
+of action--oh, how I loathed the blackleg!--and mine henceforth would
+be to dog his every footstep and never let him out of my sight until I
+forced him to disgorge his ill-gotten booty.
+
+At ten o'clock M. Jean Duval arrived, as was his wont, supercilious
+and brusque as usual. I was just explaining to him that I hoped to
+have excellent news for him after the next performance of _Le R�ve_
+when there was a peremptory ring at the bell. I went to open the door,
+and there stood a police inspector in uniform with a sheaf of papers
+in his hand.
+
+Now, I am not over-fond of our Paris police; they poke their noses in
+where they are least wanted. Their incompetence favours the
+machinations of rogues and frustrates the innocent ambitions of the
+just. However, in this instance the inspector looked amiable enough,
+though his manner, I must say, was, as usual, unpleasantly curt.
+
+"Here, Ratichon," he said, "there has been an impudent theft of a
+valuable bracelet out of Mademoiselle Mars' dressing-room at the
+Theatre Royal last night. You and your mate frequent all sorts of
+places of ill-fame; you may hear something of the affair."
+
+I chose to ignore the insult, and the inspector detached a paper from
+the sheaf which he held and threw it across the table to me.
+
+"There is a reward of two thousand five hundred francs," he said, "for
+the recovery of the bracelet. You will find on that paper an accurate
+description of the jewel. It contains the celebrated Maroni emerald,
+presented to the ex-Emperor by the Sultan, and given by him to Mlle.
+Mars."
+
+Whereupon he turned unceremoniously on his heel and went, leaving me
+face to face with the man who had so shamefully tried to swindle me. I
+turned, and resting my elbow on the table and my chin in my hand, I
+looked mutely on the soi-disant Jean Duval and equally mutely pointed
+with an accusing finger to the description of the famous bracelet
+which he had declared to me was merely strass and base metal.
+
+But he had the impudence to turn on me before I could utter a
+syllable.
+
+"Where is the bracelet?" he demanded. "You consummate liar, you! Where
+is it? You stole it last night! What have you done with it?"
+
+"I extracted, at your request," I replied with as much dignity as I
+could command, "a piece of theatrical jewellery, which you stated to
+me to be worthless, out of an iron chest, the key of which you placed
+in my hands. I . . ."
+
+"Enough of this rubbish!" he broke in roughly. "You have the bracelet.
+Give it me now, or . . ."
+
+He broke off and looked somewhat alarmed in the direction of the
+office door, from the other side of which there had just come a loud
+crash, followed by loud, if unintelligible, vituperation. What had
+happened I could not guess; all that I could do was to carry off the
+situation as boldly as I dared.
+
+"You shall have the bracelet, Sir," I said in my most suave manner.
+"You shall have it, but not unless you will pay me three thousand
+francs for it. I can get two thousand five hundred by taking it
+straight to Mlle. Mars."
+
+"And be taken up by the police for stealing it," he retorted. "How
+will you explain its being in your possession?"
+
+I did not blanch.
+
+"That is my affair," I replied. "Will you give me three thousand
+francs for it? It is worth sixty thousand francs to a clever thief
+like you."
+
+"You hound!" he cried, livid with rage, and raised his cane as if he
+would strike me.
+
+"Aye, it was cleverly done, M. Jean Duval, whoever you may be. I know
+that the gentleman-thief is a modern product of the old regime, but I
+did not know that the fraternity could show such a fine specimen as
+yourself. Pay Hector Ratichon a thousand francs for stealing a
+bracelet for you worth sixty! Indeed, M. Jean Duval, you deserved to
+succeed!"
+
+Again he shook his cane at me.
+
+"If you touch me," I declared boldly, "I shall take the bracelet at
+once to Mlle. Mars."
+
+He bit his lip and made a great effort to pull himself together.
+
+"I haven't three thousand francs by me," he said.
+
+"Go, fetch the money," I retorted, "and I'll fetch the bracelet."
+
+He demurred for a while, but I was firm, and after he had threatened
+to thrash me, to knock me down, and to denounce me to the police, he
+gave in and went to fetch the money.
+
+
+
+5.
+
+When I remembered Theodore--Theodore, whom only a thin partition wall
+had separated from the full knowledge of the value of his ill-gotten
+treasure!--I could have torn my hair out by the roots with the
+magnitude of my rage. He, the traitor, the blackleg, was about to
+triumph, where I, Hector Ratichon, had failed! He had but to take the
+bracelet to Mlle. Mars himself and obtain the munificent reward whilst
+I, after I had taken so many risks and used all the brains and tact
+wherewith Nature had endowed me, would be left with the meagre
+remnants of the fifty francs which M. Jean Duval had so grudgingly
+thrown to me. Twenty-five francs for a gold locket, ten francs for a
+bouquet, another ten for bonbons, and five for gratuities to the
+stage-doorkeeper! Make the calculation, my good Sir, and see what I
+had left. If it had not been for the five francs which I had found in
+Theodore's pocket last night, I would at this moment not only have
+been breakfastless, but also absolutely penniless.
+
+As it was, my final hope--and that a meagre one--was to arouse one
+spark of honesty in the breast of the arch-traitor, and either by
+cajolery or threats, to induce him to share his ill-gotten spoils with
+me.
+
+I had left him snoring and strapped to the chair-bedstead, and when I
+opened the office door I was marvelling in my mind whether I could
+really bear to see him dying slowly of starvation with that savoury
+pie tantalizingly under his nose. The crash which I had heard a few
+minutes ago prepared me for a change of scene. Even so, I confess that
+the sight which I beheld glued me to the threshold. There sat Theodore
+at the table, finishing the last morsel of pie, whilst the
+chair-bedstead lay in a tangled heap upon the floor.
+
+I cannot tell you how nasty he was to me about the whole thing,
+although I showed myself at once ready to forgive him all his lies and
+his treachery, and was at great pains to explain to him how I had
+given up my own bed and strapped him into it solely for the benefit of
+his health, seeing that at the moment he was threatened with delirium
+tremens.
+
+He would not listen to reason or to the most elementary dictates of
+friendship. Having poured the vials of his bilious temper over my
+devoted head, he became as perverse and as obstinate as a mule. With
+the most consummate impudence I ever beheld in any human being, he
+flatly denied all knowledge of the bracelet.
+
+Whilst I talked he stalked past me into the ante-chamber, where
+he at once busied himself in collecting all his goods and chattels.
+These he stuffed into his pockets until he appeared to be bulging all
+over his ugly-body; then he went to the door ready to go out. On the
+threshold he turned and gave me a supercilious glance over his
+shoulder.
+
+"Take note, my good Ratichon," he said, "that our partnership is
+dissolved as from to-morrow, the twentieth day of September."
+
+"As from this moment, you infernal scoundrel!" I cried.
+
+But he did not pause to listen, and slammed the door in my face.
+
+For two or three minutes I remained quite still, whilst I heard the
+shuffling footsteps slowly descending the corridor. Then I followed
+him, quietly, surreptitiously, as a fox will follow its prey. He never
+turned round once, but obviously he knew that he was being followed.
+
+I will not weary you, my dear Sir, with the details of the dance which
+he led me in and about Paris during the whole of that memorable day.
+Never a morsel passed my lips from breakfast to long after sundown. He
+tried every trick known to the profession to throw me off the scent.
+But I stuck to him like a leech. When he sauntered I sauntered; when
+he ran I ran; when he glued his nose to the window of an eating house
+I halted under a doorway close by; when he went to sleep on a bench in
+the Luxembourg Gardens I watched over him as a mother over a babe.
+
+Towards evening--it was an hour after sunset and the street-lamps were
+just being lighted--he must have thought that he had at last got rid
+of me; for, after looking carefully behind him, he suddenly started to
+walk much faster and with an amount of determination which he had
+lacked hitherto. I marvelled if he was not making for the Rue Daunou,
+where was situated the squalid tavern of ill-fame which he was wont to
+frequent. I was not mistaken.
+
+I tracked the traitor to the corner of the street, and saw him
+disappear beneath the doorway of the Taverne des Trois Tigres. I
+resolved to follow. I had money in my pocket--about twenty-five
+sous--and I was mightily thirsty. I started to run down the street,
+when suddenly Theodore came rushing back out of the tavern, hatless
+and breathless, and before I succeeded in dodging him he fell into my
+arms.
+
+"My money!" he said hoarsely. "I must have my money at once! You
+thief! You . . ."
+
+Once again my presence of mind stood me in good stead.
+
+"Pull yourself together, Theodore," I said with much dignity, "and do
+not make a scene in the open street."
+
+But Theodore was not at all prepared to pull himself together. He
+was livid with rage.
+
+"I had five francs in my pocket last night!" he cried. "You have
+stolen them, you abominable rascal!"
+
+"And you stole from me a bracelet worth three thousand francs to the
+firm," I retorted. "Give me that bracelet and you shall have your
+money back."
+
+"I can't," he blurted out desperately.
+
+"How do you mean, you can't?" I exclaimed, whilst a horrible fear like
+an icy claw suddenly gripped at my heart. "You haven't lost it, have
+you?"
+
+"Worse!" he cried, and fell up against me in semi-unconsciousness.
+
+I shook him violently. I bellowed in his ear, and suddenly, after that
+one moment of apparent unconsciousness, he became, not only wide
+awake, but as strong as a lion and as furious as a bull. We closed in
+on one another. He hammered at me with his fists, calling me every
+kind of injurious name he could think of, and I had need of all my
+strength to ward off his attacks.
+
+For a few moments no one took much notice of us. Fracas and quarrels
+outside the drinking-houses in the mean streets of Paris were so
+frequent these days that the police did not trouble much about them.
+But after a while Theodore became so violent that I was forced to call
+vigorously for help. I thought he meant to murder me. People came
+rushing out of the tavern, and someone very officiously started
+whistling for the gendarmes. This had the effect of bringing Theodore
+to his senses. He calmed down visibly, and before the crowd had had
+time to collect round us we had both sauntered off, walking in
+apparent amity side by side down the street.
+
+But at the first corner Theodore halted, and this time he confined
+himself to gripping me by the arm with one hand whilst with the other
+he grasped one of the buttons of my coat.
+
+"That five francs," he said in a hoarse, half-choked voice. "I must
+have that five francs! Can't you see that I can't have that bracelet
+till I have my five francs wherewith to redeem it?"
+
+"To redeem it!" I gasped. I was indeed glad then that he held me by
+the arm, for it seemed to me as if I was falling down a yawning abyss
+which had opened at my feet.
+
+"Yes," said Theodore, and his voice sounded as if it came from a great
+distance and through cotton-wool,
+
+"I knew that you would be after that bracelet like a famished hyena
+after a bone, so I tied it securely inside the pocket of the blouse I
+was wearing, and left this with Legros, the landlord of the Trois
+Tigres. It was a good blouse; he lent me five francs on it. Of course,
+he knew nothing about the bracelet then. But he only lends money to
+clients in this manner on the condition that it is repaid within
+twenty-four hours. I have got to pay him back before eight o'clock
+this evening or he will dispose of the blouse as he thinks best. It is
+close on eight o'clock now. Give me back my five francs, you
+confounded thief, before Legros has time to discover the bracelet!
+We'll share the reward, I promise you. Faith of an honest man. You
+liar, you cheat, you--"
+
+What was the use of talking? I had not got five francs. I had spent
+ten sous in getting myself some breakfast, and three francs in a
+savoury pie flavoured with garlic and in a quarter of a bottle of
+cognac. I groaned aloud. I had exactly twenty-five sous left.
+
+We went back to the tavern hoping against hope that Legros had not yet
+turned out the pockets of the blouse, and that we might induce him, by
+threat or cajolery or the usurious interest of twenty-five sous, to
+grant his client a further twenty-four hours wherein to redeem the
+pledge.
+
+One glance at the interior of the tavern, however, told us that all
+our hopes were in vain. Legros, the landlord, was even then turning
+the blouse over and over, whilst his hideous hag of a wife was talking
+to the police inspector, who was showing her the paper that announced
+the offer of two thousand five hundred francs for the recovery of a
+valuable bracelet, the property of Mlle. Mars, the distinguished
+tragedienne.
+
+We only waited one minute with our noses glued against the windows of
+the Trois Tigres, just long enough to see Legros extracting the
+leather case from the pocket of the blouse, just long enough to hear
+the police inspector saying peremptorily:
+
+"You, Legros, ought to be able to let the police know who stole the
+bracelet. You must know who left that blouse with you last night."
+
+Then we both fled incontinently down the street.
+
+Now, Sir, was I not right when I said that honour and loyalty are the
+essential qualities in our profession? If Theodore had not been such a
+liar and such a traitor, he and I, between us, would have been richer
+by three thousand francs that day.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+AN OVER-SENSITIVE HEART
+
+
+
+1.
+
+No doubt, Sir, that you have noticed during the course of our
+conversations that Nature has endowed me with an over-sensitive heart.
+I feel keenly, Sir, very keenly. Blows dealt me by Fate, or, as has
+been more often the case, by the cruel and treacherous hand of man,
+touch me on the raw. I suffer acutely. I am highly strung. I am one of
+those rare beings whom Nature pre-ordained for love and for happiness.
+I am an ideal family man.
+
+What? You did not know that I was married? Indeed, Sir, I am. And
+though Madame Ratichon does not perhaps fulfil all my ideals of
+exquisite womanhood, nevertheless she has been an able and willing
+helpmate during these last years of comparative prosperity. Yes, you
+see me fairly prosperous now. My industry, my genius--if I may so
+express myself--found their reward at last. You will be the first to
+acknowledge--you, the confidant of my life's history--that that reward
+was fully deserved. I worked for it, toiled and thought and struggled,
+up to the last; and had Fate been just, rather than grudging, I should
+have attained that ideal which would have filled my cup of happiness
+to the brim.
+
+But, anyway, the episode connected with my marriage did mark the close
+of my professional career, and is therefore worthy of record. Since
+that day, Sir--a happy one for me, a blissful one for Mme. Ratichon--I
+have been able, thanks to the foresight of an all-wise Providence, to
+gratify my bucolic tastes. I live now, Sir, amidst my flowers, with my
+dog and my canary and Mme. Ratichon, smiling with kindly indulgence on
+the struggles and the blunders of my younger colleagues, oft consulted
+by them in matters that require special tact and discretion. I sit and
+dream now beneath the shade of a vine-clad arbour of those glorious
+days of long ago, when kings and emperors placed the destiny of their
+inheritance in my hands, when autocrats and dictators came to me for
+assistance and advice, and the name of Hector Ratichon stood for
+everything that was most astute and most discreet. And if at times a
+gentle sigh of regret escapes my lips, Mme. Ratichon--whose thinness
+is ever my despair, for I admire comeliness, Sir, as being more
+womanly--Mme. Ratichon, I say, comes to me with the gladsome news that
+dinner is served; and though she is not all that I could wish in the
+matter of the culinary arts, yet she can fry a cutlet passably, and
+one of her brothers is a wholesale wine merchant of excellent
+reputation.
+
+It was soon after my connexion with that abominable Marquis de
+Firmin-Latour that I first made the acquaintance of the present Mme.
+Ratichon, under somewhat peculiar circumstances.
+
+I remember it was on the first day of April in the year 1817 that M.
+Rochez--Fernand Rochez was his exact name--came to see me at my office
+in the Rue Daunou, and the date proved propitious, as you will
+presently see. How M. Rochez came to know of my gifts and powers, I
+cannot tell you. He never would say. He had heard of me through a
+friend, was all that he vouchsafed to say.
+
+Theodore had shown him in. Ah! have I not mentioned the fact that I
+had forgiven Theodore his lies and his treachery, and taken him back
+to my bosom and to my board? My sensitive heart had again got the
+better of my prudence, and Theodore was installed once more in the
+antechamber of my apartments in the Rue Daunou, and was, as
+heretofore, sharing with me all the good things that I could afford.
+So there he was on duty on that fateful first of April which was
+destined to be the turning-point of my destiny. And he showed M. de
+Rochez in.
+
+At once I knew my man--the type, I mean. Immaculately dressed, scented
+and befrilled, haughty of manner and nonchalant of speech, M. Rochez
+had the word "adventurer" writ all over his well-groomed person. He
+was young, good-looking, his nails were beautifully polished, his
+pantaloons fitted him without a wrinkle. These were of a soft putty
+shade; his coat was bottle-green, and his hat of the latest modish
+shape. A perfect exquisite, in fact.
+
+And he came to the point without much preamble.
+
+"M.--er--Ratichon," he said, "I have heard of you through a friend,
+who tells me that you are the most unscrupulous scoundrel he has ever
+come across."
+
+"Sir--!" I began, rising from my seat in indignant protest at the
+coarse insult. But with an authoritative gesture he checked the flow
+of my indignation.
+
+"No comedy, I pray you, Sir," he said. "We are not at the Theatre
+Moli�re, but, I presume, in an office where business is transacted
+both briefly and with discretion."
+
+"At your service, Monsieur," I replied.
+
+"Then listen, will you?" he went on curtly, "and pray do not
+interrupt. Only speak in answer to a question from me."
+
+I bowed my head in silence. Thus must the proud suffer when they
+happen to be sparsely endowed with riches.
+
+"You have no doubt heard of Mlle. Goldberg," M. Rochez continued after
+a moment's pause, "the lovely daughter of the rich usurer in the Rue
+des M�decins."
+
+I had heard of Mlle. Goldberg. Her beauty and her father's wealth were
+reported to be fabulous. I indicated my knowledge of the beautiful
+lady by a mute inclination of the head.
+
+"I love Mlle. Goldberg," my client resumed, "and I have reason for the
+belief that I am not altogether indifferent to her. Glances, you
+understand, from eyes as expressive as those of the exquisite Jewess
+speak more eloquently than words."
+
+He had forbidden me to speak, so I could only express concurrence in
+the sentiments which he expressed by a slight elevation of my left
+eyebrow.
+
+"I am determined to win the affections of Mlle. Goldberg," M. Rochez
+went on glibly, "and equally am I determined to make her my wife."
+
+"A very natural determination," I remarked involuntarily.
+
+"My only trouble with regard to pressing my court is the fact that my
+lovely Leah is never allowed outside her father's house, save in his
+company or that of his sister--an old maid of dour mien and sour
+disposition, who acts the part of a duenna with dog-like tenacity.
+Over and over again have I tried to approach the lady of my heart,
+only to be repelled or roughly rebuked for my insolence by her
+irascible old aunt."
+
+"You are not the first lover, Sir," I remarked drily, "who hath seen
+obstacles thus thrown in his way, and--"
+
+"One moment, M.--er--Ratichon," he broke in sharply. "I have not
+finished. I will not attempt to describe my feelings to you. I have
+been writhing--yes, writhing!--in face of those obstacles of which
+you speak so lightly, and for a long time I have been cudgelling my
+brains as to the possible means whereby I might approach my divinity
+unchecked. Then one day I bethought me of you--"
+
+"Of me, Sir?" I ejaculated, sorely puzzled. "Why of me?"
+
+"None of my friends," he replied nonchalantly, "would care to
+undertake so scrubby a task as I would assign to you."
+
+"I pray you to be more explicit," I retorted with unimpaired dignity.
+
+Once more he paused. Obviously he was a born mountebank, and he
+calculated all his effects to a nicety.
+
+"You, M.--er--Ratichon," he said curtly at last, "will have to take
+the duenna off my hands."
+
+I was beginning to understand. So I let him prattle on the while my
+busy brain was already at work evolving the means to render this man
+service, which in its turn I expected to be amply repaid. Thus I
+cannot repeat exactly all that he said, for I was only listening with
+half an ear. But the substance of it all was this: I was to pose as
+the friend of M. Fernand Rochez, and engage the attention of Mlle.
+Goldberg senior the while he paid his court to the lovely Leah. It was
+not a repellent task altogether, because M. Rochez's suggestion opened
+a vista of pleasant parties at open-air caf�s, with foaming tankards
+of beer, on warm afternoons the while the young people sipped sirops
+and fed on love. My newly found friend was pleased to admit that my
+personality and appearance would render my courtship of the elderly
+duenna a comparatively easy one. She would soon, he declared, fall a
+victim to my charms.
+
+After which the question of remuneration came in, and over this we did
+not altogether agree. Ultimately I decided to accept an advance of two
+hundred francs and a new suit of clothes, which I at once declared was
+indispensable under the circumstances, seeing that in my well-worn
+coat I might have the appearance of a fortune-hunter in the eyes of
+the suspicious old dame.
+
+Within my mind I envisaged the possibility of touching M. Rochez for a
+further two hundred francs if and when opportunity arose.
+
+
+
+2.
+
+The formal introduction took place on the boulevards one fine
+afternoon shortly after that. Mlle. Leah was walking under the trees
+with her duenna when we--M. Rochez and I--came face to face with them.
+My friend raised his hat, and I did likewise. Mademoiselle Leah
+blushed and the ogre frowned. Sir, she was an ogre!--bony and angular
+and hook-nosed, with thin lips that closed with a snap, and cold grey
+eyes that sent a shiver down your spine! Rochez introduced me to her,
+and I made myself exceedingly agreeable to her, while my friend
+succeeded in exchanging two or three whispered words with his
+inamorata.
+
+But we did not get very far that day. Mlle. Goldberg senior soon
+marched her lovely charge away.
+
+Ah, Sir, she was lovely indeed! And in my heart I not only envied
+Rochez his good fortune but I also felt how entirely unworthy he was
+of it. Nor did the beautiful Leah give me the impression of being
+quite so deeply struck with his charms as he would have had me
+believe. Indeed, it struck me during those few minutes that I stood
+dutifully talking to her duenna that the fair young Jewess cast more
+than one approving glance in my direction.
+
+Be that as it may, the progress of our respective courtships, now that
+the ice was broken, took on a more decided turn. At first it only
+amounted to meetings on the boulevards and a cursory greeting, but
+soon Mlle. Goldberg senior, delighted with my conversation, would
+deliberately turn to walk with me under the trees the while Fernand
+Rochez followed by the side of his adored. A week later the ladies
+accepted my friend's offer to sit under the awning of the Caf�
+Bourbon and to sip sirops, whilst we indulged in tankards of
+foaming "blondes."
+
+Within a fortnight, Sir--I may say it without boasting--I had Mlle.
+Goldberg senior in the hollow of my hand. On the boulevards, as soon
+as she caught sight of me, her dour face would be wreathed in smiles,
+a row of large yellow teeth would appear between her thin lips, and
+her cold, grey eyes would soften with a glance of welcome which more
+than ever sent a cold shudder down my spine. While we four were
+together, either promenading or sitting at open-air caf�s in the cool
+of the evening, the old duenna had eyes and ears only for me, and if
+my friend Rochez did not get on with his own courtship as fast as he
+would have wished the fault rested entirely with him.
+
+For he did _not_ get on with his courtship, and that was a fact. The
+fair Leah was very sweet, very coy, greatly amused, I fancy, at her
+aunt's obvious infatuation for me, and not a little flattered at the
+handsome M. Rochez's attentions to herself. But there it all ended.
+And whenever I questioned Rochez on the subject, he flew into a temper
+and consigned all middle-aged Jewesses to perdition, and all the
+lovely and young ones to a comfortable kind of Hades to which he alone
+amongst the male sex would have access. From which I gathered that I
+was not wrong in my surmises, that the fair Leah had been smitten by
+my personality and my appearance rather than by those of my friend,
+and that he was suffering the pangs of an insane jealousy.
+
+This, of course, he never would admit. All that he told me one day was
+that Leah, with the characteristic timidity of her race, refused to
+marry him unless she could obtain her father's consent to the union.
+Old Goldberg, duly approached on the matter, flatly forbade his
+daughter to have anything further to do with that fortune-hunter, that
+parasite, that beggarly pick-thank--such, Sir, were but a few
+complimentary epithets which he hurled with great volubility at his
+daughter's absent suitor.
+
+It was from Mlle. Goldberg, senior, that my friend and I had the
+details of that stormy interview between father and daughter; after
+which, she declared that interviews between the lovers would
+necessarily become very difficult of arrangement. From which you will
+gather that the worthy soul, though she was as ugly as sin, was by
+this time on the side of the angels. Indeed, she was more than that.
+She professed herself willing to aid and abet them in every way she
+could. This Rochez confided to me, together with his assurance that he
+was determined to take his Fate into his own hands and, since the
+beautiful Leah would not come to him of her own accord, to carry her
+off by force.
+
+Ah, my dear Sir, those were romantic days, you must remember! Days
+when men placed the possession of the woman they loved above every
+treasure, every consideration upon earth. Ah, romance! Romance, Sir,
+was the breath of our nostrils, the blood in our veins! Imagine how
+readily we all fell in with my friend's plans. I, of course, was the
+moving spirit in it all; mine was the genius which was destined to
+turn gilded romance into grim reality. Yes, grim! For you shall see! . . .
+
+Mlle. Goldberg, senior, who appropriately enough was named Sarah, gave
+us the clue how to proceed, after which my genius worked alone.
+
+You must know that old Goldberg's house in the Rue des M�decins--a
+large apartment house in which he occupied a few rooms on the ground
+floor behind his shop--backed on to a small uncultivated garden which
+ended in a tall brick wall, the meeting-place of all the felines in
+the neighbourhood, and in which there was a small postern gate, now
+disused. This gate gave on a narrow cul-de-sac--grandiloquently named
+Passage Corneille--which was flanked on the opposite side by the tall
+boundary wall of an adjacent convent.
+
+That cul-de-sac was marked out from the very first in my mind as our
+objective. Around and about it, as it were, did I build the edifice of
+my schemes, aided by the ever-willing Sarah. The old maid threw
+herself into the affair with zest, planning and contriving like a
+veritable strategist; and I must admit that she was full of resource
+and invention. We were now in mid-May and enjoying a spell of hot
+summer weather. This gave the inventive Sarah the excuse for using the
+back garden as a place wherein to sit in the cool of the evening in
+the company of her niece.
+
+Ah, you see the whole thing now at a glance, do you not? The postern
+gate, the murky night, the daring lover, the struggling maiden, the
+willing accomplices. The actors were all there, ready for the curtain
+to be rung up on the palpitating drama.
+
+Then it was that a brilliant idea came into my brain. It was born on
+the very day that I realized with indisputable certainty that the
+lovely Leah was not in reality in love with Rochez. He fatuously
+believed that she was ready to fall into his arms, that only maidenly
+timidity held her back, and that the moment she had been snatched from
+her father's house and found herself in the arms of her adoring lover,
+she would turn to him in the very fullness of love and confidence.
+
+But I knew better. I had caught a look now and again--an undefinable
+glance, which told me the whole pitiable tale. She did not love
+Rochez; and in the drama which we were preparing to enact the curtain
+would fall on his rapture and her unhappiness.
+
+Ah, Sir! imagine what my feelings were when I realized this! This fair
+girl, against whom we were all conspiring like so many traitors, was
+still ignorant of the fatal brink on which she stood. She chatted and
+coquetted and smiled, little dreaming that in a very few days her
+happiness would be wrecked and she would be linked for life to a man
+whom she could never love. Rochez's idea, of course, was primarily to
+get hold of her fortune. I had already ascertained for him, through
+the ever-willing Sarah, that this fortune came from Leah's
+grandfather, who had left a sum of two hundred thousand francs on
+trust for her children, she to enjoy the income for her life. There
+certainly was a clause in the will whereby the girl would forfeit that
+fortune if she married without her father's consent; but according to
+Rochez's plans this could scarcely be withheld once she had been taken
+forcibly away from home, held in durance, and with her reputation
+hopelessly compromised. She could then pose as an injured victim,
+throw herself at her father's feet, and beg him to give that consent
+without which she would for ever remain an outcast of society, a
+pariah amongst her kind.
+
+A pretty piece of villainous combination, you will own! And I, Sir,
+was to lend a hand in this abomination!--nay, I was to be the chief
+villain in the drama! It was I who, even now, was spending the hours
+of the night, when I might have been dreaming sentimental dreams, in
+oiling the lock of the postern gate which was to give us access into
+papa Goldberg's garden. It was I who, under cover of darkness and
+guided by that old jade Sarah, was to sneak into that garden on the
+appointed night and forcibly seize the unsuspecting maiden and carry
+her to the carriage which Rochez would have in readiness for her.
+
+You see what a coward he was! It was a criminal offence in those days,
+punishable with deportation to New Caledonia, to abduct a young lady
+from her parents' house; and Rochez left me the dirty work to do in
+case the girl screamed and attracted the police. Now you will tell me
+if I was not justified in doing what I did, and I will abide by your
+judgment.
+
+I was to take all the risks, remember!--New Caledonia, the police, the
+odium attached to so foul a deed; and do you know for what? For a
+paltry thousand francs, which with much difficulty I had induced
+Rochez--nay, forced him!--to hand over to me in anticipation of what I
+was about to accomplish for his sake. A thousand francs! Did this
+miserliness not characterize the man? Was it to such a scrubby knave
+that I, at risk of my life and of my honour, would hand over that
+jewel amongst women, that pearl above price?--a lady with a personal
+fortune amounting to two hundred thousand francs?
+
+No, Sir; I would not! Then and there I vowed that I would not! Mine
+were to be all the risks; then mine should be the reward! What Rochez
+meant to do, that I could too, and with far greater reason. The lovely
+Leah did at times frown on Fernand; but she invariably smiled on me.
+She would fall into my arms far more readily than into his, and papa
+Goldberg would be equally forced to give his consent to her marriage
+with me as with that self-seeking carpet-knight whom he abhorred.
+
+Needless to say, I kept my own counsel, and did not speak of my
+project even to Sarah. To all appearances I was to be the mere tool in
+this affair, the unfortunate cat employed to snatch the roast
+chestnuts out of the fire for the gratification of a mealy-mouthed
+monkey.
+
+
+
+3.
+
+The appointed day and hour were at hand. Fernand Rochez had engaged a
+barouche which was to take him and his lovely victim to a little house
+at Auteuil, which he had rented for the purpose. There the lovers were
+to lie perdu until such time as papa Goldberg had relented and the
+marriage could be duly solemnized in the synagogue of the Rue des
+Halles. Sarah had offered in the meanwhile to do all that in her power
+lay to soften the old man's heart and to bring about the happy
+conclusion of the romantic adventure.
+
+For the latter we had chosen the night of May 23rd. It was a moonless
+night, and the Passage Corneille, from whence I was to operate, was
+most usefully dark. Sarah Goldberg had, according to convention, left
+the postern gate on the latch, and at ten o'clock precisely I made my
+way up the cul-de-sac and cautiously turned the handle of the door. I
+confess that my heart beat somewhat uncomfortably in my bosom.
+
+I had left Rochez and his barouche in the Rue des Pipots, about a
+hundred metres from the angle of the Passage Corneille, and it was
+along those hundred metres of a not altogether unfrequented street
+that he expected me presently to carry a possibly screaming and
+struggling burden in the very teeth of a gendarmerie always on the
+look-out for exciting captures.
+
+No, Sir; that was not to be! And it was with a resolute if beating
+heart that I presently felt the postern gate yielding to the pressure
+of my hand. The neighbouring church clock of St. Sulpice had just
+finished striking ten. I pushed open the gate and tip-toed across the
+threshold.
+
+In the garden the boughs of a dilapidated old ash tree were soughing
+in the wind above my head, whilst from the top of the boundary wall
+the yarring and yowling of beasts of the feline species grated
+unpleasantly on my ear. I could not see my hand before my eyes, and
+had just stretched it out in order to guide my footsteps when it was
+seized with a kindly yet firm pressure, whilst a voice murmured
+softly:
+
+"Hush!"
+
+"Who is it?" I whispered in response.
+
+"It is I--Sarah!" the voice replied. "Everything is all right, but
+Leah is unsuspecting. I am sure that if she suspected anything she
+would not set foot outside the door."
+
+"What shall we do?" I asked.
+
+"Wait here a moment quietly," Sarah rejoined, speaking in a rapid
+whisper, "under cover of this wall. Within the next few minutes Leah
+will come out of the house. I have left my knitting upon a garden
+chair, and I will ask her to run out and fetch it. That will be your
+opportunity. The chair is in the angle of the wall, there," she added,
+pointing to her right, "not three paces from where you are standing
+now. Leah has a white dress on. She will have to stoop in order to
+pick up the knitting. I have taken the precaution to entangle the wool
+in the leg of the chair, so she will be some few seconds entirely at
+your mercy. Have you a shawl?"
+
+I had, of course, provided myself with one. A shawl is always a
+necessary adjunct to such adventures. Breathlessly, silently, I
+intimated to my kind accomplice that I would obey her behests and that
+I was prepared for every eventuality. The next moment her hold upon my
+hand relaxed, she gave another quickly-whispered "Hush!" and
+disappeared into the night.
+
+For a second or two after that my ear caught the soft sound of her
+retreating footsteps, then nothing more. To say that I felt anxious
+and ill at ease was but to put it mildly. I was face to face with an
+adventure which might cost me at least five years' acute discomfort in
+New Caledonia, but which might also bring me as rich a reward as could
+befall any man of modest ambitions: a lovely wife and a comfortable
+fortune. My whole life seemed to be hanging on a thread, and my
+overwrought senses seemed almost to catch the sound of the
+spinning-wheel of Fate weaving the web of my destiny.
+
+A moment or two later I again caught the distinct sound of a gentle
+footfall upon the soft earth. My eyes by now were somewhat accustomed
+to the gloom. It was very dark, you understand; but through the
+darkness I saw something white moving slowly toward me. Then my heart
+thumped more furiously than ever before. I dared not breathe. I saw
+the lovely Leah approaching, or, rather, I felt her approach, for it
+was too dark to see. She moved in the direction which Sarah had
+indicated to me as being the place where stood the garden chair with
+the knitting upon it. I grasped the shawl. I was ready.
+
+Another few seconds of agonising suspense went by. The fair Leah had
+ceased to move. Undoubtedly she was engaged in disentangling the wool
+from the leg of the chair. That was my opportunity. More stealthy than
+any cat, I tiptoed toward the chair--and, indeed, at that moment I
+blessed the sudden yowl set up by some feline in its wrath which rent
+the still night air and effectually drowned any sound which I might
+make.
+
+There, not three paces away from me, was the dim outline of the young
+girl's form vaguely discernible in the gloom--a white mass, almost
+motionless, against a background of inky blackness. With a quick
+intaking of my breath I sprang forward, the shawl outspread in my
+hand, and with a quick dexterous gesture I threw it over her head, and
+the next second had her, faintly struggling, in my arms. She was as
+light as a feather, and I was as strong as a giant. Think of it, Sir!
+There was I, alone in the darkness, holding in my arms, together with
+a lovely form, a fortune of two hundred thousand francs!
+
+Of that fool Fernand Rochez I did not trouble to think. He had a
+barouche waiting _up_ the Rue des Pipots, a hundred metres from the
+corner of the Passage Corneille, but I had a chaise and pair of horses
+waiting _down_ that same street, and that now was my objective. Yes,
+Sir! I had arranged the whole thing! But I had done it for mine own
+advantage, not for that of the miserly friend who had been too great a
+coward to risk his own skin for the sake of his beloved.
+
+The guerdon was mine, and I was determined this time that no traitor
+or ingrate should filch from me the reward of my labours. With the
+thousand francs which Rochez had given me for my services I had
+engaged the chaise and horses, paid the coachman lavishly, and secured
+a cosy little apartment for my future wife in a pleasant hostelry I
+knew of at Suresnes.
+
+I had taken the precaution to leave the wicket-gate on the latch. With
+my foot I pushed it open, and, keeping well under the cover of the
+tall convent wall, I ran swiftly to the corner of the Rue des Pipots.
+Here I paused a moment. Through the silence of the night my ear caught
+the faint sound of horses snorting and harness jingling in the
+distance, both sides from where I stood; but of gendarmes or
+passers-by there was no sign. Gathering up the full measure of my
+courage and holding my precious burden closer to my heart, I ran
+quickly down the street.
+
+Within the next few seconds I had the seemingly inanimate maiden
+safely deposited in the inside of the barouche and myself sitting by
+her side. The driver cracked his whip, and whilst I, happy but
+exhausted, was mopping my streaming forehead the chaise rattled gaily
+along the uneven pavements of the great city in the direction of
+Suresnes.
+
+What that fool Rochez was doing I could not definitely ascertain. I
+looked through the vasistas of the coach, but could see nothing in
+pursuit of us. Then I turned my full attention to my lovely companion.
+It was pitch dark inside the carriage, you understand; only from time
+to time, as we drove past an overhanging street lanthorn, I caught a
+glimpse of that priceless bundle beside me, which lay there so still
+and so snug, still wrapped up in the shawl.
+
+With cautious, loving fingers I undid its folds. Under cover of the
+darkness the sweet and modest creature, released of her bonds, turned
+for an instant to me, and for a few, very few, happy seconds I held
+her in my arms.
+
+"Have no fear, fair one," I murmured in her ear. "It is I, Hector
+Ratichon, who adores you and who cannot live without you! Forgive me
+for this seeming violence, which was prompted by an undying passion,
+and remember that to me you are as sacred as a divinity until the
+happy hour when I can proclaim you to the world as my beloved wife!"
+
+I pressed her against my heart, and my lips imprinted a delicate kiss
+upon her forehead. After which, with chaste decorum, she once more
+turned away from me, covered her face and head with the shawl, and
+drew back into the remote corner of the carriage, where she remained,
+silent and absorbed, no doubt, in the contemplation of her happiness.
+
+I respected her silence, and I, too, fell to meditating upon my good
+fortune. Here was I, Sir, within sight of a haven wherein I could live
+through the twilight of my days in comfort and in peace, a beautiful
+young wife, a modest fortune! I had never in my wildest dreams
+envisaged a Fate more fair. The little house at Chantilly which I
+coveted, the plot of garden, the espalier peaches--all, all would be
+mine now! It seemed indeed too good to be true!
+
+The very next moment I was rudely awakened from those golden dreams by
+a loud clatter, and stern voices shouting the ominous word, "Halt!"
+The carriage drew up with such a jerk that I was flung off my seat
+against the front window and my nose seriously bruised. A faint cry of
+terror came from the precious bundle beside me.
+
+"Have no fear, my beloved," I whispered hurriedly. "Your own Hector
+will protect you!"
+
+Already the door of the carriage had been violently torn open;
+the next moment a gruff voice called out peremptorily:
+
+"By order of the Chief Commissary of Police!"
+
+I was dumbfounded. In what manner had the Chief Commissary of Police
+been already apprised of this affair? The whole thing was, of course,
+a swift and vengeful blow dealt to me by that cowardly Rochez. But
+how, in the name of thunder, had he got to work so quickly? But, of
+course, there was no time now for reflection. The gruff voice was
+going on more peremptorily and more insistently:
+
+"Is Hector Ratichon here?"
+
+I was dumb. My throat had closed up, and I could not have uttered a
+sound to save my life. The police had even got my name quite straight!
+
+"Now then, Ratichon," that same irascible voice continued, "get out of
+there! In the name of the law I charge you with the abduction of a
+defenceless female, and my orders are to bring you forthwith before
+the Chief Commissary of Police."
+
+Then it was, Sir, that bliss once more re-entered my soul. I had just
+felt a small hand pressing something crisp into mine, whilst a soft
+voice whispered in my ear:
+
+"Give him this, and tell him to let you go in peace. Say that I am
+Mademoiselle Goldberg, your promised wife."
+
+The feel of that crackling note in my hand at once restored my
+courage. Covering the lovely creature beside me with a protecting arm,
+I replied boldly to the minion of the law.
+
+"This lady," I said, "is my affianced wife. You, Sir Gendarme, are
+overstepping your powers. I demand that you let us proceed in peace."
+
+"My orders are--" the gendarme resumed; but already my sensitive
+ear had detected a faint wavering in the gruffness of his voice. The
+hectoring tone had gone out of it. I could not see him, of course, but
+somehow I felt that his attitude had become less arrogant and his
+glance more shifty.
+
+"This gentleman has spoken the truth," now came in soft, dulcet tones
+from under the shawl that wrapped the head of my beloved. "I am Mlle.
+Goldberg, M. le Gendarme, and I am travelling with M. Hector Ratichon
+entirely of my own free will, since I have promised him that I would
+be his wife."
+
+"Ah!" the gendarme ejaculated, obviously mollified.
+
+"If Mademoiselle is the fianc�e of Monsieur, and is acting of her own
+free will--"
+
+"It is not for you to interfere, eh, my friend?" I broke in jocosely.
+"You will now let us proceed in peace, and for your trouble you will
+no doubt accept this token of my consideration." And, groping in the
+darkness, I found the rough hand of the gendarme, and speedily pressed
+into it the crisp note which my adored one had given to me.
+
+"Ah!" he said, with very obvious gratification. "If Monsieur Ratichon
+will assure me that Mademoiselle here is indeed his affianced wife, then
+indeed it is not a case of abduction, and--"
+
+"Abduction!" I retorted, flaring up in righteous indignation. "Who
+dares to use the word in connexion with this lovely lady? Mademoiselle
+Goldberg, I swear, will be Madame Ratichon within the next four and
+twenty hours. And the sooner you, Sir Gendarme, allow us to proceed on
+our way the less pain will you cause to this distressed and virtuous
+damsel."
+
+This settled the whole affair quite comfortably. The gendarme shut the
+carriage door with a bang, and at my request gave the order to the
+driver to proceed. The latter once again cracked his whip, and once
+again the cumbrous vehicle, after an awkward lurch, rattled on its way
+along the cobblestones of the sleeping city.
+
+Once more I was alone with the priceless treasure by my side--alone
+and happy--more happy, I might say, than I had been before. Had not my
+adored one openly acknowledged her love for me and her desire to stand
+with me at the hymeneal altar? To put it vulgarly--though vulgarity
+in every form is repellent to me--she had burnt her boats. She had
+allowed her name to be coupled with mine in the presence of the
+minions of the law. What, after that, could her father do but give his
+consent to a union which alone would save his only child's reputation
+from the cruelty of waggish tongues?
+
+No doubt, Sir, that I was happy. True, that when the uncouth gendarme
+finally slammed to the door of our carriage and we restarted on our
+way, my ears had been unpleasantly tickled by the sound of prolonged
+and ribald laughter--laughter which sounded strangely and unpleasantly
+familiar. But after a few seconds' serious reflection I dismissed the
+matter from my thoughts. If, as indeed I gravely suspected, it was
+Fernand Rochez who had striven thus to put a spoke in the wheel of my
+good fortune, he would certainly not have laughed when I drove
+triumphantly away with my conquered bride by my side. And, of course,
+my ears _must_ have deceived me when they caught the sound of a girl's
+merry laugh mingling with the more ribald one of the man.
+
+
+
+4.
+
+I have paused purposely, Sir, ere I embark upon the narration of the
+final stage of this, my life's adventure.
+
+The chaise was bowling along the banks of the river toward Suresnes.
+Presently the driver struck to his right and plunged into the
+fastnesses of the Bois de Boulogne. For a while, therefore, we were in
+utter darkness. My lovely companion neither moved nor spoke. Somewhere
+in the far distance a church clock struck eleven. One whole hour had
+gone by since first I had embarked on this great undertaking.
+
+I was excited, feverish. The beautiful Leah's silence and tranquillity
+grated upon my nerves. I could not understand how she could remain
+there so placid when her whole life's happiness had so suddenly, so
+unexpectedly, been assured. I became more and more fidgety as time
+went on. Soon I felt that I could no longer hold myself in proper
+control. Being of an impulsive disposition, this tranquil acceptance
+of so great a joy became presently intolerable, and, unable to
+restrain my ardour any longer, I seized that passive bundle of
+loveliness in my arms.
+
+"Have no fear," I murmured once again, as I pressed her to my heart.
+
+But my admonition was obviously unnecessary. The beautiful Leah showed
+not the slightest sign of fear. She rested her head against my
+shoulder and put one arm around my neck. I was in raptures.
+
+Just then the vehicle swung out of the Bois and once more rattled upon
+the cobblestones. This time we were nearing Suresnes. A vague light,
+emanating from the lanthorns at the bridge-head, was already faintly
+visible ahead of us. Soon it grew brighter. The next moment we passed
+immediately beneath the lanthorns. The interior of the carriage was
+flooded with light . . . and, Sir, I gave a gasp of unadulterated
+dismay! The being whom I held in my arms, whose face was even at that
+moment raised up to my own, was not the lovely Leah! It was Sarah,
+Sir! Sarah Goldberg, the dour, angular aunt, whose yellow teeth
+gleamed for one brief moment through her thin lips as she threw me one
+of those glances of amorous welcome which invariably sent a cold
+shiver down my spine. Sarah Goldberg! I scarce could believe my eyes,
+and for a moment did indeed think that the elusive, swiftly-vanished
+light of the bridge-head lanthorns had played my excited senses a
+weird and cruel trick. But no! The very next second proved my
+disillusionment. Sarah spoke to me!
+
+She spoke to me and laughed! Ah, she was happy, Sir! Happy in that she
+had completely and irrevocably tricked me! That traitor Fernand Rochez
+was up to the neck in the plot which had saddled me for ever with an
+ugly, elderly wife of dour mien and no fortune, while he and the
+lovely Leah were spinning the threads of perfect love at the other end
+of Paris and laughing their fill at my discomfiture. Think, Sir, what
+I suffered during those few brief minutes while the coach lurched
+through the narrow streets of Suresnes, and I had perforce to listen
+to the protestations of undying love from this unprepossessing female!
+
+That love, she vowed, was her excuse, and everything, she asserted,
+was fair in love and war. She knew that after Rochez had attained his
+heart's desire and carried off the lady of his choice--which he had
+successfully done half an hour before I myself made my way up the
+Passage Corneille--I would pass out of her life for ever. This she
+could not endure. Life at once would become intolerable. And, aided
+and abetted by Rochez and Leah, she had planned and contrived my
+mystification and won me by foul means, since she could not do so by
+fair; and it seemed as if her volubility then was the forecast of what
+my life with her would be in the future. Talk! Talk! Talk! She never
+ceased!
+
+She told me the whole story of the abominable conspiracy against my
+liberty. Her brother, M. Goldberg, she explained, had determined upon
+remarriage. She, Sarah, felt that henceforth she would be in the way
+of everybody; she would have no home. Leah married to Rochez; a new
+and young Mme. Goldberg ruling in the old house of the Rue des
+M�decins! Ah, it was unthinkable!
+
+And I, Sir--I, Hector Ratichon--had, it appears, by my polite manners
+and prepossessing ways, induced this dour old maid to believe that she
+was not altogether indifferent to me. Ah, how I cursed my own charms,
+when I realised whither they had led me! It seems that it was that
+fickle jade Leah who first imagined the whole execrable plot. Rochez
+was to entrust me with the task of carrying off his beloved, and thus
+I would be tricked in the darkness into abducting Mlle. Goldberg
+senior from her home. Then some friends of Rochez arranged to play the
+comedy of false gendarmes, and again I was tricked into acknowledging
+Sarah as my affianced wife before independent witnesses. After that I
+could no longer repudiate mine honourable intentions, for if I did,
+then I should be arraigned before the law on a criminal charge of
+abduction. In this comedy of false gendarmes Rochez himself and the
+heartless Leah had joined with zest and laughed over my discomfiture,
+whilst the friends who played their r�les to such perfection had a
+paltry hundred francs each as the price of this infamous trick. Now my
+doom was sealed, and all that was left for me to do was to think
+disconsolately over my future.
+
+I did bitterly reproach Sarah for her treachery and tried to still her
+protestations of love by pointing out to her that I had absolutely no
+fortune, and could only offer her a life of squalor, not to say of
+what. But this she knew, and vowed that penury by my side would make
+her happier than luxury beside any other man. Ah, Sir, 'tis given to
+few men to arouse such selfless passion in a woman's heart, and it
+hath oft been my dream in the past one day thus to be adored for
+myself alone!
+
+But for the moment I was too deeply angered to listen placidly to
+Sarah's vows of undying affection. My nerves were irritated by her
+fulsome adulation; indeed, I could not bear the sight of her nor yet
+the sound of her voice. You may imagine how thankful I was when the
+chaise came at last to a halt outside the humble little hostelry where
+I had engaged the room which I had so fondly hoped would have been
+occupied by the lovely and fickle Leah.
+
+I bundled Mlle. Goldberg senior into the house, and here again I had
+to endure galling mortification in the shape of sidelong glances cast
+at me and my future bride by the landlord of the hostelry and his
+ill-bred daughter. When I engaged the room I had very foolishly told
+them that it would be occupied by a lovely lady who had consented to
+be my wife, and that she would remain here in happy seclusion until
+such time as all arrangements for our wedding were complete. The
+humiliation of these vulgar people's irony seemed like the last straw
+which overweighed my forbearance. The room and pension I had already
+paid two days in advance, so I had nothing more to say either to the
+ribald landlord or to Mlle. Goldberg senior. I was bitterly angered
+against her, and refused her the solace of a kindly look or of an
+encouraging pressure from my hand, even though she waited for both
+with the pathetic patience of an old spaniel.
+
+I re-entered the coach, which was to take me back to mine own humble
+lodgings in Passy. Here at least I was alone--alone with my gloomy
+thoughts. My heart was full of wrath against the woman who had so
+basely tricked me, and I viewed with dismay amounting almost to
+despair the prospect of spending the rest of my life in her company.
+That night I slept but little, nor yet the following night, or the
+night after that. Those days I spent in seclusion, thankful for my
+solitude.
+
+Twice each day did Mlle. Goldberg come to my lodgings. In the foolish
+past I had somewhat injudiciously acquainted her of where I lived. Now
+she came and asked to be allowed to see me, but invariably did I
+refuse thus to gratify her. I felt that time alone would perhaps
+soften my feelings a little towards her. In the meanwhile I must
+commend her discretion and delicacy of procedure. She did not in any
+way attempt to molest me. When she was told by Theodore--whom I
+employed during the day to guard me against unwelcome visitors--that I
+refused to see her, she invariably went away without demur, nor did
+she refer in any way, either with adjurations or threats, to the
+impending wedding. Indeed, Sir, she was a lady of vast discretion.
+
+On the third day, however, I received a visit from M. Goldberg
+himself. I could not refuse to see him. Indeed, he would not be
+denied, but roughly pushed Theodore aside, who tried to hinder him. He
+had come armed with a riding-whip, and nothing but mine own innate
+dignity saved me from outrage. He came, Sir, with a marriage licence
+for his sister and me in one pocket and with a denunciation to the
+police against me for abduction in another. He gave me the choice.
+What could I do, Sir? I was like a helpless babe in the hands of
+unscrupulous brigands!
+
+The marriage licence was for the following day--at the mairie of the
+eighth arrondissement first, and in the synagogue of the Rue des
+Halles afterwards. I chose the marriage licence. What could I do, Sir?
+I was helpless!
+
+Of my wedding day I have but a dim recollection. It was all hustle and
+bustle; from the mairie to the synagogue, and thence to the house of
+M. Goldberg in the Rue des M�decins. I must say that the old usurer
+received me and my bride with marked amiability. He was, I gathered,
+genuinely pleased that his sister had found happiness and a home by
+the side of an honourable man, seeing that he himself was on the point
+of contracting a fresh alliance with a Jewish lady of unsurpassed
+loveliness.
+
+Of Rochez and Leah we saw nothing that day, and from one or two words
+which M. Goldberg let fall I concluded that he was greatly angered
+against his daughter because of her marriage with a fortune-hunting
+adventurer, who, he weirdly hinted, had already found quick and
+exemplary punishment for his crime. I was sincerely glad to hear this,
+even though I could not get M. Goldberg to explain in what that
+exemplary punishment consisted.
+
+The climax came at six o'clock of that eventful afternoon, at the hour
+when I, with the newly-enthroned Mme. Ratichon on my arm, was about to
+take leave of M. Goldberg. I must admit that at that moment my heart
+was overflowing with bitterness. I had been led like a lamb to the
+slaughter; I had been made to look foolish and absurd in the midst of
+this Israelite community which I despised; I was saddled for the rest
+of my life with an unprepossessing elderly wife, who could do naught
+for me but share the penury, the hard crusts, the onion pies with me
+and Theodore. The only advantage I might ever derive from her was that
+she would darn my stockings, sew the buttons on my vests, and goffer
+the frills of my shirts!
+
+Was this not enough to turn any man's naturally sweet disposition to
+gall? No doubt my mobile face betrayed something of the bitterness of
+my thoughts, for M. Goldberg at one moment slapped me vigorously on
+the back and bade me be of good cheer, as things were not so bad as I
+imagined. I was on the point of asking him what he meant when I saw
+another gentleman advancing toward me. His face, which was sallow and
+oily, bore a kind of obsequious smile; his clothes were of rusty
+black, and his features were markedly Jewish in character. He had some
+law papers under his arm, and he was perpetually rubbing his thin,
+bony hands together as if he were for ever washing them.
+
+"Monsieur Hector Ratichon," he said unctuously, "it is with much
+gratification that I bring you the joyful news."
+
+Joyful news!--to me! Ah, Sir, the words struck at first with cruel
+irony upon mine ear. But not so a second later, for the Jewish
+gentleman went on speaking, and what he said appeared to my reeling
+senses like songs of angels from paradise.
+
+At first I could not grasp his full meaning. A moment ago I had been
+in the depths of despair, and now--now--a whole vista of beatitude
+opened out before me! What the worthy Israelite said was that, by the
+terms of Grandpapa Goldberg's will, if Leah married without her
+father's consent, one-half of the fortune destined for her would
+revert to her aunt, Sarah Goldberg, now Madame Hector Ratichon.
+
+Can you wonder that I could scarce believe my ears? One-half that
+fortune meant that a hundred thousand francs would now become mine! M.
+Goldberg had already made it very clear to his daughter and to Rochez
+that he would never give his consent to their marriage, and, as this
+was now consummated, they had already forfeited one-half of the
+grandfather's fortune in favour of my Sarah. That was the exemplary
+punishment which they were to suffer for their folly.
+
+But their folly--aye! and their treachery--had become my joy. In this
+moment of heavenly rapture I was speechless, but I turned to Sarah
+with loving arms outstretched, and the next instant she nestled
+against my heart like a joyful if elderly bird.
+
+What is said of a people, Sir, is also true of the individual. Happy
+he who hath no history. Since that never-to-be-forgotten hour my life
+has run its simple, uneventful course here in this quiet corner of our
+beautiful France, with my pony and my dog and my chickens, and Mme.
+Ratichon to minister to my creature comforts.
+
+I bought this little property, Sir, soon after my marriage, and my
+office in the Rue Daunou knows me no more. You like the house, Sir?
+Ah, yes! And the garden? . . . After d�jeuner you must see my prize
+chickens. Theodore will show them to you. You did not know Theodore
+was here? Well, yes! He lives with us. Madame Ratichon finds him
+useful about the house, and, not being used to luxuries, he is on the
+whole pleasantly contented.
+
+Ah, here comes Madame Ratichon to tell us that the d�jeuner is served!
+This way, Sir, under the porch. . . . After you!
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Castles in the Air, by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
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+    <title>
+      Castles in the Air, by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
+    </title>
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Castles in the Air, by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Castles in the Air
+
+Author: Baroness Emmuska Orczy
+
+Release Date: May 28, 2004 [EBook #12461]
+Last Updated: September 7, 2018
+
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASTLES IN THE AIR ***
+
+
+
+
+Etext produced by Jim Tinsley
+
+HTML file produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      CASTLES IN THE AIR
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Baroness Emmuska Orczy
+    </h2>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_FORE"> FOREWORD </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>CASTLES IN THE AIR</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. &mdash; A ROLAND FOR HIS OLIVER </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. &mdash; A FOOL&rsquo;S PARADISE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. &mdash; ON THE BRINK </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. &mdash; CARISSIMO </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. &mdash; THE TOYS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. &mdash; HONOUR AMONG &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. &mdash; AN OVER-SENSITIVE HEART </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_FORE" id="link2H_FORE"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      FOREWORD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In presenting this engaging rogue to my readers, I feel that I owe them,
+      if not an apology, at least an explanation for this attempt at enlisting
+      sympathy in favour of a man who has little to recommend him save his own
+      unconscious humour. In very truth my good friend Ratichon is an unblushing
+      liar, thief, a forger&mdash;anything you will; his vanity is past belief,
+      his scruples are non-existent. How he escaped a convict settlement it is
+      difficult to imagine, and hard to realize that he died&mdash;presumably
+      some years after the event recorded in the last chapter of his
+      autobiography&mdash;a respected member of the community, honoured by that
+      same society which should have raised a punitive hand against him. Yet
+      this I believe to be the case. At any rate, in spite of close research in
+      the police records of the period, I can find no mention of Hector
+      Ratichon. &ldquo;Heureux le peuple qui n&rsquo;a pas d&rsquo;histoire&rdquo;
+      applies, therefore, to him, and we must take it that Fate and his own
+      sorely troubled country dealt lightly with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Which brings me back to my attempt at an explanation. If Fate dealt
+      kindly, why not we? Since time immemorial there have been worse scoundrels
+      unhung than Hector Ratichon, and he has the saving grace&mdash; which few
+      possess&mdash;of unruffled geniality. Buffeted by Fate, sometimes
+      starving, always thirsty, he never complains; and there is all through his
+      autobiography what we might call an &ldquo;Ah, well!&rdquo; attitude about
+      his outlook on life. Because of this, and because his very fatuity makes
+      us smile, I feel that he deserves forgiveness and even a certain amount of
+      recognition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fragmentary notes, which I have only very slightly modified, came into
+      my hands by a happy chance one dull post-war November morning in Paris,
+      when rain, sleet and the north wind drove me for shelter under the arcades
+      of the Odéon, and a kindly vendor of miscellaneous printed matter and
+      mouldy MSS. allowed me to rummage amongst a load of old papers which he
+      was about to consign to the rubbish heap. I imagine that the notes were
+      set down by the actual person to whom the genial Hector Ratichon recounted
+      the most conspicuous events of his chequered career, and as I turned over
+      the torn and musty pages, which hung together by scraps of mouldy thread,
+      I could not help feeling the humour&mdash;aye! and the pathos&mdash;of
+      that drabby side of old Paris which was being revealed to me through the
+      medium of this rogue&rsquo;s adventures. And even as, holding the
+      fragments in my hand, I walked home that morning through the rain
+      something of that same quaint personality seemed once more to haunt the
+      dank and dreary streets of the once dazzling Ville Lumière. I seemed to
+      see the shabby bottle-green coat, the nankeen pantaloons, the down-at-heel
+      shoes of this &ldquo;confidant of Kings&rdquo;; I could hear his unctuous,
+      self-satisfied laugh, and sensed his furtive footstep whene&rsquo;er a
+      gendarme came into view. I saw his ruddy, shiny face beaming at me through
+      the sleet and the rain as, like a veritable squire of dames, he minced his
+      steps upon the boulevard, or, like a reckless smuggler, affronted the
+      grave dangers of mountain fastnesses upon the Juras; and I was quite glad
+      to think that a life so full of unconscious humour had not been cut short
+      upon the gallows. And I thought kindly of him, for he had made me smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is nothing fine about him, nothing romantic; nothing in his actions
+      to cause a single thrill to the nerves of the most unsophisticated reader.
+      Therefore, I apologize in that I have not held him up to a just obloquy
+      because of his crimes, and I ask indulgence for his turpitudes because of
+      the laughter which they provoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EMMUSKA ORCZY. <i>Paris, 1921</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CASTLES IN THE AIR
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. &mdash; A ROLAND FOR HIS OLIVER
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      My name is Ratichon&mdash;Hector Ratichon, at your service, and I make so
+      bold as to say that not even my worst enemy would think of minimizing the
+      value of my services to the State. For twenty years now have I placed my
+      powers at the disposal of my country: I have served the Republic, and was
+      confidential agent to Citizen Robespierre; I have served the Empire, and
+      was secret factotum to our great Napoléon; I have served King Louis&mdash;with
+      a brief interval of one hundred days&mdash; for the past two years, and I
+      can only repeat that no one, in the whole of France, has been so useful or
+      so zealous in tracking criminals, nosing out conspiracies, or denouncing
+      traitors as I have been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet you see me a poor man to this day: there has been a persistently
+      malignant Fate which has worked against me all these years, and would&mdash;but
+      for a happy circumstance of which I hope anon to tell you&mdash;have left
+      me just as I was, in the matter of fortune, when I first came to Paris and
+      set up in business as a volunteer police agent at No. 96 Rue Daunou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My apartment in those days consisted of an antechamber, an outer office
+      where, if need be, a dozen clients might sit, waiting their turn to place
+      their troubles, difficulties, anxieties before the acutest brain in
+      France, and an inner room wherein that same acute brain&mdash;mine, my
+      dear Sir&mdash;was wont to ponder and scheme. That apartment was not
+      luxuriously furnished&mdash;furniture being very dear in those days&mdash;but
+      there were a couple of chairs and a table in the outer office, and a
+      cupboard wherein I kept the frugal repast which served me during the
+      course of a long and laborious day. In the inner office there were more
+      chairs and another table, littered with papers: letters and packets all
+      tied up with pink tape (which cost three sous the metre), and bundles of
+      letters from hundreds of clients, from the highest and the lowest in the
+      land, you understand, people who wrote to me and confided in me to-day as
+      kings and emperors had done in the past. In the antechamber there was a
+      chair-bedstead for Theodore to sleep on when I required him to remain in
+      town, and a chair on which he could sit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, of course, there was Theodore!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah! my dear Sir, of him I can hardly speak without feeling choked with the
+      magnitude of my emotion. A noble indignation makes me dumb. Theodore, sir,
+      has ever been the cruel thorn that times out of number hath wounded my
+      over-sensitive heart. Think of it! I had picked him out of the gutter! No!
+      no! I do not mean this figuratively! I mean that, actually and in the
+      flesh, I took him up by the collar of his tattered coat and dragged him
+      out of the gutter in the Rue Blanche, where he was grubbing for trifles
+      out of the slime and mud. He was frozen, Sir, and starved&mdash;yes,
+      starved! In the intervals of picking filth up out of the mud he held out a
+      hand blue with cold to the passers-by and occasionally picked up a sou.
+      When I found him in that pitiable condition he had exactly twenty centimes
+      between him and absolute starvation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I, Sir Hector Ratichon, the confidant of two kings, three autocrats
+      and an emperor, took that man to my bosom&mdash;fed him, clothed him,
+      housed him, gave him the post of secretary in my intricate, delicate,
+      immensely important business&mdash;and I did this, Sir, at a salary which,
+      in comparison with his twenty centimes, must have seemed a princely one to
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His duties were light. He was under no obligation to serve me or to be at
+      his post before seven o&rsquo;clock in the morning, and all that he had to
+      do then was to sweep out the three rooms, fetch water from the well in the
+      courtyard below, light the fire in the iron stove which stood in my inner
+      office, shell the haricots for his own mess of pottage, and put them to
+      boil. During the day his duties were lighter still. He had to run errands
+      for me, open the door to prospective clients, show them into the outer
+      office, explain to them that his master was engaged on affairs relating to
+      the kingdom of France, and generally prove himself efficient, useful and
+      loyal&mdash;all of which qualities he assured me, my dear Sir, he
+      possessed to the fullest degree. And I believed him, Sir; I nurtured the
+      scorpion in my over-sensitive bosom! I promised him ten per cent. on all
+      the profits of my business, and all the remnants from my own humble
+      repasts&mdash;bread, the skins of luscious sausages, the bones from
+      savoury cutlets, the gravy from the tasty carrots and onions. You would
+      have thought that his gratitude would become boundless, that he would
+      almost worship the benefactor who had poured at his feet the full
+      cornucopia of comfort and luxury. Not so! That man, Sir, was a snake in
+      the grass&mdash;a serpent&mdash;a crocodile! Even now that I have entirely
+      severed my connexion with that ingrate, I seem to feel the wounds, like
+      dagger-thrusts, which he dealt me with so callous a hand. But I have done
+      with him&mdash;done, I tell you! How could I do otherwise than to send him
+      back to the gutter from whence I should never have dragged him? My
+      goodness, he repaid with an ingratitude so black that you, Sir, when you
+      hear the full story of his treachery, will exclaim aghast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, you shall judge! His perfidy commenced less than a week after I had
+      given him my third best pantaloons and three sous to get his hair cut,
+      thus making a man of him. And yet, you would scarcely believe it, in the
+      matter of the secret documents he behaved toward me like a veritable
+      Judas!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Listen, my dear Sir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I told you, I believe, that I had my office in the Rue Daunou. You
+      understand that I had to receive my clients&mdash;many of whom were of
+      exalted rank&mdash;-in a fashionable quarter of Paris. But I actually
+      lodged in Passy&mdash;being fond of country pursuits and addicted to fresh
+      air&mdash;in a humble hostelry under the sign of the &ldquo;Grey Cat&rdquo;;
+      and here, too, Theodore had a bed. He would walk to the office a couple of
+      hours before I myself started on the way, and I was wont to arrive as soon
+      after ten o&rsquo;clock of a morning as I could do conveniently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On this memorable occasion of which I am about to tell you&mdash;it was
+      during the autumn of 1815&mdash;I had come to the office unusually early,
+      and had just hung my hat and coat in the outer room, and taken my seat at
+      my desk in the inner office, there to collect my thoughts in preparation
+      for the grave events which the day might bring forth, when, suddenly, an
+      ill-dressed, dour-looking individual entered the room without so much as
+      saying, &ldquo;By your leave,&rdquo; and after having pushed Theodore&mdash;who
+      stood by like a lout&mdash;most unceremoniously to one side. Before I had
+      time to recover from my surprise at this unseemly intrusion, the uncouth
+      individual thrust Theodore roughly out of the room, slammed the door in
+      his face, and having satisfied himself that he was alone with me and that
+      the door was too solid to allow of successful eavesdropping, he dragged
+      the best chair forward&mdash;the one, sir, which I reserve for lady
+      visitors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He threw his leg across it, and, sitting astride, he leaned his elbows
+      over the back and glowered at me as if he meant to frighten me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is Charles Saurez,&rdquo; he said abruptly, &ldquo;and I
+      want your assistance in a matter which requires discretion, ingenuity and
+      alertness. Can I have it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was about to make a dignified reply when he literally threw the next
+      words at me: &ldquo;Name your price, and I will pay it!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What could I do, save to raise my shoulders in token that the matter of
+      money was one of supreme indifference to me, and my eyebrows in a manner
+      of doubt that M. Charles Saurez had the means wherewith to repay my
+      valuable services? By way of a rejoinder he took out from the inner pocket
+      of his coat a greasy letter-case, and with his exceedingly grimy fingers
+      extracted therefrom some twenty banknotes, which a hasty glance on my part
+      revealed as representing a couple of hundred francs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will give you this as a retaining fee,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;if
+      you will undertake the work I want you to do; and I will double the amount
+      when you have carried the work out successfully.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four hundred francs! It was not lavish, it was perhaps not altogether the
+      price I would have named, but it was very good, these hard times. You
+      understand? We were all very poor in France in that year 1815 of which I
+      speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am always quite straightforward when I am dealing with a client who
+      means business. I pushed aside the litter of papers in front of me, leaned
+      my elbows upon my desk, rested my chin in my hands, and said briefly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M. Charles Saurez, I listen!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew his chair a little closer and dropped his voice almost to a
+      whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know the Chancellerie of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?&rdquo;
+      he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly,&rdquo; I replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know M. de Marsan&rsquo;s private office? He is chief secretary
+      to M. de Talleyrand.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;but I can find out.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is on the first floor, immediately facing the service staircase,
+      and at the end of the long passage which leads to the main staircase.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Easy to find, then,&rdquo; I remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite. At this hour and until twelve o&rsquo;clock, M. de Marsan
+      will be occupied in copying a document which I desire to possess. At
+      eleven o&rsquo;clock precisely there will be a noisy disturbance in the
+      corridor which leads to the main staircase. M. de Marsan, in all
+      probability, will come out of his room to see what the disturbance is
+      about. Will you undertake to be ready at that precise moment to make a
+      dash from the service staircase into the room to seize the document, which
+      no doubt will be lying on the top of the desk, and bring it to an address
+      which I am about to give you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is risky,&rdquo; I mused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very,&rdquo; he retorted drily, &ldquo;or I&rsquo;d do it myself,
+      and not pay you four hundred francs for your trouble.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trouble!&rdquo; I exclaimed, with withering sarcasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trouble, you call it? If I am caught, it means penal servitude&mdash;New
+      Caledonia, perhaps&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly,&rdquo; he said, with the same irritating calmness; &ldquo;and
+      if you succeed it means four hundred francs. Take it or leave it, as you
+      please, but be quick about it. I have no time to waste; it is past nine o&rsquo;clock
+      already, and if you won&rsquo;t do the work, someone else will.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a few seconds longer I hesitated. Schemes, both varied and wild,
+      rushed through my active brain: refuse to take this risk, and denounce the
+      plot to the police; refuse it, and run to warn M. de Marsan; refuse it,
+      and&mdash; I had little time for reflection. My uncouth client was
+      standing, as it were, with a pistol to my throat&mdash;with a pistol and
+      four hundred francs! The police might perhaps give me half a louis for my
+      pains, or they might possibly remember an unpleasant little incident in
+      connexion with the forgery of some Treasury bonds which they have never
+      succeeded in bringing home to me&mdash;one never knows! M. de Marsan might
+      throw me a franc, and think himself generous at that!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All things considered, then, when M. Charles Saurez suddenly said, &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+      with marked impatience, I replied, &ldquo;Agreed,&rdquo; and within five
+      minutes I had two hundred francs in my pocket, with the prospect of two
+      hundred more during the next four and twenty hours. I was to have a free
+      hand in conducting my own share of the business, and M. Charles Saurez was
+      to call for the document at my lodgings at Passy on the following morning
+      at nine o&rsquo;clock.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      2.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      I flatter myself that I conducted the business with remarkable skill. At
+      precisely ten minutes to eleven I rang at the Chancellerie of the Ministry
+      for Foreign Affairs. I was dressed as a respectable commissionnaire, and I
+      carried a letter and a small parcel addressed to M. de Marsan. &ldquo;First
+      floor,&rdquo; said the concierge curtly, as soon as he had glanced at the
+      superscription on the letter. &ldquo;Door faces top of the service stairs.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I mounted and took my stand some ten steps below the landing, keeping the
+      door of M. de Marsan&rsquo;s room well in sight. Just as the bells of
+      Notre Dame boomed the hour I heard what sounded like a furious altercation
+      somewhere in the corridor just above me. There was much shouting, then one
+      or two cries of &ldquo;Murder!&rdquo; followed by others of &ldquo;What is
+      it?&rdquo; and &ldquo;What in the name of &mdash;&mdash;&mdash; is all
+      this infernal row about?&rdquo; Doors were opened and banged, there was a
+      general running and rushing along that corridor, and the next minute the
+      door in front of me was opened also, and a young man came out, pen in
+      hand, and shouting just like everybody else:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the &mdash;&mdash;&mdash; is all this infernal row about?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Murder, help!&rdquo; came from the distant end of the corridor, and
+      M. de Marsan&mdash;undoubtedly it was he&mdash;did what any other young
+      man under the like circumstances would have done: he ran to see what was
+      happening and to lend a hand in it, if need be. I saw his slim figure
+      disappearing down the corridor at the very moment that I slipped into his
+      room. One glance upon the desk sufficed: there lay the large
+      official-looking document, with the royal signature affixed thereto, and
+      close beside it the copy which M. de Marsan had only half finished&mdash;the
+      ink on it was still wet. Hesitation, Sir, would have been fatal. I did not
+      hesitate; not one instant. Three seconds had scarcely elapsed before I
+      picked up the document, together with M. de Marsan&rsquo;s half-finished
+      copy of the same, and a few loose sheets of Chancellerie paper which I
+      thought might be useful. Then I slipped the lot inside my blouse. The
+      bogus letter and parcel I left behind me, and within two minutes of my
+      entry into the room I was descending the service staircase quite
+      unconcernedly, and had gone past the concierge&rsquo;s lodge without being
+      challenged. How thankful I was to breathe once more the pure air of
+      heaven. I had spent an exceedingly agitated five minutes, and even now my
+      anxiety was not altogether at rest. I dared not walk too fast lest I
+      attracted attention, and yet I wanted to put the river, the Pont Neuf, and
+      a half dozen streets between me and the Chancellerie of the Ministry of
+      Foreign Affairs. No one who has not gone through such an exciting
+      adventure as I have just recorded can conceive what were my feelings of
+      relief and of satisfaction when I at last found myself quietly mounting
+      the stairs which led to my office on the top floor of No. 96 Rue Daunou.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      3.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Now, I had not said anything to Theodore about this affair. It was
+      certainly arranged between us when he entered my service as confidential
+      clerk and doorkeeper that in lieu of wages, which I could not afford to
+      pay him, he would share my meals with me and have a bed at my expense in
+      the same house at Passy where I lodged; moreover, I would always give him
+      a fair percentage on the profits which I derived from my business. The
+      arrangement suited him very well. I told you that I picked him out of the
+      gutter, and I heard subsequently that he had gone through many an
+      unpleasant skirmish with the police in his day, and if I did not employ
+      him no one else would.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all, he did earn a more or less honest living by serving me. But in
+      this instance, since I had not even asked for his assistance, I felt that,
+      considering the risks of New Caledonia and a convict ship which I had
+      taken, a paltry four hundred francs could not by any stretch of the
+      imagination rank as a &ldquo;profit&rdquo; in a business&mdash;and
+      Theodore was not really entitled to a percentage, was he?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So when I returned I crossed the ante-chamber and walked past him with my
+      accustomed dignity; nor did he offer any comment on my get-up. I often
+      affected a disguise in those days, even when I was not engaged in
+      business, and the dress and get-up of a respectable commissionnaire was a
+      favourite one with me. As soon as I had changed I sent him out to make
+      purchases for our luncheon&mdash;five sous&rsquo; worth of stale bread,
+      and ten sous&rsquo; worth of liver sausage, of which he was inordinately
+      fond. He would take the opportunity on the way of getting moderately drunk
+      on as many glasses of absinthe as he could afford. I saw him go out of the
+      outer door, and then I set to work to examine the precious document.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, one glance was sufficient for me to realize its incalculable value!
+      Nothing more or less than a Treaty of Alliance between King Louis XVIII of
+      France and the King of Prussia in connexion with certain schemes of naval
+      construction. I did not understand the whole diplomatic verbiage, but it
+      was pretty clear to my unsophisticated mind that this treaty had been
+      entered into in secret by the two monarchs, and that it was intended to
+      prejudice the interests both of Denmark and of Russia in the Baltic Sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I also realized that both the Governments of Denmark and Russia would no
+      doubt pay a very considerable sum for the merest glance at this document,
+      and that my client of this morning was certainly a secret service agent&mdash;otherwise
+      a spy&mdash;of one of those two countries, who did not choose to take the
+      very severe risks which I had taken this morning, but who would, on the
+      other hand, reap the full reward of the daring coup, whilst I was to be
+      content with four hundred francs!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, I am a man of deliberation as well as of action, and at this juncture&mdash;feeling
+      that Theodore was still safely out of the way&mdash;I thought the whole
+      matter over quietly, and then took what precautions I thought fit for the
+      furthering of my own interests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To begin with, I set to work to make a copy of the treaty on my own
+      account. I have brought the study of calligraphy to a magnificent degree
+      of perfection, and the writing on the document was easy enough to imitate,
+      as was also the signature of our gracious King Louis and of M. de
+      Talleyrand, who had countersigned it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you remember, I had picked up two or three loose sheets of paper off M.
+      de Marsan&rsquo;s desk; these bore the arms of the Chancellerie of Foreign
+      Affairs stamped upon them, and were in every way identical with that on
+      which the original document had been drafted. When I had finished my work
+      I flattered myself that not the greatest calligraphic expert could have
+      detected the slightest difference between the original and the copy which
+      I had made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The work took me a long time. When at last I folded up the papers and
+      slipped them once more inside my blouse it was close upon two. I wondered
+      why Theodore had not returned with our luncheon, but on going to the
+      little anteroom which divides my office from the outer door, great was my
+      astonishment to see him lolling there on the rickety chair which he
+      affectioned, and half asleep. I had some difficulty in rousing him.
+      Apparently he had got rather drunk while he was out, and had then returned
+      and slept some of his booze off, without thinking that I might be hungry
+      and needing my luncheon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you let me know you had come back?&rdquo; I asked
+      curtly, for indeed I was very cross with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you were busy,&rdquo; he replied, with what I thought
+      looked like a leer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have never really cared for Theodore, you understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, I partook of our modest luncheon with him in perfect amity and
+      brotherly love, but my mind was busy all the time. I began to wonder if
+      Theodore suspected something; if so, I knew that I could not trust him. He
+      would try and ferret things out, and then demand a share in my hard-earned
+      emoluments to which he was really not entitled. I did not feel safe with
+      that bulky packet of papers on me, and I felt that Theodore&rsquo;s bleary
+      eyes were perpetually fixed upon the bulge in the left-hand side of my
+      coat. At one moment he looked so strange that I thought he meant to knock
+      me down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So my mind was quickly made up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After luncheon I would go down to my lodgings at Passy, and I knew of a
+      snug little hiding-place in my room there where the precious documents
+      would be quite safe until such time as I was to hand them&mdash;or one of
+      them&mdash;to M. Charles Saurez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This plan I put into execution, and with remarkable ingenuity too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Theodore was busy clearing up the debris of our luncheon, I not only
+      gave him the slip, but as I went out I took the precaution of locking the
+      outer door after me, and taking the key away in my pocket. I thus made
+      sure that Theodore could not follow me. I then walked to Passy&mdash;a
+      matter of two kilometres&mdash;and by four o&rsquo;clock I had the
+      satisfaction of stowing the papers safely away under one of the tiles in
+      the flooring of my room, and then pulling the strip of carpet in front of
+      my bed snugly over the hiding-place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Theodore&rsquo;s attic, where he slept, was at the top of the house,
+      whilst my room was on the ground floor, and so I felt that I could now go
+      back quite comfortably to my office in the hope that more remunerative
+      work and more lavish clients would come my way before nightfall.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      4.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was a little after five o&rsquo;clock when I once more turned the key
+      in the outer door of my rooms in the Rue Daunou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Theodore did not seem in the least to resent having been locked in for two
+      hours. I think he must have been asleep most of the time. Certainly I
+      heard a good deal of shuffling when first I reached the landing outside
+      the door; but when I actually walked into the apartment with an air of
+      quiet unconcern Theodore was sprawling on the chair-bedstead, with eyes
+      closed, a nose the colour of beetroot, and emitting sounds through his
+      thin, cracked lips which I could not, Sir, describe graphically in your
+      presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I took no notice of him, however, even though, as I walked past him, I saw
+      that he opened one bleary eye and watched my every movement. I went
+      straight into my private room and shut the door after me. And here, I
+      assure you, my dear Sir, I literally fell into my favourite chair,
+      overcome with emotion and excitement. Think what I had gone through! The
+      events of the last few hours would have turned any brain less keen, less
+      daring than that of Hector Ratichon. And here was I, alone at last, face
+      to face with the future. What a future, my dear Sir! Fate was smiling on
+      me at last. At last I was destined to reap a rich reward for all the
+      skill, the energy, the devotion, which up to this hour I had placed at the
+      service of my country and my King&mdash;or my Emperor, as the case might
+      be&mdash;without thought of my own advantage. Here was I now in possession
+      of a document&mdash;two documents&mdash;each one of which was worth at
+      least a thousand francs to persons whom I could easily approach. One
+      thousand francs! Was I dreaming? Five thousand would certainly be paid by
+      the Government whose agent M. Charles Saurez admittedly was for one glance
+      at that secret treaty which would be so prejudicial to their political
+      interests; whilst M. de Marsan himself would gladly pay another five
+      thousand for the satisfaction of placing the precious document intact
+      before his powerful and irascible uncle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten thousand francs! How few were possessed of such a sum in these days!
+      How much could be done with it! I would not give up business altogether,
+      of course, but with my new capital I would extend it and, there was a
+      certain little house, close to Chantilly, a house with a few acres of
+      kitchen garden and some fruit trees, the possession of which would render
+      me happier than any king. . . . I would marry! Oh, yes! I would certainly
+      marry&mdash;found a family. I was still young, my dear Sir, and passably
+      good looking. In fact there was a certain young widow, comely and amiable,
+      who lived not far from Passy, who had on more than one occasion given me
+      to understand that I was more than passably good looking. I had always
+      been susceptible where the fair sex was concerned, and now . . . oh, now!
+      I could pick and choose! The comely widow had a small fortune of her own,
+      and there were others! . . .
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus I dreamed on for the better part of an hour, until, soon after six o&rsquo;clock,
+      there was a knock at the outer door and I heard Theodore&rsquo;s shuffling
+      footsteps crossing the small anteroom. There was some muttered
+      conversation, and presently my door was opened and Theodore&rsquo;s ugly
+      face was thrust into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A lady to see you,&rdquo; he said curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, he dropped his voice, smacked his lips, and winked with one eye.
+      &ldquo;Very pretty,&rdquo; he whispered, &ldquo;but has a young man with
+      her whom she calls Arthur. Shall I send them in?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I then and there made up my mind that I would get rid of Theodore now that
+      I could afford to get a proper servant. My business would in future be
+      greatly extended; it would become very important, and I was beginning to
+      detest Theodore. But I said &ldquo;Show the lady in!&rdquo; with becoming
+      dignity, and a few moments later a beautiful woman entered my room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was vaguely conscious that a creature of my own sex walked in behind
+      her, but of him I took no notice. I rose to greet the lady and invited her
+      to sit down, but I had the annoyance of seeing the personage whom
+      deliberately she called &ldquo;Arthur&rdquo; coming familiarly forward and
+      leaning over the back of her chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I hated him. He was short and stout and florid, with an
+      impertinent-looking moustache, and hair that was very smooth and oily save
+      for two tight curls, which looked like the horns of a young goat, on each
+      side of the centre parting. I hated him cordially, and had to control my
+      feelings not to show him the contempt which I felt for his fatuousness and
+      his air of self-complacency. Fortunately the beautiful being was the first
+      to address me, and thus I was able to ignore the very presence of the
+      detestable man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are M. Ratichon, I believe,&rdquo; she said in a voice that was
+      dulcet and adorably tremulous, like the voice of some sweet, shy young
+      thing in the presence of genius and power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hector Ratichon,&rdquo; I replied calmly. &ldquo;Entirely at your
+      service, Mademoiselle.&rdquo; Then I added, with gentle, encouraging
+      kindliness, &ldquo;Mademoiselle...?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is Geoffroy,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;Madeleine Geoffroy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her eyes&mdash;such eyes, my dear Sir!&mdash;of a tender,
+      luscious grey, fringed with lashes and dewy with tears. I met her glance.
+      Something in my own eyes must have spoken with mute eloquence of my
+      distress, for she went on quickly and with a sweet smile. &ldquo;And this,&rdquo;
+      she said, pointing to her companion, &ldquo;is my brother, Arthur
+      Geoffroy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An exclamation of joyful surprise broke from my lips, and I beamed and
+      smiled on M. Arthur, begged him to be seated, which he refused, and
+      finally I myself sat down behind my desk. I now looked with unmixed
+      benevolence on both my clients, and then perceived that the lady&rsquo;s
+      exquisite face bore unmistakable signs of recent sorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now, Mademoiselle,&rdquo; I said, as soon as I had taken up a
+      position indicative of attention and of encouragement, &ldquo;will you
+      deign to tell me how I can have the honour to serve you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; she began in a voice that trembled with emotion,
+      &ldquo;I have come to you in the midst of the greatest distress that any
+      human being has ever been called upon to bear. It was by the merest
+      accident that I heard of you. I have been to the police; they cannot&mdash;will
+      not&mdash;act without I furnish them with certain information which it is
+      not in my power to give them. Then when I was half distraught with
+      despair, a kindly agent there spoke to me of you. He said that you were
+      attached to the police as a voluntary agent, and that they sometimes put
+      work in your way which did not happen to be within their own scope. He
+      also said that sometimes you were successful.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nearly always, Mademoiselle,&rdquo; I broke in firmly and with much
+      dignity. &ldquo;Once more I beg of you to tell me in what way I may have
+      the honour to serve you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not for herself, Monsieur,&rdquo; here interposed M. Arthur,
+      whilst a blush suffused Mlle. Geoffroy&rsquo;s lovely face, &ldquo;that my
+      sister desires to consult you, but for her fiancé M. de Marsan, who is
+      very ill indeed, hovering, in fact, between life and death. He could not
+      come in person. The matter is one that demands the most profound secrecy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may rely on my discretion, Monsieur,&rdquo; I murmured, without
+      showing, I flatter myself, the slightest trace of that astonishment which,
+      at mention of M. de Marsan&rsquo;s name, had nearly rendered me
+      speechless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M. de Marsan came to see me in utmost distress, Monsieur,&rdquo;
+      resumed the lovely creature. &ldquo;He had no one in whom he could&mdash;or
+      rather dared&mdash;confide. He is in the Chancellerie for Foreign Affairs.
+      His uncle M. de Talleyrand thinks a great deal of him and often entrusts
+      him with very delicate work. This morning he gave M. de Marsan a valuable
+      paper to copy&mdash;a paper, Monsieur, the importance of which it were
+      impossible to overestimate. The very safety of this country, the honour of
+      our King, are involved in it. I cannot tell you its exact contents, and it
+      is because I would not tell more about it to the police that they would
+      not help me in any way, and referred me to you. How could they, said the
+      chief Commissary to me, run after a document the contents of which they
+      did not even know? But you will be satisfied with what I have told you,
+      will you not, my dear M. Ratichon?&rdquo; she continued, with a pathetic
+      quiver in her voice and a look of appeal in her eyes which St. Anthony
+      himself could not have resisted, &ldquo;and help me to regain possession
+      of that paper, the final loss of which would cost M. de Marsan his life.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To say that my feeling of elation of a while ago had turned to one of
+      supreme beatitude would be to put it very mildly indeed. To think that
+      here was this lovely being in tears before me, and that it lay in my power
+      to dry those tears with a word and to bring a smile round those perfect
+      lips, literally made my mouth water in anticipation&mdash;for I am sure
+      that you will have guessed, just as I did in a moment, that the valuable
+      document of which this adorable being was speaking, was snugly hidden away
+      under the flooring of my room in Passy. I hated that unknown de Marsan. I
+      hated this Arthur who leaned so familiarly over her chair, but I had the
+      power to render her a service beside which their lesser claims on her
+      regard would pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, I am not the man to act on impulse, even at a moment like this. I
+      wanted to think the whole matter over first, and . . . well . . . I had
+      made up my mind to demand five thousand francs when I handed the document
+      over to my first client to-morrow morning. At any rate, for the moment I
+      acted&mdash;if I may say so&mdash;with great circumspection and dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must presume, Mademoiselle,&rdquo; I said in my most
+      business-like manner, &ldquo;that the document you speak of has been
+      stolen.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stolen, Monsieur,&rdquo; she assented whilst the tears once more
+      gathered in her eyes, &ldquo;and M. de Marsan now lies at death&rsquo;s
+      door with a terrible attack of brain fever, brought on by shock when he
+      discovered the loss.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How and when was it stolen?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some time during the morning,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;M. de
+      Talleyrand gave the document to M. de Marsan at nine o&rsquo;clock,
+      telling him that he wanted the copy by midday. M. de Marsan set to work at
+      once, laboured uninterruptedly until about eleven o&rsquo;clock, when a
+      loud altercation, followed by cries of &lsquo;Murder!&rsquo; and of
+      &lsquo;Help!&rsquo; and proceeding from the corridor outside his door,
+      caused him to run out of the room in order to see what was happening. The
+      altercation turned out to be between two men who had pushed their way into
+      the building by the main staircase, and who became very abusive to the
+      gendarme who ordered them out. The men were not hurt; nevertheless they
+      screamed as if they were being murdered. They took to their heels quickly
+      enough, and I don&rsquo;t know what has become of them, but . . .&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; I concluded blandly, &ldquo;whilst M. de Marsan was out
+      of the room the precious document was stolen.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was, Monsieur,&rdquo; exclaimed Mlle. Geoffroy piteously.
+      &ldquo;You will find it for us . . . will you not?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she added more calmly: &ldquo;My brother and I are offering ten
+      thousand francs reward for the recovery of the document.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not fall off my chair, but I closed my eyes. The vision which the
+      lovely lady&rsquo;s words had conjured up dazzled me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle,&rdquo; I said with solemn dignity, &ldquo;I pledge
+      you my word of honour that I will find the document for you and lay it at
+      your feet or die in your service. Give me twenty hours, during which I
+      will move heaven and earth to discover the thief. I will go at once to the
+      Chancellerie and collect what evidence I can. I have worked under M. de
+      Robespierre, Mademoiselle, under the great Napoléon, and under the
+      illustrious Fouché! I have never been known to fail, once I have set my
+      mind upon a task.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In that case you will earn your ten thousand francs, my friend,&rdquo;
+      said the odious Arthur drily, &ldquo;and my sister and M. de Marsan will
+      still be your debtors. Are there any questions you would like to ask
+      before we go?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None,&rdquo; I said loftily, choosing to ignore his sneering
+      manner. &ldquo;If Mademoiselle deigns to present herself here to-morrow at
+      two o&rsquo;clock I will have news to communicate to her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You will admit that I carried off the situation in a becoming manner. Both
+      Mademoiselle and Arthur Geoffroy gave me a few more details in connexion
+      with the affair. To these details I listened with well simulated interest.
+      Of course, they did not know that there were no details in connexion with
+      this affair that I did not know already. My heart was actually dancing
+      within my bosom. The future was so entrancing that the present appeared
+      like a dream; the lovely being before me seemed like an angel, an emissary
+      from above come to tell me of the happiness which was in store for me. The
+      house near Chantilly&mdash;the little widow&mdash;the kitchen garden&mdash;the
+      magic words went on hammering in my brain. I longed now to be rid of my
+      visitors, to be alone once more, so as to think out the epilogue of this
+      glorious adventure. Ten thousand francs was the reward offered me by this
+      adorable creature! Well, then, why should not M. Charles Saurez, on his
+      side, pay me another ten thousand for the same document, which was
+      absolutely undistinguishable from the first?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten thousand, instead of two hundred which he had the audacity to offer
+      me!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seven o&rsquo;clock had struck before I finally bowed my clients out of
+      the room. Theodore had gone. The lazy lout would never stay as much as
+      five minutes after his appointed time, so I had to show the adorable
+      creature and her fat brother out of the premises myself. But I did not
+      mind that. I flatter myself that I can always carry off an awkward
+      situation in a dignified manner. A brief allusion to the inefficiency of
+      present-day servants, a jocose comment on my own simplicity of habits, and
+      the deed was done. M. Arthur Geoffroy and Mademoiselle Madeleine his
+      sister were half-way down the stairs. A quarter of an hour later I was
+      once more out in the streets of Paris. It was a beautiful, balmy night. I
+      had two hundred francs in my pocket and there was a magnificent prospect
+      of twenty thousand francs before me! I could afford some slight
+      extravagance. I had dinner at one of the fashionable restaurants on the
+      quay, and I remained some time out on the terrace sipping my coffee and
+      liqueur, dreaming dreams such as I had never dreamed before. At ten o&rsquo;clock
+      I was once more on my way to Passy.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      5.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      When I turned the corner of the street and came is sight of the squalid
+      house where I lodged, I felt like a being from another world. Twenty
+      thousand francs&mdash;a fortune!&mdash;was waiting for me inside those
+      dingy walls. Yes, twenty thousand, for by now I had fully made up my mind.
+      I had two documents concealed beneath the floor of my bedroom&mdash;one so
+      like the other that none could tell them apart. One of these I would
+      restore to the lovely being who had offered me ten thousand francs for it,
+      and the other I would sell to my first and uncouth client for another ten
+      thousand francs!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four hundred! Bah! Ten thousand shall you pay for the treaty, my friend of
+      the Danish or Russian Secret Service! Ten thousand!&mdash;it is worth that
+      to you!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that happy frame of mind I reached the front door of my dingy abode.
+      Imagine my surprise on being confronted with two agents of police, each
+      with fixed bayonet, who refused to let me pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I lodge here,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your name?&rdquo; queried one of the men. &ldquo;Hector Ratichon,&rdquo;
+      I replied. Whereupon they gave me leave to enter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was very mysterious. My heart beat furiously. Fear for the safety of my
+      precious papers held me in a death-like grip. I ran straight to my room,
+      locked the door after me, and pulled the curtains together in front of the
+      window. Then, with hands that trembled as if with ague, I pulled aside the
+      strip of carpet which concealed the hiding-place of what meant a fortune
+      to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I nearly fainted with joy; the papers were there&mdash;quite safely. I
+      took them out and replaced them inside my coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I ran up to see if Theodore was in. I found him in bed. He told me
+      that he had left the office whilst my visitors were still with me, as he
+      felt terribly sick. He had been greatly upset when, about an hour ago, the
+      maid-of-all-work had informed him that the police were in the house, that
+      they would allow no one&mdash;except the persons lodging in the house&mdash;to
+      enter it, and no one, once in, would be allowed to leave. How long these
+      orders would hold good Theodore did not know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I left him moaning and groaning and declaring that he felt very ill, and I
+      went in quest of information. The corporal in command of the gendarmes was
+      exceedingly curt with me at first, but after a time he unbent and
+      condescended to tell me that my landlord had been denounced for permitting
+      a Bonapartiste club to hold its sittings in his house. So far so good.
+      Such denunciations were very frequent these days, and often ended
+      unpleasantly for those concerned, but the affair had obviously nothing to
+      do with me. I felt that I could breathe again. But there was still the
+      matter of the consigne. If no one, save the persons who lodged in the
+      house, would be allowed to enter it, how would M. Charles Saurez contrive
+      to call for the stolen document and, incidentally, to hand me over the ten
+      thousand francs I was hoping for? And if no one, once inside the house,
+      would be allowed to leave it, how could I meet Mlle. Geoffroy to-morrow at
+      two o&rsquo;clock in my office and receive ten thousand francs from her in
+      exchange for the precious paper?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moreover the longer the police stayed in this house and poked their noses
+      about in affairs that concerned hardworking citizens like myself&mdash;why&mdash;the
+      greater the risk would be of the matter of the stolen document coming to
+      light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was positively maddening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I never undressed that night, but just lay down on my bed, thinking. The
+      house was very still at times, but at others I could hear the tramp of the
+      police agents up and down the stairs and also outside my window. The
+      latter gave on a small, dilapidated back garden which had a wooden fence
+      at the end of it. Beyond it were some market gardens belonging to a M.
+      Lorraine. It did not take me very long to realize that that way lay my
+      fortune of twenty thousand francs. But for the moment I remained very
+      still. My plan was already made. At about midnight I went to the window
+      and opened it cautiously. I had heard no noise from that direction for
+      some time, and I bent my ear to listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not a sound! Either the sentry was asleep, or he had gone on his round,
+      and for a few moments the way was free. Without a moment&rsquo;s
+      hesitation I swung my leg over the sill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still no sound. My heart beat so fast that I could almost hear it. The
+      night was very dark. A thin mist-like drizzle was falling; in fact the
+      weather conditions were absolutely perfect for my purpose. With utmost
+      wariness I allowed myself to drop from the window-ledge on to the soft
+      ground below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If I was caught by the sentry I had my answer ready: I was going to meet
+      my sweetheart at the end of the garden. It is an excuse which always meets
+      with the sympathy of every true-hearted Frenchman. The sentry would, of
+      course, order me back to my room, but I doubt if he would ill-use me; the
+      denunciation was against the landlord, not against me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still not a sound. I could have danced with joy. Five minutes more and I
+      would be across the garden and over that wooden fence, and once more on my
+      way to fortune. My fall from the window had been light, as my room was on
+      the ground floor; but I had fallen on my knees, and now, as I picked
+      myself up, I looked up, and it seemed to me as if I saw Theodore&rsquo;s
+      ugly face at his attic window. Certainly there was a light there, and I
+      may have been mistaken as to Theodore&rsquo;s face being visible. The very
+      next second the light was extinguished and I was left in doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I did not pause to think. In a moment I was across the garden, my
+      hands gripped the top of the wooden fence, I hoisted myself up&mdash;with
+      some difficulty, I confess&mdash;but at last I succeeded. I threw my leg
+      over and gently dropped down on the other side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then suddenly two rough arms encircled my waist, and before I could
+      attempt to free myself a cloth was thrown over my head, and I was lifted
+      up and carried away, half suffocated and like an insentient bundle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the cloth was removed from my face I was half sitting, half lying, in
+      an arm-chair in a strange room which was lighted by an oil lamp that hung
+      from the ceiling above. In front of me stood M. Arthur Geoffroy and that
+      beast Theodore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Arthur Geoffroy was coolly folding up the two valuable papers for the
+      possession of which I had risked a convict ship and New Caledonia, and
+      which would have meant affluence for me for many days to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Theodore who had removed the cloth from my face. As soon as I had
+      recovered my breath I made a rush for him, for I wanted to strangle him.
+      But M. Arthur Geoffroy was too quick and too strong for me. He pushed me
+      back into the chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Easy, easy, M. Ratichon,&rdquo; he said pleasantly; &ldquo;do not
+      vent your wrath upon this good fellow. Believe me, though his actions may
+      have deprived you of a few thousand francs, they have also saved you from
+      lasting and biting remorse. This document, which you stole from M. de
+      Marsan and so ingeniously duplicated, involved the honour of our King and
+      our country, as well as the life of an innocent man. My sister&rsquo;s
+      fiancé would never have survived the loss of the document which had been
+      entrusted to his honour.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would have returned it to Mademoiselle to-morrow,&rdquo; I
+      murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only one copy of it, I think,&rdquo; he retorted; &ldquo;the other
+      you would have sold to whichever spy of the Danish or Russian Governments
+      happened to have employed you in this discreditable business.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you know?&rdquo; I said involuntarily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Through a very simple process of reasoning, my good M. Ratichon,&rdquo;
+      he replied blandly. &ldquo;You are a very clever man, no doubt, but the
+      cleverest of us is at times apt to make a mistake. You made two, and I
+      profited by them. Firstly, after my sister and I left you this afternoon,
+      you never made the slightest pretence of making inquiries or collecting
+      information about the mysterious theft of the document. I kept an eye on
+      you throughout the evening. You left your office and strolled for a while
+      on the quays; you had an excellent dinner at the Restaurant des Anglais;
+      then you settled down to your coffee and liqueur. Well, my good M.
+      Ratichon, obviously you would have been more active in the matter if you
+      had not known exactly where and when and how to lay your hands upon the
+      document, for the recovery of which my sister had offered you ten thousand
+      francs.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I groaned. I had not been quite so circumspect as I ought to have been,
+      but who would have thought&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have had something to do with police work in my day,&rdquo;
+      continued M. Geoffroy blandly, &ldquo;though not of late years; but my
+      knowledge of their methods is not altogether rusty and my powers of
+      observation are not yet dulled. During my sister&rsquo;s visit to you this
+      afternoon I noticed the blouse and cap of a commissionnaire lying in a
+      bundle in a corner of your room. Now, though M. de Marsan has been in a
+      burning fever since he discovered his loss, he kept just sufficient
+      presence of mind at the moment to say nothing about that loss to any of
+      the Chancellerie officials, but to go straight home to his apartments in
+      the Rue Royale and to send for my sister and for me. When we came to him
+      he was already partly delirious, but he pointed to a parcel and a letter
+      which he had brought away from his office. The parcel proved to be an
+      empty box and the letter a blank sheet of paper; but the most casual
+      inquiry of the concierge at the Chancellerie elicited the fact that a
+      commissionaire had brought these things in the course of the morning. That
+      was your second mistake, my good M. Ratichon; not a very grave one,
+      perhaps, but I have been in the police, and somehow, the moment I caught
+      sight of that blouse and cap in your office, I could not help connecting
+      it with the commissionnaire who had brought a bogus parcel and letter to
+      my future brother-in-law a few minutes before that mysterious and
+      unexplained altercation took place in the corridor.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again I groaned. I felt as a child in the hands of that horrid creature
+      who seemed to be dissecting all the thoughts which had run riot through my
+      mind these past twenty hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was all very simple, my good M. Ratichon,&rdquo; now concluded
+      my tormentor still quite amiably. &ldquo;Another time you will have to be
+      more careful, will you not? You will also have to bestow more confidence
+      upon your partner or servant. Directly I had seen that commissionnaire&rsquo;s
+      blouse and cap, I set to work to make friends with M. Theodore. When my
+      sister and I left your office in the Rue Daunou, we found him waiting for
+      us at the bottom of the stairs. Five francs loosened his tongue: he
+      suspected that you were up to some game in which you did not mean him to
+      have a share; he also told us that you had spent two hours in laborious
+      writing, and that you and he both lodged at a dilapidated little inn,
+      called the &lsquo;Grey Cat,&rsquo; in Passy. I think he was rather
+      disappointed that we did not shower more questions, and therefore more
+      emoluments, upon him. Well, after I had denounced this house to the police
+      as a Bonapartiste club, and saw it put under the usual consigne, I bribed
+      the corporal of the gendarmerie in charge of it to let me have Theodore&rsquo;s
+      company for the little job I had in hand, and also to clear the back
+      garden of sentries so as to give you a chance and the desire to escape.
+      All the rest you know. Money will do many things, my good M. Ratichon, and
+      you see how simple it all was. It would have been still more simple if the
+      stolen document had not been such an important one that the very existence
+      of it must be kept a secret even from the police. So I could not have you
+      shadowed and arrested as a thief in the usual manner! However, I have the
+      document and its ingenious copy, which is all that matters. Would to God,&rdquo;
+      he added with a suppressed curse, &ldquo;that I could get hold equally
+      easily of the Secret Service agent to whom you, a Frenchman, were going to
+      sell the honour of your country!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then it was that&mdash;though broken in spirit and burning with thoughts
+      of the punishment I would mete out to Theodore&mdash;my full faculties
+      returned to me, and I queried abruptly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would you give to get him?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five hundred francs,&rdquo; he replied without hesitation. &ldquo;Can
+      you find him?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make it a thousand,&rdquo; I retorted, &ldquo;and you shall have
+      him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you give me five hundred francs now,&rdquo; I insisted,
+      &ldquo;and another five hundred when you have the man, and I will tell
+      you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Agreed,&rdquo; he said impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I was not to be played with by him again. I waited in silence until he
+      had taken a pocket-book from the inside of his coat and counted out five
+      hundred francs, which he kept in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now&mdash;&rdquo; he commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The man,&rdquo; I then announced calmly, &ldquo;will call on me for
+      the document at my lodgings at the hostelry of the &lsquo;Grey Cat&rsquo;
+      to-morrow morning at nine o&rsquo;clock.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good,&rdquo; rejoined M. Geoffroy. &ldquo;We shall be there.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made no demur about giving me the five hundred francs, but half my
+      pleasure in receiving them vanished when I saw Theodore&rsquo;s bleary
+      eyes fixed ravenously upon them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another five hundred francs,&rdquo; M. Geoffroy went on quietly,
+      &ldquo;will be yours as soon as the spy is in our hands.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did get that further five hundred of course, for M. Charles Saurez was
+      punctual to the minute, and M. Geoffroy was there with the police to
+      apprehend him. But to think that I might have had twenty thousand&mdash;!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I had to give Theodore fifty francs on the transaction, as he
+      threatened me with the police when I talked of giving him the sack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But we were quite good friends again after that until&mdash; But you shall
+      judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. &mdash; A FOOL&rsquo;S PARADISE
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Ah! my dear Sir, I cannot tell you how poor we all were in France in that
+      year of grace 1816&mdash;so poor, indeed, that a dish of roast pork was
+      looked upon as a feast, and a new gown for the wife an unheard-of luxury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The war had ruined everyone. Twenty-two years! and hopeless humiliation
+      and defeat at the end of it. The Emperor handed over to the English; a
+      Bourbon sitting on the throne of France; crowds of foreign soldiers still
+      lording it all over the country&mdash;until the country had paid its debts
+      to her foreign invaders, and thousands of our own men still straggling
+      home through Germany and Belgium&mdash;the remnants of Napoléon&rsquo;s
+      Grand Army&mdash;ex-prisoners of war, or scattered units who had found
+      their weary way home at last, shoeless, coatless, half starved and
+      perished from cold and privations, unfit for housework, for agriculture,
+      or for industry, fit only to follow their fallen hero, as they had done
+      through a quarter of a century, to victory and to death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With me, Sir, business in Paris was almost at a standstill. I, who had
+      been the confidential agent of two kings, three democrats and one emperor;
+      I, who had held diplomatic threads in my hands which had caused thrones to
+      totter and tyrants to quake, and who had brought more criminals and
+      intriguers to book than any other man alive&mdash;I now sat in my office
+      in the Rue Daunou day after day with never a client to darken my doors,
+      even whilst crime and political intrigue were more rife in Paris than they
+      had been in the most corrupt days of the Revolution and the Consulate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I told you, I think, that I had forgiven Theodore his abominable treachery
+      in connexion with the secret naval treaty, and we were the best of friends&mdash;that
+      is, outwardly, of course. Within my inmost heart I felt, Sir, that I could
+      never again trust that shameless traitor&mdash;that I had in very truth
+      nurtured a serpent in my bosom. But I am proverbially tender-hearted. You
+      will believe me or not, I simply could not turn that vermin out into the
+      street. He deserved it! Oh, even he would have admitted when he was quite
+      sober, which was not often, that I had every right to give him the sack,
+      to send him back to the gutter whence he had come, there to grub once more
+      for scraps of filth and to stretch a half-frozen hand to the charity of
+      the passers by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I did not do it, Sir. No, I did not do it. I kept him on at the office
+      as my confidential servant; I gave him all the crumbs that fell from mine
+      own table, and he helped himself to the rest. I made as little difference
+      as I could in my intercourse with him. I continued to treat him almost as
+      an equal. The only difference I did make in our mode of life was that I no
+      longer gave him bed and board at the hostelry where I lodged in Passy, but
+      placed the chair-bedstead in the anteroom of the office permanently at his
+      disposal, and allowed him five sous a day for his breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But owing to the scarcity of business that now came my way, Theodore had
+      little or nothing to do, and he was in very truth eating his head off, and
+      with that, grumble, grumble all the time, threatening to leave me, if you
+      please, to leave my service for more remunerative occupation. As if anyone
+      else would dream of employing such an out-at-elbows mudlark&mdash;a
+      jail-bird, Sir, if you&rsquo;ll believe me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the Spring of 1816 came along. Spring, Sir, with its beauty and its
+      promises, and the thoughts of love which come eternally in the minds of
+      those who have not yet wholly done with youth. Love, Sir! I dreamed of it
+      on those long, weary afternoons in April, after I had consumed my scanty
+      repast, and whilst Theodore in the anteroom was snoring like a hog. At
+      even, when tired out and thirsty, I would sit for a while outside a humble
+      café on the outer boulevards, I watched the amorous couples wander past me
+      on their way to happiness. At night I could not sleep, and bitter were my
+      thoughts, my revilings against a cruel fate that had condemned me&mdash;a
+      man with so sensitive a heart and so generous a nature&mdash;to the
+      sorrows of perpetual solitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That, Sir, was my mood, when on a never-to-be-forgotten afternoon toward
+      the end of April, I sat mooning disconsolately in my private room and a
+      timid rat-tat at the outer door of the apartment roused Theodore from his
+      brutish slumbers. I heard him shuffling up to the door, and I hurriedly
+      put my necktie straight and smoothed my hair, which had become disordered
+      despite the fact that I had only indulged in a very abstemious déjeuner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I said that the knock at my door was in the nature of a timid rat-rat
+      I did not perhaps describe it quite accurately. It was timid, if you will
+      understand me, and yet bold, as coming from one who might hesitate to
+      enter and nevertheless feels assured of welcome. Obviously a client, I
+      thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Effectively, Sir, the next moment my eyes were gladdened by the sight of a
+      lovely woman, beautifully dressed, young, charming, smiling but to hide
+      her anxiety, trustful, and certainly wealthy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment she stepped into the room I knew that she was wealthy; there
+      was an air of assurance about her which only those are able to assume who
+      are not pestered with creditors. She wore two beautiful diamond rings upon
+      her hands outside her perfectly fitting glove, and her bonnet was adorned
+      with flowers so exquisitely fashioned that a butterfly would have been
+      deceived and would have perched on it with delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her shoes were of the finest kid, shiny at the toes like tiny mirrors,
+      whilst her dainty ankles were framed in the filmy lace frills of her
+      pantalets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within the wide brim of her bonnet her exquisite face appeared like a
+      rosebud nestling in a basket. She smiled when I rose to greet her, gave me
+      a look that sent my susceptible heart a-flutter and caused me to wish that
+      I had not taken that bottle-green coat of mine to the Mont de Piété only
+      last week. I offered her a seat, which she took, arranging her skirts
+      about her with inimitable grace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One moment,&rdquo; I added, as soon as she was seated, &ldquo;and I
+      am entirely at your service.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I took up pen and paper&mdash;an unfinished letter which I always keep
+      handy for the purpose&mdash;and wrote rapidly. It always looks well for a
+      lawyer or an <i>agent confidentiel</i> to keep a client waiting for a
+      moment or two while he attends to the enormous pressure of correspondence
+      which, if allowed to accumulate for five minutes, would immediately
+      overwhelm him. I signed and folded the letter, threw it with a nonchalant
+      air into a basket filled to the brim with others of equal importance,
+      buried my face in my hands for a few seconds as if to collect my thoughts,
+      and finally said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now, Mademoiselle, will you deign to tell me what procures me
+      the honour of your visit?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lovely creature had watched my movements with obvious impatience, a
+      frown upon her exquisite brow. But now she plunged straightway into her
+      story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; she said with that pretty, determined air which
+      became her so well, &ldquo;my name is Estelle Bachelier. I am an orphan,
+      an heiress, and have need of help and advice. I did not know to whom to
+      apply. Until three months ago I was poor and had to earn my living by
+      working in a milliner&rsquo;s shop in the Rue St. Honoré. The concierge in
+      the house where I used to lodge is my only friend, but she cannot help me
+      for reasons which will presently be made clear to you. She told me,
+      however, that she had a nephew named Theodore, who was clerk to M.
+      Ratichon, advocate and confidential agent. She gave me your address; and
+      as I knew no one else I determined to come and consult you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I flatter myself, that though my countenance is exceptionally mobile, I
+      possess marvellous powers for keeping it impassive when necessity arises.
+      In this instance, at mention of Theodore&rsquo;s name, I showed neither
+      surprise nor indignation. Yet you will readily understand that I felt
+      both. Here was that man, once more revealed as a traitor. Theodore had an
+      aunt of whom he had never as much as breathed a word. He had an aunt, and
+      that aunt a concierge&mdash;<i>ipso facto</i>, if I may so express it, a
+      woman of some substance, who, no doubt, would often have been only too
+      pleased to extend hospitality to the man who had so signally befriended
+      her nephew; a woman, Sir, who was undoubtedly possessed of savings which
+      both reason and gratitude would cause her to invest in an old-established
+      and substantial business run by a trustworthy and capable man, such, for
+      instance, as the bureau of a confidential agent in a good quarter of
+      Paris, which, with the help of a little capital, could be rendered highly
+      lucrative and beneficial to all those, concerned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I determined then and there to give Theodore a piece of my mind and to
+      insist upon an introduction to his aunt. After which I begged the
+      beautiful creature to proceed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father, Monsieur,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;died three months
+      ago, in England, whither he had emigrated when I was a mere child, leaving
+      my poor mother to struggle along for a livelihood as best she could. My
+      mother died last year, Monsieur, and I have hard a hard life; and now it
+      seems that my father made a fortune in England and left it all to me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was greatly interested in her story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first intimation I had of it, Monsieur, was three months ago,
+      when I had a letter from an English lawyer in London telling me that my
+      father, Jean Paul Bachelier&mdash;that was his name, Monsieur&mdash;had
+      died out there and made a will leaving all his money, about one hundred
+      thousand francs, to me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes!&rdquo; I murmured, for my throat felt parched and my eyes
+      dim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hundred thousand francs! Ye gods!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems,&rdquo; she proceeded demurely, &ldquo;that my father put
+      it in his will that the English lawyers were to pay me the interest on the
+      money until I married or reached the age of twenty-one. Then the whole of
+      the money was to be handed over to me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had to steady myself against the table or I would have fallen over
+      backwards! This godlike creature, to whom the sum of one hundred thousand
+      francs was to be paid over when she married, had come to me for help and
+      advice! The thought sent my brain reeling! I am so imaginative!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Proceed, Mademoiselle, I pray you,&rdquo; I contrived to say with
+      dignified calm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Monsieur, as I don&rsquo;t know a word of English, I took the
+      letter to Mr. Farewell, who is the English traveller for Madame Cécile,
+      the milliner for whom I worked. He is a kind, affable gentleman and was
+      most helpful to me. He was, as a matter of fact, just going over to
+      England the very next day. He offered to go and see the English lawyers
+      for me, and to bring me back all particulars of my dear father&rsquo;s
+      death and of my unexpected fortune.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; said I, for she had paused a moment, &ldquo;did Mr.
+      Farewell go to England on your behalf?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Monsieur. He went and returned about a fortnight later. He had
+      seen the English lawyers, who confirmed all the good news which was
+      contained in their letter. They took, it seems, a great fancy to Mr.
+      Farewell, and told him that since I was obviously too young to live alone
+      and needed a guardian to look after my interests, they would appoint him
+      my guardian, and suggested that I should make my home with him until I was
+      married or had attained the age of twenty-one. Mr. Farewell told me that
+      though this arrangement might be somewhat inconvenient in his bachelor
+      establishment, he had been unable to resist the entreaties of the English
+      lawyers, who felt that no one was more fitted for such onerous duties than
+      himself, seeing that he was English and so obviously my friend.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The scoundrel! The blackguard!&rdquo; I exclaimed in an unguarded
+      outburst of fury. . . .
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your pardon, Mademoiselle,&rdquo; I added more calmly, seeing that
+      the lovely creature was gazing at me with eyes full of astonishment not
+      unmixed with distrust, &ldquo;I am anticipating. Am I to understand, then,
+      that you have made your home with this Mr. Farewell?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Monsieur, at number sixty-five Rue des Pyramides.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he a married man?&rdquo; I asked casually.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is a widower, Monsieur.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Middle-aged?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite elderly, Monsieur.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could have screamed with joy. I was not yet forty myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why!&rdquo; she added gaily, &ldquo;he is thinking of retiring from
+      business&mdash;he is, as I said, a commercial traveller&mdash;in favour of
+      his nephew, M. Adrien Cazalès.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more I had to steady myself against the table. The room swam round
+      me. One hundred thousand francs!&mdash;a lovely creature!&mdash;an
+      unscrupulous widower!&mdash;an equally dangerous young nephew. I rose and
+      tottered to the window. I flung it wide open&mdash;a thing I never do save
+      at moments of acute crises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The breath of fresh air did me good. I returned to my desk, and was able
+      once more to assume my habitual dignity and presence of mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In all this, Mademoiselle,&rdquo; I said in my best professional
+      manner, &ldquo;I do not gather how I can be of service to you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am coming to that, Monsieur,&rdquo; she resumed after a slight
+      moment of hesitation, even as an exquisite blush suffused her damask
+      cheeks. &ldquo;You must know that at first I was very happy in the house
+      of my new guardian. He was exceedingly kind to me, though there were times
+      already when I fancied . . .&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She hesitated&mdash;more markedly this time&mdash;and the blush became
+      deeper on her cheeks. I groaned aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely he is too old,&rdquo; I suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Much too old,&rdquo; she assented emphatically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more I would have screamed with joy had not a sharp pang, like a
+      dagger-thrust, shot through my heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the nephew, eh?&rdquo; I said as jocosely, as indifferently as
+      I could. &ldquo;Young M. Cazalès? What?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she replied with perfect indifference. &ldquo;I hardly
+      ever see him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately it were not seemly for an avocat and the <i>agent
+      confidentiel</i> of half the Courts of Europe to execute the measures of a
+      polka in the presence of a client, or I would indeed have jumped up and
+      danced with glee. The happy thoughts were hammering away in my mind:
+      &ldquo;The old one is much too old&mdash;the young one she never sees!&rdquo;
+      and I could have knelt down and kissed the hem of her gown for the
+      exquisite indifference with which she had uttered those magic words:
+      &ldquo;Oh! I hardly ever see him!&rdquo;&mdash;words which converted my
+      brightest hopes into glowing possibilities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, as it was, I held my emotions marvellously in check, and with perfect
+      sang-froid once more asked the beauteous creature how I could be of
+      service to her in her need.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of late, Monsieur,&rdquo; she said, as she raised a pair of limpid,
+      candid blue eyes to mine, &ldquo;my position in Mr. Farewell&rsquo;s house
+      has become intolerable. He pursues me with his attentions, and he has
+      become insanely jealous. He will not allow me to speak to anyone, and has
+      even forbidden M. Cazalès, his own nephew, the house. Not that I care
+      about that,&rdquo; she added with an expressive shrug of the shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has forbidden M. Cazalès the house,&rdquo; rang like a paean in
+      my ear. &ldquo;Not that she cares about that! Tra la, la, la, la, la!&rdquo;
+      What I actually contrived to say with a measured and judicial air was:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you deign to entrust me with the conduct of your affairs, I
+      would at once communicate with the English lawyers in your name and
+      suggest to them the advisability of appointing another guardian. . . . I
+      would suggest, for instance . . . er . . . that I . . .&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can you do that, Monsieur?&rdquo; she broke in somewhat
+      impatiently, &ldquo;seeing that I cannot possibly tell you who these
+      lawyers are?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh?&rdquo; I queried, gasping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I neither know their names nor their residence in England.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more I gasped. &ldquo;Will you explain?&rdquo; I murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems, Monsieur, that while my dear mother lived she always
+      refused to take a single sou from my father, who had so basely deserted
+      her. Of course, she did not know that he was making a fortune over in
+      England, nor that he was making diligent inquiries as to her whereabouts
+      when he felt that he was going to die. Thus, he discovered that she had
+      died the previous year and that I was working in the atelier of Madame
+      Cécile, the well-known milliner. When the English lawyers wrote to me at
+      that address they, of course, said that they would require all my papers
+      of identification before they paid any money over to me, and so, when Mr.
+      Farewell went over to England, he took all my papers with him and . . .&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She burst into tears and exclaimed piteously:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I have nothing now, Monsieur&mdash;nothing to prove who I am!
+      Mr. Farewell took everything, even the original letter which the English
+      lawyers wrote to me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farewell,&rdquo; I urged, &ldquo;can be forced by the law to give
+      all your papers up to you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I have nothing now, Monsieur&mdash;he threatened to destroy all
+      my papers unless I promised to become his wife! And I haven&rsquo;t the
+      least idea how and where to find the English lawyers. I don&rsquo;t
+      remember either their name or their address; and if I did, how could I
+      prove my identity to their satisfaction? I don&rsquo;t know a soul in
+      Paris save a few irresponsible millinery apprentices and Madame Cécile,
+      who, no doubt, is hand in glove with Mr. Farewell. I am all alone in the
+      world and friendless. . . . I have come to you, Monsieur, in my distress .
+      . . and you will help me, will you not?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked more adorable in grief than she had ever done before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To tell you that at this moment visions floated in my mind, before which
+      Dante&rsquo;s visions of Paradise would seem pale and tame, were but to
+      put it mildly. I was literally soaring in heaven. For you see I am a man
+      of intellect and of action. No sooner do I see possibilities before me
+      than my brain soars in an empyrean whilst conceiving daring plans for my
+      body&rsquo;s permanent abode in elysium. At this present moment, for
+      instance&mdash;to name but a few of the beatific visions which literally
+      dazzled me with their radiance&mdash;I could see my fair client as a
+      lovely and blushing bride by my side, even whilst Messieurs X. and X., the
+      two still unknown English lawyers, handed me a heavy bag which bore the
+      legend &ldquo;One hundred thousand francs.&rdquo; I could see . . . But I
+      had not the time now to dwell on these ravishing dreams. The beauteous
+      creature was waiting for my decision. She had placed her fate in my hands;
+      I placed my hand on my heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle,&rdquo; I said solemnly, &ldquo;I will be your adviser
+      and your friend. Give me but a few days&rsquo; grace, every hour, every
+      minute of which I will spend in your service. At the end of that time I
+      will not only have learned the name and address of the English lawyers,
+      but I will have communicated with them on your behalf, and all your papers
+      proving your identity will be in your hands. Then we can come to a
+      decision with regard to a happier and more comfortable home for you. In
+      the meanwhile I entreat you to do nothing that may precipitate Mr.
+      Farewell&rsquo;s actions. Do not encourage his advances, but do not
+      repulse them, and above all keep me well informed of everything that goes
+      on in his house.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke a few words of touching gratitude, then she rose, and with a
+      gesture of exquisite grace she extracted a hundred-franc note from her
+      reticule and placed it upon my desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle,&rdquo; I protested with splendid dignity, &ldquo;I
+      have done nothing as yet.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! but you will, Monsieur,&rdquo; she entreated in accents that
+      completed my subjugation to her charms. &ldquo;Besides, you do not know
+      me! How could I expect you to work for me and not to know if, in the end,
+      I should repay you for all your trouble? I pray you to take this small sum
+      without demur. Mr. Farewell keeps me well supplied with pocket money.
+      There will be another hundred for you when you place the papers in my
+      hands.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I bowed to her, and, having once more assured her of my unswerving loyalty
+      to her interests, I accompanied her to the door, and anon saw her graceful
+      figure slowly descend the stairs and then disappear along the corridor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I went back to my room, and was only just in time to catch Theodore
+      calmly pocketing the hundred-franc note which my fair client had left on
+      the table. I secured the note and I didn&rsquo;t give him a black eye, for
+      it was no use putting him in a bad temper when there was so much to do.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      2.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      That very same evening I interviewed the concierge at No. 65 Rue des
+      Pyramides. From him I learned that Mr. Farewell lived on a very small
+      income on the top floor of the house, that his household consisted of a
+      housekeeper who cooked and did the work of the apartment for him, and an
+      odd-job man who came every morning to clean boots, knives, draw water and
+      carry up fuel from below. I also learned that there was a good deal of
+      gossip in the house anent the presence in Mr. Farewell&rsquo;s bachelor
+      establishment of a young and beautiful girl, whom he tried to keep a
+      virtual prisoner under his eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, dressed in a shabby blouse, alpaca cap, and trousers
+      frayed out round the ankles, I&mdash;Hector Ratichon, the confidant of
+      kings&mdash;was lounging under the porte-cochere of No. 65 Rue des
+      Pyramides. I was watching the movements of a man, similarly attired to
+      myself, as he crossed and recrossed the courtyard to draw water from the
+      well or to fetch wood from one of the sheds, and then disappeared up the
+      main staircase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A casual, tactful inquiry of the concierge assured me that that man was
+      indeed in the employ of Mr. Farewell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I waited as patiently and inconspicuously as I could, and at ten o&rsquo;clock
+      I saw that my man had obviously finished his work for the morning and had
+      finally come down the stairs ready to go home. I followed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will not speak of the long halt in the cabaret du Chien Noir, where he
+      spent an hour and a half in the company of his friends, playing dominoes
+      and drinking eau-de-vie whilst I had perforce to cool my heels outside.
+      Suffice it to say that I did follow him to his house just behind the
+      fish-market, and that half an hour later, tired out but triumphant, having
+      knocked at his door, I was admitted into the squalid room which he
+      occupied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He surveyed me with obvious mistrust, but I soon reassured him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My friend Mr. Farewell has recommended you to me,&rdquo; I said
+      with my usual affability. &ldquo;I was telling him just awhile ago that I
+      needed a man to look after my office in the Rue Daunou of a morning, and
+      he told me that in you I would find just the man I wanted.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hm!&rdquo; grunted the fellow, very sullenly I thought. &ldquo;I
+      work for Farewell in the mornings. Why should he recommend me to you? Am I
+      not giving satisfaction?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfect satisfaction,&rdquo; I rejoined urbanely; &ldquo;that is
+      just the point. Mr. Farewell desires to do you a good turn seeing that I
+      offered to pay you twenty sous for your morning&rsquo;s work instead of
+      the ten which you are getting from him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw his eyes glisten at mention of the twenty sous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;d best go and tell him then that I am taking on your work,&rdquo;
+      he said; and his tone was no longer sullen now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite unnecessary,&rdquo; I rejoined. &ldquo;I arranged everything
+      with Mr. Farewell before I came to you. He has already found someone else
+      to do his work, and I shall want you to be at my office by seven o&rsquo;clock
+      to-morrow morning. And,&rdquo; I added, for I am always cautious and
+      judicious, and I now placed a piece of silver in his hand, &ldquo;here are
+      the first twenty sous on account.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took the money and promptly became very civil, even obsequious. He not
+      only accompanied me to the door, but all the way down the stairs, and
+      assured me all the time that he would do his best to give me entire
+      satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I left my address with him, and sure enough, he turned up at the office
+      the next morning at seven o&rsquo;clock precisely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Theodore had had my orders to direct him in his work, and I was left free
+      to enact the second scene of the moving drama in which I was determined to
+      play the hero and to ring down the curtain to the sound of the wedding
+      bells.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      3.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      I took on the work of odd-job man at 65 Rue des Pyramides. Yes, I! Even I,
+      who had sat in the private room of an emperor discussing the destinies of
+      Europe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But with a beautiful bride and one hundred thousand francs as my goal I
+      would have worked in a coal mine or on the galleys for such a guerdon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The task, I must tell you, was terribly irksome to a man of my
+      sensibilities, endowed with an active mind and a vivid imagination. The
+      dreary monotony of fetching water and fuel from below and polishing the
+      boots of that arch-scoundrel Farewell would have made a less stout spirit
+      quail. I had, of course, seen through the scoundrel&rsquo;s game at once.
+      He had rendered Estelle quite helpless by keeping all her papers of
+      identification and by withholding from her all the letters which, no
+      doubt, the English lawyers wrote to her from time to time. Thus she was
+      entirely in his power. But, thank heaven! only momentarily, for I, Hector
+      Ratichon, argus-eyed, was on the watch. Now and then the monotony of my
+      existence and the hardship of my task were relieved by a brief glimpse of
+      Estelle or a smile of understanding from her lips; now and then she would
+      contrive to murmur as she brushed past me while I was polishing the
+      scoundrel&rsquo;s study floor, &ldquo;Any luck yet?&rdquo; And this quiet
+      understanding between us gave me courage to go on with my task.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After three days I had conclusively made up my mind that Mr. Farewell kept
+      his valuable papers in the drawer of the bureau in the study. After that I
+      always kept a lump of wax ready for use in my pocket. On the fifth day I
+      was very nearly caught trying to take an impression of the lock of the
+      bureau drawer. On the seventh I succeeded, and took the impression over to
+      a locksmith I knew of, and gave him an order to have a key made to fit it
+      immediately. On the ninth day I had the key.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then commenced a series of disappointments and of unprofitable days which
+      would have daunted one less bold and less determined. I don&rsquo;t think
+      that Farewell ever suspected me, but it is a fact that never once did he
+      leave me alone in his study whilst I was at work there polishing the oak
+      floor. And in the meanwhile I could see how he was pursuing my beautiful
+      Estelle with his unwelcome attentions. At times I feared that he meant to
+      abduct her; his was a powerful personality and she seemed like a little
+      bird fighting against the fascination of a serpent. Latterly, too, an air
+      of discouragement seemed to dwell upon her lovely face. I was half
+      distraught with anxiety, and once or twice, whilst I knelt upon the hard
+      floor, scrubbing and polishing as if my life depended on it, whilst he&mdash;the
+      unscrupulous scoundrel&mdash;sat calmly at his desk, reading or writing, I
+      used to feel as if the next moment I must attack him with my
+      scrubbing-brush and knock him down senseless whilst I ransacked his
+      drawers. My horror of anything approaching violence saved me from so
+      foolish a step.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then it was that in the hour of my blackest despair a flash of genius
+      pierced through the darkness of my misery. For some days now Madame
+      Dupont, Farewell&rsquo;s housekeeper, had been exceedingly affable to me.
+      Every morning now, when I came to work, there was a cup of hot coffee
+      waiting for me, and, when I left, a small parcel of something appetizing
+      for me to take away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hallo!&rdquo; I said to myself one day, when, over a cup of coffee,
+      I caught sight of her small, piggy eyes leering at me with an unmistakable
+      expression of admiration. &ldquo;Does salvation lie where I least expected
+      it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the moment I did nothing more than wink at the fat old thing, but the
+      next morning I had my arm round her waist&mdash;a metre and a quarter,
+      Sir, where it was tied in the middle&mdash;and had imprinted a kiss upon
+      her glossy cheek. What that love-making cost me I cannot attempt to
+      describe. Once Estelle came into the kitchen when I was staggering under a
+      load of a hundred kilos sitting on my knee. The reproachful glance which
+      she cast at me filled my soul with unspeakable sorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I was working for her dear sake; working that I might win her in the
+      end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A week later Mr. Farewell was absent from home for the evening. Estelle
+      had retired to her room, and I was a welcome visitor in the kitchen, where
+      Madame Dupont had laid out a regular feast for me. I had brought a couple
+      of bottles of champagne with me and, what with the unaccustomed drink and
+      the ogling and love-making to which I treated her, a hundred kilos of
+      foolish womanhood was soon hopelessly addled and incapable. I managed to
+      drag her to the sofa, where she remained quite still, with a beatific
+      smile upon her podgy face, her eyes swimming in happy tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had not a moment to lose. The very next minute I was in the study and
+      with a steady hand was opening the drawers of the bureau and turning over
+      the letters and papers which I found therein.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly an exclamation of triumph escaped my lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I held a packet in my hand on which was written in a clear hand: &ldquo;The
+      papers of Mlle. Estelle Bachelier.&rdquo; A brief examination of the
+      packet sufficed. It consisted of a number of letters written in English,
+      which language I only partially understand, but they all bore the same
+      signature, &ldquo;John Pike and Sons, solicitors,&rdquo; and the address
+      was at the top, &ldquo;168 Cornhill, London.&rdquo; It also contained my
+      Estelle&rsquo;s birth certificate, her mother&rsquo;s marriage
+      certificate, and her police registration card.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was rapt in the contemplation of my own ingenuity in having thus
+      brilliantly attained my goal, when a stealthy noise in the next room
+      roused me from my trance and brought up vividly to my mind the awful risks
+      which I was running at this moment. I turned like an animal at bay to see
+      Estelle&rsquo;s beautiful face peeping at me through the half-open door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hist!&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;Have you got the papers?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I waved the packet triumphantly. She, excited and adorable, stepped
+      briskly into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me see,&rdquo; she murmured excitedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I, emboldened by success, cried gaily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not till I have received compensation for all that I have done and
+      endured.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Compensation?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the shape of a kiss.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh! I won&rsquo;t say that she threw herself in my arms then and there.
+      No, no! She demurred. All young girls, it seems, demur under the
+      circumstances; but she was adorable, coy and tender in turns, pouting and
+      coaxing, and playing like a kitten till she had taken the papers from me
+      and, with a woman&rsquo;s natural curiosity, had turned the English
+      letters over and over, even though she could not read a word of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, Sir, in the midst of her innocent frolic and at the very moment when
+      I was on the point of snatching the kiss which she had so tantalizingly
+      denied me, we heard the opening and closing of the front door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Farewell had come home, and there was no other egress from the study
+      save the sitting-room, which in its turn had no other egress but the door
+      leading into the very passage where even now Mr. Farewell was standing,
+      hanging up his hat and cloak on the rack.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      4.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      We stood hand in hand&mdash;Estelle and I&mdash;fronting the door through
+      which Mr. Farewell would presently appear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-night we fly together,&rdquo; I declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where to?&rdquo; she whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you go to the woman at your former lodgings?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I will take you there to-night. To-morrow we will be married
+      before the Procureur du Roi; in the evening we leave for England.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes!&rdquo; she murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When he comes in I&rsquo;ll engage him in conversation,&rdquo; I
+      continued hurriedly. &ldquo;You make a dash for the door and run
+      downstairs as fast as you can. I&rsquo;ll follow as quickly as may be and
+      meet you under the porte-cochere.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had only just time to nod assent when the door which gave on the
+      sitting-room was pushed open, and Farewell, unconscious at first of our
+      presence, stepped quietly into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Estelle,&rdquo; he cried, more puzzled than angry when he suddenly
+      caught sight of us both, &ldquo;what are you doing here with that lout?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was trembling with excitement&mdash;not fear, of course, though Farewell
+      was a powerful-looking man, a head taller than I was. I stepped boldly
+      forward, covering the adored one with my body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The lout,&rdquo; I said with calm dignity, &ldquo;has frustrated
+      the machinations of a knave. To-morrow I go to England in order to place
+      Mademoiselle Estelle Bachelier under the protection of her legal
+      guardians, Messieurs Pike and Sons, solicitors, of London.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave a cry of rage, and before I could retire to some safe entrenchment
+      behind the table or the sofa, he was upon me like a mad dog. He had me by
+      the throat, and I had rolled backwards down on to the floor, with him on
+      the top of me, squeezing the breath out of me till I verily thought that
+      my last hour had come. Estelle had run out of the room like a startled
+      hare. This, of course, was in accordance with my instructions to her, but
+      I could not help wishing then that she had been less obedient and somewhat
+      more helpful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As it was, I was beginning to feel a mere worm in the grip of that savage
+      scoundrel, whose face I could perceive just above me, distorted with
+      passion, whilst hoarse ejaculations escaped his trembling lips:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You meddlesome fool! You oaf! You toad! This for your interference!&rdquo;
+      he added as he gave me a vigorous punch on the head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt my senses reeling. My head was swimming, my eyes no longer could
+      see distinctly. It seemed as if an unbearable pressure upon my chest would
+      finally squeeze the last breath out of my body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was trying to remember the prayers I used to murmur at my mother&rsquo;s
+      knee, for verily I thought that I was dying, when suddenly, through my
+      fading senses, came the sound of a long, hoarse cry, whilst the floor was
+      shaken as with an earthquake. The next moment the pressure on my chest
+      seemed to relax. I could hear Farewell&rsquo;s voice uttering language
+      such as it would be impossible for me to put on record; and through it all
+      hoarse and convulsive cries of: &ldquo;You shan&rsquo;t hurt him&mdash;you
+      limb of Satan, you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gradually strength returned to me. I could see as well as hear, and what I
+      saw filled me with wonder and with pride. Wonder at Ma&rsquo;ame Dupont&rsquo;s
+      pluck! Pride in that her love for me had given such power to her mighty
+      arms! Aroused from her slumbers by the sound of the scuffle, she had run
+      to the study, only to find me in deadly peril of my life. Without a second&rsquo;s
+      hesitation she had rushed on Farewell, seized him by the collar, pulled
+      him away from me, and then thrown the whole weight of her hundred kilos
+      upon him, rendering him helpless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, woman! lovely, selfless woman! My heart a prey to remorse, in that I
+      could not remain in order to thank my plucky deliverer, I nevertheless
+      finally struggled to my feet and fled from the apartment and down the
+      stairs, never drawing breath till I felt Estelle&rsquo;s hand resting
+      confidingly upon my arm.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      5.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      I took her to the house where she used to lodge, and placed her under the
+      care of the kind concierge who was Theodore&rsquo;s aunt. Then I, too,
+      went home, determined to get a good night&rsquo;s rest. The morning would
+      be a busy one for me. There would be the special licence to get, the cure
+      of St. Jacques to interview, the religious ceremony to arrange for, and
+      the places to book on the stagecoach for Boulogne <i>en route</i> for
+      England&mdash;and fortune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was supremely happy and slept the sleep of the just. I was up betimes
+      and started on my round of business at eight o&rsquo;clock the next
+      morning. I was a little troubled about money, because when I had paid for
+      the licence and given to the cure the required fee for the religious
+      service and ceremony, I had only five francs left out of the hundred which
+      the adored one had given me. However, I booked the seats on the
+      stage-coach and determined to trust to luck. Once Estelle was my wife, all
+      money care would be at an end, since no power on earth could stand between
+      me and the hundred thousand francs, the happy goal for which I had so ably
+      striven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The marriage ceremony was fixed for eleven o&rsquo;clock, and it was just
+      upon ten when, at last, with a light heart and springy step, I ran up the
+      dingy staircase which led to the adored one&rsquo;s apartments. I knocked
+      at the door. It was opened by a young man, who with a smile courteously
+      bade me enter. I felt a little bewildered&mdash;and slightly annoyed. My
+      Estelle should not receive visits from young men at this hour. I pushed
+      past the intruder in the passage and walked boldly into the room beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Estelle was sitting upon the sofa, her eyes bright, her mouth smiling, a
+      dimple in each cheek. I approached her with outstretched arms, but she
+      paid no heed to me, and turned to the young man, who had followed me into
+      the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adrien,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;this is kind M. Ratichon, who at
+      risk of his life obtained for us all my papers of identification and also
+      the valuable name and address of the English lawyers.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; added the young man as he extended his hand to me,
+      &ldquo;Estelle and I will remain eternally your debtors.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I struck at the hand which he had so impudently held out to me and turned
+      to Estelle with my usual dignified calm, but with wrath expressed in every
+      line of my face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Estelle,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;what is the meaning of this?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she retorted with one of her provoking smiles, &ldquo;you
+      must not call me Estelle, you know, or Adrien will smack your face. We are
+      indeed grateful to you, my good M. Ratichon,&rdquo; she continued more
+      seriously, &ldquo;and though I only promised you another hundred francs
+      when your work for me was completed, my husband and I have decided to give
+      you a thousand francs in view of the risks which you ran on our behalf.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your husband!&rdquo; I stammered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was married to M. Adrien Cazalès a month ago,&rdquo; she said,
+      &ldquo;but we had perforce to keep our marriage a secret, because Mr.
+      Farewell once vowed to me that unless I became his wife he would destroy
+      all my papers of identification, and then&mdash;even if I ever succeeded
+      in discovering who were the English lawyers who had charge of my father&rsquo;s
+      money&mdash;I could never prove it to them that I and no one else was
+      entitled to it. But for you, dear M. Ratichon,&rdquo; added the cruel and
+      shameless one, &ldquo;I should indeed never have succeeded.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of this overwhelming cataclysm I am proud to say that I
+      retained mastery over my rage and contrived to say with perfect calm:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why have deceived me, Mademoiselle? Why have kept your marriage
+      a secret from me? Was I not toiling and working and risking my life for
+      you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And would you have worked quite so enthusiastically for me,&rdquo;
+      queried the false one archly, &ldquo;if I had told you everything?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I groaned. Perhaps she was right. I don&rsquo;t know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I took the thousand francs and never saw M. and Mme. Cazalès again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I met Ma&rsquo;ame Dupont by accident soon after. She has left Mr.
+      Farewell&rsquo;s service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She still weighs one hundred kilos.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I often call on her of an evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, well!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. &mdash; ON THE BRINK
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      You would have thought that after the shameful way in which Theodore
+      treated me in the matter of the secret treaty that I would then and there
+      have turned him out of doors, sent him back to grub for scraps out of the
+      gutter, and hardened my heart once and for all against that snake in the
+      grass whom I had nurtured in my bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, as no doubt you have remarked ere this, I have been burdened by
+      Nature with an over-sensitive heart. It is a burden, my dear Sir, and
+      though I have suffered inexpressibly under it, I nevertheless agree with
+      the English poet, George Crabbe, whose works I have read with a great deal
+      of pleasure and profit in the original tongue, and who avers in one of his
+      inimitable &ldquo;Tales&rdquo; that it is &ldquo;better to love amiss than
+      nothing to have loved.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not that I loved Theodore, you understand? But he and I had shared so many
+      ups and downs together of late that I was loath to think of him as reduced
+      to begging his bread in the streets. Then I kept him by me, for I thought
+      that he might at times be useful to me in my business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I kept him to my hurt, as you will presently see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In those days&mdash;I am now speaking of the time immediately following
+      the Restoration of our beloved King Louis XVIII to the throne of his
+      forbears&mdash;Parisian society was, as it were, divided into two distinct
+      categories: those who had become impoverished by the revolution and the
+      wars of the Empire, and those who had made their fortunes thereby. Among
+      the former was M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, a handsome young officer of
+      cavalry; and among the latter was one Mauruss Mosenstein, a usurer of the
+      Jewish persuasion, whose wealth was reputed in millions, and who had a
+      handsome daughter biblically named Rachel, who a year ago had become
+      Madame la Marquise de Firmin-Latour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the first moment that this brilliant young couple appeared upon the
+      firmament of Parisian society I took a keen interest in all their doings.
+      In those days, you understand, it was in the essence of my business to
+      know as much as possible of the private affairs of people in their
+      position, and instinct had at once told me that in the case of M. le
+      Marquis de Firmin-Latour such knowledge might prove very remunerative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus I very soon found out that M. le Marquis had not a single louis of
+      his own to bless himself with, and that it was Papa Mosenstein&rsquo;s
+      millions that kept up the young people&rsquo;s magnificent establishment
+      in the Rue de Grammont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I also found out that Mme. la Marquise was some dozen years older than
+      Monsieur, and that she had been a widow when she married him. There were
+      rumours that her first marriage had not been a happy one. The husband, M.
+      le Compte de Naquet, had been a gambler and a spendthrift, and had
+      dissipated as much of his wife&rsquo;s fortune as he could lay his hands
+      on, until one day he went off on a voyage to America, or goodness knows
+      where, and was never heard of again. Mme. la Comtesse, as she then was,
+      did not grieve over her loss; indeed, she returned to the bosom of her
+      family, and her father&mdash;a shrewd usurer, who had amassed an enormous
+      fortune during the wars&mdash;succeeded, with the aid of his apparently
+      bottomless moneybags, in having his first son-in-law declared deceased by
+      Royal decree, so as to enable the beautiful Rachel to contract another,
+      yet more brilliant alliance, as far as name and lineage were concerned,
+      with the Marquis de Firmin-Latour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, I learned that the worthy Israelite&rsquo;s one passion was the
+      social advancement of his daughter, whom he worshipped. So, as soon as the
+      marriage was consummated and the young people were home from their
+      honeymoon, he fitted up for their use the most extravagantly sumptuous
+      apartment Paris had ever seen. Nothing seemed too good or too luxurious
+      for Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour. He desired her to cut a brilliant
+      figure in Paris society&mdash;nay, to be the Ville Lumiere&rsquo;s
+      brightest and most particular star. After the town house he bought a
+      chateau in the country, horses and carriages, which he placed at the
+      disposal of the young couple; he kept up an army of servants for them, and
+      replenished their cellars with the choicest wines. He threw money about
+      for diamonds and pearls which his daughter wore, and paid all his
+      son-in-law&rsquo;s tailors&rsquo; and shirt-makers&rsquo; bills. But
+      always the money was his, you understand? The house in Paris was his, so
+      was the chateau on the Loire; he lent them to his daughter. He lent her
+      the diamonds, and the carriages, and the boxes at the opera and the
+      Français. But here his generosity ended. He had been deceived in his
+      daughter&rsquo;s first husband; some of the money which he had given her
+      had gone to pay the gambling debts of an unscrupulous spendthrift. He was
+      determined that this should not occur again. A man might spend his wife&rsquo;s
+      money&mdash;indeed, the law placed most of it at his disposal in those
+      days&mdash;but he could not touch or mortgage one sou that belonged to his
+      father-in-law. And, strangely enough, Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour
+      acquiesced and aided her father in his determination. Whether it was the
+      Jewish blood in her, or merely obedience to old Mosenstein&rsquo;s whim,
+      it were impossible to say. Certain it is that out of the lavish pin-money
+      which her father gave her as a free gift from time to time, she only doled
+      out a meagre allowance to her husband, and although she had everything she
+      wanted, M. le Marquis on his side had often less than twenty francs in his
+      pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A very humiliating position, you will admit, Sir, for a dashing young
+      cavalry officer. Often have I seen him gnawing his finger-nails with rage
+      when, at the end of a copious dinner in one of the fashionable restaurants&mdash;where
+      I myself was engaged in a business capacity to keep an eye on possibly
+      light-fingered customers&mdash;it would be Mme. la Marquise who paid the
+      bill, even gave the pourboire to the waiter. At such times my heart would
+      be filled with pity for his misfortunes, and, in my own proud and lofty
+      independence, I felt that I did not envy him his wife&rsquo;s millions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course, he borrowed from every usurer in the city for as long as they
+      would lend him any money; but now he was up to his eyes in debt, and there
+      was not a Jew inside France who would have lent him one hundred francs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You see, his precarious position was as well known as were his extravagant
+      tastes and the obstinate parsimoniousness of M. Mosenstein.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But such men as M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, you understand, Sir, are
+      destined by Nature first and by fortuitous circumstances afterwards to
+      become the clients of men of ability like myself. I knew that sooner or
+      later the elegant young soldier would be forced to seek the advice of
+      someone wiser than himself, for indeed his present situation could not
+      last much longer. It would soon be &ldquo;sink&rdquo; with him, for he
+      could no longer &ldquo;swim.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I was determined that when that time came he should turn to me as the
+      drowning man turns to the straw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So where M. le Marquis went in public I went, when possible. I was biding
+      my time, and wisely too, as you will judge.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      2.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Then one day our eyes met: not in a fashionable restaurant, I may tell
+      you, but in a discreet one situated on the slopes of Montmartre. I was
+      there alone, sipping a cup of coffee after a frugal dinner. I had drifted
+      in there chiefly because I had quite accidentally caught sight of M. le
+      Marquis de Firmin-Latour walking arm-in-arm up the Rue Lepic with a lady
+      who was both youthful and charming&mdash;a well-known dancer at the opera.
+      Presently I saw him turn into that discreet little restaurant, where, in
+      very truth, it was not likely that Mme. la Marquise would follow him. But
+      I did. What made me do it, I cannot say; but for some time now it had been
+      my wish to make the personal acquaintance of M. de Firmin-Latour, and I
+      lost no opportunity which might help me to attain this desire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow the man interested me. His social and financial position was
+      peculiar, you will admit, and here, methought, was the beginning of an
+      adventure which might prove the turning-point in his career and . . . my
+      opportunity. I was not wrong, as you will presently see. Whilst silently
+      eating my simple dinner, I watched M. de Firmin-Latour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had started the evening by being very gay; he had ordered champagne and
+      a succulent meal, and chatted light-heartedly with his companion, until
+      presently three young women, flashily dressed, made noisy irruption into
+      the restaurant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. de Firmin-Latour&rsquo;s friend hailed them, introduced them to him,
+      and soon he was host, not to one lady, but to four, and instead of two
+      dinners he had to order five, and more champagne, and then dessert&mdash;peaches,
+      strawberries, bonbons, liqueurs, flowers, and what not, until I could see
+      that the bill which presently he would be called upon to pay would amount
+      to far more than his quarterly allowance from Mme. la Marquise, far more,
+      presumably, than he had in his pocket at the present moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My brain works with marvellous rapidity, as you know. Already I had made
+      up my mind to see the little comedy through to the end, and I watched with
+      a good deal of interest and some pity the clouds of anxiety gathering over
+      M. de Firmin-Latour&rsquo;s brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dinner party lasted some considerable time; then the inevitable
+      cataclysm occurred. The ladies were busy chattering and rouging their lips
+      when the bill was presented. They affected to see and hear nothing: it is
+      a way ladies have when dinner has to be paid for; but I saw and heard
+      everything. The waiter stood by, silent and obsequious at first, whilst M.
+      le Marquis hunted through all his pockets. Then there was some whispered
+      colloquy, and the waiter&rsquo;s attitude lost something of its correct
+      dignity. After that the proprietor was called, and the whispered colloquy
+      degenerated into altercation, whilst the ladies&mdash;not at all unaware
+      of the situation&mdash;giggled amongst themselves. Finally, M. le Marquis
+      offered a promissory note, which was refused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then it was that our eyes met. M. de Firmin-Latour had flushed to the
+      roots of his hair. His situation was indeed desperate, and my opportunity
+      had come. With consummate sang-froid, I advanced towards the agitated
+      group composed of M. le Marquis, the proprietor, and the head waiter. I
+      glanced at the bill, the cause of all this turmoil, which reposed on a
+      metal salver in the head waiter&rsquo;s hand, and with a brief:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If M. le Marquis will allow me . . .&rdquo; I produced my
+      pocket-book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bill was for nine hundred francs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first M. le Marquis thought that I was about to pay it&mdash;and so did
+      the proprietor of the establishment, who made a movement as if he would
+      lie down on the floor and lick my boots. But not so. To begin with, I did
+      not happen to possess nine hundred francs, and if I did, I should not Have
+      been fool enough to lend them to this young scapegrace. No! What I did was
+      to extract from my notebook a card, one of a series which I always keep by
+      me in case of an emergency like the present one. It bore the legend:
+      &ldquo;Comte Hercule de Montjoie, secrétaire particulier de M. le Duc d&rsquo;Otrante,&rdquo;
+      and below it the address, &ldquo;Palais du Commissariat de Police, 12 Quai
+      d&rsquo;Orsay.&rdquo; This card I presented with a graceful flourish of
+      the arm to the proprietor of the establishment, whilst I said with that
+      lofty self-assurance which is one of my finest attributes and which I have
+      never seen equalled:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M. le Marquis is my friend. I will be guarantee for this trifling
+      amount.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The proprietor and head waiter stammered excuses. Private secretary of M.
+      le Duc d&rsquo;Otrante! Think of it! It is not often that such personages
+      deign to frequent the .restaurants of Montmartre. M. le Marquis, on the
+      other hand, looked completely bewildered, whilst I, taking advantage of
+      the situation, seized him familiarly by the arm, and leading him toward
+      the door, I said with condescending urbanity:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One word with you, my dear Marquis. It is so long since we have
+      met.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I bowed to the ladies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mesdames,&rdquo; I said, and was gratified to see that they
+      followed my dramatic exit with eyes of appreciation and of wonder. The
+      proprietor himself offered me my hat, and a moment or two later M. de
+      Firmin-Latour and I were out together in the Rue Lepic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Comte,&rdquo; he said as soon as he had recovered his
+      breath, &ldquo;how can I think you? . . .&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not now, Monsieur, not now,&rdquo; I replied. &ldquo;You have only
+      just time to make your way as quickly as you can back to your palace in
+      the Rue de Grammont before our friend the proprietor discovers the several
+      mistakes which he has made in the past few minutes and vents his wrath
+      upon your fair guests.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right,&rdquo; he rejoined lightly. &ldquo;But I will have
+      the pleasure to call on you to-morrow at the Palais du Commissariat.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do no such thing, Monsieur le Marquis,&rdquo; I retorted with a
+      pleasant laugh. &ldquo;You would not find me there.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;&rdquo; he stammered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; I broke in with my wonted business-like and persuasive
+      manner, &ldquo;if you think that I have conducted this delicate affair for
+      you with tact and discretion, then, in your own interest I should advise
+      you to call on me at my private office, No. 96 Rue Daunou. Hector
+      Ratichon, at your service.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He appeared more bewildered than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rue Daunou,&rdquo; he murmured. &ldquo;Ratichon!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Private inquiry and confidential agent,&rdquo; I rejoined. &ldquo;My
+      brains are at your service should you desire to extricate yourself from
+      the humiliating financial position in which it has been my good luck to
+      find you, and yours to meet with me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With that I left him, Sir, to walk away or stay as he pleased. As for me,
+      I went quickly down the street. I felt that the situation was absolutely
+      perfect; to have spoken another word might have spoilt it. Moreover, there
+      was no knowing how soon the proprietor of that humble hostelry would begin
+      to have doubts as to the identity of the private secretary of M. le Duc d&rsquo;Otrante.
+      So I was best out of the way.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      3.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The very next day M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour called upon me at my
+      office in the Rue Daunou. Theodore let him in, and the first thing that
+      struck me about him was his curt, haughty manner and the look of disdain
+      wherewith he regarded the humble appointments of my business premises. He
+      himself was magnificently dressed, I may tell you. His bottle-green coat
+      was of the finest cloth and the most perfect cut I had ever seen. His
+      kerseymere pantaloons fitted him without a wrinkle. He wore gloves, he
+      carried a muff of priceless zibeline, and in his cravat there was a
+      diamond the size of a broad bean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He also carried a malacca cane, which he deposited upon my desk, and a
+      gold-rimmed spy-glass which, with a gesture of supreme affectation, he
+      raised to his eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, M. Hector Ratichon,&rdquo; he said abruptly, &ldquo;perhaps
+      you will be good enough to explain.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had risen when he entered. But now I sat down again and coolly pointed
+      to the best chair in the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you give yourself the trouble to sit down, M. le Marquis?&rdquo;
+      I riposted blandly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He called me names&mdash;rude names! but I took no notice of that . . .
+      and he sat down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now!&rdquo; he said once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it you desire to know, M. le Marquis?&rdquo; I queried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why you interfered in my affairs last night?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you complain?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he admitted reluctantly, &ldquo;but I don&rsquo;t
+      understand your object.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My object was to serve you then,&rdquo; I rejoined quietly, &ldquo;and
+      later.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by &lsquo;later&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-day,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;to-morrow; whenever your present
+      position becomes absolutely unendurable.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is that now,&rdquo; he said with a savage oath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought as much,&rdquo; was my curt comment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And do you mean to assert,&rdquo; he went on more earnestly,
+      &ldquo;that you can find a way out of it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you desire it&mdash;yes!&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew his chair nearer to my desk, and I leaned forward, with my elbows
+      on the table, the finger-tips of one hand in contact with those of the
+      other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us begin by reviewing the situation, shall we, Monsieur?&rdquo;
+      I began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you wish,&rdquo; he said curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a gentleman of refined, not to say luxurious tastes, who
+      finds himself absolutely without means to gratify them. Is that so?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have a wife and a father-in-law who, whilst lavishing costly
+      treasures upon you, leave you in a humiliating dependence on them for
+      actual money.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again he nodded approvingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Human nature,&rdquo; I continued with gentle indulgence, &ldquo;being
+      what it is, you pine after what you do not possess&mdash;namely, money.
+      Houses, equipages, servants, even good food and wine, are nothing to you
+      beside that earnest desire for money that you can call your own, and
+      which, if only you had it, you could spend at your pleasure.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the point, man, to the point!&rdquo; he broke in impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One moment, M. le Marquis, and I have done. But first of all, with
+      your permission, shall we also review the assets in your life which we
+      will have to use in order to arrive at the gratification of your earnest
+      wish?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Assets? What do you mean?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The means to our end. You want money; we must find the means to get
+      it for you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I begin to understand,&rdquo; he said, and drew his chair another
+      inch or two closer to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Firstly, M. le Marquis,&rdquo; I resumed, and now my voice had
+      become earnest and incisive, &ldquo;firstly you have a wife, then you have
+      a father-in-law whose wealth is beyond the dreams of humble people like
+      myself, and whose one great passion in life is the social position of the
+      daughter whom he worships. Now,&rdquo; I added, and with the tip of my
+      little finger I touched the sleeve of my aristocratic client, &ldquo;here
+      at once is your first asset. Get at the money-bags of papa by threatening
+      the social position of his daughter.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whereupon my young gentleman jumped to his feet and swore and abused me
+      for a mudlark and a muckworm and I don&rsquo;t know what. He seized his
+      malacca cane and threatened me with it, and asked me how the devil I dared
+      thus to speak of Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour. He cursed, and he
+      stormed and he raved of his sixteen quarterings and of my loutishness. He
+      did everything in fact except walk out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I let him go on quite quietly. It was part of his programme, and we had to
+      go through the performance. As soon as he gave me the chance of putting in
+      a word edgeways I rejoined quietly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are not going to hurt Madame la Marquise, Monsieur; and if you
+      do not want the money, let us say no more about it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whereupon he calmed down; after a while he sat down again, this time with
+      his cane between his knees and its ivory knob between his teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; he said curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor did he interrupt me again whilst I expounded my scheme to him&mdash;one
+      that, mind you, I had evolved during the night, knowing well that I should
+      receive his visit during the day; and I flatter myself that no finer
+      scheme for the bleeding of a parsimonious usurer was ever devised by any
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If it succeeded&mdash;and there was no reason why it should not&mdash;M.
+      de Firmin-Latour would pocket a cool half-million, whilst I, sir, the
+      brain that had devised the whole scheme, pronounced myself satisfied with
+      the paltry emolument of one hundred thousand francs, out of which,
+      remember, I should have to give Theodore a considerable sum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We talked it all over, M. le Marquis and I, the whole afternoon. I may
+      tell you at once that he was positively delighted with the plan, and then
+      and there gave me one hundred francs out of his own meagre purse for my
+      preliminary expenses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning we began work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had begged M. le Marquis to find the means of bringing me a few scraps
+      of the late M. le Comte de Naquet&rsquo;s&mdash;Madame la Marquise&rsquo;s
+      first husband&mdash;handwriting. This, fortunately, he was able to do.
+      They were a few valueless notes penned at different times by the deceased
+      gentleman and which, luckily for us all, Madame had not thought it worth
+      while to keep under lock and key.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think I told you before, did I not? what a marvellous expert I am in
+      every kind of calligraphy, and soon I had a letter ready which was to
+      represent the first fire in the exciting war which we were about to wage
+      against an obstinate lady and a parsimonious usurer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My identity securely hidden under the disguise of a commissionnaire, I
+      took that letter to Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour&rsquo;s sumptuous
+      abode in the Rue de Grammont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. le Marquis, you understand, had in the meanwhile been thoroughly primed
+      in the rôle which he was to play; as for Theodore, I thought it best for
+      the moment to dispense with his aid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The success of our first skirmish surpassed our expectations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten minutes after the letter had been taken upstairs to Mme. la Marquise,
+      one of the maids, on going past her mistress&rsquo;s door, was startled to
+      hear cries and moans proceeding from Madame&rsquo;s room. She entered and
+      found Madame lying on the sofa, her face buried in the cushions, and
+      sobbing and screaming in a truly terrifying manner. The maid applied the
+      usual restoratives, and after a while Madame became more calm and at once
+      very curtly ordered the maid out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. le Marquis, on being apprised of this mysterious happening, was much
+      distressed; he hurried to his wife&rsquo;s apartments, and was as gentle
+      and loving with her as he had been in the early days of their honeymoon.
+      But throughout the whole of that evening, and, indeed, for the next two
+      days, all the explanation that he could get from Madame herself was that
+      she had a headache and that the letter which she had received that
+      afternoon was of no consequence and had nothing to do with her migraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But clearly the beautiful Rachel was extraordinarily agitated. At night
+      she did not sleep, but would pace up and down her apartments in a state
+      bordering on frenzy, which of course caused M. le Marquis a great deal of
+      anxiety and of sorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, on the Friday morning it seemed as if Madame could contain
+      herself no longer. She threw herself into her husband&rsquo;s arms and
+      blurted out the whole truth. M. le Comte de Naquet, her first husband, who
+      had been declared drowned at sea, and therefore officially deceased by
+      Royal decree, was not dead at all. Madame had received a letter from him
+      wherein he told her that he had indeed suffered shipwreck, then untold
+      misery on a desert island for three years, until he had been rescued by a
+      passing vessel, and finally been able, since he was destitute, to work his
+      way back to France and to Paris. Here he had lived for the past few months
+      as best he could, trying to collect together a little money so as to
+      render himself presentable before his wife, whom he had never ceased to
+      love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Inquiries discreetly conducted had revealed the terrible truth, that
+      Madame had been faithless to him, had light-heartedly assumed the death of
+      her husband, and had contracted what was nothing less than a bigamous
+      marriage. Now he, M. de Naquet, standing on his rights as Rachel
+      Mosenstein&rsquo;s only lawful husband, demanded that she should return to
+      him, and as a prelude to a permanent and amicable understanding, she was
+      to call at three o&rsquo;clock precisely on the following Friday at No. 96
+      Rue Daunou, where their reconciliation and reunion was to take place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The letter announcing this terrible news and making this preposterous
+      demand she now placed in the hands of M. le Marquis, who at first was
+      horrified and thunderstruck, and appeared quite unable to deal with the
+      situation or to tender advice. For Madame it meant complete social ruin,
+      of course, and she herself declared that she would never survive such a
+      scandal. Her tears and her misery made the loving heart of M. le Marquis
+      bleed in sympathy. He did all he could to console and comfort the lady,
+      whom, alas! he could no longer look upon as his wife. Then, gradually,
+      both he and she became more composed. It was necessary above all things to
+      make sure that Madame was not being victimized by an impostor, and for
+      this purpose M. le Marquis generously offered himself as a disinterested
+      friend and adviser. He offered to go himself to the Rue Daunou at the hour
+      appointed and to do his best to induce M. le Comte de Naquet&mdash;if
+      indeed he existed&mdash;to forgo his rights on the lady who had so
+      innocently taken on the name and hand of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour.
+      Somewhat more calm, but still unconsoled, the beautiful Rachel accepted
+      this generous offer. I believe that she even found five thousand francs in
+      her privy purse which was to be offered to M. de Naquet in exchange for a
+      promise never to worry Mme. la Marquise again with his presence. But this
+      I have never been able to ascertain with any finality. Certain it is that
+      when at three o&rsquo;clock on that same afternoon M. de Firmin-Latour
+      presented himself at my office, he did not offer me a share in any five
+      thousand francs, though he spoke to me about the money, adding that he
+      thought it would look well if he were to give it back to Madame, and to
+      tell her that M. de Naquet had rejected so paltry a sum with disdain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought such a move unnecessary, and we argued about it rather warmly,
+      and in the end he went away, as I say, without offering me any share in
+      the emolument. Whether he did put his project into execution or not I
+      never knew. He told me that he did. After that there followed for me, Sir,
+      many days, nay, weeks, of anxiety and of strenuous work. Mme. la Marquise
+      received several more letters from the supposititious M. de Naquet, any
+      one of which would have landed me, Sir, in a vessel bound for New
+      Caledonia. The discarded husband became more and more insistent as time
+      went on, and finally sent an ultimatum to Madame saying that he was tired
+      of perpetual interviews with M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, whose right
+      to interfere in the matter he now wholly denied, and that he was quite
+      determined to claim his lawful wife before the whole world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame la Marquise, in the meanwhile, had passed from one fit of hysterics
+      into another. She denied her door to everyone and lived in the strictest
+      seclusion in her beautiful apartment of the Rue de Grammont. Fortunately
+      this all occurred in the early autumn, when the absence of such a society
+      star from fashionable gatherings was not as noticeable as it otherwise
+      would have been. But clearly we were working up for the climax, which
+      occurred in the way I am about to relate.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      4.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Ah, my dear Sir, when after all these years I think of my adventure with
+      that abominable Marquis, righteous and noble indignation almost strikes me
+      dumb. To think that with my own hands and brains I literally put half a
+      million into that man&rsquo;s pocket, and that he repaid me with the
+      basest ingratitude, almost makes me lose my faith in human nature.
+      Theodore, of course, I could punish, and did so adequately; and where my
+      chastisement failed, Fate herself put the finishing touch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But M. de Firmin-Latour . . .!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, you shall judge for yourself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I told you, we now made ready for the climax; and that climax, Sir, I
+      can only describe as positively gorgeous. We began by presuming that Mme.
+      la Marquise had now grown tired of incessant demands for interviews and
+      small doles of money, and that she would be willing to offer a
+      considerable sum to her first and only lawful husband in exchange for a
+      firm guarantee that he would never trouble her again as long as she lived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We fixed the sum at half a million francs, and the guarantee was to take
+      the form of a deed duly executed by a notary of repute and signed by the
+      supposititious Comte de Naquet. A letter embodying the demand and offering
+      the guarantee was thereupon duly sent to Mme. la Marquise, and she, after
+      the usual attack of hysterics, duly confided the matter to M. de
+      Firmin-Latour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The consultation between husband and wife on the deplorable subject was
+      touching in the extreme; and I will give that abominable Marquis credit
+      for playing his rôle in a masterly manner. At first he declared to his
+      dear Rachel that he did not know what to suggest, for in truth she had
+      nothing like half a million on which she could lay her hands. To speak of
+      this awful pending scandal to Papa Mosenstein was not to be thought of. He
+      was capable of repudiating the daughter altogether who was bringing such
+      obloquy upon herself and would henceforth be of no use to him as a society
+      star.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for himself in this terrible emergency, he, of course, had less than
+      nothing, or his entire fortune would be placed&mdash;if he had one&mdash;at
+      the feet of his beloved Rachel. To think that he was on the point of
+      losing her was more than he could bear, and the idea that she would soon
+      become the talk of every gossip-monger in society, and mayhap be put in
+      prison for bigamy, wellnigh drove him crazy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What could be done in this awful perplexity he for one could not think,
+      unless indeed his dear Rachel were willing to part with some of her
+      jewellery; but no! he could not think of allowing her to make such a
+      sacrifice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whereupon Madame, like a drowning man, or rather woman, catching at a
+      straw, bethought her of her emeralds. They were historic gems, once the
+      property of the Empress Marie-Thérèse, and had been given to her on her
+      second marriage by her adoring father. No, no! she would never miss them;
+      she seldom wore them, for they were heavy and more valuable than elegant,
+      and she was quite sure that at the Mont de Piété they would lend her five
+      hundred thousand francs on them. Then gradually they could be redeemed
+      before papa had become aware of their temporary disappearance. Madame
+      would save the money out of the liberal allowance she received from him
+      for pin-money. Anything, anything was preferable to this awful doom which
+      hung over her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even so M. le Marquis demurred. The thought of his proud and
+      fashionable Rachel going to the Mont de Piété to pawn her own jewels was
+      not to be thought of. She would be seen, recognized, and the scandal would
+      be as bad and worse than anything that loomed on the black horizon of her
+      fate at this hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What was to be done? What was to be done?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then M. le Marquis had a brilliant idea. He knew of a man, a very
+      reliable, trustworthy man, attorney-at-law by profession, and therefore a
+      man of repute, who was often obliged in the exercise of his profession to
+      don various disguises when tracking criminals in the outlying quarters of
+      Paris. M. le Marquis, putting all pride and dignity nobly aside in the
+      interests of his adored Rachel, would borrow one of these disguises and
+      himself go to the Mont de Piété with the emeralds, obtain the five hundred
+      thousand francs, and remit them to the man whom he hated most in all the
+      world, in exchange for the aforementioned guarantee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame la Marquise, overcome with gratitude, threw herself, in the midst
+      of a flood of tears, into the arms of the man whom she no longer dared to
+      call her husband, and so the matter was settled for the moment. M. le
+      Marquis undertook to have the deed of guarantee drafted by the same notary
+      of repute whom he knew, and, if Madame approved of it, the emeralds would
+      then be converted into money, and the interview with M. le Comte de Naquet
+      fixed for Wednesday, October 10th, at some convenient place, subsequently
+      to be determined on&mdash;in all probability at the bureau of that same
+      ubiquitous attorney-at-law, M. Hector Ratichon, at 96 Rue Daunon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All was going on excellently well, as you observe. I duly drafted the
+      deed, and M. de Firmin-Latour showed it to Madame for her approval. It was
+      so simply and so comprehensively worded that she expressed herself
+      thoroughly satisfied with it, whereupon M. le Marquis asked her to write
+      to her shameful persecutor in order to fix the date and hour for the
+      exchange of the money against the deed duly signed and witnessed. M. le
+      Marquis had always been the intermediary for her letters, you understand,
+      and for the small sums of money which she had sent from time to time to
+      the factitious M. de Naquet; now he was to be entrusted with the final
+      negotiations which, though at a heavy cost, would bring security and
+      happiness once more in the sumptuous palace of the Rue de Grammont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then it was that the first little hitch occurred. Mme. la Marquise&mdash;whether
+      prompted thereto by a faint breath of suspicion, or merely by natural
+      curiosity&mdash;altered her mind about the appointment. She decided that
+      M. le Marquis, having pledged the emeralds, should bring the money to her,
+      and she herself would go to the bureau of M. Hector Ratichon in the Rue
+      Daunou, there to meet M. de Naquet, whom she had not seen for seven years,
+      but who had once been very dear to her, and herself fling in his face the
+      five hundred thousand francs, the price of his silence and of her peace of
+      mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At once, as you perceive, the situation became delicate. To have demurred,
+      or uttered more than a casual word of objection, would in the case of M.
+      le Marquis have been highly impolitic. He felt that at once, the moment he
+      raised his voice in protest: and when Madame declared herself determined
+      he immediately gave up arguing the point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The trouble was that we had so very little time wherein to formulate new
+      plans. Monsieur was to go the very next morning to the Mont de Piété to
+      negotiate the emeralds, and the interview with the fabulous M. de Naquet
+      was to take place a couple of hours later; and it was now three o&rsquo;clock
+      in the afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as M. de Firmin-Latour was able to leave his wife, he came round
+      to my office. He appeared completely at his wits&rsquo; end, not knowing
+      what to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If my wife,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;insists on a personal interview
+      with de Naquet, who does not exist, our entire scheme falls to the ground.
+      Nay, worse! for I shall be driven to concoct some impossible explanation
+      for the non-appearance of that worthy, and heaven only knows if I shall
+      succeed in wholly allaying my wife&rsquo;s suspicions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he added with a sigh, &ldquo;it is doubly hard to have
+      seen fortune so near one&rsquo;s reach and then to see it dashed away at
+      one fell swoop by the relentless hand of Fate.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not one word, you observe, of gratitude to me or of recognition of the
+      subtle mind that had planned and devised the whole scheme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, Sir, it is at the hour of supreme crises like the present one that
+      Hector Ratichon&rsquo;s genius soars up to the empyrean. It became great,
+      Sir; nothing short of great; and even the marvellous schemes of the
+      Italian Macchiavelli paled before the ingenuity which I now displayed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half an hour&rsquo;s reflection had sufficed. I had made my plans, and I
+      had measured the full length of the terrible risks which I ran. Among
+      these New Caledonia was the least. But I chose to take the risks, Sir; my
+      genius could not stoop to measuring the costs of its flight. While M. de
+      Firmin-Latour alternately raved and lamented I had already planned and
+      contrived. As I say, we had very little time: a few hours wherein to
+      render ourselves worthy of Fortune&rsquo;s smiles. And this is what I
+      planned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You tell me that you were not in Paris during the year 1816 of which I
+      speak. If you had been, you would surely recollect the sensation caused
+      throughout the entire city by the disappearance of M. le Marquis de
+      Firmin-Latour, one of the most dashing young officers in society and one
+      of its acknowledged leaders. It was the 10th day of October. M. le Marquis
+      had breakfasted in the company of Madame at nine o&rsquo;clock. A couple
+      of hours later he went out, saying he would be home for déjeuner. Madame
+      clearly expected him, for his place was laid, and she ordered the déjeuner
+      to be kept back over an hour in anticipation of his return. But he did not
+      come. The afternoon wore on and he did not come. Madame sat down at two o&rsquo;clock
+      to déjeuner alone. She told the major-domo that M. le Marquis was detained
+      in town and might not be home for some time. But the major-domo declared
+      that Madame&rsquo;s voice, as she told him this, sounded tearful and
+      forced, and that she ate practically nothing, refusing one succulent dish
+      after another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The staff of servants was thus kept on tenterhooks all day, and when the
+      shadows of evening began to draw in, the theory was started in the kitchen
+      that M. le Marquis had either met with an accident or been foully
+      murdered. No one, however, dared speak of this to Madame la Marquise, who
+      had locked herself up in her room in the early part of the afternoon, and
+      since then had refused to see anyone. The major-domo was now at his wits&rsquo;
+      end. He felt that in a measure the responsibility of the household rested
+      upon his shoulders. Indeed he would have taken it upon himself to apprise
+      M. Mauruss Mosenstein of the terrible happenings, only that the worthy
+      gentleman was absent from Paris just then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. la Marquise remained shut up in her room until past eight o&rsquo;clock.
+      Then she ordered dinner to be served and made pretence of sitting down to
+      it; but again the major-domo declared that she ate nothing, whilst
+      subsequently the confidential maid who had undressed her vowed that Madame
+      had spent the whole night walking up and down the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus two agonizing days went by; agonizing they were to everybody. Madame
+      la Marquise became more and more agitated, more and more hysterical as
+      time went on, and the servants could not help but notice this, even though
+      she made light of the whole affair, and desperate efforts to control
+      herself. The heads of her household, the major-domo, the confidential
+      maid, the chef de cuisine, did venture to drop a hint or two as to the
+      possibility of an accident or of foul play, and the desirability of
+      consulting the police; but Madame would not hear a word of it; she became
+      very angry at the suggestion, and declared that she was perfectly well
+      aware of M. le Marquis&rsquo;s whereabouts, that he was well and would
+      return home almost immediately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As was only natural, tongues presently began to wag. Soon it was common
+      talk in Paris that M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour had disappeared from his
+      home and that Madame was trying to put a bold face upon the occurrence.
+      There were surmises and there was gossip&mdash; oh! interminable and
+      long-winded gossip! Minute circumstances in connexion with M. le Marquis&rsquo;s
+      private life and Mme. la Marquise&rsquo;s affairs were freely discussed in
+      the cafés, the clubs and restaurants, and as no one knew the facts of the
+      case, surmises soon became very wild.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the third day of M. le Marquis&rsquo;s disappearance Papa Mosenstein
+      returned to Paris from Vichy, where he had just completed his annual cure.
+      He arrived at Rue de Grammont at three o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon,
+      demanded to see Mme. la Marquise at once, and then remained closeted with
+      her in her apartment for over an hour. After which he sent for the
+      inspector of police of the section, with the result that that very same
+      evening M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour was found locked up in an humble
+      apartment on the top floor of a house in the Rue Daunou, not ten minutes&rsquo;
+      walk from his own house. When the police&mdash;acting on information
+      supplied to them by M. Mauruss Mosenstein&mdash;forced their way into that
+      apartment, they were horrified to find M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour
+      there, tied hand and foot with cords to a chair, his likely calls for help
+      smothered by a woollen shawl wound loosely round the lower part of his
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was half dead with inanition, and was conveyed speechless and helpless
+      to his home in the Rue de Grammont, there, presumably, to be nursed back
+      to health by Madame his wife.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      5.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Now in all this matter, I ask you, Sir, who ran the greatest risk? Why, I&mdash;Hector
+      Ratichon, of course&mdash;Hector Ratichon, in whose apartment M. de
+      Firmin-Latour was discovered in a position bordering on absolute
+      inanition. And the proof of this is, that that selfsame night I was
+      arrested at my lodgings at Passy, and charged with robbery and attempted
+      murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a terrible predicament for a respectable citizen, a man of
+      integrity and reputation, in which to find himself; but Papa Mosenstein
+      was both tenacious and vindictive. His daughter, driven to desperation at
+      last, and terrified that M. le Marquis had indeed been foully murdered by
+      M. de Naquet, had made a clean breast of the whole affair to her father,
+      and he in his turn had put the minions of the law in full possession of
+      all the facts; and since M. le Comte de Naquet had vanished, leaving no
+      manner of trace or clue of his person behind him, the police, needing a
+      victim, fell back on an innocent man. Fortunately, Sir, that innocence
+      clear as crystal soon shines through every calumny. But this was not
+      before I had suffered terrible indignities and all the tortures which base
+      ingratitude can inflict upon a sensitive heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such ingratitude as I am about to relate to you has never been equalled on
+      this earth, and even after all these years, Sir, you see me overcome with
+      emotion at the remembrance of it all. I was under arrest, remember, on a
+      terribly serious charge, but, conscious of mine own innocence and of my
+      unanswerable system of defence, I bore the preliminary examination by the
+      juge d&rsquo;instruc-tion with exemplary dignity and patience. I knew, you
+      see, that at my very first confrontation with my supposed victim the
+      latter would at once say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! but no! This is not the man who assaulted me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our plan, which so far had been overwhelmingly successful, had been this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the morning of the tenth, M. de Firmin-Latour having pawned the
+      emeralds, and obtained the money for them, was to deposit that money in
+      his own name at the bank of Raynal Frères and then at once go to the
+      office in the Rue Daunou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There he would be met by Theodore, who would bind him comfortably but
+      securely to a chair, put a shawl around his mouth and finally lock the
+      door on him. Theodore would then go to his mother&rsquo;s and there remain
+      quietly until I needed his services again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been thought inadvisable for me to be seen that morning anywhere in
+      the neighbourhood of the Rue Daunou, but that perfidious reptile Theodore
+      ran no risks in doing what he was told. To begin with he is a past master
+      in the art of worming himself in and out of a house without being seen,
+      and in this case it was his business to exercise a double measure of
+      caution. And secondly, if by some unlucky chance the police did
+      subsequently connect him with the crime, there was I, his employer, a man
+      of integrity and repute, prepared to swear that the man had been in my
+      company at the other end of Paris all the while that M. le Marquis de
+      Firmin-Latour was, by special arrangement, making use of my office in the
+      Rue Daunou, which I had lent him for purposes of business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally it was agreed between us that when M. le Marquis would presently
+      be questioned by the police as to the appearance of the man who had
+      assaulted and robbed him, he would describe him as tall and blond, almost
+      like an Angliche in countenance. Now I possess&mdash;as you see, Sir&mdash;all
+      the finest characteristics of the Latin race, whilst Theodore looks like
+      nothing on earth, save perhaps a cross between a rat and a monkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wish you to realize, therefore, that no one ran any risks in this affair
+      excepting myself. I, as the proprietor of the apartment where the assault
+      was actually supposed to have taken place, did run a very grave risk,
+      because I could never have proved an alibi. Theodore was such a
+      disreputable mudlark that his testimony on my behalf would have been
+      valueless. But with sublime sacrifice I accepted these risks, and you will
+      presently see, Sir, how I was repaid for my selflessness. I pined in a
+      lonely prison-cell while these two limbs of Satan concocted a plot to rob
+      me of my share in our mutual undertaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, Sir, the day came when I was taken from my prison-cell for the
+      purpose of being confronted with the man whom I was accused of having
+      assaulted. As you will imagine, I was perfectly calm. According to our
+      plan the confrontation would be the means of setting me free at once. I
+      was conveyed to the house in the Rue de Grammont, and here I was kept
+      waiting for some little time while the juge d&rsquo;instruction went in to
+      prepare M. le Marquis, who was still far from well. Then I was introduced
+      into the sick-room. I looked about me with the perfect composure of an
+      innocent man about to be vindicated, and calmly gazed on the face of the
+      sick man who was sitting up in his magnificent bed, propped up with
+      pillows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I met his glance firmly whilst M. le Juge d&rsquo;instruction placed the
+      question to him in a solemn and earnest tone:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, will you look at the prisoner
+      before you and tell us whether you recognize in him the man who assaulted
+      you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that perfidious Marquis, Sir, raised his eyes and looked me squarely&mdash;yes!
+      squarely&mdash;in the face and said with incredible assurance:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Monsieur le Juge, that is the man! I recognize him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To me it seemed then as if a thunderbolt had crashed through the ceiling
+      and exploded at my feet. I was like one stunned and dazed; the black
+      ingratitude, the abominable treachery, completely deprived me of speech. I
+      felt choked, as if some poisonous effluvia&mdash;the poison, Sir, of that
+      man&rsquo;s infamy&mdash;had got into my throat. That state of inertia
+      lasted, I believe, less than a second; the next I had uttered a hoarse cry
+      of noble indignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You vampire, you!&rdquo; I exclaimed. &ldquo;You viper! You . . .&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would have thrown myself on him and strangled him with glee, but that
+      the minions of the law had me by the arms and dragged me away out of the
+      hateful presence of that traitor, despite my objurgations and my
+      protestations of innocence. Imagine my feelings when I found myself once
+      more in a prison-cell, my heart filled with unspeakable bitterness against
+      that perfidious Judas. Can you wonder that it took me some time before I
+      could collect my thoughts sufficiently to review my situation, which no
+      doubt to the villain himself who had just played me this abominable trick
+      must have seemed desperate indeed? Ah! I could see it all, of course! He
+      wanted to> see me sent to New Caledonia, whilst he enjoyed the fruits of
+      his unpardonable backsliding. In order to retain the miserable hundred
+      thousand francs which he had promised me he did not hesitate to plunge up
+      to the neck in this heinous conspiracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, conspiracy! for the very next day, when I was once more hailed before
+      the juge d&rsquo;instruction, another confrontation awaited me: this time
+      with that scurvy rogue Theodore. He had been suborned by M. le Marquis to
+      turn against the hand that fed him. What price he was paid for this Judas
+      trick I shall never know, and all that I do know is that he actually swore
+      before the juge d&rsquo;instruction that M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour
+      called at my office in the late forenoon of the tenth of October; that I
+      then ordered him&mdash;Theodore&mdash;to go out to get his dinner first,
+      and then to go all the way over to Neuilly with a message to someone who
+      turned out to be non-existent. He went on to assert that when he returned
+      at six o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon he found the office door locked, and
+      I&mdash;his employer&mdash;presumably gone. This at first greatly upset
+      him, because he was supposed to sleep on the premises, but seeing that
+      there was nothing for it but to accept the inevitable, he went round to
+      his mother&rsquo;s rooms at the back of the fish-market and remained there
+      ever since, waiting to hear from me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That, Sir, was the tissue of lies which that jailbird had concocted for my
+      undoing, knowing well that I could not disprove them because it had been
+      my task on that eventful morning to keep an eye on M. le Marquis whilst he
+      went to the Mont de Piété first, and then to MM. Raynal Frères, the
+      bankers where he deposited the money. For this purpose I had been obliged
+      to don a disguise, which I had not discarded till later in the day, and
+      thus was unable to disprove satisfactorily the monstrous lies told by that
+      perjurer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah! I can see that sympathy for my unmerited misfortunes has filled your
+      eyes with tears. No doubt in your heart you feel that my situation at that
+      hour was indeed desperate, and that I&mdash;Hector Ratichon, the confidant
+      of kings, the benefactor of the oppressed&mdash;did spend the next few
+      years of my life in a penal settlement, where those arch-malefactors
+      themselves should have been. But no, Sir! Fate may be a fickle jade,
+      rogues may appear triumphant, but not for long, Sir, not for long! It is
+      brains that conquer in the end . . . brains backed by righteousness and by
+      justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether I had actually foreseen the treachery of those two rattlesnakes,
+      or whether my habitual caution and acumen alone prompted me to take those
+      measures of precaution of which I am about to tell you, I cannot
+      truthfully remember. Certain it is that I did take those precautions which
+      ultimately proved to be the means of compensating me for most that I had
+      suffered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been a part of the original plan that, on the day immediately
+      following the tenth of October, I, in my own capacity as Hector Ratichon,
+      who had been absent from my office for twenty-four hours, would arrive
+      there in the morning, find the place locked, force an entrance into the
+      apartment, and there find M. le Marquis in his pitiable plight. After
+      which I would, of course, immediately notify the police of the mysterious
+      occurrence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That had been the rôle which I had intended to play. M. le Marquis
+      approved of it and had professed himself quite willing to endure a
+      twenty-four-hours&rsquo; martyrdom for the sake of half a million francs.
+      But, as I have just had the honour to tell you, something which I will not
+      attempt to explain prompted me at the last moment to modify my plan in one
+      little respect. I thought it too soon to go back to the Rue Daunou within
+      twenty-four hours of our well-contrived coup, and I did not altogether
+      care for the idea of going myself to the police in order to explain to
+      them that I had found a man gagged and bound in my office. The less one
+      has to do with these minions of the law the better. Mind you, I had
+      envisaged the possibility of being accused of assault and robbery, but I
+      did not wish to take, as it were, the very first steps myself in that
+      direction. You might call this a matter of sentiment or of prudence, as
+      you wish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So I waited until the evening of the second day before I got the key from
+      Theodore. Then before the concierge at 96 Rue Daunou had closed the
+      porte-cochere for the night, I slipped into the house unobserved, ran up
+      the stairs to my office and entered the apartment. I struck a light and
+      made my way to the inner room where the wretched Marquis hung in the chair
+      like a bundle of rags. I called to him, but he made no movement. As I had
+      anticipated, he had fainted for want of food. Of course, I was very sorry
+      for him, for his plight was pitiable, but he was playing for high stakes,
+      and a little starvation does no man any harm. In his case there was half a
+      million at the end of his brief martyrdom, which could, at worst, only
+      last another twenty-four hours. I reckoned that Mme. la Marquise could not
+      keep the secret of her husband&rsquo;s possible whereabouts longer than
+      that, and in any event I was determined that, despite all risks, I would
+      go myself to the police on the following day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meanwhile, since I was here and since M. le Marquis was
+      unconscious, I proceeded then and there to take the precaution which
+      prudence had dictated, and without which, seeing this man&rsquo;s
+      treachery and Theodore&rsquo;s villainy, I should undoubtedly have ended
+      my days as a convict. What I did was to search M. le Marquis&rsquo;s
+      pockets for anything that might subsequently prove useful to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had no definite idea in the matter, you understand; but I had vague
+      notions of finding the bankers&rsquo; receipt for the half-million francs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, I did not find that, but I did find the receipt from the Mont de
+      Piété for a parure of emeralds on which half a million francs had been
+      lent. This I carefully put away in my waistcoat pocket, but as there was
+      nothing else I wished to do just then I extinguished the light and made my
+      way cautiously out of the apartment and out of the house. No one had seen
+      me enter or go out, and M. le Marquis had not stirred while I went through
+      his pockets.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      6.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      That, Sir, was the precaution which I had taken in order to safeguard
+      myself against the machinations of traitors. And see how right I was; see
+      how hopeless would have been my plight at this hour when Theodore, too,
+      turned against me like the veritable viper that he was. I never really
+      knew when and under what conditions the infamous bargain was struck which
+      was intended to deprive me of my honour and of my liberty, nor do I know
+      what emolument Theodore was to receive for his treachery. Presumably the
+      two miscreants arranged it all some time during that memorable morning of
+      the tenth even whilst I was risking my life in their service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for M. de Firmin-Latour, that worker of iniquity who, in order to save
+      a paltry hundred thousand francs from the hoard which I had helped him to
+      acquire, did not hesitate to commit such an abominable crime, he did not
+      long remain in the enjoyment of his wealth or of his peace of mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The very next day I made certain statements before M. le Juge d&rsquo;instruction
+      with regard to M. Mauruss Mosenstein, which caused the former to summon
+      the worthy Israelite to his bureau, there to be confronted with me. I had
+      nothing more to lose, since those execrable rogues had already, as it
+      were, tightened the rope about my neck, but I had a great deal to gain&mdash;revenge
+      above all, and perhaps the gratitude of M. Mosenstein for opening his eyes
+      to the rascality of his son-in-law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a stream of eloquent words which could not fail to carry conviction, I
+      gave then and there in the bureau of the juge d&rsquo;instruction my
+      version of the events of the past few weeks, from the moment when M. le
+      Marquis de Firmin-Latour came to consult me on the subject of his wife&rsquo;s
+      first husband, until the hour when he tried to fasten an abominable crime
+      upon me. I told how I had been deceived by my own employé, Theodore, a man
+      whom I had rescued out of the gutter and loaded with gifts, how by dint of
+      a clever disguise which would have deceived his own mother he had assumed
+      the appearance and personality of M. le Comte de Naquet, first and only
+      lawful lord of the beautiful Rachel Mosenstein. I told of the interviews
+      in my office, my earnest desire to put an end to this abominable
+      blackmailing by informing the police of the whole affair. I told of the
+      false M. de Naquet&rsquo;s threats to create a gigantic scandal which
+      would forever ruin the social position of the so-called Marquis de
+      Firmin-Latour. I told of M. le Marquis&rsquo;s agonized entreaties, his
+      prayers, supplications, that I would do nothing in the matter for the sake
+      of an innocent lady who had already grievously suffered. I spoke of my
+      doubts, my scruples, my desire to do what was just and what was right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A noble expose of the situation, Sir, you will admit. It left me hot and
+      breathless. I mopped my head with a handkerchief and sank back, gasping,
+      in the arms of the minions of the law. The juge d&rsquo;instruction
+      ordered my removal, not back to my prison-cell but into his own ante-room,
+      where I presently collapsed upon a very uncomfortable bench and endured
+      the additional humiliation of having a glass of water held to my lips.
+      Water! when I had asked for a drink of wine as my throat felt parched
+      after that lengthy effort at oratory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, there I sat and waited patiently whilst, no doubt, M. le Juge d&rsquo;Instruction
+      and the noble Israelite were comparing notes as to their impression of my
+      marvellous speech. I had not long to wait. Less than ten minutes later I
+      was once more summoned into the presence of M. le Juge; and this time the
+      minions of the law were ordered to remain in the antechamber. I thought
+      this was of good augury; and I waited to hear M. le Juge give forth the
+      order that would at once set me free. But it was M. Mosenstein who first
+      addressed me, and in very truth surprise rendered me momentarily dumb when
+      he did it thus:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now then, you consummate rascal, when you have given up the receipt
+      of the Mont de Piété which you stole out of M. le Marquis&rsquo;s pocket
+      you may go and carry on your rogueries elsewhere and call yourself
+      mightily lucky to have escaped so lightly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I assure you, Sir, that a feather would have knocked me down. The coarse
+      insult, the wanton injustice, had deprived me of the use of my limbs and
+      of my speech. Then the juge d&rsquo;instruction proceeded dryly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now then, Ratichon, you have heard what M. Mauruss Mosenstein has
+      been good enough to say to you. He did it with my approval and consent. I
+      am prepared to give an <i>ordonnance de non-lieu</i> in your favour which
+      will have the effect of at once setting you free if you will restore to
+      this gentleman here the Mont de Piété receipt which you appear to have
+      stolen.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; I said with consummate dignity in the face of this
+      reiterated taunt, &ldquo;I have stolen nothing&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. le Juge&rsquo;s hand was already on the bell-pull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; he said coolly, &ldquo;I can ring for the gendarmes to
+      take you back to the cells, and you will stand your trial for blackmail,
+      theft, assault and robbery.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I put up my hand with an elegant and perfectly calm gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your pardon, M. le Juge,&rdquo; I said with the gentle resignation
+      of undeserved martyrdom, &ldquo;I was about to say that when I re-visited
+      my rooms in the Rue Daunou after a three days&rsquo; absence, and found
+      the police in possession, I picked up on the floor of my private room a
+      white paper which on subsequent examination proved to be a receipt from
+      the Mont de Piété for some valuable gems, and made out in the name of M.
+      le Marquis de Firmin-Latour.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you done with it, you abominable knave?&rdquo; the
+      irascible old usurer rejoined roughly, and I regret to say that he grasped
+      his malacca cane with ominous violence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I was not to be thus easily intimidated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! voilà, M. le Juge,&rdquo; I said with a shrug of the shoulders.
+      &ldquo;I have mislaid it. I do not know where it is.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you do not find it,&rdquo; Mosenstein went on savagely, &ldquo;you
+      will find yourself on a convict ship before long.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In which case, no doubt,&rdquo; I retorted with suave urbanity,
+      &ldquo;the police will search my rooms where I lodge, and they will find
+      the receipt from the Mont de Piété, which I had mislaid. And then the
+      gossip will be all over Paris that Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour had
+      to pawn her jewels in order to satisfy the exigencies of her first and
+      only lawful husband who has since mysteriously disappeared; and some
+      people will vow that he never came back from the Antipodes, whilst others&mdash;by
+      far the most numerous&mdash;will shrug their shoulders and sigh: &lsquo;One
+      never knows!&rsquo; which will be exceedingly unpleasant for Mme. la
+      Marquise.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both M. Mauruss Mosenstein and the juge d&rsquo;instruc-tion said a great
+      deal more that afternoon. I may say that their attitude towards me and the
+      language that they used were positively scandalous. But I had become now
+      the master of the situation and I could afford to ignore their insults. In
+      the end everything was settled quite amicably. I agreed to dispose of the
+      receipt from the Mont de Piété to M. Mauruss Mosenstein for the sum of two
+      hundred francs, and for another hundred I would indicate to him the
+      banking house where his precious son-in-law had deposited the half-million
+      francs obtained for the emeralds. This latter information I would indeed
+      have offered him gratuitously had he but known with what immense pleasure
+      I thus put a spoke in that knavish Marquis&rsquo;s wheel of fortune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The worthy Israelite further agreed to pay me an annuity of two hundred
+      francs so long as I kept silent upon the entire subject of Mme. la
+      Marquise&rsquo;s first husband and of M. le Marquis&rsquo;s rôle in the
+      mysterious affair of the Rue Daunou. For thus was the affair classed
+      amongst the police records. No one outside the chief actors of the drama
+      and M. le Juge d&rsquo;Instruction ever knew the true history of how a
+      dashing young cavalry officer came to be assaulted and left to starve for
+      three days in the humble apartment of an attorney-at-law of undisputed
+      repute. And no one outside the private bureau of M. le Juge d&rsquo;Instruction
+      ever knew what it cost the wealthy M. Mosenstein to have the whole affair
+      &ldquo;classed&rdquo; and hushed up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for me, I had three hundred francs as payment for work which I had
+      risked my neck and my reputation to accomplish. Three hundred instead of
+      the hundred thousand which I had so richly deserved: that, and a paltry
+      two hundred francs a year, which was to cease the moment that as much as a
+      rumour of the whole affair was breathed in public. As if I could help
+      people talking!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But M. le Marquis did not enjoy the fruits of his villainy, and I had
+      again the satisfaction of seeing him gnaw his finger-nails with rage
+      whenever the lovely Rachel paid for his dinner at fashionable restaurants.
+      Indeed Papa Mosenstein tightened the strings of his money-bags even more
+      securely than he had done in the past. Under threats of prosecution for
+      theft and I know not what, he forced his son-in-law to disgorge that
+      half-million which he had so pleasantly tucked away in the banking house
+      of Raynal Frères, and I was indeed thankful that prudence had, on that
+      memorable morning, suggested to me the advisability of dogging the Marquis&rsquo;s
+      footsteps. I doubt not but what he knew whence had come the thunderbolt
+      which had crushed his last hopes of an independent fortune, and no doubt
+      too he does not cherish feelings of good will towards me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this eventuality leaves me cold. He has only himself to thank for his
+      misfortune. Everything would have gone well but for his treachery. We
+      would have become affluent, he and I and Theodore. Theodore has gone to
+      live with his mother, who has a fish-stall in the Halles; she gives him
+      three sous a day for washing down the stall and selling the fish when it
+      has become too odorous for the ordinary customers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he might have had five hundred francs for himself and remained my
+      confidential clerk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. &mdash; CARISSIMO
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      You must not think for a moment, my dear Sir, that I was ever actually
+      deceived in Theodore. Was it likely that I, who am by temperament and
+      habit accustomed to read human visages like a book, was it likely, I say,
+      that I would fail to see craftiness in those pale, shifty eyes, deceit in
+      the weak, slobbering mouth, intemperance in the whole aspect of the
+      shrunken, slouchy figure which I had, for my subsequent sorrow, so
+      generously rescued from starvation?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Generous? I was more than generous to him. They say that the poor are the
+      friends of the poor, and I told you how poor we were in those days! Ah!
+      but poor! my dear Sir, you have no conception! Meat in Paris in the autumn
+      of 1816 was 24 francs the kilo, and milk 1 franc the quarter litre, not to
+      mention eggs and butter, which were delicacies far beyond the reach of
+      cultured, well-born people like myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet throughout that trying year I fed Theodore&mdash;yes, I fed him.
+      He used to share onion pie with me whenever I partook of it, and he had
+      haricot soup every day, into which I allowed him to boil the skins of all
+      the sausages and the luscious bones of all the cutlets of which I happened
+      to partake. Then think what he cost me in drink! Never could I leave a
+      half or quarter bottle of wine but he would finish it; his impudent
+      fingers made light of every lock and key. I dared not allow as much as a
+      sou to rest in the pocket of my coat but he would ferret it out the moment
+      I hung the coat up in the outer room and my back was turned for a few
+      seconds. After a while I was forced&mdash;yes, I, Sir, who have spoken on
+      terms of equality with kings&mdash;I was forced to go out and make my own
+      purchases in the neighbouring provision shops. And why? Because if I sent
+      Theodore and gave him a few sous wherewith to make these purchases, he
+      would spend the money at the nearest cabaret in getting drunk on absinthe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He robbed me, Sir, shamefully, despite the fact that he had ten per cent,
+      commission on all the profits of the firm. I gave him twenty francs out of
+      the money which I had earned at the sweat of my brow in the service of
+      Estelle Bachelier. Twenty francs, Sir! Reckoning two hundred francs as
+      business profit on the affair, a generous provision you will admit! And
+      yet he taunted me with having received a thousand. This was mere
+      guesswork, of course, and I took no notice of his taunts: did the brains
+      that conceived the business deserve no payment? Was my labour to be
+      counted as dross?&mdash;the humiliation, the blows which I had to endure
+      while he sat in hoggish content, eating and sleeping without thought for
+      the morrow? After which he calmly pocketed the twenty francs to earn which
+      he had not raised one finger, and then demanded more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, no, my dear Sir, you will believe me or not, that man could not go
+      straight. Times out of count he would try and deceive me, despite the fact
+      that, once or twice, he very nearly came hopelessly to grief in the
+      attempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, just to give you an instance. About this time Paris was in the grip
+      of a gang of dog-thieves as unscrupulous and heartless as they were
+      daring. Can you wonder at it? with that awful penury about and a number of
+      expensive &ldquo;tou-tous&rdquo; running about the streets under the very
+      noses of the indigent proletariat? The ladies of the aristocracy and of
+      the wealthy bourgeoisie had imbibed this craze for lap-dogs during their
+      sojourn in England at the time of the emigration, and being women of the
+      Latin race and of undisciplined temperament, they were just then carrying
+      their craze to excess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I was saying, this indulgence led to wholesale thieving. Tou-tous were
+      abstracted from their adoring mistresses with marvellous adroitness;
+      whereupon two or three days would elapse while the adoring mistress wept
+      buckets full of tears and set the police of M. Fouché, Duc d&rsquo;Otrante,
+      by the ears in search of her pet. The next act in the tragi-comedy would
+      be an anonymous demand for money&mdash;varying in amount in accordance
+      with the known or supposed wealth of the lady&mdash;and an equally
+      anonymous threat of dire vengeance upon the tou-tou if the police were put
+      upon the track of the thieves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You will ask me, no doubt, what all this had to do with Theodore. Well! I
+      will tell you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You must know that of late he had become extraordinarily haughty and
+      independent. I could not keep him to his work. His duties were to sweep
+      the office&mdash;he did not do it; to light the fires&mdash;I had to light
+      them myself every morning; to remain in the anteroom and show clients in&mdash;he
+      was never at his post. In fact he was never there when I did want him:
+      morning, noon and night he was out&mdash;gadding about and coming home,
+      Sir, only to eat and sleep. I was seriously thinking of giving him the
+      sack. And then one day he disappeared! Yes, Sir, disappeared completely as
+      if the earth had swallowed him up. One morning&mdash;it was in the
+      beginning of December and the cold was biting&mdash;I arrived at the
+      office and found that his chair-bed which stood in the antechamber had not
+      been slept in; in fact that it had not been made up overnight. In the
+      cupboard I found the remnants of an onion pie, half a sausage, and a
+      quarter of a litre of wine, which proved conclusively that he had not been
+      in to supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first I was not greatly disturbed in my mind. I had found out quite
+      recently that Theodore had some sort of a squalid home of his own
+      somewhere behind the fish-market, together with an old and wholly
+      disreputable mother who plied him with drink whenever he spent an evening
+      with her and either he or she had a franc in their pocket. Still, after
+      these bouts spent in the bosom of his family he usually returned to sleep
+      them off at my expense in my office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had unfortunately very little to do that day, so in the late afternoon,
+      not having seen anything of Theodore all day, I turned my steps toward the
+      house behind the fish-market where lived the mother of that ungrateful
+      wretch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman&rsquo;s surprise when I inquired after her precious son was
+      undoubtedly genuine. Her lamentations and crocodile tears certainly were
+      not. She reeked of alcohol, and the one room which she inhabited was
+      indescribably filthy. I offered her half a franc if she gave me authentic
+      news of Theodore, knowing well that for that sum she would have sold him
+      to the devil. But very obviously she knew nothing of his whereabouts, and
+      I soon made haste to shake the dirt of her abode from my heels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had become vaguely anxious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wondered if he had been murdered somewhere down a back street, and if I
+      should miss him very much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not think that I would.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moreover, no one could have any object in murdering Theodore. In his own
+      stupid way he was harmless enough, and he certainly was not possessed of
+      anything worth stealing. I myself was not over-fond of the man&mdash;but I
+      should not have bothered to murder him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, I was undoubtedly anxious, and slept but little that night thinking
+      of the wretch. When the following morning I arrived at my office and still
+      could see no trace of him, I had serious thoughts of putting the law in
+      motion on his behalf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then, however, an incident occurred which drove all thoughts of such
+      an insignificant personage as Theodore from my mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had just finished tidying up the office when there came a peremptory
+      ring at the outer door, repeated at intervals of twenty seconds or so. It
+      meant giving a hasty glance all round to see that no fragments of onion
+      pie or of cheap claret lingered in unsuspected places, and it meant my
+      going, myself, to open the door to my impatient visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did it, Sir, and then at the door I stood transfixed. I had seen many
+      beautiful women in my day&mdash;great ladies of the Court, brilliant
+      ladies of the Consulate, the Directorate and the Empire&mdash;but never in
+      my life had I seen such an exquisite and resplendent apparition as the one
+      which now sailed through the antechamber of my humble abode.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir, Hector Ratichon&rsquo;s heart has ever been susceptible to the charms
+      of beauty in distress. This lovely being, Sir, who now at my invitation
+      entered my office and sank with perfect grace into the arm-chair, was in
+      obvious distress. Tears hung on the fringe of her dark lashes, and the
+      gossamer-like handkerchief which she held in her dainty hand was nothing
+      but a wet rag. She gave herself exactly two minutes wherein to compose
+      herself, after which she dried her eyes and turned the full artillery of
+      her bewitching glance upon me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Ratichon,&rdquo; she began, even before I had taken my
+      accustomed place at my desk and assumed that engaging smile which inspires
+      confidence even in the most timorous; &ldquo;Monsieur Ratichon, they tell
+      me that you are so clever, and&mdash;oh! I am in such trouble.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; I rejoined with noble simplicity, &ldquo;you may
+      trust me to do the impossible in order to be of service to you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Admirably put, you will admit. I have always been counted a master of
+      appropriate diction, and I had been quick enough to note the plain band of
+      gold which encircled the third finger of her dainty left hand, flanked
+      though it was by a multiplicity of diamond, pearl and other jewelled
+      rings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are kind, Monsieur Ratichon,&rdquo; resumed the beauteous
+      creature more calmly. &ldquo;But indeed you will require all the ingenuity
+      of your resourceful brain in order to help me in this matter. I am
+      struggling in the grip of a relentless fate which, if you do not help me,
+      will leave me broken-hearted.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Command me, Madame,&rdquo; I riposted quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From out the daintiest of reticules the fair lady now extracted a very
+      greasy and very dirty bit of paper, and handed it to me with the brief
+      request: &ldquo;Read this, I pray you, my good M. Ratichon.&rdquo; I took
+      the paper. It was a clumsily worded, ill-written, ill-spelt demand for
+      five thousand francs, failing which sum the thing which Madame had lost
+      would forthwith be destroyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked up, puzzled, at my fair client.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My darling Carissimo, my dear M. Ratichon,&rdquo; she said in reply
+      to my mute query.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Carissimo?&rdquo; I stammered, yet further intrigued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My darling pet, a valuable creature, the companion of my lonely
+      hours,&rdquo; she rejoined, once more bursting into tears. &ldquo;If I
+      lose him, my heart will inevitably break.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I understood at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame has lost her dog?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has been stolen by one of those expert dog thieves, who then
+      levy blackmail on the unfortunate owner?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again she nodded in assent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I read the dirty, almost illegible scrawl through more carefully this
+      time. It was a clumsy notification addressed to Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé
+      de St. Pris to the effect that her tou-tou was for the moment safe, and
+      would be restored to the arms of his fond mistress provided the sum of
+      five thousand francs was deposited in the hands of the bearer of the
+      missive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Minute directions were then given as to where and how the money was to be
+      deposited. Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé was, on the third day from this at six
+      o&rsquo;clock in the evening precisely, to go in person and alone to the
+      angle of the Rue Guénégaud and the Rue Mazarine, at the rear of the
+      Institut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There two men would meet her, one of whom would have Carissimo in his
+      arms; to the other she must hand over the money, whereupon the pet would
+      at once be handed back to her. But if she failed to keep this appointment,
+      or if in the meanwhile she made the slightest attempt to trace the writer
+      of the missive or to lay a trap for his capture by the police, Carissimo
+      would at once meet with a summary death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These were the usual tactics of experienced dog thieves, only that in this
+      case the demand was certainly exorbitant. Five thousand francs! But even
+      so . . . I cast a rapid and comprehensive glance on the brilliant
+      apparition before me&mdash;the jewelled rings, the diamonds in the
+      shell-like ears, the priceless fur coat&mdash;and with an expressive shrug
+      of the shoulders I handed the dirty scrap of paper back to its fair
+      recipient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas, Madame,&rdquo; I said, taking care that she should not guess
+      how much it cost me to give her such advice, &ldquo;I am afraid that in
+      such cases there is nothing to be done. If you wish to save your pet you
+      will have to pay. . .&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! but, Monsieur,&rdquo; she exclaimed tearfully, &ldquo;you don&rsquo;t
+      understand. Carissimo is all the world to me, and this is not the first
+      time, nor yet the second, that he has been stolen from me. Three times, my
+      good M. Ratichon, three times has he been stolen, and three times have I
+      received such peremptory demands for money for his safe return; and every
+      time the demand has been more and more exorbitant. Less than a month ago
+      M. le Comte paid three thousand francs for his recovery.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur le Comte?&rdquo; I queried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My husband, Sir,&rdquo; she replied, with an exquisite air of
+      hauteur. &ldquo;M. le Comte de Nolé de St. Pris.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, then,&rdquo; I continued calmly, &ldquo;I fear me that Monsieur
+      de Nolé de St. Pris will have to pay again.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he won&rsquo;t!&rdquo; she now cried out in a voice broken with
+      sobs, and incontinently once more saturated her gossamer handkerchief with
+      her tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I see nothing for it, Madame,&rdquo; I rejoined, much against
+      my will with a slight touch of impatience, &ldquo;I see nothing for it but
+      that yourself . . .&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! but, Monsieur,&rdquo; she retorted, with a sigh that would have
+      melted a heart of stone, &ldquo;that is just my difficulty. I cannot pay .
+      . .&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; I protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! if I had money of my own,&rdquo; she continued, with an
+      adorable gesture of impatience, &ldquo;I would not worry. Mais voilà: I
+      have not a silver franc of my own to bless myself with. M. le Comte is
+      over generous. He pays all my bills without a murmur&mdash;he pays my
+      dressmaker, my furrier; he loads me with gifts and dispenses charity on a
+      lavish scale in my name. I have horses, carriages, servants&mdash;everything
+      I can possibly want and more, but I never have more than a few hundred
+      francs to dispose of. Up to now I have never for a moment felt the want of
+      money. To-day, when Carissimo is being lost to me, I feel the entire
+      horror of my position.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But surely, Madame,&rdquo; I urged, &ldquo;M. le Comte . . .&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Monsieur,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;M. le Comte has flatly
+      refused this time to pay these abominable thieves for the recovery of
+      Carissimo. He upbraids himself for having yielded to their demands on the
+      three previous occasions. He calls these demands blackmailing, and vows
+      that to give them money again is to encourage them in their nefarious
+      practices. Oh! he has been cruel to me, cruel!&mdash;for the first time in
+      my life, Monsieur, my husband has made me unhappy, and if I lose my
+      darling now I shall indeed be broken-hearted.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was silent for a moment or two. I was beginning to wonder what part I
+      should be expected to play in the tragedy which was being unfolded before
+      me by this lovely and impecunious creature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame la Comtesse,&rdquo; I suggested tentatively, after a while,
+      &ldquo;your jewellery . . . you must have a vast number which you seldom
+      wear . . . five thousand francs is soon made up. . . .&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You see, Sir, my hopes of a really good remunerative business had by now
+      dwindled down to vanishing point. All that was left of them was a vague
+      idea that the beautiful Comtesse would perhaps employ me as an
+      intermediary for the sale of some of her jewellery, in which case . . .
+      But already her next words disillusioned me even on that point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Monsieur,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;what would be the use?
+      Through one of the usual perverse tricks of fate, M. le Comte would be
+      sure to inquire after the very piece of jewellery of which I had so
+      disposed, and moreover . . .&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moreover&mdash;yes, Mme. la Comtesse?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moreover, my husband is right,&rdquo; she concluded decisively.
+      &ldquo;If I give in to those thieves to-day and pay them five thousand
+      francs, they would only set to work to steal Carissimo again and demand
+      ten thousand francs from me another time.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was silent. What could I say? Her argument was indeed unanswerable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my good M. Ratichon,&rdquo; she said very determinedly after a
+      while. &ldquo;I have quite decided that you must confound those thieves.
+      They have given me three days&rsquo; grace, as you see in their abominable
+      letter. If after three days the money is not forthcoming, and if in the
+      meanwhile I dare to set a trap for them or in any way communicate with the
+      police, my darling Carissimo will be killed and my heart be broken.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame la Comtesse,&rdquo; I entreated, for of a truth I could not
+      bear to see her cry again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must bring Carissimo back to me, M. Ratichon,&rdquo; she
+      continued peremptorily, &ldquo;before those awful three days have elapsed.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I swear that I will,&rdquo; I rejoined solemnly; but I must admit
+      that I did it entirely on the spur of the moment, for of a truth I saw no
+      prospect whatever of being able to accomplish what she desired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Without my paying a single louis to those execrable thieves,&rdquo;
+      the exquisite creature went on peremptorily,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It shall be done, Madame la Comtesse.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And let me tell you,&rdquo; she now added, with the sweetest and
+      archest of smiles, &ldquo;that if you succeed in this, M. le Comte de Nolé
+      de St. Pris will gladly pay you the five thousand francs which he refuses
+      to give to those miscreants.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five thousand francs! A mist swam before my eyes,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mais, Madame la Comtesse . . .&rdquo; I stammered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she added, with an adorable uptilting of her little
+      chin, &ldquo;I am not promising what I cannot fulfil. M. le Comte de Nolé
+      only said this morning, apropos of dog thieves, that he would gladly give
+      ten thousand francs to anyone who succeeded in ridding society of such
+      pests.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could have knelt down on the hard floor, Sir, and . . .
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well then, Madame,&rdquo; was my ready rejoinder, &ldquo;why not
+      ten thousand francs to me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She bit her coral lips . . . but she also smiled. I could see that my
+      personality and my manners had greatly impressed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will only be responsible for the first five thousand,&rdquo; she
+      said lightly. &ldquo;But, for the rest, I can confidently assure you that
+      you will not find a miser in M. le Comte de Nolé de St. Pris.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could have knelt down on the hard floor, Sir, and kissed her exquisitely
+      shod feet. Five thousand francs certain! Perhaps ten! A fortune, Sir, in
+      those days! One that would keep me in comfort&mdash;nay, affluence, until
+      something else turned up. I was swimming in the empyrean and only came
+      rudely to earth when I recollected that I should have to give Theodore
+      something for his share of the business. Ah! fortunately that for the
+      moment he was comfortably out of the way! Thoughts that perhaps he had
+      been murdered after all once more coursed through my brain: not
+      unpleasantly, I&rsquo;ll admit. I would not have raised a finger to hurt
+      the fellow, even though he had treated me with the basest ingratitude and
+      treachery; but if someone else took the trouble to remove him, why indeed
+      should I quarrel with fate?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Back I came swiftly to the happy present. The lovely creature was showing
+      me a beautifully painted miniature of Carissimo, a King Charles spaniel of
+      no common type. This she suggested that I should keep by me for the
+      present for purposes of identification. After this we had to go into the
+      details of the circumstances under which she had lost her pet. She had
+      been for a walk with him, it seems, along the Quai Voltaire, and was
+      returning home by the side of the river, when suddenly a number of workmen
+      in blouses and peaked caps came trooping out of a side street and
+      obstructed her progress. She had Carissimo on the lead, and she at once
+      admitted to me that at first she never thought of connecting this pushing
+      and jostling rabble with any possible theft. She held her ground for
+      awhile, facing the crowd: for a few moments she was right in the midst of
+      it, and just then she felt the dog straining at the lead. She turned round
+      at once with the intention of picking him up, when to her horror she saw
+      that there was only a bundle of something weighty at the end of the lead,
+      and that the dog had disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole incident occurred, the lovely creature declared, within the
+      space of thirty seconds; the next instant the crowd had scattered in
+      several directions, the men running and laughing as they went. Mme. la
+      Comtesse was left standing alone on the quay. Not a passer-by in sight,
+      and the only gendarme visible, a long way down the Quai, had his back
+      turned toward her. Nevertheless she ran and hied him, and presently he
+      turned and, realizing that something was amiss, he too ran to meet her. He
+      listened to her story, swore lustily, but shrugged his shoulders in token
+      that the tale did not surprise him and that but little could be done.
+      Nevertheless he at once summoned those of his colleagues who were on duty
+      in the neighbourhood, and one of them went off immediately to notify the
+      theft at the nearest commissariat of police. After which they all
+      proceeded to a comprehensive scouring of the many tortuous sidestreets of
+      the quartier; but, needless to say, there was no sign of Carissimo or of
+      his abductors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night my lovely client went home distracted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following evening, when, broken-hearted, she wandered down the quays
+      living over again the agonizing moments during which she lost her pet, a
+      workman in a blue blouse, with a peaked cap pulled well over his eyes,
+      lurched up against her and thrust into her hand the missive which she had
+      just shown me. He then disappeared into the night, and she had only the
+      vaguest possible recollection of his appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That, Sir, was the substance of the story which the lovely creature told
+      me in a voice oft choked with tears. I questioned her very closely and in
+      my most impressive professional manner as to the identity of any one man
+      among the crowd who might have attracted her attention, but all that she
+      could tell me was that she had a vague impression of a wizened hunchback
+      with evil face, shaggy red beard and hair, and a black patch covering the
+      left eye.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      2.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Not much data to go on, you will, I think, admit, and I Can assure you,
+      Sir, that had I not possessed that unbounded belief in myself which is the
+      true hall-mark of genius, I would at the outset have felt profoundly
+      discouraged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As it was, I found just the right words of consolation and of hope
+      wherewith to bow my brilliant client out of my humble apartments, and then
+      to settle down to deep and considered meditation. Nothing, Sir, is so
+      conducive to thought as a long, brisk walk through the crowded streets of
+      Paris. So I brushed my coat, put on my hat at a becoming angle, and
+      started on my way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I walked as far as Suresnes, and I thought. After that, feeling fatigued,
+      I sat on the terrace of the Café Bourbon, overlooking the river. There I
+      sipped my coffee and thought. I walked back into Paris in the evening, and
+      still thought, and thought, and thought. After that I had some dinner,
+      washed down by an agreeable bottle of wine&mdash;did I mention that the
+      lovely creature had given me a hundred francs on account?&mdash;then I
+      went for a stroll along the Quai Voltaire, and I may safely say that there
+      is not a single side and tortuous street in its vicinity that I did not
+      explore from end to end during the course of that never to be forgotten
+      evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But still my mind remained in a chaotic condition. I had not succeeded in
+      forming any plan. What a quandary, Sir! Oh! what a quandary! Here was I,
+      Hector Ratichon, the confidant of kings, the right hand of two emperors,
+      set to the task of stealing a dog&mdash;for that is what I should have to
+      do&mdash;from an unscrupulous gang of thieves whose identity, abode and
+      methods were alike unknown to me. Truly, Sir, you will own that this was a
+      herculean task.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vaguely my thoughts reverted to Theodore. He might have been of good
+      counsel, for he knew more about thieves than I did, but the ungrateful
+      wretch was out of the way on the one occasion when he might have been of
+      use to me who had done so much for him. Indeed, my reason told me that I
+      need not trouble my head about Theodore. He had vanished; that he would
+      come back presently was, of course, an indubitable fact; people like
+      Theodore never vanish completely. He would come back and demand I know not
+      what, his share, perhaps, in a business which was so promising even if it
+      was still so vague.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five thousand francs! A round sum! If I gave Theodore five hundred the sum
+      would at once appear meagre, unimportant. Four thousand five hundred
+      francs!&mdash;it did not even <i>sound</i> well to my mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So I took care that Theodore vanished from my mental vision as completely
+      as he had done for the last two days from my ken, and as there was nothing
+      more that could be done that evening, I turned my weary footsteps toward
+      my lodgings at Passy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All that night, Sir, I lay wakeful and tossing in my bed, alternately
+      fuming and rejecting plans for the attainment of that golden goal&mdash;the
+      recovery of Mme. de Nolé&rsquo;s pet dog. And the whole of the next day I
+      spent in vain quest. I visited every haunt of ill-fame known to me within
+      the city. I walked about with a pistol in my belt, a hunk of bread and
+      cheese in my pocket, and slowly growing despair in my heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the evening Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé called for news of Carissimo, and
+      I could give her none. She cried, Sir, and implored, and her tears and
+      entreaties got on to my nerves until I felt ready to fall into hysterics.
+      One more day and all my chances of a bright and wealthy future would have
+      vanished. Unless the money was forthcoming on the morrow, the dog would be
+      destroyed, and with him my every hope of that five thousand francs. And
+      though she still irradiated charm and luxury from her entire lovely
+      person, I begged her not to come to the office again, and promised that as
+      soon as I had any news to impart I would at once present myself at her
+      house in the Faubourg St. Germain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night I never slept one wink. Think of it, Sir! The next few hours
+      were destined to see me either a prosperous man for many days to come, or
+      a miserable, helpless, disappointed wretch. At eight o&rsquo;clock I was
+      at my office. Still no news of Theodore. I could now no longer dismiss him
+      from my mind. Something had happened to him, I could have no doubt. This
+      anxiety, added to the other more serious one, drove me to a state
+      bordering on frenzy. I hardly knew what I was doing. I wandered all day up
+      and down the Quai Voltaire, and the Quai des Grands Augustins, and in and
+      around the tortuous streets till I was dog-tired, distracted, half crazy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went to the Morgue, thinking to find there Theodore&rsquo;s dead body,
+      and found myself vaguely looking for the mutilated corpse of Carissimo.
+      Indeed, after a while Theodore and Carissimo became so inextricably mixed
+      up in my mind that I could not have told you if I was seeking for the one
+      or for the other and if Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé was now waiting to clasp
+      her pet dog or my man-of-all-work to her exquisite bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She in the meanwhile had received a second, yet more peremptory, missive
+      through the same channel as the previous one. A grimy deformed man, with
+      ginger-coloured hair, and wearing a black patch over one eye, had been
+      seen by one of the servants lolling down the street where Madame lived,
+      and subsequently the concierge discovered that an exceedingly dirty scrap
+      of paper had been thrust under the door of his lodge. The writer of the
+      epistle demanded that Mme. la Comtesse should stand in person at six o&rsquo;clock
+      that same evening at the corner of the Rue Guénégaud, behind the Institut
+      de France. Two men, each wearing a blue blouse and peaked cap, would meet
+      her there. She must hand over the money to one of them, whilst the other
+      would have Carissimo in his arms. The missive closed with the usual
+      threats that if the police were mixed up in the affair, or the money not
+      forthcoming, Carissimo would be destroyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Six o&rsquo;clock was the hour fixed by these abominable thieves for the
+      final doom of Carissimo. It was now close on five. In a little more than
+      an hour my last hope of five or ten thousand francs and a smile of
+      gratitude from a pair of lovely lips would have gone, never again to
+      return. A great access of righteous rage seized upon me. I determined that
+      those miserable thieves, whoever they were, should suffer for the
+      disappointment which I was now enduring. If I was to lose five thousand
+      francs, they at least should not be left free to pursue their evil ways. I
+      would communicate with the police; the police should meet the miscreants
+      at the corner of the Rue Guénégaud. Carissimo would die; his lovely
+      mistress would be brokenhearted. I would be left to mourn yet another
+      illusion of a possible fortune, but they would suffer in gaol or in New
+      Caledonia the consequences of all their misdeeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortified by this resolution, I turned my weary footsteps in the direction
+      of the gendarmerie where I intended to lodge my denunciation of those
+      abominable thieves and blackmailers. The night was dark, the streets
+      ill-lighted, the air bitterly cold. A thin drizzle, half rain, half snow,
+      was descending, chilling me to the bone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was walking rapidly along the river bank with my coat collar pulled up
+      to my ears, and still instinctively peering up every narrow street which
+      debouches on the quay. Then suddenly I spied Theodore. He was coming down
+      the Rue Beaune, slouching along with head bent in his usual way. He
+      appeared to be carrying something, not exactly heavy, but cumbersome,
+      under his left arm. Within the next few minutes he would have been face to
+      face with me, for I had come to a halt at the angle of the street,
+      determined to have it out with the rascal then and there in spite of the
+      cold and in spite of my anxiety about Carissimo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All of a sudden he raised his head and saw me, and in a second he turned
+      on his heel and began to run up the street in the direction whence he had
+      come. At once I gave chase. I ran after him&mdash;and then, Sir, he came
+      for a second within the circle of light projected by a street lanthorn.
+      But in that one second I had seen that which turned my frozen blood into
+      liquid lava&mdash;a tail, Sir!&mdash;a dog&rsquo;s tail, fluffy and curly,
+      projecting from beneath that recreant&rsquo;s left arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A dog, Sir! a dog! Carissimo! the darling of Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé&rsquo;s
+      heart! Carissimo, the recovery of whom would mean five thousand francs
+      into my pocket! Carissimo! I knew it! For me there existed but one dog in
+      all the world; one dog and one spawn of the devil, one arch-traitor, one
+      limb of Satan! Theodore!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How he had come by Carissimo I had not time to con-conjecture. I called to
+      him. I called his accursed name, using appellations which fell far short
+      of those which he deserved. But the louder I called the faster he ran, and
+      I, breathless, panting, ran after him, determined to run him to earth,
+      fearful lest I should lose him in the darkness of the night. All down the
+      Rue Beaune we ran, and already I could hear behind me the heavy and more
+      leisured tramp of a couple of gendarmes who in their turn had started to
+      give chase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I tell you, Sir, the sound lent wings to my feet. A chance&mdash;a last
+      chance&mdash;was being offered me by a benevolent Fate to earn that five
+      thousand francs, the keystone to my future fortune. If I had the strength
+      to seize and hold Theodore until the gendarmes came up, and before he had
+      time to do away with the dog, the five thousand francs could still be
+      mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So I ran, Sir, as I had never run before; the beads of perspiration poured
+      down from my forehead; the breath came stertorous and hot from my heaving
+      breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then suddenly Theodore disappeared!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Disappeared, Sir, as if the earth had swallowed him up! A second ago I had
+      seen him dimly, yet distinctly through the veil of snow and rain ahead of
+      me, running with that unmistakable shuffling gait of his, hugging the dog
+      closely under his arm. I had seen him&mdash;another effort and I might
+      have touched him!&mdash;now the long and deserted street lay dark and
+      mysterious before me, and behind me I could hear the measured tramp of the
+      gendarmes and their peremptory call of &ldquo;Halt, in the name of the
+      King!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But not in vain, Sir, am I called Hector Ratichon; not in vain have kings
+      and emperors reposed confidence in my valour and my presence of mind. In
+      less time than it takes to relate I had already marked with my eye the
+      very spot&mdash;down the street&mdash;where I had last seen Theodore. I
+      hurried forward and saw at once that my surmise had been correct. At that
+      very spot, Sir, there was a low doorway which gave on a dark and dank
+      passage. The door itself was open. I did not hesitate. My life stood in
+      the balance but I did not falter. I might be affronting within the next
+      second or two a gang of desperate thieves, but I did not quake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I turned into that doorway, Sir; the next moment I felt a stunning blow
+      between my eyes. I just remember calling out with all the strength of my
+      lungs: &ldquo;Police! Gendarmes! A moi!&rdquo; Then nothing more.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      3.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      I woke with the consciousness of violent wordy warfare carried on around
+      me. I was lying on the ground, and the first things I saw were three or
+      four pairs of feet standing close together. Gradually out of the confused
+      hubbub a few sentences struck my reawakened senses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The man is drunk.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t have him inside the house.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you this is a respectable house.&rdquo; This from a shrill
+      feminine voice. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve never had the law inside our doors
+      before.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time I had succeeded in raising myself on my elbow, and, by the
+      dim light of a hanging lamp somewhere down the passage, I was pretty well
+      able to take stock of my surroundings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The half-dozen bedroom candlesticks on a table up against the wall, the
+      row of keys hanging on hooks fixed to a board above, the glass partition
+      with the words &ldquo;Concierge&rdquo; and &ldquo;Réception&rdquo; painted
+      across it, all told me that this was one of those small, mostly squalid
+      and disreputable lodging houses or hotels in which this quarter of Paris
+      still abounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two gendarmes who had been running after me were arguing the matter of
+      my presence here with the proprietor of the place and with the concierge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I struggled to my feet. Whereupon for the space of a solid two minutes I
+      had to bear as calmly as I could the abuse and vituperation which the
+      feminine proprietor of this &ldquo;respectable house&rdquo; chose to hurl
+      at my unfortunate head. After which I obtained a hearing from the
+      bewildered minions of the law. To them I gave as brief and succinct a
+      narrative as I could of the events of the past three days. The theft of
+      Carissimo&mdash;the disappearance of Theodore&mdash;my meeting him a while
+      ago, with the dog under his arm&mdash;his second disappearance, this time
+      within the doorway of this &ldquo;respectable abode,&rdquo; and finally
+      the blow which alone had prevented me from running the abominable thief to
+      earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gendarmes at first were incredulous. I could see that they were still
+      under the belief that my excitement was due to over-indulgence in
+      alcoholic liquor, whilst Madame the proprietress called me an abominable
+      liar for daring to suggest that she harboured thieves within her doors.
+      Then suddenly, as if in vindication of my character, there came from a
+      floor above the sound of a loud, shrill bark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Carissimo!&rdquo; I cried triumphantly. Then I added in a rapid
+      whisper, &ldquo;Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé is rich. She spoke of a big
+      reward for the recovery of her pet.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These happy words had the effect of stimulating the zeal of the gendarmes.
+      Madame the proprietress grew somewhat confused and incoherent, and finally
+      blurted it out that one of her lodgers&mdash;a highly respectable
+      gentleman&mdash;did keep a dog, but that there was no crime in that
+      surely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of your lodgers?&rdquo; queried the representative of the law.
+      &ldquo;When did he come?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About three days ago,&rdquo; she replied sullenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What room does he occupy?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Number twenty-five on the third floor.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He came with his dog?&rdquo; I interposed quickly, &ldquo;a
+      spaniel?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your lodger, is he an ugly, slouchy creature&mdash;with hooked
+      nose, bleary eyes and shaggy yellow hair?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to this she vouchsafed no reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already the matter had passed out of my hands. One of the gendarmes
+      prepared to go upstairs and bade me follow him, whilst he ordered his
+      comrade to remain below and on no account to allow anyone to enter or
+      leave the house. The proprietress and concierge were warned that if they
+      interfered with the due execution of the law they would be severely dealt
+      with; after which we went upstairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a while, as we ascended, we could hear the dog barking furiously,
+      then, presently, just as we reached the upper landing, we heard a loud
+      curse, a scramble, and then a piteous whine quickly smothered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My very heart stood still. The next moment, however, the gendarme had
+      kicked open the door of No. 25, and I followed him into the room. The
+      place looked dirty and squalid in the extreme&mdash;just the sort of place
+      I should have expected Theodore to haunt. It was almost bare save for a
+      table in the centre, a couple of rickety chairs, a broken-down bedstead
+      and an iron stove in the corner. On the table a tallow candle was
+      spluttering and throwing a very feeble circle of light around.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first glance I thought that the room was empty, then suddenly I heard
+      another violent expletive and became aware of a man sitting close beside
+      the iron stove. He turned to stare at us as we entered, but to my surprise
+      it was not Theodore&rsquo;s ugly face which confronted us. The man sitting
+      there alone in the room where I had expected to see Theodore and Carissimo
+      had a shaggy beard of an undoubted ginger hue. He had on a blue blouse and
+      a peaked cap; beneath his cap his lank hair protruded more decided in
+      colour even than his beard. His head was sunk between his shoulders, and
+      right across his face, from the left eyebrow over the cheek and as far as
+      his ear, he had a hideous crimson scar, which told up vividly against the
+      ghastly pallor of his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was no sign of Theodore!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first my friend the gendarme was quite urbane. He asked very politely
+      to see Monsieur&rsquo;s pet dog. Monsieur denied all knowledge of a dog,
+      which denial only tended to establish his own guilt and the veracity of
+      mine own narrative. The gendarme thereupon became more peremptory and the
+      man promptly lost his temper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I, in the meanwhile, was glancing round the room and soon spied a wall
+      cupboard which had obviously been deliberately screened by the bedstead.
+      While my companion was bringing the whole majesty of the law to bear upon
+      the miscreant&rsquo;s denegations I calmly dragged the bedstead aside and
+      opened the cupboard door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An ejaculation from my quivering throat brought the gendarme to my side.
+      Crouching in the dark recess of the wall cupboard was Carissimo&mdash;not
+      dead, thank goodness! but literally shaking with terror. I pulled him out
+      as gently as I could, for he was so frightened that he growled and snapped
+      viciously at me. I handed him to the gendarme, for by the side of
+      Carissimo I had seen something which literally froze my blood within my
+      veins. It was Theodore&rsquo;s hat and coat, which he had been wearing
+      when I chased him to this house of mystery and of ill-fame, and wrapped
+      together with it was a rag all smeared with blood, whilst the same hideous
+      stains were now distinctly visible on the door of the cupboard itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I turned to the gendarme, who at once confronted the abominable malefactor
+      with the obvious proofs of a horrible crime. But the depraved wretch stood
+      by, Sir, perfectly calm and with a cynicism in his whole bearing which I
+      had never before seen equalled!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know nothing about that coat,&rdquo; he asserted with a shrug of
+      the shoulders, &ldquo;nor about the dog.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gendarme by this time was purple with fury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not know anything about the dog?&rdquo; he exclaimed in a voice
+      choked with righteous indignation. &ldquo;Why, he . . . he barked!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this indisputable fact in no way disconcerted the miscreant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard a dog yapping,&rdquo; he said with consummate impudence,
+      &ldquo;but I thought he was in the next room. No wonder,&rdquo; he added
+      coolly, &ldquo;since he was in a wall cupboard.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A wall cupboard,&rdquo; the gendarme rejoined triumphantly, &ldquo;situated
+      in the very room which you occupy at this moment.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a mistake, my friend,&rdquo; the cynical wretch retorted,
+      undaunted. &ldquo;I do not occupy this room. I do not lodge in this hotel
+      at all.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then how came you to be here?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came on a visit to a friend who happened to be out when I
+      arrived. I found a pleasant fire here, and I sat down to warm myself. Your
+      noisy and unwarranted irruption into this room has so bewildered me that I
+      no longer know whether I am standing on my head or on my heels.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll show you soon enough what you are standing on, my fine
+      fellow,&rdquo; the gendarme riposted with breezy, cheerfulness. &ldquo;Allons!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I must say that the pampered minion of the law arose splendidly to the
+      occasion. He seized the miscreant by the arm and took him downstairs,
+      there to confront him with the proprietress of the establishment, while I&mdash;with
+      marvellous presence of mind&mdash;took possession of Carissimo and hid him
+      as best I could beneath my coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the hall below a surprise and a disappointment were in store for me. I
+      had reached the bottom of the stairs when the shrill feminine accents of
+      Mme. the proprietress struck unpleasantly on my ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! no! I tell you!&rdquo; she was saying. &ldquo;This man is not
+      my lodger. He never came here with a dog. There,&rdquo; she added volubly,
+      and pointing an unwashed finger at Carissimo who was struggling and
+      growling in my arms, &ldquo;there is the dog. A gentleman brought him with
+      him last Wednesday, when he inquired if he could have a room here for a
+      few nights. Number twenty-five happened to be vacant, and I have no
+      objection to dogs. I let the gentleman have the room, and he paid me
+      twenty sous in advance when he took possession and told me he would keep
+      the room three nights.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The gentleman? What gentleman?&rdquo; the gendarme queried, rather
+      inanely I thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My lodger,&rdquo; the woman replied. &ldquo;He is out for the
+      moment, but he will be back presently I make no doubt. The dog is his. . .
+      .&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is he like?&rdquo; the minion of the law queried abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who? the dog?&rdquo; she retorted impudently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no! Your lodger.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more the unwashed finger went up and pointed straight at me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He described him well enough just now; thin and slouchy in his
+      ways. He has lank, yellow hair, a nose perpetually crimson&mdash;with the
+      cold no doubt&mdash;and pale, watery eyes. . . .&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Theodore,&rdquo; I exclaimed mentally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bewildered, the gendarme pointed to his prisoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this man . . . ?&rdquo; he queried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; the proprietress replied. &ldquo;I have seen Monsieur
+      twice, or was it three times? He would visit number twenty-five now and
+      then.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will not weary you with further accounts of the close examination to
+      which the representative of the law subjected the personnel of the squalid
+      hotel. The concierge and the man of all work did indeed confirm what the
+      proprietress said, and whilst my friend the gendarme &mdash;puzzled and
+      floundering&mdash;was scratching his head in complete bewilderment, I
+      thought that the opportunity had come for me to slip quietly out by the
+      still open door and make my way as fast as I could to the sumptuous abode
+      in the Faubourg St. Germain, where the gratitude of Mme. de Nolé, together
+      with five thousand francs, were even now awaiting me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After Madame the proprietress had identified Carissimo, I had once more
+      carefully concealed him under my coat. I was ready to seize my
+      opportunity, after which I would be free to deal with the matter of
+      Theodore&rsquo;s amazing disappearance. Unfortunately just at this moment
+      the little brute gave a yap, and the minion of the law at once interposed
+      and took possession of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The dog belongs to the police now, Sir,&rdquo; he said sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fatuous jobbernowl wanted his share of the reward, you see.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      4.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Having been forced thus to give up Carissimo, and with him all my hopes of
+      a really substantial fortune, I was determined to make the red-polled
+      miscreant suffer for my disappointment, and the minions of the law sweat
+      in the exercise of their duty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I demanded Theodore! My friend, my comrade, my right hand! I had seen him
+      not ten minutes ago, carrying in his arms this very dog, whom I had
+      subsequently found inside a wall cupboard beside a blood-stained coat.
+      Where was Theodore? Pointing an avenging finger at the red-headed
+      reprobate, I boldly accused him of having murdered my friend with a view
+      to robbing him of the reward offered for the recovery of the dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This brought a new train of thought into the wooden pates of the
+      gendarmes. A quartet of them had by this time assembled within the
+      respectable precincts of the Hôtel des Cadets. One of them&mdash;senior to
+      the others&mdash;at once dispatched a younger comrade to the nearest
+      commissary of police for advice and assistance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he ordered us all into the room pompously labelled &ldquo;Réception,&rdquo;
+      and there proceeded once more to interrogate us all, making copious notes
+      in his leather-bound book all the time, whilst I, moaning and lamenting
+      the loss of my faithful friend and man of all work, loudly demanded the
+      punishment of his assassin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Theodore&rsquo;s coat, his hat, the blood-stained rag, had all been
+      brought down from No. 25 and laid out upon the table ready for the
+      inspection of M. the Commissary of Police.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That gentleman arrived with two private agents, armed with full powers and
+      wrapped in the magnificent imperturbability of the law. The gendarme had
+      already put him <i>au fait</i> of the events, and as soon as he was seated
+      behind the table upon which reposed the &ldquo;pièces de conviction,&rdquo;
+      he in his turn proceeded to interrogate the ginger-pated miscreant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But strive how he might, M. the Commissary elicited no further information
+      from him than that which we all already possessed. The man gave his name
+      as Aristide Nicolet. He had no fixed abode. He had come to visit his
+      friend who lodged in No. 25 in the Hôtel des Cadets. Not finding him at
+      home he had sat by the fire and had waited for him. He knew absolutely
+      nothing of the dog and absolutely nothing of the whereabouts of Theodore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll soon see about that!&rdquo; asserted M. the Commissary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He ordered a perquisition of every room and every corner of the hotel,
+      Madame the proprietress loudly lamenting that she and her respectable
+      house would henceforth be disgraced for ever. But the thieves&mdash;whoever
+      they were&mdash;were clever. Not a trace of any illicit practice was found
+      on the premises&mdash;and not a trace of Theodore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had he indeed been murdered? The thought now had taken root in my mind.
+      For the moment I had even forgotten Carissimo and my vanished five
+      thousand francs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, Sir! Aristide Nicolet was marched off to the depot&mdash;still
+      protesting his innocence. The next day he was confronted with Mme. la
+      Comtesse de Nolé, who could not say more than that he might have formed
+      part of the gang who had jostled her on the Quai Voltaire, whilst the
+      servant who had taken the missive from him failed to recognize him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carissimo was restored to the arms of his loving mistress, but the reward
+      for his recovery had to be shared between the police and myself: three
+      thousand francs going to the police who apprehended the thief, and two
+      thousand to me who had put them on the track.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not a fortune, Sir, but I had to be satisfied. But in the meanwhile
+      the disappearance of Theodore had remained an unfathomable mystery. No
+      amount of questionings and cross-questionings, no amount of confrontations
+      and perquisitions, had brought any new matter to light. Aristide Nicolet
+      persisted in his statements, as did the proprietress and the concierge of
+      the Hôtel des Cadets in theirs. Theodore had undoubtedly occupied room No.
+      25 in the hotel during the three days while I was racking my brain as to
+      what had become of him. I equally undoubtedly saw him for a few moments
+      running up the Rue Beaune with Carissimo&rsquo;s tail projecting beneath
+      his coat. Then he entered the open doorway of the hotel, and henceforth
+      his whereabouts remained a baffling mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beyond his coat and hat, the stained rag and the dog himself, there was
+      not the faintest indication of what became of him after that. The
+      concierge vowed that he did not enter the hotel&mdash;Aristide Nicolet
+      vowed that he did not enter No. 25. But then the dog was in the cupboard,
+      and so were the hat and coat; and even the police were bound to admit that
+      in the short space of time between my last glimpse of Theodore and the
+      gendarme&rsquo;s entry into room 25 it would be impossible for the most
+      experienced criminal on earth to murder a man, conceal every trace of the
+      crime, and so to dispose of the body as to baffle the most minute inquiry
+      and the most exhaustive search.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes when I thought the whole matter out I felt that I was growing
+      crazy.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      5.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Thus about a week or ten days went by and I had just come reluctantly to
+      the conclusion that there must be some truth in the old mediaeval legends
+      which tell us that the devil runs away with his elect from time to time,
+      when I received a summons from M. the Commissary of Police to present
+      myself at his bureau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was pleasant and urbane as usual, but to my anxious query after
+      Theodore he only gave me the old reply: &ldquo;No trace of him can be
+      found.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he added: &ldquo;We must therefore take it for granted, my good M.
+      Ratichon, that your man of all work is&mdash;of his own free will&mdash;keeping
+      out of the way. The murder theory is untenable; we have had to abandon it.
+      The total disappearance of the body is an unanswerable argument against
+      it. Would you care to offer a reward for information leading to the
+      recovery of your missing friend?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I hesitated. I certainly was not prepared to pay anyone for finding
+      Theodore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think it over, my good M. Ratichon,&rdquo; rejoined M. le
+      Commissaire pleasantly. &ldquo;But in the meanwhile I must tell you that
+      we have decided to set Aristide Nicolet free. There is not a particle of
+      evidence against him either in the matter of the dog or of that of your
+      friend. Mme. de Nolé&rsquo;s servants cannot swear to his identity, whilst
+      you have sworn that you last saw the dog in your man&rsquo;s arms. That
+      being so, I feel that we have no right to detain an innocent man.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, Sir, what could I say? I knew well enough that there was not a
+      tittle of solid evidence against the man Nicolet, nor had I the power to
+      move the police of His Majesty the King from their decision. In my heart
+      of hearts I had the firm conviction that the ginger-polled ruffian knew
+      all about Carissimo and all about the present whereabouts of that rascal
+      Theodore. But what could I say, Sir? What could I do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went home that night to my lodgings at Passy more perplexed than ever I
+      had been in my life before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning I arrived at my office soon after nine. The problem had
+      presented itself to me during the night of finding a new man of all work
+      who would serve me on the same terms as that ungrateful wretch Theodore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I mounted the stairs with a heavy step and opened the outer door of my
+      apartment with my private key; and then, Sir, I assure you that for one
+      brief moment I felt that my knees were giving way under me and that I
+      should presently measure my full length on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There, sitting at the table in my private room, was Theodore. He had
+      donned one of the many suits of clothes which I always kept at the office
+      for purposes of my business, and he was calmly consuming a luscious
+      sausage which was to have been part of my dinner today, and finishing a
+      half-bottle of my best Bordeaux.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He appeared wholly unconscious of his enormities, and when I taxed him
+      with his villainies and plied him with peremptory questions he met me with
+      a dogged silence and a sulky attitude which I have never seen equalled in
+      all my life. He flatly denied that he had ever walked the streets of Paris
+      with a dog under his arm, or that I had ever chased him up the Rue Beaune.
+      He denied ever having lodged in the Hôtel des Cadets, or been acquainted
+      with its proprietress, or with a red-polled, hunchback miscreant named
+      Aristide Nicolet. He denied that the coat and hat found in room No. 25
+      were his; in fact, he denied everything, and with an impudence, Sir, which
+      was past belief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he put the crown to his insolence when he finally demanded two hundred
+      francs from me: his share in the sum paid to me by Mme. de Nolé for the
+      recovery of her dog. He demanded this, Sir, in the name of justice and of
+      equity, and even brandished our partnership contract in my face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was so irate at his audacity, so disgusted that presently I felt that I
+      could not bear the sight of him any longer. I turned my back on him and
+      walked out of my own private room, leaving him there still munching my
+      sausage and drinking my Bordeaux.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was going through the antechamber with a view to going out into the
+      street for a little fresh air when something in the aspect of the
+      chair-bedstead on which that abominable brute Theodore had apparently
+      spent the night attracted my attention. I turned over one of the cushions,
+      and with a cry of rage which I took no pains to suppress I seized upon
+      what I found lying beneath: a blue linen blouse, Sir, a peaked cap, a
+      ginger-coloured wig and beard!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The villain! The abominable mountebank! The wretch! The . . . I was
+      wellnigh choking with wrath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the damning pieces of conviction in my hand, I rushed back into the
+      inner room. Already my cry of indignation had aroused the vampire from his
+      orgy. He stood before me sheepish, grinning, and taunted me, Sir&mdash;taunted
+      me for my blindness in not recognizing him under the disguise of the
+      so-called Aristide Nicolet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a disguise which he had kept by him in case of an emergency when
+      first he decided to start business as a dog thief. Carissimo had been his
+      first serious venture and but for my interference it would have been a
+      wholly successful one. He had worked the whole thing out with marvellous
+      cleverness, being greatly assisted by Madame Sand, the proprietress of the
+      Hôtel des Cadets, who was a friend of his mother&rsquo;s. The lady, it
+      seems, carried on a lucrative business of the same sort herself, and she
+      undertook to furnish him with the necessary confederates for the carrying
+      out of his plan. The proceeds of the affair were to be shared equally
+      between himself and Madame; the confederates, who helped to jostle Mme. de
+      Nolé whilst her dog was being stolen, were to receive five francs each for
+      their trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he met me at the corner of the Rue Beaune he was on his way to the
+      Rue Guénégaud, hoping to exchange Carissimo for five thousand francs. When
+      he met me, however, he felt that the best thing to do for the moment was
+      to seek safety in flight. He had only just time to run back to the hotel
+      to warn Mme. Sand of my approach and beg her to detain me at any cost.
+      Then he flew up the stairs, changed into his disguise, Carissimo barking
+      all the time furiously. Whilst he was trying to pacify the dog, the latter
+      bit him severely in the arm, drawing a good deal of blood&mdash;the
+      crimson scar across his face was a last happy inspiration which put the
+      finishing touch to his disguise and to the hoodwinking of the police and
+      of me. He had only just time to staunch the blood from his arm and to
+      thrust his own clothes and Carissimo into the wall cupboard when the
+      gendarme and I burst in upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could only gasp. For one brief moment the thought rushed through my mind
+      that I would denounce him to the police for . . . for . . .
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But that was just the trouble. Of what could I accuse him? Of murdering
+      himself or of stealing Mme. de Nolé&rsquo;s dog? The commissary would
+      hardly listen to such a tale . . . and it would make me seem ridiculous. .
+      . .
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So I gave Theodore the soundest thrashing he ever had in his life, and
+      fifty francs to keep his mouth shut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But did I not tell you that he was a monster of ingratitude?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. &mdash; THE TOYS
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      You are right, Sir, I very seldom speak of my halcyon days&mdash;those
+      days when the greatest monarch the world has ever known honoured me with
+      his intimacy and confidence. I had my office in the Rue St. Roch then, at
+      the top of a house just by the church, and not a stone&rsquo;s throw from
+      the palace, and I can tell you, Sir, that in those days ministers of
+      state, foreign ambassadors, aye! and members of His Majesty&rsquo;s
+      household, were up and down my staircase at all hours of the day. I had
+      not yet met Theodore then, and fate was wont to smile on me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for M. le Duc d&rsquo;Otrante, Minister of Police, he would send to me
+      or for me whenever an intricate case required special acumen,
+      resourcefulness and secrecy. Thus in the matter of the English files&mdash;have
+      I told you of it before? No? Well, then, you shall hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those were the days, Sir, when the Emperor&rsquo;s Berlin Decrees were
+      going to sweep the world clear of English commerce and of English
+      enterprise. It was not a case of paying heavy duty on English goods, or a
+      still heavier fine if you smuggled; it was total prohibition, and hanging
+      if you were caught bringing so much as a metre of Bradford cloth or half a
+      dozen Sheffield files into the country. But you know how it is, Sir: the
+      more strict the law the more ready are certain lawless human creatures to
+      break it. Never was smuggling so rife as it was in those days&mdash;I am
+      speaking now of 1810 or 11&mdash;never was it so daring or smugglers so
+      reckless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. le Duc d&rsquo;Otrante had his hands full, I can tell you. It had
+      become a matter for the secret police; the coastguard or customs officials
+      were no longer able to deal with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then one day Hypolite Leroux came to see me. I knew the man well&mdash;a
+      keen sleuthhound if ever there was one&mdash;and well did he deserve his
+      name, for he was as red as a fox.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ratichon,&rdquo; he said to me, without preamble, as soon as he had
+      seated himself opposite to me, and I had placed half a bottle of good
+      Bordeaux and a couple of glasses on the table. &ldquo;I want your help in
+      the matter of these English files. We have done all that we can in our
+      department. M. le Duc has doubled the customs personnel on the Swiss
+      frontier, the coastguard is both keen and efficient, and yet we know that
+      at the present moment there are thousands of English files used in this
+      country, even inside His Majesty&rsquo;s own armament works. M. le Duc d&rsquo;Otrante
+      is determined to put an end to the scandal. He has offered a big reward
+      for information which will lead to the conviction of one or more of the
+      chief culprits, and I am determined to get that reward&mdash;with your
+      help, if you will give it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the reward?&rdquo; I asked simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five thousand francs,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;Your knowledge of
+      English and Italian is what caused me to offer you a share in this
+      splendid enterprise&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s no good lying to me, Leroux,&rdquo; I broke in quietly,
+      &ldquo;if we are going to work amicably together.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He swore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The reward is ten thousand francs.&rdquo; I made the shot at a
+      venture, knowing my man well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I swear that it is not,&rdquo; he asserted hotly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Swear again,&rdquo; I retorted, &ldquo;for I&rsquo;ll not deal with
+      you for less than five thousand.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did swear again and protested loudly. But I was firm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have another glass of wine,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After which he gave in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The affair was bound to be risky. Smugglers of English goods were
+      determined and desperate men who were playing for high stakes and risking
+      their necks on the board. In all matters of smuggling a knowledge of
+      foreign languages was an invaluable asset. I spoke Italian well and knew
+      some English. I knew my worth. We both drank a glass of cognac and sealed
+      our bond then and there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After which Leroux drew his chair closer to my desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen, then,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You know the firm of Fournier
+      Frères, in the Rue Colbert?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By name, of course. Cutlers and surgical instrument makers by
+      appointment to His Majesty. What about them?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M. le Duc has had his eyes on them for some time.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fournier Frères!&rdquo; I ejaculated. &ldquo;Impossible! A more
+      reputable firm does not exist in France.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, I know,&rdquo; he rejoined impatiently. &ldquo;And yet it
+      is a curious fact that M. Aristide Fournier, the junior partner, has
+      lately bought for himself a house at St. Claude.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At St. Claude?&rdquo; I ejaculated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he responded dryly. &ldquo;Very near to Gex, what?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shrugged my shoulders, for indeed the circumstances did appear somewhat
+      strange.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do you know Gex, my dear Sir? Ah, it is a curious and romantic spot. It
+      has possibilities, both natural and political, which appear to have been
+      expressly devised for the benefit of the smuggling fraternity. Nestling in
+      the midst of the Jura mountains, it is outside the customs zone of the
+      Empire. So you see the possibilities, do you not? Gex soon became the
+      picturesque warehouse of every conceivable kind of contraband goods. On
+      one side of it there was the Swiss frontier, and the Swiss Government was
+      always willing to close one eye in the matter of customs provided its palm
+      was sufficiently greased by the light-fingered gentry. No difficulty,
+      therefore, as you see, in getting contraband goods&mdash;even English ones&mdash;as
+      far as Gex.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here they could be kept hidden until a fitting opportunity occurred for
+      smuggling them into France, opportunities for which the Jura, with their
+      narrow defiles and difficult mountain paths, afforded magnificent scope.
+      St. Claude, of which Leroux had just spoken as the place where M. Aristide
+      Fournier had recently bought himself a house, is in France, only a few
+      kilometres from the neutral zone of Gex. It seemed a strange spot to
+      choose for a wealthy and fashionable member of Parisian bourgeois society,
+      I was bound to admit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; I mused, &ldquo;one cannot go to Gex without a permit
+      from the police.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not by road,&rdquo; Leroux assented. &ldquo;But you will own that
+      there are means available to men who are young and vigorous like M.
+      Fournier, who moreover, I understand, is an accomplished mountaineer. You
+      know Gex, of course?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had crossed the Jura once, in my youth, but was not very intimately
+      familiar with the district. Leroux had a carefully drawn-out map of it in
+      his pocket; this he laid out before me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These two roads,&rdquo; he began, tracing the windings of a couple
+      of thin red lines on the map with the point of his finger, &ldquo;are the
+      only two made ones that lead in and out of the district. Here is the
+      Valserine,&rdquo; he went on, pointing to a blue line, &ldquo;which flows
+      from north to south, and both the roads wind over bridges that span the
+      river close to our frontier. The French customs stations are on our side
+      of those bridges. But, besides those two roads, the frontier can, of
+      course, be crossed by one or other of the innumerable mountain tracks
+      which are only accessible to pedestrians or mules. That is where our
+      customs officials are powerless, for the tracks are precipitous and offer
+      unlimited cover to those who know every inch of the ground. Several of
+      them lead directly into St. Claude, at some considerable distance from the
+      customs stations, and it is these tracks which are being used by M.
+      Aristide Fournier for the felonious purpose of trading with the enemy&mdash;on
+      this I would stake my life. But I mean to be even with him, and if I get
+      the help which I require from you, I am convinced that I can lay him by
+      the heels.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am your man,&rdquo; I concluded simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; he resumed. &ldquo;Are you prepared to journey
+      with me to Gex?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When do you start?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-day.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be ready.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave a deep sigh of satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then listen to my plan,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll journey
+      together as far as St. Claude; from there you will push on to Gex, and
+      take up your abode in the city, styling yourself an interpreter. This will
+      give you the opportunity of mixing with some of the smuggling fraternity,
+      and it will be your duty to keep both your eyes and ears open. I, on the
+      other hand, will take up my quarters at Mijoux, the French customs
+      station, which is on the frontier, about half a dozen kilometres from Gex.
+      Every day I&rsquo;ll arrange to meet you, either at the latter place or
+      somewhere half-way, and hear what news you may have to tell me. And mind,
+      Ratichon,&rdquo; he added sternly, &ldquo;it means running straight, or
+      the reward will slip through our fingers.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I chose to ignore the coarse insinuation, and only riposted quietly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must have money on account. I am a poor man, and will be out of
+      pocket by the transaction from the hour I start for Gex to that when you
+      pay me my fair share of the reward.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By way of a reply he took out a case from his pocket. I saw that it was
+      bulging over with banknotes, which confirmed me in my conviction both that
+      he was actually an emissary of the Minister of Police and that I could
+      have demanded an additional thousand francs without fear of losing the
+      business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll give you five hundred on account,&rdquo; he said as he
+      licked his ugly thumb preparatory to counting out the money before me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make it a thousand,&rdquo; I retorted; &ldquo;and call it &lsquo;additional,&rsquo;
+      not &lsquo;on account.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried to argue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not keen on the business,&rdquo; I said with calm dignity,
+      &ldquo;so if you think that I am asking too much&mdash;there are others,
+      no doubt, who would do the work for less.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a bold move. But it succeeded. Leroux laughed and shrugged his
+      shoulders. Then he counted out ten hundred-franc notes and laid them out
+      upon the desk. But before I could touch them he laid his large bony hands
+      over the lot and, looking me straight between the eyes, he said with
+      earnest significance:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;English files are worth as much as twenty francs apiece in the
+      market.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fournier Frères would not take the risks which they are doing for a
+      consignment of less than ten thousand.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt if they would,&rdquo; I rejoined blandly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be your business to find out how and when the smugglers
+      propose to get their next consignment over the frontier.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And to communicate any information you may have obtained to me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And to keep an eye on the valuable cargo, of course?&rdquo; I
+      concluded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said roughly, &ldquo;an eye. But hands off,
+      understand, my good Ratichon, or there&rsquo;ll be trouble.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not wait to hear my indignant protest. He had risen to his feet,
+      and had already turned to go. Now he stretched his great coarse hand out
+      to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All in good part, eh?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I took his hand. He meant no harm, did old Leroux. He was just a common,
+      vulgar fellow who did not know a gentleman when he saw one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And we parted the best of friends.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      2.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      A week later I was at Gex. At St. Claude I had parted from Leroux, and
+      then hired a chaise to take me to my destination. It was a matter of
+      fifteen kilometres by road over the frontier of the customs zone and
+      through the most superb scenery I had ever seen in my life. We drove
+      through narrow gorges, on each side of which the mountain heights rose
+      rugged and precipitous to incalculable altitudes above. From time to time
+      only did I get peeps of almost imperceptible tracks along the declivities,
+      tracks on which it seemed as if goats alone could obtain a footing. Once&mdash;hundreds
+      of feet above me&mdash;I spied a couple of mules descending what seemed
+      like a sheer perpendicular path down the mountain side. The animals
+      appeared to be heavily laden, and I marvelled what forbidden goods lay
+      hidden within their packs and whether in the days that were to come I too
+      should be called upon to risk my life on those declivities following in
+      the footsteps of the reckless and desperate criminals whom it was my duty
+      to pursue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I confess that at the thought, and with those pictures of grim nature
+      before me, I felt an unpleasant shiver coursing down my spine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing of importance occurred during the first fortnight of my sojourn at
+      Gex. I was installed in moderately comfortable, furnished rooms in the
+      heart of the city, close to the church and market square. In one of my
+      front windows, situated on the ground floor, I had placed a card bearing
+      the inscription: &ldquo;Aristide Barrot, Interpreter,&rdquo; and below,
+      &ldquo;Anglais, Allemand, Italien.&rdquo; I had even had a few clients&mdash;conversations
+      between the local police and some poor wretches caught in the act of
+      smuggling a few yards of Swiss silk or a couple of cream cheeses over the
+      French frontier, and sent back to Gex to be dealt with by the local
+      authorities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leroux had found lodgings at Mijoux, and twice daily he walked over to Gex
+      to consult with me. We met, mornings and evenings, at the café restaurant
+      of the Crâne Chauve, an obscure little tavern situated on the outskirts of
+      the city. He was waxing impatient at what he called my supineness, for
+      indeed so far I had had nothing to report.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no sign of M. Aristide Fournier. No one in Gex appeared to know
+      anything about him, though the proprietor of the principal hotel in the
+      town did recollect having had a visitor of that name once or twice during
+      the past year. But, of course, during this early stage of my stay in the
+      town it was impossible for me to believe anything that I was told. I had
+      not yet succeeded in winning the confidence of the inhabitants, and it was
+      soon pretty evident to me that the whole countryside was engaged in the
+      perilous industry of smuggling. Everyone from the mayor downwards did a
+      bit of a deal now and again in contraband goods. In ordinary cases it only
+      meant fines if one was caught, or perhaps imprisonment for repeated
+      offenses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But four or five days after my arrival at Gex I saw three fellows handed
+      over to the police of the department. They had been caught in the act of
+      trying to ford the Valserine with half a dozen pack-mules laden with
+      English cloth. They were hanged at St. Claude two days later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I can assure you, Sir, that the news of this summary administration of
+      justice sent another cold shiver down my spine, and I marvelled if indeed
+      Leroux&rsquo;s surmises were correct and if a respectable tradesman like
+      Aristide Fournier would take such terrible risks even for the sake of
+      heavy gains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had been in Gex just a fortnight when the weather, which hitherto had
+      been splendid, turned to squalls and storms. We were then in the second
+      week of September. A torrential rain had fallen the whole of one day,
+      during which I had only been out in order to meet Leroux, as usual, at the
+      Café du Crâne Chauve. I had just come home from our evening meeting&mdash;it
+      was then ten o&rsquo;clock&mdash;and I was preparing to go comfortably to
+      bed, when I was startled by a violent ring at the front-door bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had only just time to wonder if this belated visitor desired to see me
+      or my worthy landlady, Mme. Bournon, when her heavy footsteps resounded
+      along the passage. The next moment I heard my name spoken peremptorily by
+      a harsh voice, and Mme. Bournon&rsquo;s reply that M. Aristide Barrot was
+      indeed within. A few seconds later she ushered my nocturnal visitor into
+      my room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was wrapped in a dark mantle from head to foot, and he wore a
+      wide-brimmed hat pulled right over his eyes. He did not remove either as
+      he addressed me without further preamble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are an interpreter, Sir?&rdquo; he queried, speaking very
+      rapidly and in sharp commanding tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At your service,&rdquo; I replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is Ernest Berty. I want you to come with me at once to my
+      house. I require your services as intermediary between myself and some men
+      who have come to see me on business. These men whom I wish you to see are
+      Russians,&rdquo; he added, I fancied as an afterthought, &ldquo;but they
+      speak English fluently.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I suppose that I looked just as I felt&mdash;somewhat dubious owing to the
+      lateness of the hour and the darkness of the night, not to speak of the
+      abominable weather, for he continued with marked impatience:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is imperative that you should come at once. Though my house is
+      at some little distance from here, I have a chaise outside which will also
+      bring you back, and,&rdquo; he added significantly, &ldquo;I will pay you
+      whatever you demand.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very late,&rdquo; I demurred, &ldquo;the weather&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your fee, man!&rdquo; he broke in roughly, &ldquo;and let&rsquo;s
+      get on!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five hundred francs,&rdquo; I said at a venture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come!&rdquo; was his curt reply. &ldquo;I will give you the money
+      as we drive along.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wished I had made it a thousand; apparently my services were worth a
+      great deal to him. However, I picked up my mantle and my hat, and within a
+      few seconds was ready to go. I shouted up to Mme. Bournon that I would not
+      be home for a couple of hours, but that as I had my key I need not disturb
+      her when I returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once outside the door I almost regretted my ready acquiescence in this
+      nocturnal adventure. The rain was beating down unmercifully, and at first
+      I saw no sign of a vehicle; but in answer to my visitor&rsquo;s sharp
+      command I followed him down the street as far as the market square, at the
+      corner of which I spied the dim outline of a carriage and a couple of
+      horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without wasting too many words, M. Ernest Berty bundled me into the
+      carriage, and very soon we were on the way. The night was impenetrably
+      dark and the chaise more than ordinarily rickety. I had but little
+      opportunity to ascertain which way we were going. A small lanthorn fixed
+      opposite to me in the interior of the carriage, and flickering incessantly
+      before my eyes, made it still more impossible for me to see anything
+      outside the narrow window. My companion sat beside me, silent and
+      absorbed. After a while I ventured to ask him which way we were driving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Through the town,&rdquo; he replied curtly. &ldquo;My house is just
+      outside Divonne.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Divonne is, as I knew, quite close to the Swiss frontier. It is a
+      matter of seven or eight kilometres&mdash;an hour&rsquo;s drive at the
+      very least in this supremely uncomfortable vehicle. I tried to induce
+      further conversation, but made no headway against my companion&rsquo;s
+      taciturnity. However, I had little cause for complaint in another
+      direction. After the first quarter of an hour, and when we had left the
+      cobblestones of the city behind us, he drew a bundle of notes from his
+      pocket, and by the flickering light of the lanthorn he counted out ten
+      fifty-franc notes and handed them without another word to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The drive was unspeakably wearisome; but after a while I suppose that the
+      monotonous rumbling of the wheels and the incessant patter of the rain
+      against the window-panes lulled me into a kind of torpor. Certain it is
+      that presently&mdash;much sooner than I had anticipated&mdash;the chaise
+      drew up with a jerk, and I was roused to full consciousness by hearing M.
+      Berty&rsquo;s voice saying curtly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here we are! Come with me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was stiff, Sir, and I was shivering&mdash;not so much with cold as with
+      excitement. You will readily understand that all my faculties were now on
+      the qui vive. Somehow or other during the wearisome drive by the side of
+      my close-tongued companion my mind had fastened on the certitude that my
+      adventure of this night bore a close connexion to the firm of Fournier
+      Frères and to the English files which were causing so many sleepless
+      nights to M. le Duc d&rsquo;Otrante, Minister of Police.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But nothing in my manner, as I stepped out of the carriage under the porch
+      of the house which loomed dark and massive out of the surrounding gloom,
+      betrayed anything of what I felt. Outwardly I was just a worthy bourgeois,
+      an interpreter by profession, and delighted at the remunerative work so
+      opportunely put in my way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house itself appeared lonely as well as dark. M. Berty led the way
+      across a narrow passage, at the end of which there was a door which he
+      pushed open, saying in his usual abrupt manner: &ldquo;Go in there and
+      wait. I&rsquo;ll send for you directly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he closed the door on me, and I heard his footsteps recrossing the
+      corridor and presently ascending some stairs. I was left alone in a small,
+      sparsely furnished room, dimly lighted by an oil lamp which hung down from
+      the ceiling. There was a table in the middle of the room, a square of
+      carpet on the floor, and a couple of chairs beside a small iron stove. I
+      noticed that the single window was closely shuttered and barred. I sat
+      down and waited. At first the silence around me was only broken by the
+      pattering of the rain against the shutters and the soughing of the wind
+      down the iron chimney pipe, but after a little while my senses, which by
+      this time had become super-acute, were conscious of various noises within
+      the house itself: footsteps overhead, a confused murmur of voices, and
+      anon the unmistakable sound of a female voice raised as if in entreaty or
+      in complaint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow a vague feeling of alarm possessed itself of my nervous system. I
+      began to realise my position&mdash;alone, a stranger in a house as to
+      whose situation I had not the remotest idea, and among a set of men who,
+      if my surmises were correct, were nothing less than a gang of determined
+      and dangerous criminals. The voices, especially the female one, were now
+      sounding more clear. I tiptoed to the door, and very gently opened it.
+      There was indeed no mistaking the tone of desperate pleading which came
+      from some room above and through &amp; woman&rsquo;s lips. I even caught
+      the words: &ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t! Oh, don&rsquo;t! Not again!&rdquo;
+      repeated at intervals with pitiable insistence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mastering my not unnatural anxiety, I opened the door a little farther and
+      slipped out into the passage, all my instincts of chivalry towards beauty
+      in distress aroused by those piteous cries. Forgetful of every possible
+      danger and of all prudence, I had already darted down the corridor,
+      determined to do my duty as a gentleman as soon as I had ascertained
+      whence had come those cries of anguish, when I heard the frou-frou of
+      skirts and a rapid patter of small feet down the stairs. The next moment a
+      radiant vision, all white muslin, fair curls and the scent of violets,
+      descended on me from above, a soft hand closed over mine and drew me,
+      unresisting, back into the room from whence I had just come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bewildered, I gazed on the winsome apparition before me, and beheld a
+      young girl, slender as a lily, dressed in a soft, clinging gown which made
+      her appear more slender still, her fair hair arranged in a tangle of
+      unruly curls round the dainty oval of her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was exquisite, Sir! And the slenderness of her! You cannot imagine it!
+      She looked like a young sapling bending to the gale. But what cut me to
+      the heart was the look of terror and of misery in her face. She clasped
+      her hands together and the tears gathered in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go, Sir, go at once!&rdquo; she murmured under her breath, speaking
+      very rapidly. &ldquo;Do not waste a minute, I beg of you! As you value
+      your life, go before it is too late!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Mademoiselle,&rdquo; I stammered; for indeed her words and
+      appearance had roused all my worst fears, but also all my instincts of the
+      sleuth-hound scenting his quarry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t argue, I beg of you,&rdquo; continued the lovely
+      creature, who indeed seemed the prey of overwhelming emotions&mdash;fear,
+      horror, pity. &ldquo;When he comes back do not let him find you here. I&rsquo;ll
+      explain, I&rsquo;ll know what to say, only I entreat you&mdash;go!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir, I have many faults, but cowardice does not happen to be one of them,
+      and the more the angel pleaded the more determined was I to see this
+      business through. I was, of course, quite convinced by now that I was on
+      the track of M. Aristide Fournier and the English files, and I was not
+      going to let five thousand francs and the gratitude of the Minister of
+      Police slip through my fingers so easily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle,&rdquo; I rejoined as calmly as I could, &ldquo;let me
+      assure you that though your anxiety for me is like manna to a starving
+      man, I have no fears for my own safety. I have come here in the capacity
+      of a humble interpreter; I certainly am not worth putting out of the way.
+      Moreover, I have been paid for my services, and these I will render to my
+      employer to the best of my capabilities.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but you don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; she retorted, not departing
+      one jot from her attitude of terror and of entreaty, &ldquo;you don&rsquo;t
+      understand. This house, Monsieur,&rdquo; she added in a hoarse whisper,
+      &ldquo;is nothing but a den of criminals wherein no honest man or woman is
+      safe.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon, Mademoiselle,&rdquo; I riposted as lightly and as gallantly
+      as I could, &ldquo;I see before me the living proof that angels, at any
+      rate, dwell therein.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas! Sir,&rdquo; she rejoined, with a heart-rending sigh, &ldquo;if
+      you mean me, I am only to be pitied. My dear mother and I are naught but
+      slaves to the will of my brother, who uses us as tools for his nefarious
+      ends.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But . . .&rdquo; I stammered, horrified beyond speech at the vista
+      of villainy which her words had opened up before me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mother, Sir,&rdquo; she said simply, &ldquo;is old and ailing;
+      she is dying of anguish at sight of her son&rsquo;s misdeeds. I would not,
+      could not leave her, yet I would give my life to see her free from that
+      miscreant&rsquo;s clutches!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My whole soul was stirred to its depths by the intensity of passion which
+      rang through this delicate creature&rsquo;s words. What weird and awesome
+      mystery of iniquity and of crime lay hid, I wondered, between these walls?
+      In what tragedy had I thus accidentally become involved while fulfilling
+      my prosaic duty in the interest of His Majesty&rsquo;s exchequer? As in a
+      flash it suddenly came to me that perhaps I could serve both this lovely
+      creature and the Emperor better by going out of the house now, and lying
+      hidden all the night through somewhere in its vicinity until in daylight I
+      could locate its exact situation. Then I could communicate with Leroux at
+      once and procure the apprehension of this Berty&mdash;or Fournier&mdash;who
+      apparently was a desperate criminal. Already a bold plan was taking shape
+      in my brain, and with my mind&rsquo;s eye I had measured the distance
+      which separated me from the front door and safety when, in the distance, I
+      heard heavy footsteps slowly descending the stairs. I looked at my lovely
+      companion, and saw her eyes gradually dilating with increased horror. She
+      gave a smothered cry, pressed her handkerchief to her lips, then she
+      murmured hoarsely, &ldquo;Too late!&rdquo; and fled precipitately from the
+      room, leaving me a prey to mingled emotions such as I had never
+      experienced before.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      3.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      A moment or two later M. Ernest Berty, or whatever his real name may have
+      been, entered the room. Whether he had encountered his exquisite sister on
+      the corridor or the stairs, I could not tell; his face, in the dim light
+      of the hanging lamp, looked impenetrable and sinister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This way, M. Barrot,&rdquo; he said curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just for one brief moment the thought occurred to me to throw myself upon
+      him with my whole weight&mdash;which was considerable&mdash;and make a
+      wild dash for the front door. But it was more than probable that I should
+      be intercepted and brought back, after which no doubt I would be an object
+      of suspicion to these rascals and my life would not be worth an hour&rsquo;s
+      purchase. With the young girl&rsquo;s warnings ringing in my ears, I felt
+      that my one chance of safety and of circumventing these criminals lay in
+      my seeming ingenuousness and complete guileless-ness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I assumed a perfect professional manner and followed my companion up the
+      stairs. He ushered me into a room just above the one where I had been
+      waiting up to now. Three men dressed in rough clothes were sitting at a
+      table on which stood a couple of tankards and four empty pewter mugs. My
+      employer offered me a glass of ale, which I declined. Then we got to work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the first words which M. Berty uttered I knew that all my surmises had
+      been correct. Whether he himself was M. Aristide Fournier, or another
+      partner of that firm, or some other rascal engaged in nefarious doings, I
+      could not know; certain it was that through the medium of cipher words and
+      phrases which he thought were unintelligible to me, and which he ordered
+      me to interpret into English, he was giving directions to the three men
+      with regard to the convoying of contraband cargo over the frontier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was much talk of &ldquo;toys&rdquo; and &ldquo;babies&rdquo;&mdash;the
+      latter were to take a walk in the mountains and to avoid the &ldquo;thorns&rdquo;;
+      the &ldquo;toys&rdquo; were to be securely fastened and well protected
+      against water. It was obviously a case of mules and of the goods, the
+      &ldquo;thorns&rdquo; being the customs officials. By the time that we had
+      finished I was absolutely convinced in my mind that the cargo was one of
+      English files or razors, for it was evidently extraordinarily valuable and
+      not at all bulky, seeing that two &ldquo;babies&rdquo; were to carry all
+      the &ldquo;toys&rdquo; for a considerable distance. The men, too, were
+      obviously English. I tried the few words of Russian that I knew on them,
+      and their faces remained perfectly blank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, indeed, I was on the track of M. Aristide Fournier, and of one of the
+      most important hauls of enemy goods which had ever been made in France.
+      Not only that. I had also before me one of the most brutish criminals it
+      had ever been my misfortune to come across. A bully, a fiend of cruelty.
+      In very truth my fertile brain was seething with plans for eventually
+      laying that abominable ruffian by the heels: hanging would be a merciful
+      punishment for such a miscreant. Yes, indeed, five thousand francs&mdash;a
+      goodly sum in those days, Sir&mdash;was practically assured me. But over
+      and above mere lucre there was the certainty that in a few days&rsquo;
+      time I should see the light of gratitude shining out of a pair of lustrous
+      blue eyes, and a winning smile chasing away the look of fear and of sorrow
+      from the sweetest face I had seen for many a day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Despite the turmoil that was raging in my brain, however, I flatter myself
+      that my manner with the rascals remained consistently calm, businesslike,
+      indifferent to all save to the work in hand. The soi-disant Ernest Berty
+      spoke invariably in French, either dictating his orders or seeking
+      information, and I made verbal translation into English of all that he
+      said. The séance lasted close upon an hour, and presently I gathered that
+      the affair was terminated and that I could consider myself dismissed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was about to take my leave, having apparently completed my work, when M.
+      Ernest Berty called me back with a curt command.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One moment, M. Barrot,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At Monsieur&rsquo;s service,&rdquo; I responded blandly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you see,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;these fellows do not know a
+      word of French. All along the way which they will have to traverse they
+      will meet friendly outposts, who will report to them on the condition of
+      the roads and warn them of any danger that might be ahead. Their ignorance
+      of our language may be a source of infinite peril to them. They need an
+      interpreter to accompany them over the mountains.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused for a moment or two, then added abruptly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you care to go? The matter is important,&rdquo; he went on
+      quietly, &ldquo;and I am willing to pay you. It means a couple of nights&rsquo;
+      journey&mdash;a halt in the mountains during the day&mdash;and there will
+      be ten thousand francs for you if the &lsquo;toys&rsquo; reach St. Claude
+      safely.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I suppose that something in my face betrayed the eagerness which I felt.
+      Here was indeed the finger of Providence pointing to the best means of
+      undoing this abominable criminal. Not that I intended to risk my neck for
+      any ten thousand francs he chose to offer me, but as the trusted guide of
+      his ingenuous &ldquo;babies&rdquo; I could convoy them&mdash;not to St.
+      Claude, as he blandly believed, but straight into the arms of Leroux and
+      the customs officials.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then that is understood,&rdquo; he said in his usual dictatorial
+      manner, taking my consent for granted. &ldquo;Ten thousand francs. And you
+      will accompany these gentlemen and their &lsquo;babies&rsquo; as far as
+      St. Claude?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am a poor man, Sir,&rdquo; I responded meekly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you are,&rdquo; he broke in roughly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then from a number of papers which lay upon the table, he selected one
+      which he held out to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know St. Cergues?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I replied. &ldquo;It is a short walk from Gex.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This,&rdquo; he added, pointing to a paper which I had taken from
+      him, &ldquo;is a plan of the village and of the Pass of Cergues close by.
+      Study it carefully. At some point some way up the pass, which I have
+      marked with a cross, I and my men with the &lsquo;babies&rsquo; will be
+      waiting for you to-morrow evening at eight o&rsquo;clock. You cannot
+      possibly fail to find the spot, for the plan is very accurate and very
+      minute, and it is less than five hundred metres from the last house at the
+      entrance of the pass. I shall escort the men until then, and hand them
+      over into your charge for the mountain journey. Is that clear?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, then; you may go. The carriage is outside the door. You
+      know your way.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dismissed me with a curt nod, and the next two minutes saw me outside
+      this house of mystery and installed inside the ramshackle vehicle on my
+      way back to my lodgings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was worn out with fatigue and excitement, and I imagine that I slept
+      most of the way. Certain it is that the journey home was not nearly so
+      long as the outward one had been. The rain was still coming down heavily,
+      but I cared nothing about the weather, nothing about fatigue. My path to
+      fame and fortune had been made easier for me than in my wildest dreams I
+      would have dared to hope. In the morning I would see Leroux and make final
+      arrangements for the capture of those impudent smugglers, and I thought
+      the best way would be for him to meet me and the &ldquo;babies&rdquo; and
+      the &ldquo;toys&rdquo; at the very outset of our journey, as I did not
+      greatly relish the idea of crossing lonely and dangerous mountain paths in
+      the company of these ruffians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I reached home without adventure. The vehicle drew up just outside my
+      lodgings, and I was about to alight when my eyes were attracted by
+      something white which lay on the front seat of the carriage, conspicuously
+      placed so that the light from the inside lanthorn fell full upon it. I had
+      been too tired and too dazed, I suppose, to notice the thing before, but
+      now, on closer inspection, I saw that it was a note, and that it was
+      addressed to me: &ldquo;M. Aristide Barrot, Interpreter,&rdquo; and below
+      my name were the words: &ldquo;Very urgent.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I took the note feeling a thrill of excitement running through my veins at
+      its touch. I alighted, and the vehicle immediately disappeared into the
+      night. I had only caught one glimpse of the horses, and none at all of the
+      coachman. Then I went straight into my room, and by the light of the table
+      lamp I unfolded and read the mysterious note. It bore no signature, but at
+      the first words I knew that the writer was none other than the lovely
+      young creature who had appeared to me like an angel of innocence in the
+      midst of that den of thieves.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; she had written in a hand which had clearly been
+      trembling with agitation, &ldquo;you are good, you are kind; I entreat you
+      to be merciful. My dear mother, whom I worship, is sick with terror and
+      misery. She will die if she remains any longer under the sway of that
+      inhuman monster who, alas! is my own brother. And if I lose her I shall
+      die, too, for I should no longer have anyone to stand between me and his
+      cruelties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear mother has some relations living at St. Claude. She would
+      have gone to them before now, but my brother keeps us both virtual
+      prisoners here, and we have no means of arranging for such a perilous
+      journey for ourselves. Now, by the most extraordinary stroke of good
+      fortune, my brother will be absent all day to-morrow and the following
+      night. My dear mother and I feel that God Himself is showing us the way to
+      our release.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you, can you help us, dear M. Barrot? Mother and I will be at
+      Gex to-morrow at one hour after sundown. We will lie perdu in the little
+      Taverne du Roi de Rome, where, if you come to us, you will find us waiting
+      anxiously. If you can do nothing to help us, we must return broken-hearted
+      to our hated prison; but something in my heart tells me that you can help
+      us. All that we want is a vehicle of some sort and the escort of a brave
+      man like yourself as far as St. Claude, where our relatives will thank you
+      on their knees for your kindness and generosity to two helpless,
+      miserable, unprotected women, and I will kiss your hands in unbounded
+      gratitude and devotion.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      It were impossible, Monsieur, to tell you of the varied emotions which
+      filled my heart when I had perused that heart-rending appeal. All my
+      instincts of chivalry were aroused. I was determined to do my duty to
+      these helpless ladies as a man and as a gallant knight. Even before I
+      finally went to bed I had settled in my mind what I meant to do.
+      Fortunately it was quite possible for me to reconcile my duties to my
+      Emperor and those which I owed to myself in the matter of the reward for
+      the apprehension of the smugglers, with my burning desire to be the
+      saviour and protector of the lovely creature whose beauty had inflamed my
+      impressionable heart, and to have my hands kissed by her in gratitude and
+      devotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning Leroux and I were deep in our plans, whilst we sipped our
+      coffee outside the Crâne Chauve. He was beside himself with joy and
+      excitement at the prospective haul, which would, of course, redound
+      enormously to his credit, even though the success of the whole undertaking
+      would be due to my acumen, my resourcefulness and my pluck. Fortunately I
+      found him not only ready but eager to render me what assistance he could
+      in the matter of the two ladies who had thrown themselves so entirely on
+      my protection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We might get valuable information out of them,&rdquo; he remarked.
+      &ldquo;In the excess of their gratitude they may betray many more secrets
+      and nefarious doings of the firm of Fournier Frères.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which further proves,&rdquo; I remarked, &ldquo;how deeply you and
+      Monsieur le Ministre of Police are indebted to me over this affair.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not argue the point. Indeed, we were both of us far too much
+      excited to waste words in useless bickerings. Our plans for the evening
+      were fairly simple. We both pored over the map which Fournier-Berty had
+      given me, until we felt that we could reach blindfolded the spot which had
+      been marked with a cross. We then arranged that Leroux should betake
+      himself thither with a strong posse of gendarmes during the day, and lie
+      hidden in the vicinity until such time as I myself appeared upon the
+      scene, identified my friends of the night before, parleyed with them for a
+      minute or two, and finally retired, leaving the law in all its majesty, as
+      represented by Leroux, to deal with the rascals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime I also mapped out for myself my own share in this night&rsquo;s
+      adventurous work. I had hired a vehicle to take me as far as St. Cergues;
+      here I intended to leave it at the local inn, and then proceed on foot up
+      the mountain pass to the appointed spot. As soon as I had seen the
+      smugglers safely in the hands of Leroux and the gendarmes, I would make my
+      way back to St. Cergues as rapidly as I could, step into my vehicle, drive
+      like the wind back to Gex, and place myself at the disposal of my fair
+      angel and her afflicted mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leroux promised me that at the customs station on the French frontier the
+      officials would look after me and the ladies, and that a pair of fresh
+      horses would be ready to take us straight on to St. Claude, which, if all
+      was well, we could then reach by daybreak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having settled all these matters we parted company, he to arrange his own
+      affairs with the Commissary of Police and the customs officials, and I to
+      await with as much patience as I could the hour when I could start for St.
+      Cergues.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      4.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The night&mdash;just as I anticipated&mdash;promised to be very dark. A
+      thin drizzle, which wetted the unfortunate pedestrian to the marrow, had
+      replaced the torrential rain of the previous day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twilight was closing in very fast. In the late autumn afternoon I drove to
+      St. Cergues, after which I left the chaise in the village and boldly
+      started to walk up the mountain pass. I had studied the map so carefully
+      that I was quite sure of my way, but though my appointment with the
+      rascals was for eight o&rsquo;clock, I wished to reach the appointed spot
+      before the last flicker of grey light had disappeared from the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon I had left the last house well behind me. Boldly I plunged into the
+      narrow path. The loneliness of the place was indescribable. Every step
+      which I took on the stony track seemed to rouse the echoes of the grim
+      heights which rose precipitously on either side of me, and in my mind I
+      felt aghast at the extraordinary courage of those men who&mdash;like
+      Aristide Fournier and his gang&mdash;chose to affront such obvious and
+      manifold dangers as these frowning mountain regions held for them for the
+      sake of paltry lucre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had walked, according to my reckoning, just upon five hundred metres
+      through the gorge, when on ahead I perceived the flicker of lights which
+      appeared to be moving to and fro. The silence and loneliness no longer
+      seemed to be absolute. A few metres from where I was men were living and
+      breathing, plotting and planning, unconscious of the net which the
+      unerring hand of a skilful fowler had drawn round them and their misdeeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next moment I was challenged by a peremptory &ldquo;Halt!&rdquo;
+      Recognition followed. M. Ernest Berty, or Aristide Fournier, whichever he
+      was, acknowledged with a few words my punctuality, whilst through the
+      gloom I took rapid stock of his little party. I saw the vague outline of
+      three men and a couple of mules which appeared to be heavily laden. They
+      were assembled on a flat piece of ground which appeared like a roofless
+      cavern carved out of the mountain side. The walls of rock around them
+      afforded them both cover and refuge. They seemed in no hurry to start.
+      They had the long night before them, so one of them remarked in English.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, presently M. Fournier-Berty gave the signal for the start to be
+      made, he himself preparing to take leave of his men. Just at that moment
+      my ears caught the welcome sound of the tramping of feet, and before any
+      of the rascals there could realise what was happening, their way was
+      barred by Leroux and his gendarmes, who loudly gave the order, &ldquo;Hands
+      up, in the name of the Emperor!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was only conscious of a confused murmur of voices, of the click of
+      firearms, of words of command passing to and fro, and of several violent
+      oaths uttered in the not unfamiliar voice of M. Aristide Fournier. But
+      already I had spied Leroux. I only exchanged a few words with him, for
+      indeed my share of the evening&rsquo;s work was done as far as he was
+      concerned, and I made haste to retrace my steps through the darkness and
+      the rain along the lonely mountain path toward the goal where chivalry and
+      manly ardour beckoned to me from afar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I found my vehicle waiting for me at St. Cergues, and by the promise of an
+      additional pourboire, I succeeded in making the driver whip up his horses
+      to some purpose. Less than an hour later we drew up at Gex outside the
+      little inn, pretentiously called Le Roi de Rome. On alighting I was met by
+      the proprietress who, in answer to my inquiry after two ladies who had
+      arrived that afternoon, at once conducted me upstairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already my mind was busy conjuring up visions of the fair lady of
+      yester-eve. The landlady threw open a door and ushered me into a small
+      room which reeked of stale food and damp clothes. I stepped in and found
+      myself face to face with a large and exceedingly ugly old woman who rose
+      with difficulty from the sofa as I entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M. Aristide Barrot,&rdquo; she said as soon as the landlady had
+      closed the door behind me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At your service, Madame,&rdquo; I stammered. &ldquo;But&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was indeed almost aghast. Never in my life had I seen anything so
+      grotesque as this woman. To begin with she was more than ordinarily stout
+      and unwieldy&mdash;indeed, she appeared like a veritable mountain of
+      flesh; but what was so disturbing to my mind was that she was nothing but
+      a hideous caricature of her lovely daughter, whose dainty features she
+      grotesquely recalled. Her face was seamed and wrinkled, her white hair was
+      plastered down above her yellow forehead. She wore an old-fashioned bonnet
+      tied under her chin, and her huge bulk was draped in a large-patterned
+      cashmere shawl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You expected to see my dear daughter beside me, my good M. Barrot,&rdquo;
+      she said after a while speaking with remarkable gentleness and dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I confess, Madame&mdash;&rdquo; I murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! the darling has sacrificed herself for my sake. We found to-day
+      that though my son was out of the way, he had set his abominable servants
+      to watch over us. Soon we realized that we could not both get away. It
+      meant one of us staying behind to act the part of unconcern and to throw
+      dust in the eyes of our jailers. My daughter&mdash;ah! she is an angel,
+      Monsieur&mdash;feared that the disappointment and my son&rsquo;s cruelty,
+      when he returned on the morrow and found that he had been tricked, would
+      seriously endanger my life. She decided that I must go and that she would
+      remain.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Madame&mdash;&rdquo; I protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, Monsieur,&rdquo; she rejoined with the same calm dignity
+      which already had commanded my respect, &ldquo;I know that you think me a
+      selfish old woman; but my Angèle&mdash;she is an angel, of a truth!&mdash;made
+      all the arrangements, and I could not help but obey her. But have no fears
+      for her safety, Monsieur. My son would not dare lay hands on her as often
+      as he has done on me. Angèle will be brave, and our relations at St.
+      Claude will, directly we arrive, make arrangements to go and fetch her and
+      bring her back to me. My brother is an influential man; he would never
+      have allowed my son to martyrize me and Angèle had he known what we have
+      had to endure.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course I could not then tell her that all her fears for herself and the
+      lovely Angèle could now be laid to rest. Her ruffianly son was even now
+      being conveyed by Leroux and his gendarmes to the frontier, where the law
+      would take its course. I was indeed not sorry for him. I was not sorry to
+      think that he would end his evil life upon the guillotine or the gallows.
+      I was only grieved for Angèle who would spend a night and a day, perhaps
+      more, in agonized suspense, knowing nothing of the events which at one
+      great swoop would free her and her beloved mother from the tyranny of a
+      hated brother and send him to expiate his crimes. Not only did I grieve,
+      Sir, for the tender victim of that man&rsquo;s brutality, but I trembled
+      for her safety. I did not know what minions or confederates Fournier-Berty
+      had left in the lonely house yonder, or under what orders they were in
+      case he did not return from his nocturnal expedition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed for the moment I felt so agitated at thought of that beautiful
+      angel&rsquo;s peril that I looked down with anger and scorn at the fat old
+      woman who ought to have remained beside her daughter to comfort and to
+      shield her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was on the point of telling her everything, and dragging her back to her
+      post of duty which she should never have relinquished. Fortunately my
+      sense of what I owed to my own professional dignity prevented my taking
+      such a step. It was clearly not for me to argue. My first duty was to
+      stand by this helpless woman in distress, who had been committed to my
+      charge, and to convey her safely to St. Claude. After which I could see to
+      it that Mademoiselle Angèle was brought along too as quickly as
+      influential relatives could contrive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meanwhile I derived some consolation from the thought that at any
+      rate for the next four and twenty hours the lovely creature would be safe.
+      No news of the arrest of Aristide Fournier could possibly reach the lonely
+      house until I myself could return thither and take her under my
+      protection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So I said nothing; but with perfect gallantry, just as if fat Mme.
+      Fournier had been a young and beautiful woman, I begged her to give
+      herself the trouble of mounting into the carriage which was waiting for
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It took time and trouble, Sir, to hoist that mass of solid flesh into the
+      vehicle, and the driver grumbled not a little at the unexpected weight.
+      However, his horses were powerful, wiry, mountain ponies, and we made
+      headway through the darkness and along the smooth, departmental road at
+      moderate speed. I may say that it was a miserably uncomfortable journey
+      for me, sitting, as I was forced to do, on the narrow front seat of the
+      carriage, without support for my head or room for my legs. But Madame&rsquo;s
+      bulk filled the whole of the back seat, and it never seemed to enter her
+      head that I too might like the use of a cushion. However, even the worst
+      moments and the weariest journeys must come to an end, and we reached the
+      frontier in the small hours of the morning. Here we found the customs
+      officials ready to render us any service we might require. Leroux had not
+      failed to order the fresh relay of horses, and whilst these were being put
+      to, the polite officers of the station gave Madame and myself some
+      excellent coffee. Beyond the formal: &ldquo;Madame has nothing to declare
+      for His Majesty&rsquo;s customs?&rdquo; and my companion&rsquo;s equally
+      formal: &ldquo;Nothing, Monsieur, except my personal belongings,&rdquo;
+      they did not ply us with questions, and after half an hour&rsquo;s halt we
+      again proceeded on our way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We reached St. Claude at daybreak, and following Madame&rsquo;s
+      directions, the driver pulled up in front of a large house in the Avenue
+      du Jura. Again there was the same difficulty in hoisting the unwieldy lady
+      out of the vehicle, but this time, in response to my vigorous pull at the
+      outside bell, the concierge and another man came out of the house, and
+      very respectfully they approached Madame and conveyed her into the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While they did so she apparently gave them some directions about myself,
+      for anon the concierge returned, and with extreme politeness told me that
+      Madame Fournier greatly hoped that I would stay in St. Claude a day or two
+      as she had the desire to see me again very soon. She also honoured me with
+      an invitation to dine with her that same evening at seven of the clock.
+      This was the first time, I noticed, that the name Fournier was actually
+      used in connexion with any of the people with whom I had become so
+      dramatically involved. Not that I had ever doubted the identity of the
+      ruffianly Ernest Berty; still it was very satisfactory to have my surmises
+      confirmed. I concluded that the fine house in the Avenue du Jura belonged
+      to Mme. Fournier&rsquo;s brother, and I vaguely wondered who he was. The
+      invitation to dinner had certainly been given in her name, and the
+      servants had received her with a show of respect which suggested that she
+      was more than a guest in her brother&rsquo;s house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Be that as it may, I betook myself for the nonce to the Hôtel des Moines
+      in the centre of the town and killed time for the rest of the day as best
+      I could. For one thing I needed rest after the emotions and the fatigue of
+      the past forty-eight hours. Remember, Sir, I had not slept for two nights
+      and had spent the last eight hours on the narrow front seat of a jolting
+      chaise. So I had a good rest in the afternoon, and at seven o&rsquo;clock
+      I presented myself once more at the house in the Avenue du Jura.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My intention was to retire early to bed after spending an agreeable
+      evening with the family, who would no doubt overwhelm me with their
+      gratitude, and at daybreak I would drive back to Gex after I had heard all
+      the latest news from Leroux.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I confess that it was with a pardonable feeling of agitation that I tugged
+      at the wrought-iron bell-pull on the perron of the magnificent mansion in
+      the Avenue du Jura. To begin with I felt somewhat rueful at having to
+      appear before ladies at this hour in my travelling clothes, and then, you
+      will admit, Sir, that it was a somewhat awkward predicament for a man of
+      highly sensitive temperament to meet on terms of equality a refined if
+      stout lady whose son he had just helped to send to the gallows.
+      Fortunately there was no likelihood of Mme. Fournier being as yet aware of
+      this unpleasant fact: even if she did know at this hour that her son&rsquo;s
+      illicit adventure had come to grief, she could not possibly in her mind
+      connect me with his ill-fortune. So I allowed the sumptuous valet to take
+      my hat and coat and I followed him with as calm a demeanour as I could
+      assume up the richly carpeted stairs. Obviously the relatives of Mme.
+      Fournier were more than well to do. Everything in the house showed
+      evidences of luxury, not to say wealth. I was ushered into an elegant
+      salon wherein every corner showed traces of dainty feminine hands. There
+      were embroidered silk cushions upon the sofa, lace covers upon the tables,
+      whilst a work basket, filled with a riot of many coloured silks, stood
+      invitingly open. And through the apartment, Sir, a scent of violets
+      lingered and caressed my nostrils, reminding me of a beauteous creature in
+      distress whom it had been my good fortune to succour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had waited less than five minutes when I heard a swift, elastic step
+      approaching through the next room, and a second or so later, before I had
+      time to take up an appropriate posture, the door was thrown open and the
+      exquisite vision of my waking dreams&mdash;the beautiful Angèle&mdash;
+      stood smiling before me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle,&rdquo; I stammered somewhat clumsily, for of a truth
+      I was hardly able to recover my breath, and surprise had well nigh robbed
+      me of speech, &ldquo;how comes it that you are here?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She only smiled in reply, the most adorable smile I had ever seen on any
+      human face, so full of joy, of mischief&mdash;aye, of triumph, was it. I
+      asked after Madame. Again she smiled, and said Madame was in her room,
+      resting from the fatigues of her journey. I had scarce recovered from my
+      initial surprise when another&mdash;more complete still&mdash;confronted
+      me. This was the appearance of Monsieur Aristide Fournier, whom I had
+      fondly imagined already expiating his crimes in a frontier prison, but who
+      now entered, also smiling, also extremely pleasant, who greeted me as if
+      we were lifelong friends, and who then&mdash;I scarce could believe my
+      eyes&mdash;placed his arm affectionately round his sister&rsquo;s waist,
+      while she turned her sweet face up to his and gave him a fond&mdash;nay, a
+      loving look. A loving look to him who was a brute and a bully and a
+      miscreant amenable to the gallows! True his appearance was completely
+      changed: his eyes were bright and kindly, his mouth continued to smile,
+      his manner was urbane in the extreme when he finally introduced himself to
+      me as: &ldquo;Aristide Fournier, my dear Monsieur Ratichon, at your
+      service.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew my name, he knew who I was! whilst I . . . I had to pass my hand
+      once or twice over my forehead and to close and reopen my eyes several
+      times, for, of a truth, it all seemed like a dream. I tried to stammer out
+      a question or two, but I could only gasp, and the lovely Angèle appeared
+      highly amused at my distress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us dine,&rdquo; she said gaily, &ldquo;after which you may ask
+      as many questions as you like.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In very truth I was in no mood for dinner. Puzzlement and anxiety appeared
+      to grip me by the throat and to choke me. It was all very well for the
+      beautiful creature to laugh and to make merry. She had cruelly deceived
+      me, played upon the chords of my sensitive heart for purposes which no
+      doubt would presently be made clear, but in the meanwhile since the
+      smuggling of the English files had been successful&mdash;as it apparently
+      was&mdash;what had become of Leroux and his gendarmes?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What tragedy had been enacted in the narrow gorge of St. Cergues, and
+      what, oh! what had become of my hopes of that five thousand francs for the
+      apprehension of the smugglers, promised me by Leroux? Can you wonder that
+      for the moment the very thought of dinner was abhorrent to me? But only
+      for the moment. The next a sumptuous valet had thrown open the
+      folding-doors, and down the vista of the stately apartment I perceived a
+      table richly laden with china and glass and silver, whilst a distinctly
+      savoury odour was wafted to my nostrils.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will not answer a single question,&rdquo; the fair Angèle
+      reiterated with adorable determination, &ldquo;until after we have dined.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What, Sir, would you have done in my place? I believe that never until
+      this hour had Hector Ratichon reached to such a sublimity of manner. I
+      bowed with perfect dignity in token of obedience to the fair creature,
+      Sir; then without a word I offered her my arm. She placed her hand upon
+      it, and I conducted her to the dining-room, whilst Aristide Fournier, who
+      at this hour should have been on a fair way to being hanged, followed in
+      our wake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah! it seemed indeed a lovely dream: one that lasted through an excellent
+      and copious dinner, and which turned to delightful reality when, over a
+      final glass of succulent Madeira, Monsieur Aristide Fournier slowly
+      counted out one hundred notes, worth one hundred francs each, and
+      presented these to me with a gracious nod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your fee, Monsieur,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and allow me to say that
+      never have I paid out so large a sum with such a willing hand.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I have done nothing,&rdquo; I murmured from out the depths of
+      my bewilderment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle Angèle and Monsieur Fournier looked at one another, and, no
+      doubt, I presented a very comical spectacle; for both of them burst into
+      an uncontrollable fit of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, Monsieur,&rdquo; quoth Monsieur Fournier as soon as he
+      could speak coherently, &ldquo;you have done everything that you set out
+      to do and done it with perfect chivalry. You conveyed &lsquo;the toys&rsquo;
+      safely over the frontier as far as St. Claude.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how?&rdquo; I stammered, &ldquo;how?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Mademoiselle Angèle laughed, and through the ripples of her laughter
+      came her merry words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maman was very fat, was she not, my good Monsieur Ratichon? Did you
+      not think she was extraordinarily like me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I caught the glance in her eyes, and they were literally glowing with
+      mischief. Then all of a sudden I understood. She had impersonated a fat
+      mother, covered her lovely face with lines, worn a disfiguring wig and an
+      antiquated bonnet, and round her slender figure she had tucked away
+      thousands of packages of English files. I could only gasp. Astonishment,
+      not to say admiration, at her pluck literally took my breath away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Monsieur Berty?&rdquo; I murmured, my mind in a turmoil, my
+      thoughts running riot through my brain. &ldquo;The Englishmen, the mules,
+      the packs?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Berty, as you see, stands before you now in the person of
+      Monsieur Fournier,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;The Englishmen were three
+      faithful servants who threw dust not only in your eyes, my dear M.
+      Ratichon, but in those of the customs officials, while the packs contained
+      harmless personal luggage which was taken by your friend and his gendarmes
+      to the customs station at Mijoux, and there, after much swearing, equally
+      solemnly released with many apologies to M. Fournier, who was allowed to
+      proceed unmolested on his way, and who arrived here safely this afternoon,
+      whilst Maman divested herself of her fat and once more became the slender
+      Mme. Aristide Fournier, at your service.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She bobbed me a dainty curtsy, and I could only try and hide the pain
+      which this last cruel stab had inflicted on my heart. So she was not
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle&rdquo; after all, and henceforth it would even be
+      wrong to indulge in dreams of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the ten thousand francs crackled pleasantly in my breast pocket, and
+      when I finally took leave of Monsieur Aristide Fournier and his charming
+      wife, I was an exceedingly happy man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Leroux never forgave me. Of what he suspected me I do not know, or if
+      he suspected me at all. He certainly must have known about fat Maman from
+      the customs officials who had given us coffee at Mijoux.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he never mentioned the subject to me at all, nor has he spoken to me
+      since that memorable night. To one of his colleagues he once said that no
+      words in his vocabulary could possibly be adequate to express his
+      feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. &mdash; HONOUR AMONG &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Ah, my dear Sir, it is easy enough to despise our profession, but believe
+      me that all the finer qualities&mdash;those of loyalty and of truth&mdash;are
+      essential, not only to us, but to our subordinates, if we are to succeed
+      in making even a small competence out of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now let me give you an instance. Here was I, Hector Ratichon, settled in
+      Paris in that eventful year 1816 which saw the new order of things finally
+      swept aside and the old order resume its triumphant sway, which saw us
+      all, including our God-given King Louis XVIII, as poor as the proverbial
+      church mice and as eager for a bit of comfort and luxury as a hungry dog
+      is for a bone; the year which saw the army disbanded and hordes of
+      unemployed and unemployable men wandering disconsolate and half starved
+      through the country seeking in vain for some means of livelihood, while
+      the Allied troops, well fed and well clothed, stalked about as if the
+      sacred soil of France was so much dirt under their feet; the year, my dear
+      Sir, during which more intrigues were hatched and more plots concocted
+      than in any previous century in the whole history of France. We were all
+      trying to make money, since there was so precious little of it about.
+      Those of us who had brains succeeded, and then not always.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, I had brains&mdash;I do not boast of them; they are a gift from
+      Heaven&mdash;but I had them, and good looks, too, and a general air of
+      strength, coupled with refinement, which was bound to appeal to anyone
+      needing help and advice, and willing to pay for both, and yet&mdash;but
+      you shall judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You know my office in the Rue Daunou, you have been in it&mdash;plainly
+      furnished; but, as I said, these were not days of luxury. There was an
+      antechamber, too, where that traitor, blackmailer and thief, Theodore, my
+      confidential clerk in those days, lodged at my expense and kept
+      importunate clients at bay for what was undoubtedly a liberal salary&mdash;ten
+      per cent, on all the profits of the business&mdash;and yet he was always
+      complaining, the ungrateful, avaricious brute!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, Sir, on that day in September&mdash;it was the tenth, I remember&mdash;1816,
+      I must confess that I was feeling exceedingly dejected. Not one client for
+      the last three weeks, half a franc in my pocket, and nothing but a small
+      quarter of Strasburg patty in the larder. Theodore had eaten most of it,
+      and I had just sent him out to buy two sous&rsquo; worth of stale bread
+      wherewith to finish the remainder. But after that? You will admit, Sir,
+      that a less buoyant spirit would not have remained so long undaunted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was just cursing that lout Theodore inwardly, for he had been gone half
+      an hour, and I strongly suspected him of having spent my two sous on a
+      glass of absinthe, when there was a ring at the door, and I, Hector
+      Ratichon, the confidant of kings and intimate counsellor of half the
+      aristocracy in the kingdom, was forced to go and open the door just like a
+      common lackey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But here the sight which greeted my eyes fully compensated me for the
+      temporary humiliation, for on the threshold stood a gentleman who had
+      wealth written plainly upon his fine clothes, upon the dainty linen at his
+      throat and wrists, upon the quality of his rich satin necktie and the
+      perfect set of his fine cloth pantaloons, which were of an exquisite shade
+      of dove-grey. When, then, the apparition spoke, inquiring with just a
+      sufficiency of aristocratic hauteur whether M. Hector Ratichon were in,
+      you cannot be surprised, my dear Sir, that my dejection fell from me like
+      a cast-off mantle and that all my usual urbanity of manner returned to me
+      as I informed the elegant gentleman that M. Ratichon was even now standing
+      before him, and begged him to take the trouble to pass through into my
+      office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This he did, and I placed a chair in position for him. He sat down, having
+      previously dusted the chair with a graceful sweep of his lace-edged
+      handkerchief. Then he raised a gold-rimmed eyeglass to his right eye with
+      a superlatively elegant gesture, and surveyed me critically for a moment
+      or two ere he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am told, my good M. Ratichon, that you are a trustworthy fellow,
+      and one who is willing to undertake a delicate piece of business for a
+      moderate honorarium.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Except for the fact that I did not like the word &ldquo;moderate,&rdquo; I
+      was enchanted with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rumour for once has not lied, Monsieur,&rdquo; I replied in my most
+      attractive manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he rejoined&mdash;I won&rsquo;t say curtly, but with
+      businesslike brevity, &ldquo;for all purposes connected with the affair
+      which I desire to treat with you my name, as far as you are concerned,
+      shall be Jean Duval. Understand?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly, Monsieur le Marquis,&rdquo; I replied with a bland
+      smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a wild guess, but I don&rsquo;t think that I underestimated my new
+      client&rsquo;s rank, for he did not wince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know Mlle. Mars?&rdquo; he queried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The actress?&rdquo; I replied. &ldquo;Perfectly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is playing in <i>Le Rêve</i> at the Theatre Royal just now.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the first and third acts of the play she wears a gold bracelet
+      set with large green stones.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I noticed it the other night. I had a seat in the parterre, I may
+      say.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want that bracelet,&rdquo; broke in the soi-disant Jean Duval
+      unceremoniously. &ldquo;The stones are false, the gold strass. I admire
+      Mlle. Mars immensely. I dislike seeing her wearing false jewellery. I wish
+      to have the bracelet copied in real stones, and to present it to her as a
+      surprise on the occasion of the twenty-fifth performance of <i>Le Rêve</i>.
+      It will cost me a king&rsquo;s ransom, and her, for the time being, an
+      infinite amount of anxiety. She sets great store by the valueless trinket
+      solely because of the merit of its design, and I want its disappearance to
+      have every semblance of a theft. All the greater will be the lovely
+      creature&rsquo;s pleasure when, at my hands, she will receive an
+      infinitely precious jewel the exact counterpart in all save its intrinsic
+      value of the trifle which she had thought lost.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It all sounded deliciously romantic. A flavour of the past century&mdash;before
+      the endless war and abysmal poverty had killed all chivalry in us&mdash;clung
+      to this proposed transaction. There was nothing of the roturier, nothing
+      of a Jean Duval, in this polished man of the world who had thought out
+      this subtle scheme for ingratiating himself in the eyes of his lady fair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I murmured an appropriate phrase, placing my services entirely at M. le
+      Marquis&rsquo;s disposal, and once more he broke in on my polished diction
+      with that brusquerie which betrayed the man accustomed to be silently
+      obeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mlle. Mars wears the bracelet,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;during the
+      third act of <i>Le Rêve</i>. At the end of the act she enters her
+      dressing-room, and her maid helps her to change her dress. During this
+      entr&rsquo;acte Mademoiselle with her own hands puts by all the jewellery
+      which she has to wear during the more gorgeous scenes of the play. In the
+      last act&mdash;the finale of the tragedy&mdash;she appears in a plain
+      stuff gown, whilst all her jewellery reposes in the small iron safe in her
+      dressing-room. It is while Mademoiselle is on the stage during the last
+      act that I want you to enter her dressing-room and to extract the bracelet
+      out of the safe for me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I, M. le Marquis?&rdquo; I stammered. &ldquo;I, to steal a&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Firstly, M.&mdash;er&mdash;er&mdash;Ratichon, or whatever your
+      confounded name may be,&rdquo; interposed my client with inimitable
+      hauteur, &ldquo;understand that my name is Jean Duval, and if you forget
+      this again I shall be under the necessity of laying my cane across your
+      shoulders and incidentally to take my business elsewhere. Secondly, let me
+      tell you that your affectations of outraged probity are lost on me, seeing
+      that I know all about the stolen treaty which&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough, M. Jean Duval,&rdquo; I said with a dignity equal, if not
+      greater, than his own; &ldquo;do not, I pray you, misunderstand me. I am
+      ready to do you service. But if you will deign to explain how I am to
+      break open an iron safe inside a crowded building and extract therefrom a
+      trinket, without being caught in the act and locked up for house-breaking
+      and theft, I shall be eternally your debtor.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The extracting of the trinket is your affair,&rdquo; he rejoined
+      dryly. &ldquo;I will give you five hundred francs if you bring the
+      bracelet to me within fourteen days.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;&rdquo; I stammered again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your task will not be such a difficult one after all. I will give
+      you the duplicate key of the safe.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dived into the breast pocket of his coat, and drew from it a somewhat
+      large and clumsy key, which he placed upon my desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I managed to get that easily enough,&rdquo; he said nonchalantly,
+      &ldquo;a couple of nights ago, when I had the honour of visiting
+      Mademoiselle in her dressing-room. A piece of wax in my hand, Mademoiselle&rsquo;s
+      momentary absorption in her reflection while her maid was doing her hair,
+      and the impression of the original key was in my possession. But between
+      taking a model of the key and the actual theft of the bracelet out of the
+      safe there is a wide gulf which a gentleman cannot bridge over. Therefore,
+      I choose to employ you, M.&mdash;er&mdash;er&mdash;Ratichon, to complete
+      the transaction for me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For five hundred francs?&rdquo; I queried blandly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a fair sum,&rdquo; he argued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make it a thousand,&rdquo; I rejoined firmly, &ldquo;and you shall
+      have the bracelet within fourteen days.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused a moment in order to reflect; his steel-grey eyes, cool and
+      disdainful, were fixed searchingly on my face. I pride myself on the way
+      that I bear that kind of scrutiny, so even now I looked bland and withal
+      purposeful and capable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; he said, after a few moments, and he rose from
+      his chair as he spoke; &ldquo;it shall be a thousand francs, M.&mdash;er&mdash;er&mdash;Ratichon,
+      and I will hand over the money to you in exchange for the bracelet&mdash;but
+      it must be done within fourteen days, remember.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I tried to induce him to give me a small sum on account. I was about to
+      take terrible risks, remember; housebreaking, larceny, theft&mdash;call it
+      what you will, it meant the <i>police correctionelle</i> and a couple of
+      years in New Orleans for sure. He finally gave me fifty francs, and once
+      more threatened to take his business elsewhere, so I had to accept and to
+      look as urbane and dignified as I could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was out of the office and about to descend the stairs when a thought
+      struck me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where and how can I communicate with M. Jean Duval,&rdquo; I asked,
+      &ldquo;when my work is done?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will call here,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;at ten o&rsquo;clock of
+      every morning that follows a performance of <i>Le Rêve</i>. We can
+      complete our transaction then across your office desk.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next moment he was gone. Theodore passed him on the stairs and asked
+      me, with one of his impertinent leers, whether we had a new client and
+      what we might expect from him. I shrugged my shoulders. &ldquo;A new
+      client!&rdquo; I said disdainfully. &ldquo;Bah! Vague promises of a couple
+      of louis for finding out if Madame his wife sees more of a certain captain
+      of the guards than Monsieur the husband cares about.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Theodore sniffed. He always sniffs when financial matters are on the
+      tapis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anything on account?&rdquo; he queried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A paltry ten francs,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;and I may as well
+      give you your share of it now.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I tossed a franc to him across the desk. By the terms of my contract with
+      him, you understand, he was entitled to ten per cent, of every profit
+      accruing from the business in lieu of wages, but in this instance do you
+      not think that I was justified in looking on one franc now, and perhaps
+      twenty when the transaction was completed, as a more than just honorarium
+      for his share in it? Was I not taking all the risks in this delicate
+      business? Would it be fair for me to give him a hundred francs for sitting
+      quietly in the office or sipping absinthe at a neighbouring bar whilst I
+      risked New Orleans&mdash;not to speak of the gallows?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave me a strange look as he picked up the silver franc, spat on it for
+      luck, bit it with his great yellow teeth to ascertain if it were
+      counterfeit or genuine, and finally slipped it into his pocket, and
+      shuffled out of the office whistling through his teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An abominably low, deceitful creature, that Theodore, you will see anon.
+      But I won&rsquo;t anticipate.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      2.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The next performance of <i>Le Rêve</i> was announced for the following
+      evening, and I started on my campaign. As you may imagine, it did not
+      prove an easy matter. To obtain access through the stage-door to the back
+      of the theatre was one thing&mdash;a franc to the doorkeeper had done the
+      trick&mdash;to mingle with the scene-shifters, to talk with the supers, to
+      take off my hat with every form of deep respect to the principals had been
+      equally simple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had even succeeded in placing a bouquet on the dressing-table of the
+      great tragedienne on my second visit to the theatre. Her dressing-room
+      door had been left ajar during that memorable fourth act which was to see
+      the consummation of my labours. I had the bouquet in my hand, having
+      brought it expressly for that purpose. I pushed open the door, and found
+      myself face to face with a young though somewhat forbidding damsel, who
+      peremptorily demanded what my business might be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In order to minimise the risk of subsequent trouble, I had assumed the
+      disguise of a middle-aged Angliche&mdash;red side-whiskers, florid
+      complexion, a ginger-coloured wig plastered rigidly over the ears towards
+      the temples, high stock collar, nankeen pantaloons, a patch over one eye
+      and an eyeglass fixed in the other. My own sainted mother would never have
+      known me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With becoming diffidence I explained in broken French that my deep though
+      respectful admiration of Mlle. Mars had prompted me to lay a floral
+      tribute at her feet. I desired nothing more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The damsel eyed me coldly, though at the moment I was looking quite my
+      best, diffident yet courteous, a perfect gentleman of the old regime. Then
+      she took the bouquet from me and put it down on the dressing-table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I fancied that she smiled, not unkindly, and I ventured to pass the time
+      of day. She replied not altogether disapprovingly. She sat down by the
+      dressing-table and took up some needlework which she had obviously thrown
+      aside on my arrival. Close by, on the floor, was a solid iron chest with
+      huge ornamental hinges and a large escutcheon over the lock. It stood
+      about a foot high and perhaps a couple of feet long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing else in the room that suggested a receptacle for
+      jewellery; this, therefore, was obviously the safe which contained the
+      bracelet. At the self-same second my eyes alighted on a large and
+      clumsy-looking key which lay upon the dressing-table, and my hand at once
+      wandered instinctively to the pocket of my coat and closed convulsively on
+      the duplicate one which the soi-disant Jean Duval had given me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I talked eloquently for a while. The damsel answered in monosyllables, but
+      she sat unmoved at needlework, and after ten minutes or so I was forced to
+      beat a retreat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I returned to the charge at the next performance of <i>Le Rêve</i>, this
+      time with a box of bonbons for the maid instead of the bouquet for the
+      mistress. The damsel was quite amenable to a little conversation, quite
+      willing that I should dally in her company. She munched the bonbons and
+      coquetted a little with me. But she went on stolidly with her needlework,
+      and I could see that nothing would move her out of that room, where she
+      had obviously been left in charge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I bethought me of Theodore. I realised that I could not carry this
+      affair through successfully without his help. So I gave him a further five
+      francs&mdash;as I said to him it was out of my own savings&mdash;and I
+      assured him that a certain M. Jean Duval had promised me a couple of
+      hundred francs when the business which he had entrusted to me was
+      satisfactorily concluded. It was for this business&mdash;so I explained&mdash;that
+      I required his help, and he seemed quite satisfied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His task was, of course, a very easy one. What a contrast to the risk I
+      was about to run! Twenty-five francs, my dear Sir, just for knocking at
+      the door of Mlle. Mars&rsquo; dressing-room during the fourth act, whilst
+      I was engaged in conversation with the attractive guardian of the iron
+      safe, and to say in well-assumed, breathless tones:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle Mars has been taken suddenly unwell on the stage. Will
+      her maid go to her at once?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was some little distance from the dressing-room to the wings&mdash;down
+      a flight of ill-lighted stone stairs which demanded cautious ascent and
+      descent. Theodore had orders to obstruct the maid during her progress as
+      much as he could without rousing her suspicions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I reckoned that she would be fully three minutes going, questioning,
+      finding out that the whole thing was a hoax, and running back to the
+      dressing-room&mdash;three minutes in which to open the chest, extract the
+      bracelet and, incidentally, anything else of value there might be close to
+      my hand. Well, I had thought of that eventuality, too; one must think of
+      everything, you know&mdash;that is where genius comes in. Then, if
+      possible, relock the safe, so that the maid, on her return, would find
+      everything apparently in order and would not, perhaps, raise the alarm
+      until I was safely out of the theatre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It could be done&mdash;oh, yes, it could be done&mdash;with a minute to
+      spare! And to-morrow at ten o&rsquo;clock M. Jean Duval would appear, and
+      I would not part with the bracelet until a thousand francs had passed from
+      his pocket into mine. I must get Theodore out of the house, by the way,
+      before the arrival of M. Duval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A thousand francs! I had not seen a thousand francs all at once for years.
+      What a dinner I would have tomorrow! There was a certain little restaurant
+      in the Rue des Pipots where they concocted a cassolette of goose liver and
+      pork chops with haricot beans which . . . ! I only tell you that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How I got through the rest of that day I cannot tell you. The evening
+      found me&mdash;quite an habitué now&mdash;behind the stage of the Theatre
+      Royal, nodding to one or two acquaintances, most of the people looking on
+      me with grave respect and talking of me as the eccentric milor. I was
+      supposed to be pining for an introduction to the great tragedienne, who,
+      very exclusive as usual, had so far given me the cold shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten minutes after the rise of the curtain on the fourth act I was in the
+      dressing-room, presenting the maid with a gold locket which I had bought
+      from a cheapjack&rsquo;s barrow for five and twenty francs&mdash;almost
+      the last of the fifty which I had received from M. Duval on account. The
+      damsel was eyeing the locket somewhat disdainfully and giving me grudging
+      thanks for it when there came a hurried knock at the door. The next moment
+      Theodore poked his ugly face into the room. He, too, had taken the
+      precaution of assuming an excellent disguise&mdash;peaked cap set aslant
+      over one eye, grimy face, the blouse of a scene-shifter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mlle. Mars,&rdquo; he gasped breathlessly; &ldquo;she has been
+      taken ill&mdash;on the stage&mdash;very suddenly. She is in the wings&mdash;asking
+      for her maid. They think she will faint.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The damsel rose, visibly frightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll come at once,&rdquo; she said, and without the slightest
+      flurry she picked up the key of the safe and slipped it into her pocket. I
+      fancied that she gave me a look as she did this. Oh, she was a pearl among
+      Abigails! Then she pointed unceremoniously to the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Milor!&rdquo; was all she said, but of course I understood. I had
+      no idea that English milors could be thus treated by pert maidens. But
+      what cared I for social amenities just then? My hand had closed over the
+      duplicate key of the safe, and I walked out of the room in the wake of the
+      damsel. Theodore had disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once in the passage, the girl started to run. A second or two later I
+      heard the patter of her high-heeled shoes down the stone stairs. I had not
+      a moment to lose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To slip back into the dressing-room was but an instant&rsquo;s work. The
+      next I was kneeling in front of the chest. The key fitted the lock
+      accurately; one turn, and the lid flew open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chest was filled with a miscellaneous collection of theatrical
+      properties all lying loose&mdash;showy necklaces, chains, pendants, all of
+      them obviously false; but lying beneath them, and partially hidden by the
+      meretricious ornaments, were one or two boxes covered with velvet such as
+      jewellers use. My keen eyes noted these at once. I was indeed in luck! For
+      the moment, however, my hand fastened on a leather case which reposed on
+      the top in one corner, and which very obviously, from its shape, contained
+      a bracelet. My hands did not tremble, though I was quivering with
+      excitement. I opened the case. There, indeed, was the bracelet&mdash;the
+      large green stones, the magnificent gold setting, the whole jewel
+      dazzlingly beautiful. If it were real&mdash;the thought flashed through my
+      mind&mdash;it would be indeed priceless. I closed the case and put it on
+      the dressing-table beside me. I had at least another minute to spare&mdash;sixty
+      seconds wherein to dive for those velvet-covered boxes which&mdash; My
+      hand was on one of them when a slight noise caused me suddenly to turn and
+      to look behind me. It all happened as quickly as a flash of lightning. I
+      just saw a man disappearing through the door. One glance at the
+      dressing-table showed me the whole extent of my misfortune. The case
+      containing the bracelet had gone, and at that precise moment I heard a
+      commotion from the direction of the stairs and a woman screaming at the
+      top of her voice: &ldquo;Thief! Stop thief!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, Sir, I brought upon the perilous situation that presence of mind for
+      which the name of Hector Ratichon will for ever remain famous. Without a
+      single flurried movement, I slipped one of the velvet-covered cases which
+      I still had in my hand into the breast pocket of my coat, I closed down
+      the lid of the iron chest and locked it with the duplicate key, and I went
+      out of the room, closing the door behind me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The passage was dark. The damsel was running up the stairs with a couple
+      of stage hands behind her. She was explaining to them volubly, and to the
+      accompaniment of sundry half-hysterical little cries, the infamous hoax to
+      which she had fallen a victim. You might think, Sir, that here was I
+      caught like a rat in a trap, and with that velvet-covered case in my
+      breast pocket by way of damning evidence against me!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not at all, Sir! Not at all! Not so is Hector Ratichon, the keenest secret
+      agent France has ever known, the confidant of kings, brought to earth by
+      an untoward move of fate. Even before the damsel and the stage hands had
+      reached the top of the stairs and turned into the corridor, which was on
+      my left, I had slipped round noiselessly to my right and found shelter in
+      a narrow doorway, where I was screened by the surrounding darkness and by
+      a projection of the frame. While the three of them made straight for
+      Mademoiselle&rsquo;s dressing-room, and spent some considerable time there
+      in uttering varied ejaculations when they found the place and the chest to
+      all appearances untouched, I slipped out of my hiding-place, sped rapidly
+      along the corridor, and was soon half-way down the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here my habitual composure in the face of danger stood me in good stead.
+      It enabled me to walk composedly and not too hurriedly through the crowd
+      behind the scenes&mdash;supers, scene-shifters, principals, none of whom
+      seemed to be aware as yet of the hoax practised on Mademoiselle Mars&rsquo;
+      maid; and I reckon that I was out of the stage door exactly five minutes
+      after Theodore had called the damsel away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I was minus the bracelet, and in my mind there was the firm conviction
+      that that traitor Theodore had played me one of his abominable tricks. As
+      I said, the whole thing had occurred as quickly as a flash of lightning,
+      but even so my keen, experienced eyes had retained the impression of a
+      peaked cap and the corner of a blue blouse as they disappeared through the
+      dressing-room door.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      3.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Tact, wariness and strength were all required, you must admit, in order to
+      deal with the present delicate situation. I was speeding along the Rue de
+      Richelieu on my way to my office. My intention was to spend the night
+      there, where I had a chair-bedstead on which I had oft before slept
+      soundly after a day&rsquo;s hard work, and anyhow it was too late to go to
+      my lodgings at Passy at this hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moreover, Theodore slept in the antechamber of the office, and I was more
+      firmly convinced than ever that it was he who had stolen the bracelet.
+      &ldquo;Blackleg! Thief! Traitor!&rdquo; I mused. &ldquo;But thou hast not
+      done with Hector Ratichon yet.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meanwhile I bethought me of the velvet-covered box in my breast
+      pocket, and of the ginger-coloured hair and whiskers that I was still
+      wearing, and which might prove an unpleasant &ldquo;piece de conviction&rdquo;
+      in case the police were after the stolen bracelet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a view to examining the one and getting rid of the other, I turned
+      into the Square Louvois, which, as usual, was very dark and wholly
+      deserted. Here I took off my wig and whiskers and threw them over the
+      railings into the garden. Then I drew the velvet-covered box from my
+      pocket, opened it, and groped for its contents. Imagine my feelings, my
+      dear Sir, when I realised that the case was empty! Fate was indeed against
+      me that night. I had been fooled and cheated by a traitor, and had risked
+      New Orleans and worse for an empty box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment I must confess that I lost that imperturbable sang-froid
+      which is the admiration of all my friends, and with a genuine oath I flung
+      the case over the railings in the wake of the milor&rsquo;s hair and
+      whiskers. Then I hurried home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Theodore had not returned. He did not come in until the small hours of the
+      morning, and then he was in a state that I can only describe, with your
+      permission, as hoggish. He could hardly speak. I had him at my mercy.
+      Neither tact nor wariness was required for the moment. I stripped him to
+      his skin; he only laughed like an imbecile. His eyes had a horrid squint
+      in them; he was hideous. I found five francs in one of his pockets, but
+      neither in his clothes nor on his person did I find the bracelet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you done with it?&rdquo; I cried, for by this time I was
+      maddened with rage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what you are talking about!&rdquo; he stammered
+      thickly, as he tottered towards his bed. &ldquo;Give me back my five
+      francs, you thief!&rdquo; the brutish creature finally blurted out ere he
+      fell into a hog-like sleep.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      4.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Desperate evils need desperate remedies. I spent the rest of the night
+      thinking hard. By the time that dawn was breaking my mind was made up.
+      Theodore&rsquo;s stertorous breathing assured me that he was still
+      insentient. I was muscular in those days, and he a meagre, attenuated,
+      drink-sodden creature. I lifted him out of his bed in the antechamber and
+      carried him into mine in the office. I found a coil of rope, and strapped
+      him tightly in the chair-bedstead so that he could not move. I tied a
+      scarf round his mouth so that he could not scream. Then, at six o&rsquo;clock,
+      when the humbler eating-houses begin to take down their shutters, I went
+      out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had Theodore&rsquo;s five francs in my pocket, and I was desperately
+      hungry. I spent ten sous on a cup of coffee and a plate of fried onions
+      and haricot beans, and three francs on a savoury pie, highly flavoured
+      with garlic, and a quarter-bottle of excellent cognac. I drank the coffee
+      and ate the onions and the beans, and I took the pie and cognac home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I placed a table close to the chair-bedstead and on it I disposed the pie
+      and the cognac in such a manner that the moment Theodore woke his eyes
+      were bound to alight on them. Then I waited. I absolutely ached to have a
+      taste of that pie myself, it smelt so good, but I waited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Theodore woke at nine o&rsquo;clock. He struggled like a fool, but he
+      still appeared half dazed. No doubt he thought that he was dreaming. Then
+      I sat down on the edge of the bed and cut myself off a large piece of the
+      pie. I ate it with marked relish in front of Theodore, whose eyes nearly
+      started out of their sockets. Then I brewed myself a cup of coffee. The
+      mingled odour of coffee and garlic filled the room. It was delicious. I
+      thought that Theodore would have a fit. The veins stood out on his
+      forehead and a kind of gurgle came from behind the scarf round his mouth.
+      Then I told him he could partake of the pie and coffee if he told me what
+      he had done with the bracelet. He shook his head furiously, and I left the
+      pie, the cognac and the coffee on the table before him and went into the
+      antechamber, closing the office door behind me, and leaving him to
+      meditate on his treachery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What I wanted to avoid above everything was the traitor meeting M. Jean
+      Duval. He had the bracelet&mdash;of that I was as convinced as that I was
+      alive. But what could he do with a piece of false jewellery? He could not
+      dispose of it, save to a vendor of theatrical properties, who no doubt was
+      well acquainted with the trinket and would not give more than a couple of
+      francs for what was obviously stolen property. After all, I had promised
+      Theodore twenty francs; he would not be such a fool as to sell that
+      birthright for a mess of pottage and the sole pleasure of doing me a bad
+      turn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no doubt in my mind that he had put the thing away somewhere in
+      what he considered a safe place pending a reward being offered by Mlle.
+      Mars for the recovery of the bracelet. The more I thought of this the more
+      convinced I was that that was, indeed, his proposed plan of action&mdash;oh,
+      how I loathed the blackleg!&mdash;and mine henceforth would be to dog his
+      every footstep and never let him out of my sight until I forced him to
+      disgorge his ill-gotten booty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At ten o&rsquo;clock M. Jean Duval arrived, as was his wont, supercilious
+      and brusque as usual. I was just explaining to him that I hoped to have
+      excellent news for him after the next performance of <i>Le Rêve</i> when
+      there was a peremptory ring at the bell. I went to open the door, and
+      there stood a police inspector in uniform with a sheaf of papers in his
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, I am not over-fond of our Paris police; they poke their noses in
+      where they are least wanted. Their incompetence favours the machinations
+      of rogues and frustrates the innocent ambitions of the just. However, in
+      this instance the inspector looked amiable enough, though his manner, I
+      must say, was, as usual, unpleasantly curt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, Ratichon,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;there has been an impudent
+      theft of a valuable bracelet out of Mademoiselle Mars&rsquo; dressing-room
+      at the Theatre Royal last night. You and your mate frequent all sorts of
+      places of ill-fame; you may hear something of the affair.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I chose to ignore the insult, and the inspector detached a paper from the
+      sheaf which he held and threw it across the table to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a reward of two thousand five hundred francs,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;for the recovery of the bracelet. You will find on that paper
+      an accurate description of the jewel. It contains the celebrated Maroni
+      emerald, presented to the ex-Emperor by the Sultan, and given by him to
+      Mlle. Mars.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whereupon he turned unceremoniously on his heel and went, leaving me face
+      to face with the man who had so shamefully tried to swindle me. I turned,
+      and resting my elbow on the table and my chin in my hand, I looked mutely
+      on the soi-disant Jean Duval and equally mutely pointed with an accusing
+      finger to the description of the famous bracelet which he had declared to
+      me was merely strass and base metal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he had the impudence to turn on me before I could utter a syllable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is the bracelet?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;You consummate
+      liar, you! Where is it? You stole it last night! What have you done with
+      it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I extracted, at your request,&rdquo; I replied with as much dignity
+      as I could command, &ldquo;a piece of theatrical jewellery, which you
+      stated to me to be worthless, out of an iron chest, the key of which you
+      placed in my hands. I . . .&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough of this rubbish!&rdquo; he broke in roughly. &ldquo;You have
+      the bracelet. Give it me now, or . . .&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke off and looked somewhat alarmed in the direction of the office
+      door, from the other side of which there had just come a loud crash,
+      followed by loud, if unintelligible, vituperation. What had happened I
+      could not guess; all that I could do was to carry off the situation as
+      boldly as I dared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall have the bracelet, Sir,&rdquo; I said in my most suave
+      manner. &ldquo;You shall have it, but not unless you will pay me three
+      thousand francs for it. I can get two thousand five hundred by taking it
+      straight to Mlle. Mars.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And be taken up by the police for stealing it,&rdquo; he retorted.
+      &ldquo;How will you explain its being in your possession?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not blanch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is my affair,&rdquo; I replied. &ldquo;Will you give me three
+      thousand francs for it? It is worth sixty thousand francs to a clever
+      thief like you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hound!&rdquo; he cried, livid with rage, and raised his cane as
+      if he would strike me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, it was cleverly done, M. Jean Duval, whoever you may be. I
+      know that the gentleman-thief is a modern product of the old regime, but I
+      did not know that the fraternity could show such a fine specimen as
+      yourself. Pay Hector Ratichon a thousand francs for stealing a bracelet
+      for you worth sixty! Indeed, M. Jean Duval, you deserved to succeed!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again he shook his cane at me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you touch me,&rdquo; I declared boldly, &ldquo;I shall take the
+      bracelet at once to Mlle. Mars.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He bit his lip and made a great effort to pull himself together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t three thousand francs by me,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go, fetch the money,&rdquo; I retorted, &ldquo;and I&rsquo;ll fetch
+      the bracelet.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He demurred for a while, but I was firm, and after he had threatened to
+      thrash me, to knock me down, and to denounce me to the police, he gave in
+      and went to fetch the money.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      5.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      When I remembered Theodore&mdash;Theodore, whom only a thin partition wall
+      had separated from the full knowledge of the value of his ill-gotten
+      treasure!&mdash;I could have torn my hair out by the roots with the
+      magnitude of my rage. He, the traitor, the blackleg, was about to triumph,
+      where I, Hector Ratichon, had failed! He had but to take the bracelet to
+      Mlle. Mars himself and obtain the munificent reward whilst I, after I had
+      taken so many risks and used all the brains and tact wherewith Nature had
+      endowed me, would be left with the meagre remnants of the fifty francs
+      which M. Jean Duval had so grudgingly thrown to me. Twenty-five francs for
+      a gold locket, ten francs for a bouquet, another ten for bonbons, and five
+      for gratuities to the stage-doorkeeper! Make the calculation, my good Sir,
+      and see what I had left. If it had not been for the five francs which I
+      had found in Theodore&rsquo;s pocket last night, I would at this moment
+      not only have been breakfastless, but also absolutely penniless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As it was, my final hope&mdash;and that a meagre one&mdash;was to arouse
+      one spark of honesty in the breast of the arch-traitor, and either by
+      cajolery or threats, to induce him to share his ill-gotten spoils with me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had left him snoring and strapped to the chair-bedstead, and when I
+      opened the office door I was marvelling in my mind whether I could really
+      bear to see him dying slowly of starvation with that savoury pie
+      tantalizingly under his nose. The crash which I had heard a few minutes
+      ago prepared me for a change of scene. Even so, I confess that the sight
+      which I beheld glued me to the threshold. There sat Theodore at the table,
+      finishing the last morsel of pie, whilst the chair-bedstead lay in a
+      tangled heap upon the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot tell you how nasty he was to me about the whole thing, although I
+      showed myself at once ready to forgive him all his lies and his treachery,
+      and was at great pains to explain to him how I had given up my own bed and
+      strapped him into it solely for the benefit of his health, seeing that at
+      the moment he was threatened with delirium tremens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would not listen to reason or to the most elementary dictates of
+      friendship. Having poured the vials of his bilious temper over my devoted
+      head, he became as perverse and as obstinate as a mule. With the most
+      consummate impudence I ever beheld in any human being, he flatly denied
+      all knowledge of the bracelet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whilst I talked he stalked past me into the ante-chamber, where he at once
+      busied himself in collecting all his goods and chattels. These he stuffed
+      into his pockets until he appeared to be bulging all over his ugly-body;
+      then he went to the door ready to go out. On the threshold he turned and
+      gave me a supercilious glance over his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take note, my good Ratichon,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that our
+      partnership is dissolved as from to-morrow, the twentieth day of
+      September.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As from this moment, you infernal scoundrel!&rdquo; I cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he did not pause to listen, and slammed the door in my face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For two or three minutes I remained quite still, whilst I heard the
+      shuffling footsteps slowly descending the corridor. Then I followed him,
+      quietly, surreptitiously, as a fox will follow its prey. He never turned
+      round once, but obviously he knew that he was being followed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will not weary you, my dear Sir, with the details of the dance which he
+      led me in and about Paris during the whole of that memorable day. Never a
+      morsel passed my lips from breakfast to long after sundown. He tried every
+      trick known to the profession to throw me off the scent. But I stuck to
+      him like a leech. When he sauntered I sauntered; when he ran I ran; when
+      he glued his nose to the window of an eating house I halted under a
+      doorway close by; when he went to sleep on a bench in the Luxembourg
+      Gardens I watched over him as a mother over a babe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Towards evening&mdash;it was an hour after sunset and the street-lamps
+      were just being lighted&mdash;he must have thought that he had at last got
+      rid of me; for, after looking carefully behind him, he suddenly started to
+      walk much faster and with an amount of determination which he had lacked
+      hitherto. I marvelled if he was not making for the Rue Daunou, where was
+      situated the squalid tavern of ill-fame which he was wont to frequent. I
+      was not mistaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I tracked the traitor to the corner of the street, and saw him disappear
+      beneath the doorway of the Taverne des Trois Tigres. I resolved to follow.
+      I had money in my pocket&mdash;about twenty-five sous&mdash;and I was
+      mightily thirsty. I started to run down the street, when suddenly Theodore
+      came rushing back out of the tavern, hatless and breathless, and before I
+      succeeded in dodging him he fell into my arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My money!&rdquo; he said hoarsely. &ldquo;I must have my money at
+      once! You thief! You . . .&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once again my presence of mind stood me in good stead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pull yourself together, Theodore,&rdquo; I said with much dignity,
+      &ldquo;and do not make a scene in the open street.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Theodore was not at all prepared to pull himself together. He was
+      livid with rage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had five francs in my pocket last night!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;You
+      have stolen them, you abominable rascal!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you stole from me a bracelet worth three thousand francs to the
+      firm,&rdquo; I retorted. &ldquo;Give me that bracelet and you shall have
+      your money back.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he blurted out desperately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you mean, you can&rsquo;t?&rdquo; I exclaimed, whilst a
+      horrible fear like an icy claw suddenly gripped at my heart. &ldquo;You
+      haven&rsquo;t lost it, have you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Worse!&rdquo; he cried, and fell up against me in
+      semi-unconsciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shook him violently. I bellowed in his ear, and suddenly, after that one
+      moment of apparent unconsciousness, he became, not only wide awake, but as
+      strong as a lion and as furious as a bull. We closed in on one another. He
+      hammered at me with his fists, calling me every kind of injurious name he
+      could think of, and I had need of all my strength to ward off his attacks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a few moments no one took much notice of us. Fracas and quarrels
+      outside the drinking-houses in the mean streets of Paris were so frequent
+      these days that the police did not trouble much about them. But after a
+      while Theodore became so violent that I was forced to call vigorously for
+      help. I thought he meant to murder me. People came rushing out of the
+      tavern, and someone very officiously started whistling for the gendarmes.
+      This had the effect of bringing Theodore to his senses. He calmed down
+      visibly, and before the crowd had had time to collect round us we had both
+      sauntered off, walking in apparent amity side by side down the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at the first corner Theodore halted, and this time he confined himself
+      to gripping me by the arm with one hand whilst with the other he grasped
+      one of the buttons of my coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That five francs,&rdquo; he said in a hoarse, half-choked voice.
+      &ldquo;I must have that five francs! Can&rsquo;t you see that I can&rsquo;t
+      have that bracelet till I have my five francs wherewith to redeem it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To redeem it!&rdquo; I gasped. I was indeed glad then that he held
+      me by the arm, for it seemed to me as if I was falling down a yawning
+      abyss which had opened at my feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Theodore, and his voice sounded as if it came from
+      a great distance and through cotton-wool,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew that you would be after that bracelet like a famished hyena
+      after a bone, so I tied it securely inside the pocket of the blouse I was
+      wearing, and left this with Legros, the landlord of the Trois Tigres. It
+      was a good blouse; he lent me five francs on it. Of course, he knew
+      nothing about the bracelet then. But he only lends money to clients in
+      this manner on the condition that it is repaid within twenty-four hours. I
+      have got to pay him back before eight o&rsquo;clock this evening or he
+      will dispose of the blouse as he thinks best. It is close on eight o&rsquo;clock
+      now. Give me back my five francs, you confounded thief, before Legros has
+      time to discover the bracelet! We&rsquo;ll share the reward, I promise
+      you. Faith of an honest man. You liar, you cheat, you&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What was the use of talking? I had not got five francs. I had spent ten
+      sous in getting myself some breakfast, and three francs in a savoury pie
+      flavoured with garlic and in a quarter of a bottle of cognac. I groaned
+      aloud. I had exactly twenty-five sous left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We went back to the tavern hoping against hope that Legros had not yet
+      turned out the pockets of the blouse, and that we might induce him, by
+      threat or cajolery or the usurious interest of twenty-five sous, to grant
+      his client a further twenty-four hours wherein to redeem the pledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One glance at the interior of the tavern, however, told us that all our
+      hopes were in vain. Legros, the landlord, was even then turning the blouse
+      over and over, whilst his hideous hag of a wife was talking to the police
+      inspector, who was showing her the paper that announced the offer of two
+      thousand five hundred francs for the recovery of a valuable bracelet, the
+      property of Mlle. Mars, the distinguished tragedienne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We only waited one minute with our noses glued against the windows of the
+      Trois Tigres, just long enough to see Legros extracting the leather case
+      from the pocket of the blouse, just long enough to hear the police
+      inspector saying peremptorily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You, Legros, ought to be able to let the police know who stole the
+      bracelet. You must know who left that blouse with you last night.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we both fled incontinently down the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Sir, was I not right when I said that honour and loyalty are the
+      essential qualities in our profession? If Theodore had not been such a
+      liar and such a traitor, he and I, between us, would have been richer by
+      three thousand francs that day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. &mdash; AN OVER-SENSITIVE HEART
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      No doubt, Sir, that you have noticed during the course of our
+      conversations that Nature has endowed me with an over-sensitive heart. I
+      feel keenly, Sir, very keenly. Blows dealt me by Fate, or, as has been
+      more often the case, by the cruel and treacherous hand of man, touch me on
+      the raw. I suffer acutely. I am highly strung. I am one of those rare
+      beings whom Nature pre-ordained for love and for happiness. I am an ideal
+      family man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What? You did not know that I was married? Indeed, Sir, I am. And though
+      Madame Ratichon does not perhaps fulfil all my ideals of exquisite
+      womanhood, nevertheless she has been an able and willing helpmate during
+      these last years of comparative prosperity. Yes, you see me fairly
+      prosperous now. My industry, my genius&mdash;if I may so express myself&mdash;found
+      their reward at last. You will be the first to acknowledge&mdash;you, the
+      confidant of my life&rsquo;s history&mdash;that that reward was fully
+      deserved. I worked for it, toiled and thought and struggled, up to the
+      last; and had Fate been just, rather than grudging, I should have attained
+      that ideal which would have filled my cup of happiness to the brim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, anyway, the episode connected with my marriage did mark the close of
+      my professional career, and is therefore worthy of record. Since that day,
+      Sir&mdash;a happy one for me, a blissful one for Mme. Ratichon&mdash;I
+      have been able, thanks to the foresight of an all-wise Providence, to
+      gratify my bucolic tastes. I live now, Sir, amidst my flowers, with my dog
+      and my canary and Mme. Ratichon, smiling with kindly indulgence on the
+      struggles and the blunders of my younger colleagues, oft consulted by them
+      in matters that require special tact and discretion. I sit and dream now
+      beneath the shade of a vine-clad arbour of those glorious days of long
+      ago, when kings and emperors placed the destiny of their inheritance in my
+      hands, when autocrats and dictators came to me for assistance and advice,
+      and the name of Hector Ratichon stood for everything that was most astute
+      and most discreet. And if at times a gentle sigh of regret escapes my
+      lips, Mme. Ratichon&mdash;whose thinness is ever my despair, for I admire
+      comeliness, Sir, as being more womanly&mdash;Mme. Ratichon, I say, comes
+      to me with the gladsome news that dinner is served; and though she is not
+      all that I could wish in the matter of the culinary arts, yet she can fry
+      a cutlet passably, and one of her brothers is a wholesale wine merchant of
+      excellent reputation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was soon after my connexion with that abominable Marquis de
+      Firmin-Latour that I first made the acquaintance of the present Mme.
+      Ratichon, under somewhat peculiar circumstances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember it was on the first day of April in the year 1817 that M.
+      Rochez&mdash;Fernand Rochez was his exact name&mdash;came to see me at my
+      office in the Rue Daunou, and the date proved propitious, as you will
+      presently see. How M. Rochez came to know of my gifts and powers, I cannot
+      tell you. He never would say. He had heard of me through a friend, was all
+      that he vouchsafed to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Theodore had shown him in. Ah! have I not mentioned the fact that I had
+      forgiven Theodore his lies and his treachery, and taken him back to my
+      bosom and to my board? My sensitive heart had again got the better of my
+      prudence, and Theodore was installed once more in the antechamber of my
+      apartments in the Rue Daunou, and was, as heretofore, sharing with me all
+      the good things that I could afford. So there he was on duty on that
+      fateful first of April which was destined to be the turning-point of my
+      destiny. And he showed M. de Rochez in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At once I knew my man&mdash;the type, I mean. Immaculately dressed,
+      scented and befrilled, haughty of manner and nonchalant of speech, M.
+      Rochez had the word &ldquo;adventurer&rdquo; writ all over his
+      well-groomed person. He was young, good-looking, his nails were
+      beautifully polished, his pantaloons fitted him without a wrinkle. These
+      were of a soft putty shade; his coat was bottle-green, and his hat of the
+      latest modish shape. A perfect exquisite, in fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he came to the point without much preamble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M.&mdash;er&mdash;Ratichon,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I have heard of
+      you through a friend, who tells me that you are the most unscrupulous
+      scoundrel he has ever come across.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir&mdash;!&rdquo; I began, rising from my seat in indignant
+      protest at the coarse insult. But with an authoritative gesture he checked
+      the flow of my indignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No comedy, I pray you, Sir,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We are not at
+      the Theatre Molière, but, I presume, in an office where business is
+      transacted both briefly and with discretion.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At your service, Monsieur,&rdquo; I replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then listen, will you?&rdquo; he went on curtly, &ldquo;and pray do
+      not interrupt. Only speak in answer to a question from me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I bowed my head in silence. Thus must the proud suffer when they happen to
+      be sparsely endowed with riches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have no doubt heard of Mlle. Goldberg,&rdquo; M. Rochez
+      continued after a moment&rsquo;s pause, &ldquo;the lovely daughter of the
+      rich usurer in the Rue des Médecins.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had heard of Mlle. Goldberg. Her beauty and her father&rsquo;s wealth
+      were reported to be fabulous. I indicated my knowledge of the beautiful
+      lady by a mute inclination of the head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love Mlle. Goldberg,&rdquo; my client resumed, &ldquo;and I have
+      reason for the belief that I am not altogether indifferent to her.
+      Glances, you understand, from eyes as expressive as those of the exquisite
+      Jewess speak more eloquently than words.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had forbidden me to speak, so I could only express concurrence in the
+      sentiments which he expressed by a slight elevation of my left eyebrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am determined to win the affections of Mlle. Goldberg,&rdquo; M.
+      Rochez went on glibly, &ldquo;and equally am I determined to make her my
+      wife.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A very natural determination,&rdquo; I remarked involuntarily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My only trouble with regard to pressing my court is the fact that
+      my lovely Leah is never allowed outside her father&rsquo;s house, save in
+      his company or that of his sister&mdash;an old maid of dour mien and sour
+      disposition, who acts the part of a duenna with dog-like tenacity. Over
+      and over again have I tried to approach the lady of my heart, only to be
+      repelled or roughly rebuked for my insolence by her irascible old aunt.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not the first lover, Sir,&rdquo; I remarked drily, &ldquo;who
+      hath seen obstacles thus thrown in his way, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One moment, M.&mdash;er&mdash;Ratichon,&rdquo; he broke in sharply.
+      &ldquo;I have not finished. I will not attempt to describe my feelings to
+      you. I have been writhing&mdash;yes, writhing!&mdash;in face of those
+      obstacles of which you speak so lightly, and for a long time I have been
+      cudgelling my brains as to the possible means whereby I might approach my
+      divinity unchecked. Then one day I bethought me of you&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of me, Sir?&rdquo; I ejaculated, sorely puzzled. &ldquo;Why of me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None of my friends,&rdquo; he replied nonchalantly, &ldquo;would
+      care to undertake so scrubby a task as I would assign to you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I pray you to be more explicit,&rdquo; I retorted with unimpaired
+      dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more he paused. Obviously he was a born mountebank, and he calculated
+      all his effects to a nicety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You, M.&mdash;er&mdash;Ratichon,&rdquo; he said curtly at last,
+      &ldquo;will have to take the duenna off my hands.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was beginning to understand. So I let him prattle on the while my busy
+      brain was already at work evolving the means to render this man service,
+      which in its turn I expected to be amply repaid. Thus I cannot repeat
+      exactly all that he said, for I was only listening with half an ear. But
+      the substance of it all was this: I was to pose as the friend of M.
+      Fernand Rochez, and engage the attention of Mlle. Goldberg senior the
+      while he paid his court to the lovely Leah. It was not a repellent task
+      altogether, because M. Rochez&rsquo;s suggestion opened a vista of
+      pleasant parties at open-air cafés, with foaming tankards of beer, on warm
+      afternoons the while the young people sipped sirops and fed on love. My
+      newly found friend was pleased to admit that my personality and appearance
+      would render my courtship of the elderly duenna a comparatively easy one.
+      She would soon, he declared, fall a victim to my charms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After which the question of remuneration came in, and over this we did not
+      altogether agree. Ultimately I decided to accept an advance of two hundred
+      francs and a new suit of clothes, which I at once declared was
+      indispensable under the circumstances, seeing that in my well-worn coat I
+      might have the appearance of a fortune-hunter in the eyes of the
+      suspicious old dame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within my mind I envisaged the possibility of touching M. Rochez for a
+      further two hundred francs if and when opportunity arose.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      2.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The formal introduction took place on the boulevards one fine afternoon
+      shortly after that. Mlle. Leah was walking under the trees with her duenna
+      when we&mdash;M. Rochez and I&mdash;came face to face with them. My friend
+      raised his hat, and I did likewise. Mademoiselle Leah blushed and the ogre
+      frowned. Sir, she was an ogre!&mdash;bony and angular and hook-nosed, with
+      thin lips that closed with a snap, and cold grey eyes that sent a shiver
+      down your spine! Rochez introduced me to her, and I made myself
+      exceedingly agreeable to her, while my friend succeeded in exchanging two
+      or three whispered words with his inamorata.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But we did not get very far that day. Mlle. Goldberg senior soon marched
+      her lovely charge away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, Sir, she was lovely indeed! And in my heart I not only envied Rochez
+      his good fortune but I also felt how entirely unworthy he was of it. Nor
+      did the beautiful Leah give me the impression of being quite so deeply
+      struck with his charms as he would have had me believe. Indeed, it struck
+      me during those few minutes that I stood dutifully talking to her duenna
+      that the fair young Jewess cast more than one approving glance in my
+      direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Be that as it may, the progress of our respective courtships, now that the
+      ice was broken, took on a more decided turn. At first it only amounted to
+      meetings on the boulevards and a cursory greeting, but soon Mlle. Goldberg
+      senior, delighted with my conversation, would deliberately turn to walk
+      with me under the trees the while Fernand Rochez followed by the side of
+      his adored. A week later the ladies accepted my friend&rsquo;s offer to
+      sit under the awning of the Café Bourbon and to sip sirops, whilst we
+      indulged in tankards of foaming &ldquo;blondes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within a fortnight, Sir&mdash;I may say it without boasting&mdash;I had
+      Mlle. Goldberg senior in the hollow of my hand. On the boulevards, as soon
+      as she caught sight of me, her dour face would be wreathed in smiles, a
+      row of large yellow teeth would appear between her thin lips, and her
+      cold, grey eyes would soften with a glance of welcome which more than ever
+      sent a cold shudder down my spine. While we four were together, either
+      promenading or sitting at open-air cafés in the cool of the evening, the
+      old duenna had eyes and ears only for me, and if my friend Rochez did not
+      get on with his own courtship as fast as he would have wished the fault
+      rested entirely with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For he did <i>not</i> get on with his courtship, and that was a fact. The
+      fair Leah was very sweet, very coy, greatly amused, I fancy, at her aunt&rsquo;s
+      obvious infatuation for me, and not a little flattered at the handsome M.
+      Rochez&rsquo;s attentions to herself. But there it all ended. And whenever
+      I questioned Rochez on the subject, he flew into a temper and consigned
+      all middle-aged Jewesses to perdition, and all the lovely and young ones
+      to a comfortable kind of Hades to which he alone amongst the male sex
+      would have access. From which I gathered that I was not wrong in my
+      surmises, that the fair Leah had been smitten by my personality and my
+      appearance rather than by those of my friend, and that he was suffering
+      the pangs of an insane jealousy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, of course, he never would admit. All that he told me one day was
+      that Leah, with the characteristic timidity of her race, refused to marry
+      him unless she could obtain her father&rsquo;s consent to the union. Old
+      Goldberg, duly approached on the matter, flatly forbade his daughter to
+      have anything further to do with that fortune-hunter, that parasite, that
+      beggarly pick-thank&mdash;such, Sir, were but a few complimentary epithets
+      which he hurled with great volubility at his daughter&rsquo;s absent
+      suitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was from Mlle. Goldberg, senior, that my friend and I had the details
+      of that stormy interview between father and daughter; after which, she
+      declared that interviews between the lovers would necessarily become very
+      difficult of arrangement. From which you will gather that the worthy soul,
+      though she was as ugly as sin, was by this time on the side of the angels.
+      Indeed, she was more than that. She professed herself willing to aid and
+      abet them in every way she could. This Rochez confided to me, together
+      with his assurance that he was determined to take his Fate into his own
+      hands and, since the beautiful Leah would not come to him of her own
+      accord, to carry her off by force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, my dear Sir, those were romantic days, you must remember! Days when
+      men placed the possession of the woman they loved above every treasure,
+      every consideration upon earth. Ah, romance! Romance, Sir, was the breath
+      of our nostrils, the blood in our veins! Imagine how readily we all fell
+      in with my friend&rsquo;s plans. I, of course, was the moving spirit in it
+      all; mine was the genius which was destined to turn gilded romance into
+      grim reality. Yes, grim! For you shall see! . . .
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mlle. Goldberg, senior, who appropriately enough was named Sarah, gave us
+      the clue how to proceed, after which my genius worked alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You must know that old Goldberg&rsquo;s house in the Rue des Médecins&mdash;a
+      large apartment house in which he occupied a few rooms on the ground floor
+      behind his shop&mdash;backed on to a small uncultivated garden which ended
+      in a tall brick wall, the meeting-place of all the felines in the
+      neighbourhood, and in which there was a small postern gate, now disused.
+      This gate gave on a narrow cul-de-sac&mdash;grandiloquently named Passage
+      Corneille&mdash;which was flanked on the opposite side by the tall
+      boundary wall of an adjacent convent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That cul-de-sac was marked out from the very first in my mind as our
+      objective. Around and about it, as it were, did I build the edifice of my
+      schemes, aided by the ever-willing Sarah. The old maid threw herself into
+      the affair with zest, planning and contriving like a veritable strategist;
+      and I must admit that she was full of resource and invention. We were now
+      in mid-May and enjoying a spell of hot summer weather. This gave the
+      inventive Sarah the excuse for using the back garden as a place wherein to
+      sit in the cool of the evening in the company of her niece.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, you see the whole thing now at a glance, do you not? The postern gate,
+      the murky night, the daring lover, the struggling maiden, the willing
+      accomplices. The actors were all there, ready for the curtain to be rung
+      up on the palpitating drama.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then it was that a brilliant idea came into my brain. It was born on the
+      very day that I realized with indisputable certainty that the lovely Leah
+      was not in reality in love with Rochez. He fatuously believed that she was
+      ready to fall into his arms, that only maidenly timidity held her back,
+      and that the moment she had been snatched from her father&rsquo;s house
+      and found herself in the arms of her adoring lover, she would turn to him
+      in the very fullness of love and confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I knew better. I had caught a look now and again&mdash;an undefinable
+      glance, which told me the whole pitiable tale. She did not love Rochez;
+      and in the drama which we were preparing to enact the curtain would fall
+      on his rapture and her unhappiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, Sir! imagine what my feelings were when I realized this! This fair
+      girl, against whom we were all conspiring like so many traitors, was still
+      ignorant of the fatal brink on which she stood. She chatted and coquetted
+      and smiled, little dreaming that in a very few days her happiness would be
+      wrecked and she would be linked for life to a man whom she could never
+      love. Rochez&rsquo;s idea, of course, was primarily to get hold of her
+      fortune. I had already ascertained for him, through the ever-willing
+      Sarah, that this fortune came from Leah&rsquo;s grandfather, who had left
+      a sum of two hundred thousand francs on trust for her children, she to
+      enjoy the income for her life. There certainly was a clause in the will
+      whereby the girl would forfeit that fortune if she married without her
+      father&rsquo;s consent; but according to Rochez&rsquo;s plans this could
+      scarcely be withheld once she had been taken forcibly away from home, held
+      in durance, and with her reputation hopelessly compromised. She could then
+      pose as an injured victim, throw herself at her father&rsquo;s feet, and
+      beg him to give that consent without which she would for ever remain an
+      outcast of society, a pariah amongst her kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A pretty piece of villainous combination, you will own! And I, Sir, was to
+      lend a hand in this abomination!&mdash;nay, I was to be the chief villain
+      in the drama! It was I who, even now, was spending the hours of the night,
+      when I might have been dreaming sentimental dreams, in oiling the lock of
+      the postern gate which was to give us access into papa Goldberg&rsquo;s
+      garden. It was I who, under cover of darkness and guided by that old jade
+      Sarah, was to sneak into that garden on the appointed night and forcibly
+      seize the unsuspecting maiden and carry her to the carriage which Rochez
+      would have in readiness for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You see what a coward he was! It was a criminal offence in those days,
+      punishable with deportation to New Caledonia, to abduct a young lady from
+      her parents&rsquo; house; and Rochez left me the dirty work to do in case
+      the girl screamed and attracted the police. Now you will tell me if I was
+      not justified in doing what I did, and I will abide by your judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was to take all the risks, remember!&mdash;New Caledonia, the police,
+      the odium attached to so foul a deed; and do you know for what? For a
+      paltry thousand francs, which with much difficulty I had induced Rochez&mdash;nay,
+      forced him!&mdash;to hand over to me in anticipation of what I was about
+      to accomplish for his sake. A thousand francs! Did this miserliness not
+      characterize the man? Was it to such a scrubby knave that I, at risk of my
+      life and of my honour, would hand over that jewel amongst women, that
+      pearl above price?&mdash;a lady with a personal fortune amounting to two
+      hundred thousand francs?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, Sir; I would not! Then and there I vowed that I would not! Mine were
+      to be all the risks; then mine should be the reward! What Rochez meant to
+      do, that I could too, and with far greater reason. The lovely Leah did at
+      times frown on Fernand; but she invariably smiled on me. She would fall
+      into my arms far more readily than into his, and papa Goldberg would be
+      equally forced to give his consent to her marriage with me as with that
+      self-seeking carpet-knight whom he abhorred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Needless to say, I kept my own counsel, and did not speak of my project
+      even to Sarah. To all appearances I was to be the mere tool in this
+      affair, the unfortunate cat employed to snatch the roast chestnuts out of
+      the fire for the gratification of a mealy-mouthed monkey.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      3.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The appointed day and hour were at hand. Fernand Rochez had engaged a
+      barouche which was to take him and his lovely victim to a little house at
+      Auteuil, which he had rented for the purpose. There the lovers were to lie
+      perdu until such time as papa Goldberg had relented and the marriage could
+      be duly solemnized in the synagogue of the Rue des Halles. Sarah had
+      offered in the meanwhile to do all that in her power lay to soften the old
+      man&rsquo;s heart and to bring about the happy conclusion of the romantic
+      adventure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the latter we had chosen the night of May 23rd. It was a moonless
+      night, and the Passage Corneille, from whence I was to operate, was most
+      usefully dark. Sarah Goldberg had, according to convention, left the
+      postern gate on the latch, and at ten o&rsquo;clock precisely I made my
+      way up the cul-de-sac and cautiously turned the handle of the door. I
+      confess that my heart beat somewhat uncomfortably in my bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had left Rochez and his barouche in the Rue des Pipots, about a hundred
+      metres from the angle of the Passage Corneille, and it was along those
+      hundred metres of a not altogether unfrequented street that he expected me
+      presently to carry a possibly screaming and struggling burden in the very
+      teeth of a gendarmerie always on the look-out for exciting captures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, Sir; that was not to be! And it was with a resolute if beating heart
+      that I presently felt the postern gate yielding to the pressure of my
+      hand. The neighbouring church clock of St. Sulpice had just finished
+      striking ten. I pushed open the gate and tip-toed across the threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the garden the boughs of a dilapidated old ash tree were soughing in
+      the wind above my head, whilst from the top of the boundary wall the
+      yarring and yowling of beasts of the feline species grated unpleasantly on
+      my ear. I could not see my hand before my eyes, and had just stretched it
+      out in order to guide my footsteps when it was seized with a kindly yet
+      firm pressure, whilst a voice murmured softly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is it?&rdquo; I whispered in response.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is I&mdash;Sarah!&rdquo; the voice replied. &ldquo;Everything is
+      all right, but Leah is unsuspecting. I am sure that if she suspected
+      anything she would not set foot outside the door.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What shall we do?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait here a moment quietly,&rdquo; Sarah rejoined, speaking in a
+      rapid whisper, &ldquo;under cover of this wall. Within the next few
+      minutes Leah will come out of the house. I have left my knitting upon a
+      garden chair, and I will ask her to run out and fetch it. That will be
+      your opportunity. The chair is in the angle of the wall, there,&rdquo; she
+      added, pointing to her right, &ldquo;not three paces from where you are
+      standing now. Leah has a white dress on. She will have to stoop in order
+      to pick up the knitting. I have taken the precaution to entangle the wool
+      in the leg of the chair, so she will be some few seconds entirely at your
+      mercy. Have you a shawl?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had, of course, provided myself with one. A shawl is always a necessary
+      adjunct to such adventures. Breathlessly, silently, I intimated to my kind
+      accomplice that I would obey her behests and that I was prepared for every
+      eventuality. The next moment her hold upon my hand relaxed, she gave
+      another quickly-whispered &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; and disappeared into the
+      night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a second or two after that my ear caught the soft sound of her
+      retreating footsteps, then nothing more. To say that I felt anxious and
+      ill at ease was but to put it mildly. I was face to face with an adventure
+      which might cost me at least five years&rsquo; acute discomfort in New
+      Caledonia, but which might also bring me as rich a reward as could befall
+      any man of modest ambitions: a lovely wife and a comfortable fortune. My
+      whole life seemed to be hanging on a thread, and my overwrought senses
+      seemed almost to catch the sound of the spinning-wheel of Fate weaving the
+      web of my destiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment or two later I again caught the distinct sound of a gentle
+      footfall upon the soft earth. My eyes by now were somewhat accustomed to
+      the gloom. It was very dark, you understand; but through the darkness I
+      saw something white moving slowly toward me. Then my heart thumped more
+      furiously than ever before. I dared not breathe. I saw the lovely Leah
+      approaching, or, rather, I felt her approach, for it was too dark to see.
+      She moved in the direction which Sarah had indicated to me as being the
+      place where stood the garden chair with the knitting upon it. I grasped
+      the shawl. I was ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another few seconds of agonising suspense went by. The fair Leah had
+      ceased to move. Undoubtedly she was engaged in disentangling the wool from
+      the leg of the chair. That was my opportunity. More stealthy than any cat,
+      I tiptoed toward the chair&mdash;and, indeed, at that moment I blessed the
+      sudden yowl set up by some feline in its wrath which rent the still night
+      air and effectually drowned any sound which I might make.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There, not three paces away from me, was the dim outline of the young girl&rsquo;s
+      form vaguely discernible in the gloom&mdash;a white mass, almost
+      motionless, against a background of inky blackness. With a quick intaking
+      of my breath I sprang forward, the shawl outspread in my hand, and with a
+      quick dexterous gesture I threw it over her head, and the next second had
+      her, faintly struggling, in my arms. She was as light as a feather, and I
+      was as strong as a giant. Think of it, Sir! There was I, alone in the
+      darkness, holding in my arms, together with a lovely form, a fortune of
+      two hundred thousand francs!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of that fool Fernand Rochez I did not trouble to think. He had a barouche
+      waiting <i>up</i> the Rue des Pipots, a hundred metres from the corner of
+      the Passage Corneille, but I had a chaise and pair of horses waiting <i>down</i>
+      that same street, and that now was my objective. Yes, Sir! I had arranged
+      the whole thing! But I had done it for mine own advantage, not for that of
+      the miserly friend who had been too great a coward to risk his own skin
+      for the sake of his beloved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The guerdon was mine, and I was determined this time that no traitor or
+      ingrate should filch from me the reward of my labours. With the thousand
+      francs which Rochez had given me for my services I had engaged the chaise
+      and horses, paid the coachman lavishly, and secured a cosy little
+      apartment for my future wife in a pleasant hostelry I knew of at Suresnes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had taken the precaution to leave the wicket-gate on the latch. With my
+      foot I pushed it open, and, keeping well under the cover of the tall
+      convent wall, I ran swiftly to the corner of the Rue des Pipots. Here I
+      paused a moment. Through the silence of the night my ear caught the faint
+      sound of horses snorting and harness jingling in the distance, both sides
+      from where I stood; but of gendarmes or passers-by there was no sign.
+      Gathering up the full measure of my courage and holding my precious burden
+      closer to my heart, I ran quickly down the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within the next few seconds I had the seemingly inanimate maiden safely
+      deposited in the inside of the barouche and myself sitting by her side.
+      The driver cracked his whip, and whilst I, happy but exhausted, was
+      mopping my streaming forehead the chaise rattled gaily along the uneven
+      pavements of the great city in the direction of Suresnes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What that fool Rochez was doing I could not definitely ascertain. I looked
+      through the vasistas of the coach, but could see nothing in pursuit of us.
+      Then I turned my full attention to my lovely companion. It was pitch dark
+      inside the carriage, you understand; only from time to time, as we drove
+      past an overhanging street lanthorn, I caught a glimpse of that priceless
+      bundle beside me, which lay there so still and so snug, still wrapped up
+      in the shawl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With cautious, loving fingers I undid its folds. Under cover of the
+      darkness the sweet and modest creature, released of her bonds, turned for
+      an instant to me, and for a few, very few, happy seconds I held her in my
+      arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have no fear, fair one,&rdquo; I murmured in her ear. &ldquo;It is
+      I, Hector Ratichon, who adores you and who cannot live without you!
+      Forgive me for this seeming violence, which was prompted by an undying
+      passion, and remember that to me you are as sacred as a divinity until the
+      happy hour when I can proclaim you to the world as my beloved wife!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I pressed her against my heart, and my lips imprinted a delicate kiss upon
+      her forehead. After which, with chaste decorum, she once more turned away
+      from me, covered her face and head with the shawl, and drew back into the
+      remote corner of the carriage, where she remained, silent and absorbed, no
+      doubt, in the contemplation of her happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I respected her silence, and I, too, fell to meditating upon my good
+      fortune. Here was I, Sir, within sight of a haven wherein I could live
+      through the twilight of my days in comfort and in peace, a beautiful young
+      wife, a modest fortune! I had never in my wildest dreams envisaged a Fate
+      more fair. The little house at Chantilly which I coveted, the plot of
+      garden, the espalier peaches&mdash;all, all would be mine now! It seemed
+      indeed too good to be true!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The very next moment I was rudely awakened from those golden dreams by a
+      loud clatter, and stern voices shouting the ominous word, &ldquo;Halt!&rdquo;
+      The carriage drew up with such a jerk that I was flung off my seat against
+      the front window and my nose seriously bruised. A faint cry of terror came
+      from the precious bundle beside me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have no fear, my beloved,&rdquo; I whispered hurriedly. &ldquo;Your
+      own Hector will protect you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already the door of the carriage had been violently torn open; the next
+      moment a gruff voice called out peremptorily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By order of the Chief Commissary of Police!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was dumbfounded. In what manner had the Chief Commissary of Police been
+      already apprised of this affair? The whole thing was, of course, a swift
+      and vengeful blow dealt to me by that cowardly Rochez. But how, in the
+      name of thunder, had he got to work so quickly? But, of course, there was
+      no time now for reflection. The gruff voice was going on more peremptorily
+      and more insistently:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Hector Ratichon here?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was dumb. My throat had closed up, and I could not have uttered a sound
+      to save my life. The police had even got my name quite straight!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now then, Ratichon,&rdquo; that same irascible voice continued,
+      &ldquo;get out of there! In the name of the law I charge you with the
+      abduction of a defenceless female, and my orders are to bring you
+      forthwith before the Chief Commissary of Police.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then it was, Sir, that bliss once more re-entered my soul. I had just felt
+      a small hand pressing something crisp into mine, whilst a soft voice
+      whispered in my ear:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give him this, and tell him to let you go in peace. Say that I am
+      Mademoiselle Goldberg, your promised wife.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The feel of that crackling note in my hand at once restored my courage.
+      Covering the lovely creature beside me with a protecting arm, I replied
+      boldly to the minion of the law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This lady,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;is my affianced wife. You, Sir
+      Gendarme, are overstepping your powers. I demand that you let us proceed
+      in peace.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My orders are&mdash;&rdquo; the gendarme resumed; but already my
+      sensitive ear had detected a faint wavering in the gruffness of his voice.
+      The hectoring tone had gone out of it. I could not see him, of course, but
+      somehow I felt that his attitude had become less arrogant and his glance
+      more shifty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This gentleman has spoken the truth,&rdquo; now came in soft,
+      dulcet tones from under the shawl that wrapped the head of my beloved.
+      &ldquo;I am Mlle. Goldberg, M. le Gendarme, and I am travelling with M.
+      Hector Ratichon entirely of my own free will, since I have promised him
+      that I would be his wife.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; the gendarme ejaculated, obviously mollified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Mademoiselle is the fiancée of Monsieur, and is acting of her
+      own free will&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not for you to interfere, eh, my friend?&rdquo; I broke in
+      jocosely. &ldquo;You will now let us proceed in peace, and for your
+      trouble you will no doubt accept this token of my consideration.&rdquo;
+      And, groping in the darkness, I found the rough hand of the gendarme, and
+      speedily pressed into it the crisp note which my adored one had given to
+      me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he said, with very obvious gratification. &ldquo;If
+      Monsieur Ratichon will assure me that Mademoiselle here is indeed his
+      affianced wife, then indeed it is not a case of abduction, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Abduction!&rdquo; I retorted, flaring up in righteous indignation.
+      &ldquo;Who dares to use the word in connexion with this lovely lady?
+      Mademoiselle Goldberg, I swear, will be Madame Ratichon within the next
+      four and twenty hours. And the sooner you, Sir Gendarme, allow us to
+      proceed on our way the less pain will you cause to this distressed and
+      virtuous damsel.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This settled the whole affair quite comfortably. The gendarme shut the
+      carriage door with a bang, and at my request gave the order to the driver
+      to proceed. The latter once again cracked his whip, and once again the
+      cumbrous vehicle, after an awkward lurch, rattled on its way along the
+      cobblestones of the sleeping city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more I was alone with the priceless treasure by my side&mdash;alone
+      and happy&mdash;more happy, I might say, than I had been before. Had not
+      my adored one openly acknowledged her love for me and her desire to stand
+      with me at the hymeneal altar? To put it vulgarly&mdash;though vulgarity
+      in every form is repellent to me&mdash;she had burnt her boats. She had
+      allowed her name to be coupled with mine in the presence of the minions of
+      the law. What, after that, could her father do but give his consent to a
+      union which alone would save his only child&rsquo;s reputation from the
+      cruelty of waggish tongues?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No doubt, Sir, that I was happy. True, that when the uncouth gendarme
+      finally slammed to the door of our carriage and we restarted on our way,
+      my ears had been unpleasantly tickled by the sound of prolonged and ribald
+      laughter&mdash;laughter which sounded strangely and unpleasantly familiar.
+      But after a few seconds&rsquo; serious reflection I dismissed the matter
+      from my thoughts. If, as indeed I gravely suspected, it was Fernand Rochez
+      who had striven thus to put a spoke in the wheel of my good fortune, he
+      would certainly not have laughed when I drove triumphantly away with my
+      conquered bride by my side. And, of course, my ears <i>must</i> have
+      deceived me when they caught the sound of a girl&rsquo;s merry laugh
+      mingling with the more ribald one of the man.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      4.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      I have paused purposely, Sir, ere I embark upon the narration of the final
+      stage of this, my life&rsquo;s adventure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chaise was bowling along the banks of the river toward Suresnes.
+      Presently the driver struck to his right and plunged into the fastnesses
+      of the Bois de Boulogne. For a while, therefore, we were in utter
+      darkness. My lovely companion neither moved nor spoke. Somewhere in the
+      far distance a church clock struck eleven. One whole hour had gone by
+      since first I had embarked on this great undertaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was excited, feverish. The beautiful Leah&rsquo;s silence and
+      tranquillity grated upon my nerves. I could not understand how she could
+      remain there so placid when her whole life&rsquo;s happiness had so
+      suddenly, so unexpectedly, been assured. I became more and more fidgety as
+      time went on. Soon I felt that I could no longer hold myself in proper
+      control. Being of an impulsive disposition, this tranquil acceptance of so
+      great a joy became presently intolerable, and, unable to restrain my
+      ardour any longer, I seized that passive bundle of loveliness in my arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have no fear,&rdquo; I murmured once again, as I pressed her to my
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But my admonition was obviously unnecessary. The beautiful Leah showed not
+      the slightest sign of fear. She rested her head against my shoulder and
+      put one arm around my neck. I was in raptures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then the vehicle swung out of the Bois and once more rattled upon the
+      cobblestones. This time we were nearing Suresnes. A vague light, emanating
+      from the lanthorns at the bridge-head, was already faintly visible ahead
+      of us. Soon it grew brighter. The next moment we passed immediately
+      beneath the lanthorns. The interior of the carriage was flooded with light
+      . . . and, Sir, I gave a gasp of unadulterated dismay! The being whom I
+      held in my arms, whose face was even at that moment raised up to my own,
+      was not the lovely Leah! It was Sarah, Sir! Sarah Goldberg, the dour,
+      angular aunt, whose yellow teeth gleamed for one brief moment through her
+      thin lips as she threw me one of those glances of amorous welcome which
+      invariably sent a cold shiver down my spine. Sarah Goldberg! I scarce
+      could believe my eyes, and for a moment did indeed think that the elusive,
+      swiftly-vanished light of the bridge-head lanthorns had played my excited
+      senses a weird and cruel trick. But no! The very next second proved my
+      disillusionment. Sarah spoke to me!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke to me and laughed! Ah, she was happy, Sir! Happy in that she had
+      completely and irrevocably tricked me! That traitor Fernand Rochez was up
+      to the neck in the plot which had saddled me for ever with an ugly,
+      elderly wife of dour mien and no fortune, while he and the lovely Leah
+      were spinning the threads of perfect love at the other end of Paris and
+      laughing their fill at my discomfiture. Think, Sir, what I suffered during
+      those few brief minutes while the coach lurched through the narrow streets
+      of Suresnes, and I had perforce to listen to the protestations of undying
+      love from this unprepossessing female!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That love, she vowed, was her excuse, and everything, she asserted, was
+      fair in love and war. She knew that after Rochez had attained his heart&rsquo;s
+      desire and carried off the lady of his choice&mdash;which he had
+      successfully done half an hour before I myself made my way up the Passage
+      Corneille&mdash;I would pass out of her life for ever. This she could not
+      endure. Life at once would become intolerable. And, aided and abetted by
+      Rochez and Leah, she had planned and contrived my mystification and won me
+      by foul means, since she could not do so by fair; and it seemed as if her
+      volubility then was the forecast of what my life with her would be in the
+      future. Talk! Talk! Talk! She never ceased!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She told me the whole story of the abominable conspiracy against my
+      liberty. Her brother, M. Goldberg, she explained, had determined upon
+      remarriage. She, Sarah, felt that henceforth she would be in the way of
+      everybody; she would have no home. Leah married to Rochez; a new and young
+      Mme. Goldberg ruling in the old house of the Rue des Médecins! Ah, it was
+      unthinkable!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I, Sir&mdash;I, Hector Ratichon&mdash;had, it appears, by my polite
+      manners and prepossessing ways, induced this dour old maid to believe that
+      she was not altogether indifferent to me. Ah, how I cursed my own charms,
+      when I realised whither they had led me! It seems that it was that fickle
+      jade Leah who first imagined the whole execrable plot. Rochez was to
+      entrust me with the task of carrying off his beloved, and thus I would be
+      tricked in the darkness into abducting Mlle. Goldberg senior from her
+      home. Then some friends of Rochez arranged to play the comedy of false
+      gendarmes, and again I was tricked into acknowledging Sarah as my
+      affianced wife before independent witnesses. After that I could no longer
+      repudiate mine honourable intentions, for if I did, then I should be
+      arraigned before the law on a criminal charge of abduction. In this comedy
+      of false gendarmes Rochez himself and the heartless Leah had joined with
+      zest and laughed over my discomfiture, whilst the friends who played their
+      rôles to such perfection had a paltry hundred francs each as the price of
+      this infamous trick. Now my doom was sealed, and all that was left for me
+      to do was to think disconsolately over my future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did bitterly reproach Sarah for her treachery and tried to still her
+      protestations of love by pointing out to her that I had absolutely no
+      fortune, and could only offer her a life of squalor, not to say of what.
+      But this she knew, and vowed that penury by my side would make her happier
+      than luxury beside any other man. Ah, Sir, &lsquo;tis given to few men to
+      arouse such selfless passion in a woman&rsquo;s heart, and it hath oft
+      been my dream in the past one day thus to be adored for myself alone!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But for the moment I was too deeply angered to listen placidly to Sarah&rsquo;s
+      vows of undying affection. My nerves were irritated by her fulsome
+      adulation; indeed, I could not bear the sight of her nor yet the sound of
+      her voice. You may imagine how thankful I was when the chaise came at last
+      to a halt outside the humble little hostelry where I had engaged the room
+      which I had so fondly hoped would have been occupied by the lovely and
+      fickle Leah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I bundled Mlle. Goldberg senior into the house, and here again I had to
+      endure galling mortification in the shape of sidelong glances cast at me
+      and my future bride by the landlord of the hostelry and his ill-bred
+      daughter. When I engaged the room I had very foolishly told them that it
+      would be occupied by a lovely lady who had consented to be my wife, and
+      that she would remain here in happy seclusion until such time as all
+      arrangements for our wedding were complete. The humiliation of these
+      vulgar people&rsquo;s irony seemed like the last straw which overweighed
+      my forbearance. The room and pension I had already paid two days in
+      advance, so I had nothing more to say either to the ribald landlord or to
+      Mlle. Goldberg senior. I was bitterly angered against her, and refused her
+      the solace of a kindly look or of an encouraging pressure from my hand,
+      even though she waited for both with the pathetic patience of an old
+      spaniel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I re-entered the coach, which was to take me back to mine own humble
+      lodgings in Passy. Here at least I was alone&mdash;alone with my gloomy
+      thoughts. My heart was full of wrath against the woman who had so basely
+      tricked me, and I viewed with dismay amounting almost to despair the
+      prospect of spending the rest of my life in her company. That night I
+      slept but little, nor yet the following night, or the night after that.
+      Those days I spent in seclusion, thankful for my solitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twice each day did Mlle. Goldberg come to my lodgings. In the foolish past
+      I had somewhat injudiciously acquainted her of where I lived. Now she came
+      and asked to be allowed to see me, but invariably did I refuse thus to
+      gratify her. I felt that time alone would perhaps soften my feelings a
+      little towards her. In the meanwhile I must commend her discretion and
+      delicacy of procedure. She did not in any way attempt to molest me. When
+      she was told by Theodore&mdash;whom I employed during the day to guard me
+      against unwelcome visitors&mdash;that I refused to see her, she invariably
+      went away without demur, nor did she refer in any way, either with
+      adjurations or threats, to the impending wedding. Indeed, Sir, she was a
+      lady of vast discretion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the third day, however, I received a visit from M. Goldberg himself. I
+      could not refuse to see him. Indeed, he would not be denied, but roughly
+      pushed Theodore aside, who tried to hinder him. He had come armed with a
+      riding-whip, and nothing but mine own innate dignity saved me from
+      outrage. He came, Sir, with a marriage licence for his sister and me in
+      one pocket and with a denunciation to the police against me for abduction
+      in another. He gave me the choice. What could I do, Sir? I was like a
+      helpless babe in the hands of unscrupulous brigands!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The marriage licence was for the following day&mdash;at the mairie of the
+      eighth arrondissement first, and in the synagogue of the Rue des Halles
+      afterwards. I chose the marriage licence. What could I do, Sir? I was
+      helpless!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of my wedding day I have but a dim recollection. It was all hustle and
+      bustle; from the mairie to the synagogue, and thence to the house of M.
+      Goldberg in the Rue des Médecins. I must say that the old usurer received
+      me and my bride with marked amiability. He was, I gathered, genuinely
+      pleased that his sister had found happiness and a home by the side of an
+      honourable man, seeing that he himself was on the point of contracting a
+      fresh alliance with a Jewish lady of unsurpassed loveliness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of Rochez and Leah we saw nothing that day, and from one or two words
+      which M. Goldberg let fall I concluded that he was greatly angered against
+      his daughter because of her marriage with a fortune-hunting adventurer,
+      who, he weirdly hinted, had already found quick and exemplary punishment
+      for his crime. I was sincerely glad to hear this, even though I could not
+      get M. Goldberg to explain in what that exemplary punishment consisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The climax came at six o&rsquo;clock of that eventful afternoon, at the
+      hour when I, with the newly-enthroned Mme. Ratichon on my arm, was about
+      to take leave of M. Goldberg. I must admit that at that moment my heart
+      was overflowing with bitterness. I had been led like a lamb to the
+      slaughter; I had been made to look foolish and absurd in the midst of this
+      Israelite community which I despised; I was saddled for the rest of my
+      life with an unprepossessing elderly wife, who could do naught for me but
+      share the penury, the hard crusts, the onion pies with me and Theodore.
+      The only advantage I might ever derive from her was that she would darn my
+      stockings, sew the buttons on my vests, and goffer the frills of my
+      shirts!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was this not enough to turn any man&rsquo;s naturally sweet disposition to
+      gall? No doubt my mobile face betrayed something of the bitterness of my
+      thoughts, for M. Goldberg at one moment slapped me vigorously on the back
+      and bade me be of good cheer, as things were not so bad as I imagined. I
+      was on the point of asking him what he meant when I saw another gentleman
+      advancing toward me. His face, which was sallow and oily, bore a kind of
+      obsequious smile; his clothes were of rusty black, and his features were
+      markedly Jewish in character. He had some law papers under his arm, and he
+      was perpetually rubbing his thin, bony hands together as if he were for
+      ever washing them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Hector Ratichon,&rdquo; he said unctuously, &ldquo;it is
+      with much gratification that I bring you the joyful news.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joyful news!&mdash;to me! Ah, Sir, the words struck at first with cruel
+      irony upon mine ear. But not so a second later, for the Jewish gentleman
+      went on speaking, and what he said appeared to my reeling senses like
+      songs of angels from paradise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first I could not grasp his full meaning. A moment ago I had been in
+      the depths of despair, and now&mdash;now&mdash;a whole vista of beatitude
+      opened out before me! What the worthy Israelite said was that, by the
+      terms of Grandpapa Goldberg&rsquo;s will, if Leah married without her
+      father&rsquo;s consent, one-half of the fortune destined for her would
+      revert to her aunt, Sarah Goldberg, now Madame Hector Ratichon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Can you wonder that I could scarce believe my ears? One-half that fortune
+      meant that a hundred thousand francs would now become mine! M. Goldberg
+      had already made it very clear to his daughter and to Rochez that he would
+      never give his consent to their marriage, and, as this was now
+      consummated, they had already forfeited one-half of the grandfather&rsquo;s
+      fortune in favour of my Sarah. That was the exemplary punishment which
+      they were to suffer for their folly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But their folly&mdash;aye! and their treachery&mdash;had become my joy. In
+      this moment of heavenly rapture I was speechless, but I turned to Sarah
+      with loving arms outstretched, and the next instant she nestled against my
+      heart like a joyful if elderly bird.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is said of a people, Sir, is also true of the individual. Happy he
+      who hath no history. Since that never-to-be-forgotten hour my life has run
+      its simple, uneventful course here in this quiet corner of our beautiful
+      France, with my pony and my dog and my chickens, and Mme. Ratichon to
+      minister to my creature comforts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I bought this little property, Sir, soon after my marriage, and my office
+      in the Rue Daunou knows me no more. You like the house, Sir? Ah, yes! And
+      the garden? . . . After déjeuner you must see my prize chickens. Theodore
+      will show them to you. You did not know Theodore was here? Well, yes! He
+      lives with us. Madame Ratichon finds him useful about the house, and, not
+      being used to luxuries, he is on the whole pleasantly contented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, here comes Madame Ratichon to tell us that the déjeuner is served!
+      This way, Sir, under the porch. . . . After you!
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      THE END
+    </h3>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <pre>
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Castles in the Air, by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Castles in the Air, by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Castles in the Air
+
+Author: Baroness Emmuska Orczy
+
+Release Date: May 28, 2004 [EBook #12461]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASTLES IN THE AIR ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jim Tinsley <jtinsley@pobox.com>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+In presenting this engaging rogue to my readers, I feel that I owe
+them, if not an apology, at least an explanation for this attempt at
+enlisting sympathy in favour of a man who has little to recommend him
+save his own unconscious humour. In very truth my good friend Ratichon
+is an unblushing liar, thief, a forger--anything you will; his vanity
+is past belief, his scruples are non-existent. How he escaped a
+convict settlement it is difficult to imagine, and hard to realize
+that he died--presumably some years after the event recorded in the
+last chapter of his autobiography--a respected member of the
+community, honoured by that same society which should have raised a
+punitive hand against him. Yet this I believe to be the case. At any
+rate, in spite of close research in the police records of the period,
+I can find no mention of Hector Ratichon. "Heureux le peuple qui n'a
+pas d'histoire" applies, therefore, to him, and we must take it that
+Fate and his own sorely troubled country dealt lightly with him.
+
+Which brings me back to my attempt at an explanation. If Fate dealt
+kindly, why not we? Since time immemorial there have been worse
+scoundrels unhung than Hector Ratichon, and he has the saving grace--
+which few possess--of unruffled geniality. Buffeted by Fate, sometimes
+starving, always thirsty, he never complains; and there is all through
+his autobiography what we might call an "Ah, well!" attitude about his
+outlook on life. Because of this, and because his very fatuity makes
+us smile, I feel that he deserves forgiveness and even a certain
+amount of recognition.
+
+The fragmentary notes, which I have only very slightly modified, came
+into my hands by a happy chance one dull post-war November morning in
+Paris, when rain, sleet and the north wind drove me for shelter under
+the arcades of the Odeon, and a kindly vendor of miscellaneous printed
+matter and mouldy MSS. allowed me to rummage amongst a load of old
+papers which he was about to consign to the rubbish heap. I imagine
+that the notes were set down by the actual person to whom the genial
+Hector Ratichon recounted the most conspicuous events of his chequered
+career, and as I turned over the torn and musty pages, which hung
+together by scraps of mouldy thread, I could not help feeling the
+humour--aye! and the pathos--of that drabby side of old Paris which
+was being revealed to me through the medium of this rogue's
+adventures. And even as, holding the fragments in my hand, I walked
+home that morning through the rain something of that same quaint
+personality seemed once more to haunt the dank and dreary streets of
+the once dazzling Ville Lumiere. I seemed to see the shabby
+bottle-green coat, the nankeen pantaloons, the down-at-heel shoes of
+this "confidant of Kings"; I could hear his unctuous, self-satisfied
+laugh, and sensed his furtive footstep whene'er a gendarme came into
+view. I saw his ruddy, shiny face beaming at me through the sleet and
+the rain as, like a veritable squire of dames, he minced his steps
+upon the boulevard, or, like a reckless smuggler, affronted the grave
+dangers of mountain fastnesses upon the Juras; and I was quite glad to
+think that a life so full of unconscious humour had not been cut short
+upon the gallows. And I thought kindly of him, for he had made me
+smile.
+
+There is nothing fine about him, nothing romantic; nothing in his
+actions to cause a single thrill to the nerves of the most
+unsophisticated reader. Therefore, I apologize in that I have not held
+him up to a just obloquy because of his crimes, and I ask indulgence
+for his turpitudes because of the laughter which they provoke.
+
+EMMUSKA ORCZY. _Paris, 1921_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CASTLES IN THE AIR
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A ROLAND FOR HIS OLIVER
+
+
+
+1.
+
+My name is Ratichon--Hector Ratichon, at your service, and I make so
+bold as to say that not even my worst enemy would think of minimizing
+the value of my services to the State. For twenty years now have I
+placed my powers at the disposal of my country: I have served the
+Republic, and was confidential agent to Citizen Robespierre; I have
+served the Empire, and was secret factotum to our great Napoleon; I
+have served King Louis--with a brief interval of one hundred days--
+for the past two years, and I can only repeat that no one, in the
+whole of France, has been so useful or so zealous in tracking
+criminals, nosing out conspiracies, or denouncing traitors as I have
+been.
+
+And yet you see me a poor man to this day: there has been a
+persistently malignant Fate which has worked against me all these
+years, and would--but for a happy circumstance of which I hope anon to
+tell you--have left me just as I was, in the matter of fortune, when I
+first came to Paris and set up in business as a volunteer police agent
+at No. 96 Rue Daunou.
+
+My apartment in those days consisted of an antechamber, an outer
+office where, if need be, a dozen clients might sit, waiting their
+turn to place their troubles, difficulties, anxieties before the
+acutest brain in France, and an inner room wherein that same acute
+brain--mine, my dear Sir--was wont to ponder and scheme. That
+apartment was not luxuriously furnished--furniture being very dear in
+those days--but there were a couple of chairs and a table in the outer
+office, and a cupboard wherein I kept the frugal repast which served
+me during the course of a long and laborious day. In the inner office
+there were more chairs and another table, littered with papers:
+letters and packets all tied up with pink tape (which cost three sous
+the metre), and bundles of letters from hundreds of clients, from the
+highest and the lowest in the land, you understand, people who wrote
+to me and confided in me to-day as kings and emperors had done in the
+past. In the antechamber there was a chair-bedstead for Theodore to
+sleep on when I required him to remain in town, and a chair on which
+he could sit.
+
+And, of course, there was Theodore!
+
+Ah! my dear Sir, of him I can hardly speak without feeling choked with
+the magnitude of my emotion. A noble indignation makes me dumb.
+Theodore, sir, has ever been the cruel thorn that times out of number
+hath wounded my over-sensitive heart. Think of it! I had picked him
+out of the gutter! No! no! I do not mean this figuratively! I mean
+that, actually and in the flesh, I took him up by the collar of his
+tattered coat and dragged him out of the gutter in the Rue Blanche,
+where he was grubbing for trifles out of the slime and mud. He was
+frozen, Sir, and starved--yes, starved! In the intervals of picking
+filth up out of the mud he held out a hand blue with cold to the
+passers-by and occasionally picked up a sou. When I found him in that
+pitiable condition he had exactly twenty centimes between him and
+absolute starvation.
+
+And I, Sir Hector Ratichon, the confidant of two kings, three
+autocrats and an emperor, took that man to my bosom--fed him, clothed
+him, housed him, gave him the post of secretary in my intricate,
+delicate, immensely important business--and I did this, Sir, at a
+salary which, in comparison with his twenty centimes, must have seemed
+a princely one to him.
+
+His duties were light. He was under no obligation to serve me or to be
+at his post before seven o'clock in the morning, and all that he had
+to do then was to sweep out the three rooms, fetch water from the well
+in the courtyard below, light the fire in the iron stove which stood
+in my inner office, shell the haricots for his own mess of pottage,
+and put them to boil. During the day his duties were lighter still. He
+had to run errands for me, open the door to prospective clients, show
+them into the outer office, explain to them that his master was
+engaged on affairs relating to the kingdom of France, and generally
+prove himself efficient, useful and loyal--all of which qualities he
+assured me, my dear Sir, he possessed to the fullest degree. And I
+believed him, Sir; I nurtured the scorpion in my over-sensitive bosom!
+I promised him ten per cent. on all the profits of my business, and
+all the remnants from my own humble repasts--bread, the skins of
+luscious sausages, the bones from savoury cutlets, the gravy from the
+tasty carrots and onions. You would have thought that his gratitude
+would become boundless, that he would almost worship the benefactor
+who had poured at his feet the full cornucopia of comfort and luxury.
+Not so! That man, Sir, was a snake in the grass--a serpent--a
+crocodile! Even now that I have entirely severed my connexion with
+that ingrate, I seem to feel the wounds, like dagger-thrusts, which he
+dealt me with so callous a hand. But I have done with him--done, I
+tell you! How could I do otherwise than to send him back to the gutter
+from whence I should never have dragged him? My goodness, he repaid
+with an ingratitude so black that you, Sir, when you hear the full
+story of his treachery, will exclaim aghast.
+
+Ah, you shall judge! His perfidy commenced less than a week after I
+had given him my third best pantaloons and three sous to get his hair
+cut, thus making a man of him. And yet, you would scarcely believe it,
+in the matter of the secret documents he behaved toward me like a
+veritable Judas!
+
+Listen, my dear Sir.
+
+I told you, I believe, that I had my office in the Rue Daunou. You
+understand that I had to receive my clients--many of whom were of
+exalted rank---in a fashionable quarter of Paris. But I actually lodged
+in Passy--being fond of country pursuits and addicted to fresh air--in a
+humble hostelry under the sign of the "Grey Cat"; and here, too,
+Theodore had a bed. He would walk to the office a couple of hours before
+I myself started on the way, and I was wont to arrive as soon after ten
+o'clock of a morning as I could do conveniently.
+
+On this memorable occasion of which I am about to tell you--it was
+during the autumn of 1815--I had come to the office unusually early,
+and had just hung my hat and coat in the outer room, and taken my seat
+at my desk in the inner office, there to collect my thoughts in
+preparation for the grave events which the day might bring forth,
+when, suddenly, an ill-dressed, dour-looking individual entered the
+room without so much as saying, "By your leave," and after having
+pushed Theodore--who stood by like a lout--most unceremoniously to one
+side. Before I had time to recover from my surprise at this unseemly
+intrusion, the uncouth individual thrust Theodore roughly out of the
+room, slammed the door in his face, and having satisfied himself that
+he was alone with me and that the door was too solid to allow of
+successful eavesdropping, he dragged the best chair forward--the one,
+sir, which I reserve for lady visitors.
+
+He threw his leg across it, and, sitting astride, he leaned his elbows
+over the back and glowered at me as if he meant to frighten me.
+
+"My name is Charles Saurez," he said abruptly, "and I want your
+assistance in a matter which requires discretion, ingenuity and
+alertness. Can I have it?"
+
+I was about to make a dignified reply when he literally threw the next
+words at me: "Name your price, and I will pay it!" he said.
+
+What could I do, save to raise my shoulders in token that the matter
+of money was one of supreme indifference to me, and my eyebrows in a
+manner of doubt that M. Charles Saurez had the means wherewith to
+repay my valuable services? By way of a rejoinder he took out from the
+inner pocket of his coat a greasy letter-case, and with his
+exceedingly grimy fingers extracted therefrom some twenty banknotes,
+which a hasty glance on my part revealed as representing a couple of
+hundred francs.
+
+"I will give you this as a retaining fee," he said, "if you will
+undertake the work I want you to do; and I will double the amount
+when you have carried the work out successfully."
+
+Four hundred francs! It was not lavish, it was perhaps not altogether
+the price I would have named, but it was very good, these hard times.
+You understand? We were all very poor in France in that year 1815 of
+which I speak.
+
+I am always quite straightforward when I am dealing with a client who
+means business. I pushed aside the litter of papers in front of me,
+leaned my elbows upon my desk, rested my chin in my hands, and said
+briefly:
+
+"M. Charles Saurez, I listen!"
+
+He drew his chair a little closer and dropped his voice almost to a
+whisper.
+
+"You know the Chancellerie of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?" he
+asked.
+
+"Perfectly," I replied.
+
+"You know M. de Marsan's private office? He is chief secretary to M.
+de Talleyrand."
+
+"No," I said, "but I can find out."
+
+"It is on the first floor, immediately facing the service staircase,
+and at the end of the long passage which leads to the main staircase."
+
+"Easy to find, then," I remarked.
+
+"Quite. At this hour and until twelve o'clock, M. de Marsan will be
+occupied in copying a document which I desire to possess. At eleven
+o'clock precisely there will be a noisy disturbance in the corridor
+which leads to the main staircase. M. de Marsan, in all probability,
+will come out of his room to see what the disturbance is about. Will
+you undertake to be ready at that precise moment to make a dash from
+the service staircase into the room to seize the document, which no
+doubt will be lying on the top of the desk, and bring it to an address
+which I am about to give you?"
+
+"It is risky," I mused.
+
+"Very," he retorted drily, "or I'd do it myself, and not pay you four
+hundred francs for your trouble."
+
+"Trouble!" I exclaimed, with withering sarcasm.
+
+"Trouble, you call it? If I am caught, it means penal
+servitude--New Caledonia, perhaps--"
+
+"Exactly," he said, with the same irritating calmness; "and if you
+succeed it means four hundred francs. Take it or leave it, as you
+please, but be quick about it. I have no time to waste; it is past
+nine o'clock already, and if you won't do the work, someone else
+will."
+
+For a few seconds longer I hesitated. Schemes, both varied and
+wild, rushed through my active brain: refuse to take this risk, and
+denounce the plot to the police; refuse it, and run to warn M. de
+Marsan; refuse it, and-- I had little time for reflection. My uncouth
+client was standing, as it were, with a pistol to my throat--with a
+pistol and four hundred francs! The police might perhaps give me half
+a louis for my pains, or they might possibly remember an unpleasant
+little incident in connexion with the forgery of some Treasury bonds
+which they have never succeeded in bringing home to me--one never
+knows! M. de Marsan might throw me a franc, and think himself generous
+at that!
+
+All things considered, then, when M. Charles Saurez suddenly said,
+"Well?" with marked impatience, I replied, "Agreed," and within five
+minutes I had two hundred francs in my pocket, with the prospect of
+two hundred more during the next four and twenty hours. I was to have
+a free hand in conducting my own share of the business, and M. Charles
+Saurez was to call for the document at my lodgings at Passy on the
+following morning at nine o'clock.
+
+
+
+2.
+
+I flatter myself that I conducted the business with remarkable skill.
+At precisely ten minutes to eleven I rang at the Chancellerie of the
+Ministry for Foreign Affairs. I was dressed as a respectable
+commissionnaire, and I carried a letter and a small parcel addressed
+to M. de Marsan. "First floor," said the concierge curtly, as soon as
+he had glanced at the superscription on the letter. "Door faces top of
+the service stairs."
+
+I mounted and took my stand some ten steps below the landing, keeping
+the door of M. de Marsan's room well in sight. Just as the bells of
+Notre Dame boomed the hour I heard what sounded like a furious
+altercation somewhere in the corridor just above me. There was much
+shouting, then one or two cries of "Murder!" followed by others of
+"What is it?" and "What in the name of ------ is all this infernal row
+about?" Doors were opened and banged, there was a general running and
+rushing along that corridor, and the next minute the door in front of
+me was opened also, and a young man came out, pen in hand, and
+shouting just like everybody else:
+
+"What the ------ is all this infernal row about?"
+
+"Murder, help!" came from the distant end of the corridor, and M. de
+Marsan--undoubtedly it was he--did what any other young man under the
+like circumstances would have done: he ran to see what was happening
+and to lend a hand in it, if need be. I saw his slim figure
+disappearing down the corridor at the very moment that I slipped into
+his room. One glance upon the desk sufficed: there lay the large
+official-looking document, with the royal signature affixed thereto,
+and close beside it the copy which M. de Marsan had only half
+finished--the ink on it was still wet. Hesitation, Sir, would have
+been fatal. I did not hesitate; not one instant. Three seconds had
+scarcely elapsed before I picked up the document, together with M. de
+Marsan's half-finished copy of the same, and a few loose sheets of
+Chancellerie paper which I thought might be useful. Then I slipped the
+lot inside my blouse. The bogus letter and parcel I left behind me, and
+within two minutes of my entry into the room I was descending the
+service staircase quite unconcernedly, and had gone past the concierge's
+lodge without being challenged. How thankful I was to breathe once more
+the pure air of heaven. I had spent an exceedingly agitated five
+minutes, and even now my anxiety was not altogether at rest. I dared not
+walk too fast lest I attracted attention, and yet I wanted to put the
+river, the Pont Neuf, and a half dozen streets between me and the
+Chancellerie of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. No one who has not gone
+through such an exciting adventure as I have just recorded can conceive
+what were my feelings of relief and of satisfaction when I at last found
+myself quietly mounting the stairs which led to my office on the top
+floor of No. 96 Rue Daunou.
+
+
+
+3.
+
+Now, I had not said anything to Theodore about this affair. It was
+certainly arranged between us when he entered my service as
+confidential clerk and doorkeeper that in lieu of wages, which I could
+not afford to pay him, he would share my meals with me and have a bed
+at my expense in the same house at Passy where I lodged; moreover, I
+would always give him a fair percentage on the profits which I derived
+from my business. The arrangement suited him very well. I told you
+that I picked him out of the gutter, and I heard subsequently that he
+had gone through many an unpleasant skirmish with the police in his
+day, and if I did not employ him no one else would.
+
+After all, he did earn a more or less honest living by serving me. But
+in this instance, since I had not even asked for his assistance, I
+felt that, considering the risks of New Caledonia and a convict ship
+which I had taken, a paltry four hundred francs could not by any
+stretch of the imagination rank as a "profit" in a business--and
+Theodore was not really entitled to a percentage, was he?
+
+So when I returned I crossed the ante-chamber and walked past him with
+my accustomed dignity; nor did he offer any comment on my get-up. I
+often affected a disguise in those days, even when I was not engaged
+in business, and the dress and get-up of a respectable commissionnaire
+was a favourite one with me. As soon as I had changed I sent him out
+to make purchases for our luncheon--five sous' worth of stale bread,
+and ten sous' worth of liver sausage, of which he was inordinately
+fond. He would take the opportunity on the way of getting moderately
+drunk on as many glasses of absinthe as he could afford. I saw him go
+out of the outer door, and then I set to work to examine the precious
+document.
+
+Well, one glance was sufficient for me to realize its incalculable
+value! Nothing more or less than a Treaty of Alliance between King
+Louis XVIII of France and the King of Prussia in connexion with
+certain schemes of naval construction. I did not understand the whole
+diplomatic verbiage, but it was pretty clear to my unsophisticated
+mind that this treaty had been entered into in secret by the two
+monarchs, and that it was intended to prejudice the interests both of
+Denmark and of Russia in the Baltic Sea.
+
+I also realized that both the Governments of Denmark and Russia would
+no doubt pay a very considerable sum for the merest glance at this
+document, and that my client of this morning was certainly a secret
+service agent--otherwise a spy--of one of those two countries, who
+did not choose to take the very severe risks which I had taken this
+morning, but who would, on the other hand, reap the full reward of the
+daring coup, whilst I was to be content with four hundred francs!
+
+Now, I am a man of deliberation as well as of action, and at this
+juncture--feeling that Theodore was still safely out of the way--I
+thought the whole matter over quietly, and then took what precautions
+I thought fit for the furthering of my own interests.
+
+To begin with, I set to work to make a copy of the treaty on my own
+account. I have brought the study of calligraphy to a magnificent
+degree of perfection, and the writing on the document was easy enough
+to imitate, as was also the signature of our gracious King Louis and
+of M. de Talleyrand, who had countersigned it.
+
+If you remember, I had picked up two or three loose sheets of paper
+off M. de Marsan's desk; these bore the arms of the Chancellerie of
+Foreign Affairs stamped upon them, and were in every way identical
+with that on which the original document had been drafted. When I had
+finished my work I flattered myself that not the greatest calligraphic
+expert could have detected the slightest difference between the
+original and the copy which I had made.
+
+The work took me a long time. When at last I folded up the papers and
+slipped them once more inside my blouse it was close upon two. I
+wondered why Theodore had not returned with our luncheon, but on going
+to the little anteroom which divides my office from the outer door,
+great was my astonishment to see him lolling there on the rickety
+chair which he affectioned, and half asleep. I had some difficulty in
+rousing him. Apparently he had got rather drunk while he was out, and
+had then returned and slept some of his booze off, without thinking
+that I might be hungry and needing my luncheon.
+
+"Why didn't you let me know you had come back?" I asked curtly, for
+indeed I was very cross with him.
+
+"I thought you were busy," he replied, with what I thought looked like
+a leer.
+
+I have never really cared for Theodore, you understand.
+
+However, I partook of our modest luncheon with him in perfect amity
+and brotherly love, but my mind was busy all the time. I began to
+wonder if Theodore suspected something; if so, I knew that I could not
+trust him. He would try and ferret things out, and then demand a share
+in my hard-earned emoluments to which he was really not entitled. I
+did not feel safe with that bulky packet of papers on me, and I felt
+that Theodore's bleary eyes were perpetually fixed upon the bulge in
+the left-hand side of my coat. At one moment he looked so strange that
+I thought he meant to knock me down.
+
+So my mind was quickly made up.
+
+After luncheon I would go down to my lodgings at Passy, and I knew of
+a snug little hiding-place in my room there where the precious
+documents would be quite safe until such time as I was to hand
+them--or one of them--to M. Charles Saurez.
+
+This plan I put into execution, and with remarkable ingenuity too.
+
+While Theodore was busy clearing up the debris of our luncheon, I not
+only gave him the slip, but as I went out I took the precaution of
+locking the outer door after me, and taking the key away in my pocket.
+I thus made sure that Theodore could not follow me. I then walked to
+Passy--a matter of two kilometres--and by four o'clock I had the
+satisfaction of stowing the papers safely away under one of the tiles
+in the flooring of my room, and then pulling the strip of carpet in
+front of my bed snugly over the hiding-place.
+
+Theodore's attic, where he slept, was at the top of the house, whilst
+my room was on the ground floor, and so I felt that I could now go
+back quite comfortably to my office in the hope that more remunerative
+work and more lavish clients would come my way before nightfall.
+
+
+
+4.
+
+It was a little after five o'clock when I once more turned the key in
+the outer door of my rooms in the Rue Daunou.
+
+Theodore did not seem in the least to resent having been locked in for
+two hours. I think he must have been asleep most of the time.
+Certainly I heard a good deal of shuffling when first I reached the
+landing outside the door; but when I actually walked into the
+apartment with an air of quiet unconcern Theodore was sprawling on the
+chair-bedstead, with eyes closed, a nose the colour of beetroot, and
+emitting sounds through his thin, cracked lips which I could not, Sir,
+describe graphically in your presence.
+
+I took no notice of him, however, even though, as I walked past him, I
+saw that he opened one bleary eye and watched my every movement. I
+went straight into my private room and shut the door after me. And
+here, I assure you, my dear Sir, I literally fell into my favourite
+chair, overcome with emotion and excitement. Think what I had gone
+through! The events of the last few hours would have turned any brain
+less keen, less daring than that of Hector Ratichon. And here was I,
+alone at last, face to face with the future. What a future, my dear
+Sir! Fate was smiling on me at last. At last I was destined to reap a
+rich reward for all the skill, the energy, the devotion, which up to
+this hour I had placed at the service of my country and my King--or my
+Emperor, as the case might be--without thought of my own advantage.
+Here was I now in possession of a document--two documents--each one
+of which was worth at least a thousand francs to persons whom I could
+easily approach. One thousand francs! Was I dreaming? Five thousand
+would certainly be paid by the Government whose agent M. Charles
+Saurez admittedly was for one glance at that secret treaty which would
+be so prejudicial to their political interests; whilst M. de Marsan
+himself would gladly pay another five thousand for the satisfaction of
+placing the precious document intact before his powerful and irascible
+uncle.
+
+Ten thousand francs! How few were possessed of such a sum in these
+days! How much could be done with it! I would not give up business
+altogether, of course, but with my new capital I would extend it and,
+there was a certain little house, close to Chantilly, a house with a
+few acres of kitchen garden and some fruit trees, the possession of
+which would render me happier than any king. . . . I would marry! Oh,
+yes! I would certainly marry--found a family. I was still young, my
+dear Sir, and passably good looking. In fact there was a certain young
+widow, comely and amiable, who lived not far from Passy, who had on
+more than one occasion given me to understand that I was more than
+passably good looking. I had always been susceptible where the fair sex
+was concerned, and now . . . oh, now! I could pick and choose! The comely
+widow had a small fortune of her own, and there were others! . . .
+
+Thus I dreamed on for the better part of an hour, until, soon after
+six o'clock, there was a knock at the outer door and I heard
+Theodore's shuffling footsteps crossing the small anteroom. There was
+some muttered conversation, and presently my door was opened and
+Theodore's ugly face was thrust into the room.
+
+"A lady to see you," he said curtly.
+
+Then, he dropped his voice, smacked his lips, and winked with one eye.
+"Very pretty," he whispered, "but has a young man with her whom she
+calls Arthur. Shall I send them in?"
+
+I then and there made up my mind that I would get rid of Theodore now
+that I could afford to get a proper servant. My business would in
+future be greatly extended; it would become very important, and I was
+beginning to detest Theodore. But I said "Show the lady in!" with
+becoming dignity, and a few moments later a beautiful woman entered my
+room.
+
+I was vaguely conscious that a creature of my own sex walked in behind
+her, but of him I took no notice. I rose to greet the lady and invited
+her to sit down, but I had the annoyance of seeing the personage whom
+deliberately she called "Arthur" coming familiarly forward and leaning
+over the back of her chair.
+
+I hated him. He was short and stout and florid, with an
+impertinent-looking moustache, and hair that was very smooth and oily
+save for two tight curls, which looked like the horns of a young goat,
+on each side of the centre parting. I hated him cordially, and had to
+control my feelings not to show him the contempt which I felt for his
+fatuousness and his air of self-complacency. Fortunately the beautiful
+being was the first to address me, and thus I was able to ignore the
+very presence of the detestable man.
+
+"You are M. Ratichon, I believe," she said in a voice that was dulcet
+and adorably tremulous, like the voice of some sweet, shy young thing
+in the presence of genius and power.
+
+"Hector Ratichon," I replied calmly. "Entirely at your service,
+Mademoiselle." Then I added, with gentle, encouraging kindliness,
+"Mademoiselle...?"
+
+"My name is Geoffroy," she replied, "Madeleine Geoffroy."
+
+She raised her eyes--such eyes, my dear Sir!--of a tender, luscious
+grey, fringed with lashes and dewy with tears. I met her glance.
+Something in my own eyes must have spoken with mute eloquence of my
+distress, for she went on quickly and with a sweet smile. "And this,"
+she said, pointing to her companion, "is my brother, Arthur Geoffroy."
+
+An exclamation of joyful surprise broke from my lips, and I beamed and
+smiled on M. Arthur, begged him to be seated, which he refused, and
+finally I myself sat down behind my desk. I now looked with unmixed
+benevolence on both my clients, and then perceived that the lady's
+exquisite face bore unmistakable signs of recent sorrow.
+
+"And now, Mademoiselle," I said, as soon as I had taken up a position
+indicative of attention and of encouragement, "will you deign to tell
+me how I can have the honour to serve you?"
+
+"Monsieur," she began in a voice that trembled with emotion, "I have
+come to you in the midst of the greatest distress that any human being
+has ever been called upon to bear. It was by the merest accident that
+I heard of you. I have been to the police; they cannot--will not--act
+without I furnish them with certain information which it is not in my
+power to give them. Then when I was half distraught with despair, a
+kindly agent there spoke to me of you. He said that you were attached
+to the police as a voluntary agent, and that they sometimes put work
+in your way which did not happen to be within their own scope. He also
+said that sometimes you were successful."
+
+"Nearly always, Mademoiselle," I broke in firmly and with much
+dignity. "Once more I beg of you to tell me in what way I may have the
+honour to serve you."
+
+"It is not for herself, Monsieur," here interposed M. Arthur, whilst a
+blush suffused Mlle. Geoffroy's lovely face, "that my sister desires
+to consult you, but for her fiance M. de Marsan, who is very ill
+indeed, hovering, in fact, between life and death. He could not come
+in person. The matter is one that demands the most profound secrecy."
+
+"You may rely on my discretion, Monsieur," I murmured, without
+showing, I flatter myself, the slightest trace of that astonishment
+which, at mention of M. de Marsan's name, had nearly rendered me
+speechless.
+
+"M. de Marsan came to see me in utmost distress, Monsieur," resumed
+the lovely creature. "He had no one in whom he could--or rather
+dared--confide. He is in the Chancellerie for Foreign Affairs. His
+uncle M. de Talleyrand thinks a great deal of him and often entrusts
+him with very delicate work. This morning he gave M. de Marsan a
+valuable paper to copy--a paper, Monsieur, the importance of which it
+were impossible to overestimate. The very safety of this country, the
+honour of our King, are involved in it. I cannot tell you its exact
+contents, and it is because I would not tell more about it to the
+police that they would not help me in any way, and referred me to you.
+How could they, said the chief Commissary to me, run after a document
+the contents of which they did not even know? But you will be
+satisfied with what I have told you, will you not, my dear M.
+Ratichon?" she continued, with a pathetic quiver in her voice and a
+look of appeal in her eyes which St. Anthony himself could not have
+resisted, "and help me to regain possession of that paper, the final
+loss of which would cost M. de Marsan his life."
+
+To say that my feeling of elation of a while ago had turned to one of
+supreme beatitude would be to put it very mildly indeed. To think that
+here was this lovely being in tears before me, and that it lay in my
+power to dry those tears with a word and to bring a smile round those
+perfect lips, literally made my mouth water in anticipation--for I am
+sure that you will have guessed, just as I did in a moment, that the
+valuable document of which this adorable being was speaking, was
+snugly hidden away under the flooring of my room in Passy. I hated
+that unknown de Marsan. I hated this Arthur who leaned so familiarly
+over her chair, but I had the power to render her a service beside
+which their lesser claims on her regard would pale.
+
+However, I am not the man to act on impulse, even at a moment like
+this. I wanted to think the whole matter over first, and . . .
+well . . . I had made up my mind to demand five thousand francs when
+I handed the document over to my first client to-morrow morning. At
+any rate, for the moment I acted--if I may say so--with great
+circumspection and dignity.
+
+"I must presume, Mademoiselle," I said in my most business-like
+manner, "that the document you speak of has been stolen."
+
+"Stolen, Monsieur," she assented whilst the tears once more gathered
+in her eyes, "and M. de Marsan now lies at death's door with a
+terrible attack of brain fever, brought on by shock when he discovered
+the loss."
+
+"How and when was it stolen?" I asked.
+
+"Some time during the morning," she replied. "M. de Talleyrand gave
+the document to M. de Marsan at nine o'clock, telling him that he
+wanted the copy by midday. M. de Marsan set to work at once, laboured
+uninterruptedly until about eleven o'clock, when a loud altercation,
+followed by cries of 'Murder!' and of 'Help!' and proceeding from the
+corridor outside his door, caused him to run out of the room in order
+to see what was happening. The altercation turned out to be between
+two men who had pushed their way into the building by the main
+staircase, and who became very abusive to the gendarme who ordered
+them out. The men were not hurt; nevertheless they screamed as if they
+were being murdered. They took to their heels quickly enough, and I
+don't know what has become of them, but . . ."
+
+"But," I concluded blandly, "whilst M. de Marsan was out of the room
+the precious document was stolen."
+
+"It was, Monsieur," exclaimed Mlle. Geoffroy piteously. "You will
+find it for us . . . will you not?"
+
+Then she added more calmly: "My brother and I are offering ten
+thousand francs reward for the recovery of the document."
+
+I did not fall off my chair, but I closed my eyes. The vision which
+the lovely lady's words had conjured up dazzled me.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I said with solemn dignity, "I pledge you my word of
+honour that I will find the document for you and lay it at your feet
+or die in your service. Give me twenty hours, during which I will move
+heaven and earth to discover the thief. I will go at once to the
+Chancellerie and collect what evidence I can. I have worked under M.
+de Robespierre, Mademoiselle, under the great Napoleon, and under the
+illustrious Fouche! I have never been known to fail, once I have set
+my mind upon a task."
+
+"In that case you will earn your ten thousand francs, my friend," said
+the odious Arthur drily, "and my sister and M. de Marsan will still be
+your debtors. Are there any questions you would like to ask before we
+go?"
+
+"None," I said loftily, choosing to ignore his sneering manner. "If
+Mademoiselle deigns to present herself here to-morrow at two o'clock I
+will have news to communicate to her."
+
+You will admit that I carried off the situation in a becoming manner.
+Both Mademoiselle and Arthur Geoffroy gave me a few more details in
+connexion with the affair. To these details I listened with well
+simulated interest. Of course, they did not know that there were no
+details in connexion with this affair that I did not know already. My
+heart was actually dancing within my bosom. The future was so
+entrancing that the present appeared like a dream; the lovely being
+before me seemed like an angel, an emissary from above come to tell me
+of the happiness which was in store for me. The house near
+Chantilly--the little widow--the kitchen garden--the magic words went
+on hammering in my brain. I longed now to be rid of my visitors, to be
+alone once more, so as to think out the epilogue of this glorious
+adventure. Ten thousand francs was the reward offered me by this
+adorable creature! Well, then, why should not M. Charles Saurez, on
+his side, pay me another ten thousand for the same document, which was
+absolutely undistinguishable from the first?
+
+Ten thousand, instead of two hundred which he had the audacity to
+offer me!
+
+Seven o'clock had struck before I finally bowed my clients out of the
+room. Theodore had gone. The lazy lout would never stay as much as
+five minutes after his appointed time, so I had to show the adorable
+creature and her fat brother out of the premises myself. But I did not
+mind that. I flatter myself that I can always carry off an awkward
+situation in a dignified manner. A brief allusion to the inefficiency
+of present-day servants, a jocose comment on my own simplicity of
+habits, and the deed was done. M. Arthur Geoffroy and Mademoiselle
+Madeleine his sister were half-way down the stairs. A quarter of an
+hour later I was once more out in the streets of Paris. It was a
+beautiful, balmy night. I had two hundred francs in my pocket and
+there was a magnificent prospect of twenty thousand francs before me!
+I could afford some slight extravagance. I had dinner at one of the
+fashionable restaurants on the quay, and I remained some time out on
+the terrace sipping my coffee and liqueur, dreaming dreams such as I
+had never dreamed before. At ten o'clock I was once more on my way to
+Passy.
+
+
+
+5.
+
+When I turned the corner of the street and came is sight of the
+squalid house where I lodged, I felt like a being from another world.
+Twenty thousand francs--a fortune!--was waiting for me inside those
+dingy walls. Yes, twenty thousand, for by now I had fully made up my
+mind. I had two documents concealed beneath the floor of my
+bedroom--one so like the other that none could tell them apart. One of
+these I would restore to the lovely being who had offered me ten
+thousand francs for it, and the other I would sell to my first and
+uncouth client for another ten thousand francs!
+
+Four hundred! Bah! Ten thousand shall you pay for the treaty, my
+friend of the Danish or Russian Secret Service! Ten thousand!--it is
+worth that to you!
+
+In that happy frame of mind I reached the front door of my dingy
+abode. Imagine my surprise on being confronted with two agents of
+police, each with fixed bayonet, who refused to let me pass.
+
+"But I lodge here," I said.
+
+"Your name?" queried one of the men. "Hector Ratichon," I
+replied. Whereupon they gave me leave to enter.
+
+It was very mysterious. My heart beat furiously. Fear for the safety
+of my precious papers held me in a death-like grip. I ran straight to
+my room, locked the door after me, and pulled the curtains together in
+front of the window. Then, with hands that trembled as if with ague, I
+pulled aside the strip of carpet which concealed the hiding-place of
+what meant a fortune to me.
+
+I nearly fainted with joy; the papers were there--quite safely. I took
+them out and replaced them inside my coat.
+
+Then I ran up to see if Theodore was in. I found him in bed. He told
+me that he had left the office whilst my visitors were still with me,
+as he felt terribly sick. He had been greatly upset when, about an
+hour ago, the maid-of-all-work had informed him that the police were
+in the house, that they would allow no one--except the persons lodging
+in the house--to enter it, and no one, once in, would be allowed to
+leave. How long these orders would hold good Theodore did not know.
+
+I left him moaning and groaning and declaring that he felt very ill,
+and I went in quest of information. The corporal in command of the
+gendarmes was exceedingly curt with me at first, but after a time he
+unbent and condescended to tell me that my landlord had been denounced
+for permitting a Bonapartiste club to hold its sittings in his house.
+So far so good. Such denunciations were very frequent these days, and
+often ended unpleasantly for those concerned, but the affair had
+obviously nothing to do with me. I felt that I could breathe again.
+But there was still the matter of the consigne. If no one, save the
+persons who lodged in the house, would be allowed to enter it, how
+would M. Charles Saurez contrive to call for the stolen document and,
+incidentally, to hand me over the ten thousand francs I was hoping for?
+And if no one, once inside the house, would be allowed to leave it,
+how could I meet Mlle. Geoffroy to-morrow at two o'clock in my office
+and receive ten thousand francs from her in exchange for the precious
+paper?
+
+Moreover the longer the police stayed in this house and poked their
+noses about in affairs that concerned hardworking citizens like
+myself--why--the greater the risk would be of the matter of the stolen
+document coming to light.
+
+It was positively maddening.
+
+I never undressed that night, but just lay down on my bed, thinking.
+The house was very still at times, but at others I could hear the
+tramp of the police agents up and down the stairs and also outside my
+window. The latter gave on a small, dilapidated back garden which had
+a wooden fence at the end of it. Beyond it were some market gardens
+belonging to a M. Lorraine. It did not take me very long to realize
+that that way lay my fortune of twenty thousand francs. But for the
+moment I remained very still. My plan was already made. At about
+midnight I went to the window and opened it cautiously. I had heard no
+noise from that direction for some time, and I bent my ear to listen.
+
+Not a sound! Either the sentry was asleep, or he had gone on his
+round, and for a few moments the way was free. Without a moment's
+hesitation I swung my leg over the sill.
+
+Still no sound. My heart beat so fast that I could almost hear it. The
+night was very dark. A thin mist-like drizzle was falling; in fact the
+weather conditions were absolutely perfect for my purpose. With utmost
+wariness I allowed myself to drop from the window-ledge on to the soft
+ground below.
+
+If I was caught by the sentry I had my answer ready: I was going to
+meet my sweetheart at the end of the garden. It is an excuse which
+always meets with the sympathy of every true-hearted Frenchman. The
+sentry would, of course, order me back to my room, but I doubt if he
+would ill-use me; the denunciation was against the landlord, not
+against me.
+
+Still not a sound. I could have danced with joy. Five minutes more and
+I would be across the garden and over that wooden fence, and once more
+on my way to fortune. My fall from the window had been light, as my
+room was on the ground floor; but I had fallen on my knees, and now,
+as I picked myself up, I looked up, and it seemed to me as if I saw
+Theodore's ugly face at his attic window. Certainly there was a light
+there, and I may have been mistaken as to Theodore's face being
+visible. The very next second the light was extinguished and I was
+left in doubt.
+
+But I did not pause to think. In a moment I was across the garden, my
+hands gripped the top of the wooden fence, I hoisted myself up--with
+some difficulty, I confess--but at last I succeeded. I threw my leg
+over and gently dropped down on the other side.
+
+Then suddenly two rough arms encircled my waist, and before I could
+attempt to free myself a cloth was thrown over my head, and I was
+lifted up and carried away, half suffocated and like an insentient
+bundle.
+
+When the cloth was removed from my face I was half sitting, half
+lying, in an arm-chair in a strange room which was lighted by an oil
+lamp that hung from the ceiling above. In front of me stood M. Arthur
+Geoffroy and that beast Theodore.
+
+M. Arthur Geoffroy was coolly folding up the two valuable papers for
+the possession of which I had risked a convict ship and New Caledonia,
+and which would have meant affluence for me for many days to come.
+
+It was Theodore who had removed the cloth from my face. As soon as I
+had recovered my breath I made a rush for him, for I wanted to
+strangle him. But M. Arthur Geoffroy was too quick and too strong for
+me. He pushed me back into the chair.
+
+"Easy, easy, M. Ratichon," he said pleasantly; "do not vent your wrath
+upon this good fellow. Believe me, though his actions may have
+deprived you of a few thousand francs, they have also saved you from
+lasting and biting remorse. This document, which you stole from M. de
+Marsan and so ingeniously duplicated, involved the honour of our King
+and our country, as well as the life of an innocent man. My sister's
+fiance would never have survived the loss of the document which had
+been entrusted to his honour."
+
+"I would have returned it to Mademoiselle to-morrow," I murmured.
+
+"Only one copy of it, I think," he retorted; "the other you would have
+sold to whichever spy of the Danish or Russian Governments happened to
+have employed you in this discreditable business."
+
+"How did you know?" I said involuntarily.
+
+"Through a very simple process of reasoning, my good M. Ratichon," he
+replied blandly. "You are a very clever man, no doubt, but the
+cleverest of us is at times apt to make a mistake. You made two, and I
+profited by them. Firstly, after my sister and I left you this
+afternoon, you never made the slightest pretence of making inquiries
+or collecting information about the mysterious theft of the document.
+I kept an eye on you throughout the evening. You left your office and
+strolled for a while on the quays; you had an excellent dinner at the
+Restaurant des Anglais; then you settled down to your coffee and
+liqueur. Well, my good M. Ratichon, obviously you would have been more
+active in the matter if you had not known exactly where and when and
+how to lay your hands upon the document, for the recovery of which my
+sister had offered you ten thousand francs."
+
+I groaned. I had not been quite so circumspect as I ought to have
+been, but who would have thought--
+
+"I have had something to do with police work in my day," continued M.
+Geoffroy blandly, "though not of late years; but my knowledge of their
+methods is not altogether rusty and my powers of observation are not
+yet dulled. During my sister's visit to you this afternoon I noticed
+the blouse and cap of a commissionnaire lying in a bundle in a corner
+of your room. Now, though M. de Marsan has been in a burning fever
+since he discovered his loss, he kept just sufficient presence of mind
+at the moment to say nothing about that loss to any of the
+Chancellerie officials, but to go straight home to his apartments in
+the Rue Royale and to send for my sister and for me. When we came to
+him he was already partly delirious, but he pointed to a parcel and a
+letter which he had brought away from his office. The parcel proved to
+be an empty box and the letter a blank sheet of paper; but the most
+casual inquiry of the concierge at the Chancellerie elicited the fact
+that a commissionaire had brought these things in the course of the
+morning. That was your second mistake, my good M. Ratichon; not a very
+grave one, perhaps, but I have been in the police, and somehow, the
+moment I caught sight of that blouse and cap in your office, I could
+not help connecting it with the commissionnaire who had brought a
+bogus parcel and letter to my future brother-in-law a few minutes
+before that mysterious and unexplained altercation took place in the
+corridor."
+
+Again I groaned. I felt as a child in the hands of that horrid
+creature who seemed to be dissecting all the thoughts which had run
+riot through my mind these past twenty hours.
+
+"It was all very simple, my good M. Ratichon," now concluded my
+tormentor still quite amiably. "Another time you will have to be more
+careful, will you not? You will also have to bestow more confidence upon
+your partner or servant. Directly I had seen that commissionnaire's
+blouse and cap, I set to work to make friends with M. Theodore. When my
+sister and I left your office in the Rue Daunou, we found him waiting
+for us at the bottom of the stairs. Five francs loosened his tongue: he
+suspected that you were up to some game in which you did not mean him to
+have a share; he also told us that you had spent two hours in laborious
+writing, and that you and he both lodged at a dilapidated little inn,
+called the 'Grey Cat,' in Passy. I think he was rather disappointed that
+we did not shower more questions, and therefore more emoluments, upon
+him. Well, after I had denounced this house to the police as a
+Bonapartiste club, and saw it put under the usual consigne, I bribed the
+corporal of the gendarmerie in charge of it to let me have Theodore's
+company for the little job I had in hand, and also to clear the back
+garden of sentries so as to give you a chance and the desire to escape.
+All the rest you know. Money will do many things, my good M. Ratichon,
+and you see how simple it all was. It would have been still more simple
+if the stolen document had not been such an important one that the very
+existence of it must be kept a secret even from the police. So I could
+not have you shadowed and arrested as a thief in the usual manner!
+However, I have the document and its ingenious copy, which is all that
+matters. Would to God," he added with a suppressed curse, "that I could
+get hold equally easily of the Secret Service agent to whom you, a
+Frenchman, were going to sell the honour of your country!"
+
+Then it was that--though broken in spirit and burning with thoughts of
+the punishment I would mete out to Theodore--my full faculties
+returned to me, and I queried abruptly:
+
+"What would you give to get him?"
+
+"Five hundred francs," he replied without hesitation. "Can you find
+him?"
+
+"Make it a thousand," I retorted, "and you shall have him."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Will you give me five hundred francs now," I insisted, "and another
+five hundred when you have the man, and I will tell you?"
+
+"Agreed," he said impatiently.
+
+But I was not to be played with by him again. I waited in silence
+until he had taken a pocket-book from the inside of his coat and
+counted out five hundred francs, which he kept in his hand.
+
+"Now--" he commanded.
+
+"The man," I then announced calmly, "will call on me for the document
+at my lodgings at the hostelry of the 'Grey Cat' to-morrow morning at
+nine o'clock."
+
+"Good," rejoined M. Geoffroy. "We shall be there."
+
+He made no demur about giving me the five hundred francs, but half my
+pleasure in receiving them vanished when I saw Theodore's bleary eyes
+fixed ravenously upon them.
+
+"Another five hundred francs," M. Geoffroy went on quietly, "will be
+yours as soon as the spy is in our hands."
+
+I did get that further five hundred of course, for M. Charles Saurez
+was punctual to the minute, and M. Geoffroy was there with the police
+to apprehend him. But to think that I might have had twenty
+thousand--!
+
+And I had to give Theodore fifty francs on the transaction, as he
+threatened me with the police when I talked of giving him the sack.
+
+But we were quite good friends again after that until-- But you
+shall judge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A FOOL'S PARADISE
+
+
+
+1.
+
+Ah! my dear Sir, I cannot tell you how poor we all were in France in
+that year of grace 1816--so poor, indeed, that a dish of roast pork
+was looked upon as a feast, and a new gown for the wife an unheard-of
+luxury.
+
+The war had ruined everyone. Twenty-two years! and hopeless
+humiliation and defeat at the end of it. The Emperor handed over to
+the English; a Bourbon sitting on the throne of France; crowds of
+foreign soldiers still lording it all over the country--until the
+country had paid its debts to her foreign invaders, and thousands of
+our own men still straggling home through Germany and Belgium--the
+remnants of Napoleon's Grand Army--ex-prisoners of war, or scattered
+units who had found their weary way home at last, shoeless, coatless,
+half starved and perished from cold and privations, unfit for
+housework, for agriculture, or for industry, fit only to follow their
+fallen hero, as they had done through a quarter of a century, to
+victory and to death.
+
+With me, Sir, business in Paris was almost at a standstill. I, who had
+been the confidential agent of two kings, three democrats and one
+emperor; I, who had held diplomatic threads in my hands which had
+caused thrones to totter and tyrants to quake, and who had brought
+more criminals and intriguers to book than any other man alive--I now
+sat in my office in the Rue Daunou day after day with never a client
+to darken my doors, even whilst crime and political intrigue were more
+rife in Paris than they had been in the most corrupt days of the
+Revolution and the Consulate.
+
+I told you, I think, that I had forgiven Theodore his abominable
+treachery in connexion with the secret naval treaty, and we were the
+best of friends--that is, outwardly, of course. Within my inmost heart
+I felt, Sir, that I could never again trust that shameless
+traitor--that I had in very truth nurtured a serpent in my bosom. But
+I am proverbially tender-hearted. You will believe me or not, I simply
+could not turn that vermin out into the street. He deserved it! Oh,
+even he would have admitted when he was quite sober, which was not
+often, that I had every right to give him the sack, to send him back
+to the gutter whence he had come, there to grub once more for scraps
+of filth and to stretch a half-frozen hand to the charity of the
+passers by.
+
+But I did not do it, Sir. No, I did not do it. I kept him on at the
+office as my confidential servant; I gave him all the crumbs that fell
+from mine own table, and he helped himself to the rest. I made as
+little difference as I could in my intercourse with him. I continued
+to treat him almost as an equal. The only difference I did make in our
+mode of life was that I no longer gave him bed and board at the
+hostelry where I lodged in Passy, but placed the chair-bedstead in the
+anteroom of the office permanently at his disposal, and allowed him
+five sous a day for his breakfast.
+
+But owing to the scarcity of business that now came my way, Theodore
+had little or nothing to do, and he was in very truth eating his head
+off, and with that, grumble, grumble all the time, threatening to
+leave me, if you please, to leave my service for more remunerative
+occupation. As if anyone else would dream of employing such an
+out-at-elbows mudlark--a jail-bird, Sir, if you'll believe me.
+
+Thus the Spring of 1816 came along. Spring, Sir, with its beauty and
+its promises, and the thoughts of love which come eternally in the
+minds of those who have not yet wholly done with youth. Love, Sir! I
+dreamed of it on those long, weary afternoons in April, after I had
+consumed my scanty repast, and whilst Theodore in the anteroom was
+snoring like a hog. At even, when tired out and thirsty, I would sit
+for a while outside a humble cafe on the outer boulevards, I watched
+the amorous couples wander past me on their way to happiness. At night
+I could not sleep, and bitter were my thoughts, my revilings against a
+cruel fate that had condemned me--a man with so sensitive a heart and
+so generous a nature--to the sorrows of perpetual solitude.
+
+That, Sir, was my mood, when on a never-to-be-forgotten afternoon
+toward the end of April, I sat mooning disconsolately in my private
+room and a timid rat-tat at the outer door of the apartment roused
+Theodore from his brutish slumbers. I heard him shuffling up to the
+door, and I hurriedly put my necktie straight and smoothed my hair,
+which had become disordered despite the fact that I had only indulged
+in a very abstemious dejeuner.
+
+When I said that the knock at my door was in the nature of a timid
+rat-rat I did not perhaps describe it quite accurately. It was timid,
+if you will understand me, and yet bold, as coming from one who might
+hesitate to enter and nevertheless feels assured of welcome. Obviously
+a client, I thought.
+
+Effectively, Sir, the next moment my eyes were gladdened by the sight
+of a lovely woman, beautifully dressed, young, charming, smiling but
+to hide her anxiety, trustful, and certainly wealthy.
+
+The moment she stepped into the room I knew that she was wealthy;
+there was an air of assurance about her which only those are able to
+assume who are not pestered with creditors. She wore two beautiful
+diamond rings upon her hands outside her perfectly fitting glove, and
+her bonnet was adorned with flowers so exquisitely fashioned that a
+butterfly would have been deceived and would have perched on it with
+delight.
+
+Her shoes were of the finest kid, shiny at the toes like tiny mirrors,
+whilst her dainty ankles were framed in the filmy lace frills of her
+pantalets.
+
+Within the wide brim of her bonnet her exquisite face appeared like a
+rosebud nestling in a basket. She smiled when I rose to greet her,
+gave me a look that sent my susceptible heart a-flutter and caused me
+to wish that I had not taken that bottle-green coat of mine to the
+Mont de Piete only last week. I offered her a seat, which she took,
+arranging her skirts about her with inimitable grace.
+
+"One moment," I added, as soon as she was seated, "and I am entirely
+at your service."
+
+I took up pen and paper--an unfinished letter which I always keep
+handy for the purpose--and wrote rapidly. It always looks well for a
+lawyer or an _agent confidentiel_ to keep a client waiting for a moment
+or two while he attends to the enormous pressure of correspondence
+which, if allowed to accumulate for five minutes, would immediately
+overwhelm him. I signed and folded the letter, threw it with a
+nonchalant air into a basket filled to the brim with others of equal
+importance, buried my face in my hands for a few seconds as if to
+collect my thoughts, and finally said:
+
+"And now, Mademoiselle, will you deign to tell me what procures me the
+honour of your visit?"
+
+The lovely creature had watched my movements with obvious impatience,
+a frown upon her exquisite brow. But now she plunged straightway into
+her story.
+
+"Monsieur," she said with that pretty, determined air which became her
+so well, "my name is Estelle Bachelier. I am an orphan, an heiress,
+and have need of help and advice. I did not know to whom to apply.
+Until three months ago I was poor and had to earn my living by working
+in a milliner's shop in the Rue St. Honore. The concierge in the house
+where I used to lodge is my only friend, but she cannot help me for
+reasons which will presently be made clear to you. She told me,
+however, that she had a nephew named Theodore, who was clerk to M.
+Ratichon, advocate and confidential agent. She gave me your address;
+and as I knew no one else I determined to come and consult you."
+
+I flatter myself, that though my countenance is exceptionally mobile,
+I possess marvellous powers for keeping it impassive when necessity
+arises. In this instance, at mention of Theodore's name, I showed
+neither surprise nor indignation. Yet you will readily understand that
+I felt both. Here was that man, once more revealed as a traitor.
+Theodore had an aunt of whom he had never as much as breathed a word.
+He had an aunt, and that aunt a concierge--_ipso facto_, if I may so
+express it, a woman of some substance, who, no doubt, would often have
+been only too pleased to extend hospitality to the man who had so
+signally befriended her nephew; a woman, Sir, who was undoubtedly
+possessed of savings which both reason and gratitude would cause her
+to invest in an old-established and substantial business run by a
+trustworthy and capable man, such, for instance, as the bureau of a
+confidential agent in a good quarter of Paris, which, with the help of
+a little capital, could be rendered highly lucrative and beneficial to
+all those, concerned.
+
+I determined then and there to give Theodore a piece of my mind and to
+insist upon an introduction to his aunt. After which I begged the
+beautiful creature to proceed.
+
+"My father, Monsieur," she continued, "died three months ago, in
+England, whither he had emigrated when I was a mere child, leaving my
+poor mother to struggle along for a livelihood as best she could. My
+mother died last year, Monsieur, and I have hard a hard life; and now
+it seems that my father made a fortune in England and left it all to
+me."
+
+I was greatly interested in her story.
+
+"The first intimation I had of it, Monsieur, was three months ago,
+when I had a letter from an English lawyer in London telling me that
+my father, Jean Paul Bachelier--that was his name, Monsieur--had died
+out there and made a will leaving all his money, about one hundred
+thousand francs, to me."
+
+"Yes, yes!" I murmured, for my throat felt parched and my eyes dim.
+
+Hundred thousand francs! Ye gods!
+
+"It seems," she proceeded demurely, "that my father put it in his will
+that the English lawyers were to pay me the interest on the money
+until I married or reached the age of twenty-one. Then the whole of
+the money was to be handed over to me."
+
+I had to steady myself against the table or I would have fallen over
+backwards! This godlike creature, to whom the sum of one hundred
+thousand francs was to be paid over when she married, had come to me
+for help and advice! The thought sent my brain reeling! I am so
+imaginative!
+
+"Proceed, Mademoiselle, I pray you," I contrived to say with dignified
+calm.
+
+"Well, Monsieur, as I don't know a word of English, I took the letter
+to Mr. Farewell, who is the English traveller for Madame Cecile, the
+milliner for whom I worked. He is a kind, affable gentleman and was
+most helpful to me. He was, as a matter of fact, just going over to
+England the very next day. He offered to go and see the English
+lawyers for me, and to bring me back all particulars of my dear
+father's death and of my unexpected fortune."
+
+"And," said I, for she had paused a moment, "did Mr. Farewell go to
+England on your behalf?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur. He went and returned about a fortnight later. He had
+seen the English lawyers, who confirmed all the good news which was
+contained in their letter. They took, it seems, a great fancy to Mr.
+Farewell, and told him that since I was obviously too young to live
+alone and needed a guardian to look after my interests, they would
+appoint him my guardian, and suggested that I should make my home with
+him until I was married or had attained the age of twenty-one. Mr.
+Farewell told me that though this arrangement might be somewhat
+inconvenient in his bachelor establishment, he had been unable to
+resist the entreaties of the English lawyers, who felt that no one was
+more fitted for such onerous duties than himself, seeing that he was
+English and so obviously my friend."
+
+"The scoundrel! The blackguard!" I exclaimed in an unguarded outburst
+of fury. . . .
+
+"Your pardon, Mademoiselle," I added more calmly, seeing that the
+lovely creature was gazing at me with eyes full of astonishment not
+unmixed with distrust, "I am anticipating. Am I to understand, then,
+that you have made your home with this Mr. Farewell?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur, at number sixty-five Rue des Pyramides."
+
+"Is he a married man?" I asked casually.
+
+"He is a widower, Monsieur."
+
+"Middle-aged?"
+
+"Quite elderly, Monsieur."
+
+I could have screamed with joy. I was not yet forty myself.
+
+"Why!" she added gaily, "he is thinking of retiring from business--he
+is, as I said, a commercial traveller--in favour of his nephew, M.
+Adrien Cazales."
+
+Once more I had to steady myself against the table. The room swam
+round me. One hundred thousand francs!--a lovely creature!--an
+unscrupulous widower!--an equally dangerous young nephew. I rose and
+tottered to the window. I flung it wide open--a thing I never do save
+at moments of acute crises.
+
+The breath of fresh air did me good. I returned to my desk, and was
+able once more to assume my habitual dignity and presence of mind.
+
+"In all this, Mademoiselle," I said in my best professional manner, "I
+do not gather how I can be of service to you."
+
+"I am coming to that, Monsieur," she resumed after a slight moment of
+hesitation, even as an exquisite blush suffused her damask cheeks.
+"You must know that at first I was very happy in the house of my new
+guardian. He was exceedingly kind to me, though there were times
+already when I fancied . . ."
+
+She hesitated--more markedly this time--and the blush became deeper on
+her cheeks. I groaned aloud.
+
+"Surely he is too old," I suggested.
+
+"Much too old," she assented emphatically.
+
+Once more I would have screamed with joy had not a sharp pang, like a
+dagger-thrust, shot through my heart.
+
+"But the nephew, eh?" I said as jocosely, as indifferently as I could.
+"Young M. Cazales? What?"
+
+"Oh!" she replied with perfect indifference. "I hardly ever see him."
+
+Unfortunately it were not seemly for an avocat and the _agent
+confidentiel_ of half the Courts of Europe to execute the measures of
+a polka in the presence of a client, or I would indeed have jumped up
+and danced with glee. The happy thoughts were hammering away in my
+mind: "The old one is much too old--the young one she never sees!" and
+I could have knelt down and kissed the hem of her gown for the
+exquisite indifference with which she had uttered those magic words:
+"Oh! I hardly ever see him!"--words which converted my brightest hopes
+into glowing possibilities.
+
+But, as it was, I held my emotions marvellously in check, and with
+perfect sang-froid once more asked the beauteous creature how I could
+be of service to her in her need.
+
+"Of late, Monsieur," she said, as she raised a pair of limpid, candid
+blue eyes to mine, "my position in Mr. Farewell's house has become
+intolerable. He pursues me with his attentions, and he has become
+insanely jealous. He will not allow me to speak to anyone, and has
+even forbidden M. Cazales, his own nephew, the house. Not that I care
+about that," she added with an expressive shrug of the shoulders.
+
+"He has forbidden M. Cazales the house," rang like a paean in my ear.
+"Not that she cares about that! Tra la, la, la, la, la!" What I
+actually contrived to say with a measured and judicial air was:
+
+"If you deign to entrust me with the conduct of your affairs, I would
+at once communicate with the English lawyers in your name and suggest
+to them the advisability of appointing another guardian. . . . I would
+suggest, for instance . . . er . . . that I . . ."
+
+"How can you do that, Monsieur?" she broke in somewhat impatiently,
+"seeing that I cannot possibly tell you who these lawyers are?"
+
+"Eh?" I queried, gasping.
+
+"I neither know their names nor their residence in England."
+
+Once more I gasped. "Will you explain?" I murmured.
+
+"It seems, Monsieur, that while my dear mother lived she always
+refused to take a single sou from my father, who had so basely
+deserted her. Of course, she did not know that he was making a fortune
+over in England, nor that he was making diligent inquiries as to her
+whereabouts when he felt that he was going to die. Thus, he discovered
+that she had died the previous year and that I was working in the
+atelier of Madame Cecile, the well-known milliner. When the English
+lawyers wrote to me at that address they, of course, said that they
+would require all my papers of identification before they paid any
+money over to me, and so, when Mr. Farewell went over to England, he
+took all my papers with him and . . ."
+
+She burst into tears and exclaimed piteously:
+
+"Oh! I have nothing now, Monsieur--nothing to prove who I am! Mr.
+Farewell took everything, even the original letter which the English
+lawyers wrote to me."
+
+"Farewell," I urged, "can be forced by the law to give all your papers
+up to you."
+
+"Oh! I have nothing now, Monsieur--he threatened to destroy all my
+papers unless I promised to become his wife! And I haven't the least
+idea how and where to find the English lawyers. I don't remember
+either their name or their address; and if I did, how could I prove my
+identity to their satisfaction? I don't know a soul in Paris save a
+few irresponsible millinery apprentices and Madame Cecile, who, no
+doubt, is hand in glove with Mr. Farewell. I am all alone in the world
+and friendless. . . . I have come to you, Monsieur, in my distress . . .
+and you will help me, will you not?"
+
+She looked more adorable in grief than she had ever done before.
+
+To tell you that at this moment visions floated in my mind, before
+which Dante's visions of Paradise would seem pale and tame, were but
+to put it mildly. I was literally soaring in heaven. For you see I am
+a man of intellect and of action. No sooner do I see possibilities
+before me than my brain soars in an empyrean whilst conceiving daring
+plans for my body's permanent abode in elysium. At this present
+moment, for instance--to name but a few of the beatific visions which
+literally dazzled me with their radiance--I could see my fair client
+as a lovely and blushing bride by my side, even whilst Messieurs X.
+and X., the two still unknown English lawyers, handed me a heavy bag
+which bore the legend "One hundred thousand francs." I could see . . .
+But I had not the time now to dwell on these ravishing dreams. The
+beauteous creature was waiting for my decision. She had placed her
+fate in my hands; I placed my hand on my heart.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I said solemnly, "I will be your adviser and your
+friend. Give me but a few days' grace, every hour, every minute of
+which I will spend in your service. At the end of that time I will not
+only have learned the name and address of the English lawyers, but I
+will have communicated with them on your behalf, and all your papers
+proving your identity will be in your hands. Then we can come to a
+decision with regard to a happier and more comfortable home for you.
+In the meanwhile I entreat you to do nothing that may precipitate Mr.
+Farewell's actions. Do not encourage his advances, but do not repulse
+them, and above all keep me well informed of everything that goes on
+in his house."
+
+She spoke a few words of touching gratitude, then she rose, and with a
+gesture of exquisite grace she extracted a hundred-franc note from her
+reticule and placed it upon my desk.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I protested with splendid dignity, "I have done
+nothing as yet."
+
+"Ah! but you will, Monsieur," she entreated in accents that completed
+my subjugation to her charms. "Besides, you do not know me! How could
+I expect you to work for me and not to know if, in the end, I should
+repay you for all your trouble? I pray you to take this small sum
+without demur. Mr. Farewell keeps me well supplied with pocket money.
+There will be another hundred for you when you place the papers in my
+hands."
+
+I bowed to her, and, having once more assured her of my unswerving
+loyalty to her interests, I accompanied her to the door, and anon saw
+her graceful figure slowly descend the stairs and then disappear along
+the corridor.
+
+Then I went back to my room, and was only just in time to catch
+Theodore calmly pocketing the hundred-franc note which my fair client
+had left on the table. I secured the note and I didn't give him a
+black eye, for it was no use putting him in a bad temper when there
+was so much to do.
+
+
+
+2.
+
+That very same evening I interviewed the concierge at No. 65 Rue des
+Pyramides. From him I learned that Mr. Farewell lived on a very small
+income on the top floor of the house, that his household consisted of
+a housekeeper who cooked and did the work of the apartment for him,
+and an odd-job man who came every morning to clean boots, knives, draw
+water and carry up fuel from below. I also learned that there was a
+good deal of gossip in the house anent the presence in Mr. Farewell's
+bachelor establishment of a young and beautiful girl, whom he tried to
+keep a virtual prisoner under his eye.
+
+The next morning, dressed in a shabby blouse, alpaca cap, and trousers
+frayed out round the ankles, I--Hector Ratichon, the confidant of
+kings--was lounging under the porte-cochere of No. 65 Rue des
+Pyramides. I was watching the movements of a man, similarly attired to
+myself, as he crossed and recrossed the courtyard to draw water from
+the well or to fetch wood from one of the sheds, and then disappeared
+up the main staircase.
+
+A casual, tactful inquiry of the concierge assured me that that man
+was indeed in the employ of Mr. Farewell.
+
+I waited as patiently and inconspicuously as I could, and at ten
+o'clock I saw that my man had obviously finished his work for the
+morning and had finally come down the stairs ready to go home. I
+followed him.
+
+I will not speak of the long halt in the cabaret du Chien Noir, where
+he spent an hour and a half in the company of his friends, playing
+dominoes and drinking eau-de-vie whilst I had perforce to cool my
+heels outside. Suffice it to say that I did follow him to his house
+just behind the fish-market, and that half an hour later, tired out
+but triumphant, having knocked at his door, I was admitted into the
+squalid room which he occupied.
+
+He surveyed me with obvious mistrust, but I soon reassured him.
+
+"My friend Mr. Farewell has recommended you to me," I said with my
+usual affability. "I was telling him just awhile ago that I needed a
+man to look after my office in the Rue Daunou of a morning, and he
+told me that in you I would find just the man I wanted."
+
+"Hm!" grunted the fellow, very sullenly I thought. "I work for
+Farewell in the mornings. Why should he recommend me to you? Am I not
+giving satisfaction?"
+
+"Perfect satisfaction," I rejoined urbanely; "that is just the point.
+Mr. Farewell desires to do you a good turn seeing that I offered to
+pay you twenty sous for your morning's work instead of the ten which
+you are getting from him."
+
+I saw his eyes glisten at mention of the twenty sous.
+
+"I'd best go and tell him then that I am taking on your work," he
+said; and his tone was no longer sullen now.
+
+"Quite unnecessary," I rejoined. "I arranged everything with Mr.
+Farewell before I came to you. He has already found someone else to do
+his work, and I shall want you to be at my office by seven o'clock
+to-morrow morning. And," I added, for I am always cautious and
+judicious, and I now placed a piece of silver in his hand, "here are
+the first twenty sous on account."
+
+He took the money and promptly became very civil, even obsequious. He
+not only accompanied me to the door, but all the way down the stairs,
+and assured me all the time that he would do his best to give me
+entire satisfaction.
+
+I left my address with him, and sure enough, he turned up at the
+office the next morning at seven o'clock precisely.
+
+Theodore had had my orders to direct him in his work, and I was left
+free to enact the second scene of the moving drama in which I was
+determined to play the hero and to ring down the curtain to the sound
+of the wedding bells.
+
+
+
+3.
+
+I took on the work of odd-job man at 65 Rue des Pyramides. Yes, I!
+Even I, who had sat in the private room of an emperor discussing the
+destinies of Europe.
+
+But with a beautiful bride and one hundred thousand francs as my goal
+I would have worked in a coal mine or on the galleys for such a
+guerdon.
+
+The task, I must tell you, was terribly irksome to a man of my
+sensibilities, endowed with an active mind and a vivid imagination.
+The dreary monotony of fetching water and fuel from below and
+polishing the boots of that arch-scoundrel Farewell would have made a
+less stout spirit quail. I had, of course, seen through the
+scoundrel's game at once. He had rendered Estelle quite helpless by
+keeping all her papers of identification and by withholding from her
+all the letters which, no doubt, the English lawyers wrote to her from
+time to time. Thus she was entirely in his power. But, thank heaven!
+only momentarily, for I, Hector Ratichon, argus-eyed, was on the
+watch. Now and then the monotony of my existence and the hardship of
+my task were relieved by a brief glimpse of Estelle or a smile of
+understanding from her lips; now and then she would contrive to murmur
+as she brushed past me while I was polishing the scoundrel's study
+floor, "Any luck yet?" And this quiet understanding between us gave me
+courage to go on with my task.
+
+After three days I had conclusively made up my mind that Mr. Farewell
+kept his valuable papers in the drawer of the bureau in the study.
+After that I always kept a lump of wax ready for use in my pocket. On
+the fifth day I was very nearly caught trying to take an impression of
+the lock of the bureau drawer. On the seventh I succeeded, and took
+the impression over to a locksmith I knew of, and gave him an order to
+have a key made to fit it immediately. On the ninth day I had the key.
+
+Then commenced a series of disappointments and of unprofitable days
+which would have daunted one less bold and less determined. I don't
+think that Farewell ever suspected me, but it is a fact that never
+once did he leave me alone in his study whilst I was at work there
+polishing the oak floor. And in the meanwhile I could see how he was
+pursuing my beautiful Estelle with his unwelcome attentions. At times
+I feared that he meant to abduct her; his was a powerful personality
+and she seemed like a little bird fighting against the fascination of
+a serpent. Latterly, too, an air of discouragement seemed to dwell
+upon her lovely face. I was half distraught with anxiety, and once or
+twice, whilst I knelt upon the hard floor, scrubbing and polishing as
+if my life depended on it, whilst he--the unscrupulous scoundrel--sat
+calmly at his desk, reading or writing, I used to feel as if the next
+moment I must attack him with my scrubbing-brush and knock him down
+senseless whilst I ransacked his drawers. My horror of anything
+approaching violence saved me from so foolish a step.
+
+Then it was that in the hour of my blackest despair a flash of genius
+pierced through the darkness of my misery. For some days now Madame
+Dupont, Farewell's housekeeper, had been exceedingly affable to me.
+Every morning now, when I came to work, there was a cup of hot coffee
+waiting for me, and, when I left, a small parcel of something
+appetizing for me to take away.
+
+"Hallo!" I said to myself one day, when, over a cup of coffee, I
+caught sight of her small, piggy eyes leering at me with an
+unmistakable expression of admiration. "Does salvation lie where I
+least expected it?"
+
+For the moment I did nothing more than wink at the fat old thing, but
+the next morning I had my arm round her waist--a metre and a quarter,
+Sir, where it was tied in the middle--and had imprinted a kiss upon
+her glossy cheek. What that love-making cost me I cannot attempt to
+describe. Once Estelle came into the kitchen when I was staggering
+under a load of a hundred kilos sitting on my knee. The reproachful
+glance which she cast at me filled my soul with unspeakable sorrow.
+
+But I was working for her dear sake; working that I might win her in
+the end.
+
+A week later Mr. Farewell was absent from home for the evening.
+Estelle had retired to her room, and I was a welcome visitor in the
+kitchen, where Madame Dupont had laid out a regular feast for me. I
+had brought a couple of bottles of champagne with me and, what with
+the unaccustomed drink and the ogling and love-making to which I
+treated her, a hundred kilos of foolish womanhood was soon hopelessly
+addled and incapable. I managed to drag her to the sofa, where she
+remained quite still, with a beatific smile upon her podgy face, her
+eyes swimming in happy tears.
+
+I had not a moment to lose. The very next minute I was in the study
+and with a steady hand was opening the drawers of the bureau and
+turning over the letters and papers which I found therein.
+
+Suddenly an exclamation of triumph escaped my lips.
+
+I held a packet in my hand on which was written in a clear hand: "The
+papers of Mlle. Estelle Bachelier." A brief examination of the packet
+sufficed. It consisted of a number of letters written in English,
+which language I only partially understand, but they all bore the same
+signature, "John Pike and Sons, solicitors," and the address was at
+the top, "168 Cornhill, London." It also contained my Estelle's birth
+certificate, her mother's marriage certificate, and her police
+registration card.
+
+I was rapt in the contemplation of my own ingenuity in having thus
+brilliantly attained my goal, when a stealthy noise in the next room
+roused me from my trance and brought up vividly to my mind the awful
+risks which I was running at this moment. I turned like an animal at
+bay to see Estelle's beautiful face peeping at me through the
+half-open door.
+
+"Hist!" she whispered. "Have you got the papers?"
+
+I waved the packet triumphantly. She, excited and adorable, stepped
+briskly into the room.
+
+"Let me see," she murmured excitedly.
+
+But I, emboldened by success, cried gaily:
+
+"Not till I have received compensation for all that I have done and
+endured."
+
+"Compensation?"
+
+"In the shape of a kiss."
+
+Oh! I won't say that she threw herself in my arms then and there. No,
+no! She demurred. All young girls, it seems, demur under the
+circumstances; but she was adorable, coy and tender in turns, pouting
+and coaxing, and playing like a kitten till she had taken the papers
+from me and, with a woman's natural curiosity, had turned the English
+letters over and over, even though she could not read a word of them.
+
+Then, Sir, in the midst of her innocent frolic and at the very moment
+when I was on the point of snatching the kiss which she had so
+tantalizingly denied me, we heard the opening and closing of the front
+door.
+
+Mr. Farewell had come home, and there was no other egress from the
+study save the sitting-room, which in its turn had no other egress but
+the door leading into the very passage where even now Mr. Farewell was
+standing, hanging up his hat and cloak on the rack.
+
+
+
+4.
+
+We stood hand in hand--Estelle and I--fronting the door through which
+Mr. Farewell would presently appear.
+
+"To-night we fly together," I declared.
+
+"Where to?" she whispered.
+
+"Can you go to the woman at your former lodgings?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Then I will take you there to-night. To-morrow we will be married
+before the Procureur du Roi; in the evening we leave for England."
+
+"Yes, yes!" she murmured.
+
+"When he comes in I'll engage him in conversation," I continued
+hurriedly. "You make a dash for the door and run downstairs as fast as
+you can. I'll follow as quickly as may be and meet you under the
+porte-cochere."
+
+She had only just time to nod assent when the door which gave on the
+sitting-room was pushed open, and Farewell, unconscious at first of
+our presence, stepped quietly into the room.
+
+"Estelle," he cried, more puzzled than angry when he suddenly caught
+sight of us both, "what are you doing here with that lout?"
+
+I was trembling with excitement--not fear, of course, though Farewell
+was a powerful-looking man, a head taller than I was. I stepped boldly
+forward, covering the adored one with my body.
+
+"The lout," I said with calm dignity, "has frustrated the machinations
+of a knave. To-morrow I go to England in order to place Mademoiselle
+Estelle Bachelier under the protection of her legal guardians,
+Messieurs Pike and Sons, solicitors, of London."
+
+He gave a cry of rage, and before I could retire to some safe
+entrenchment behind the table or the sofa, he was upon me like a mad
+dog. He had me by the throat, and I had rolled backwards down on to
+the floor, with him on the top of me, squeezing the breath out of me
+till I verily thought that my last hour had come. Estelle had run out
+of the room like a startled hare. This, of course, was in accordance
+with my instructions to her, but I could not help wishing then that
+she had been less obedient and somewhat more helpful.
+
+As it was, I was beginning to feel a mere worm in the grip of that
+savage scoundrel, whose face I could perceive just above me, distorted
+with passion, whilst hoarse ejaculations escaped his trembling lips:
+
+"You meddlesome fool! You oaf! You toad! This for your
+interference!" he added as he gave me a vigorous punch on the head.
+
+I felt my senses reeling. My head was swimming, my eyes no longer
+could see distinctly. It seemed as if an unbearable pressure upon my
+chest would finally squeeze the last breath out of my body.
+
+I was trying to remember the prayers I used to murmur at my mother's
+knee, for verily I thought that I was dying, when suddenly, through my
+fading senses, came the sound of a long, hoarse cry, whilst the floor
+was shaken as with an earthquake. The next moment the pressure on my
+chest seemed to relax. I could hear Farewell's voice uttering language
+such as it would be impossible for me to put on record; and through it
+all hoarse and convulsive cries of: "You shan't hurt him--you limb of
+Satan, you!"
+
+Gradually strength returned to me. I could see as well as hear, and
+what I saw filled me with wonder and with pride. Wonder at Ma'ame
+Dupont's pluck! Pride in that her love for me had given such power to
+her mighty arms! Aroused from her slumbers by the sound of the
+scuffle, she had run to the study, only to find me in deadly peril of
+my life. Without a second's hesitation she had rushed on Farewell,
+seized him by the collar, pulled him away from me, and then thrown the
+whole weight of her hundred kilos upon him, rendering him helpless.
+
+Ah, woman! lovely, selfless woman! My heart a prey to remorse, in that
+I could not remain in order to thank my plucky deliverer, I
+nevertheless finally struggled to my feet and fled from the apartment
+and down the stairs, never drawing breath till I felt Estelle's hand
+resting confidingly upon my arm.
+
+
+
+5.
+
+I took her to the house where she used to lodge, and placed her under
+the care of the kind concierge who was Theodore's aunt. Then I, too,
+went home, determined to get a good night's rest. The morning would be
+a busy one for me. There would be the special licence to get, the cure
+of St. Jacques to interview, the religious ceremony to arrange for,
+and the places to book on the stagecoach for Boulogne _en route_ for
+England--and fortune.
+
+I was supremely happy and slept the sleep of the just. I was up
+betimes and started on my round of business at eight o'clock the next
+morning. I was a little troubled about money, because when I had paid
+for the licence and given to the cure the required fee for the
+religious service and ceremony, I had only five francs left out of the
+hundred which the adored one had given me. However, I booked the seats
+on the stage-coach and determined to trust to luck. Once Estelle was
+my wife, all money care would be at an end, since no power on earth
+could stand between me and the hundred thousand francs, the happy goal
+for which I had so ably striven.
+
+The marriage ceremony was fixed for eleven o'clock, and it was just
+upon ten when, at last, with a light heart and springy step, I ran up
+the dingy staircase which led to the adored one's apartments. I
+knocked at the door. It was opened by a young man, who with a smile
+courteously bade me enter. I felt a little bewildered--and slightly
+annoyed. My Estelle should not receive visits from young men at this
+hour. I pushed past the intruder in the passage and walked boldly into
+the room beyond.
+
+Estelle was sitting upon the sofa, her eyes bright, her mouth smiling,
+a dimple in each cheek. I approached her with outstretched arms, but
+she paid no heed to me, and turned to the young man, who had followed
+me into the room.
+
+"Adrien," she said, "this is kind M. Ratichon, who at risk of his life
+obtained for us all my papers of identification and also the valuable
+name and address of the English lawyers."
+
+"Monsieur," added the young man as he extended his hand to me,
+"Estelle and I will remain eternally your debtors."
+
+I struck at the hand which he had so impudently held out to me and
+turned to Estelle with my usual dignified calm, but with wrath
+expressed in every line of my face.
+
+"Estelle," I said, "what is the meaning of this?"
+
+"Oh," she retorted with one of her provoking smiles, "you must not
+call me Estelle, you know, or Adrien will smack your face. We are
+indeed grateful to you, my good M. Ratichon," she continued more
+seriously, "and though I only promised you another hundred francs when
+your work for me was completed, my husband and I have decided to give
+you a thousand francs in view of the risks which you ran on our
+behalf."
+
+"Your husband!" I stammered.
+
+"I was married to M. Adrien Cazales a month ago," she said, "but we
+had perforce to keep our marriage a secret, because Mr. Farewell once
+vowed to me that unless I became his wife he would destroy all my
+papers of identification, and then--even if I ever succeeded in
+discovering who were the English lawyers who had charge of my father's
+money--I could never prove it to them that I and no one else was
+entitled to it. But for you, dear M. Ratichon," added the cruel and
+shameless one, "I should indeed never have succeeded."
+
+In the midst of this overwhelming cataclysm I am proud to say that I
+retained mastery over my rage and contrived to say with perfect calm:
+
+"But why have deceived me, Mademoiselle? Why have kept your marriage a
+secret from me? Was I not toiling and working and risking my life for
+you?"
+
+"And would you have worked quite so enthusiastically for me," queried
+the false one archly, "if I had told you everything?"
+
+I groaned. Perhaps she was right. I don't know.
+
+I took the thousand francs and never saw M. and Mme. Cazales again.
+
+But I met Ma'ame Dupont by accident soon after. She has left Mr.
+Farewell's service.
+
+She still weighs one hundred kilos.
+
+I often call on her of an evening.
+
+Ah, well!
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ON THE BRINK
+
+
+
+1.
+
+You would have thought that after the shameful way in which Theodore
+treated me in the matter of the secret treaty that I would then and
+there have turned him out of doors, sent him back to grub for scraps
+out of the gutter, and hardened my heart once and for all against that
+snake in the grass whom I had nurtured in my bosom.
+
+But, as no doubt you have remarked ere this, I have been burdened by
+Nature with an over-sensitive heart. It is a burden, my dear Sir, and
+though I have suffered inexpressibly under it, I nevertheless agree
+with the English poet, George Crabbe, whose works I have read with a
+great deal of pleasure and profit in the original tongue, and who
+avers in one of his inimitable "Tales" that it is "better to love
+amiss than nothing to have loved."
+
+Not that I loved Theodore, you understand? But he and I had shared so
+many ups and downs together of late that I was loath to think of him
+as reduced to begging his bread in the streets. Then I kept him by me,
+for I thought that he might at times be useful to me in my business.
+
+I kept him to my hurt, as you will presently see.
+
+In those days--I am now speaking of the time immediately following the
+Restoration of our beloved King Louis XVIII to the throne of his
+forbears--Parisian society was, as it were, divided into two distinct
+categories: those who had become impoverished by the revolution and
+the wars of the Empire, and those who had made their fortunes thereby.
+Among the former was M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, a handsome young
+officer of cavalry; and among the latter was one Mauruss Mosenstein, a
+usurer of the Jewish persuasion, whose wealth was reputed in millions,
+and who had a handsome daughter biblically named Rachel, who a year
+ago had become Madame la Marquise de Firmin-Latour.
+
+From the first moment that this brilliant young couple appeared upon
+the firmament of Parisian society I took a keen interest in all their
+doings. In those days, you understand, it was in the essence of my
+business to know as much as possible of the private affairs of people
+in their position, and instinct had at once told me that in the case
+of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour such knowledge might prove very
+remunerative.
+
+Thus I very soon found out that M. le Marquis had not a single louis
+of his own to bless himself with, and that it was Papa Mosenstein's
+millions that kept up the young people's magnificent establishment in
+the Rue de Grammont.
+
+I also found out that Mme. la Marquise was some dozen years older than
+Monsieur, and that she had been a widow when she married him. There
+were rumours that her first marriage had not been a happy one. The
+husband, M. le Compte de Naquet, had been a gambler and a spendthrift,
+and had dissipated as much of his wife's fortune as he could lay his
+hands on, until one day he went off on a voyage to America, or
+goodness knows where, and was never heard of again. Mme. la Comtesse,
+as she then was, did not grieve over her loss; indeed, she returned to
+the bosom of her family, and her father--a shrewd usurer, who had
+amassed an enormous fortune during the wars--succeeded, with the aid
+of his apparently bottomless moneybags, in having his first son-in-law
+declared deceased by Royal decree, so as to enable the beautiful
+Rachel to contract another, yet more brilliant alliance, as far as
+name and lineage were concerned, with the Marquis de Firmin-Latour.
+
+Indeed, I learned that the worthy Israelite's one passion was the
+social advancement of his daughter, whom he worshipped. So, as soon as
+the marriage was consummated and the young people were home from their
+honeymoon, he fitted up for their use the most extravagantly sumptuous
+apartment Paris had ever seen. Nothing seemed too good or too
+luxurious for Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour. He desired her to cut
+a brilliant figure in Paris society--nay, to be the Ville Lumiere's
+brightest and most particular star. After the town house he bought a
+chateau in the country, horses and carriages, which he placed at the
+disposal of the young couple; he kept up an army of servants for them,
+and replenished their cellars with the choicest wines. He threw money
+about for diamonds and pearls which his daughter wore, and paid all
+his son-in-law's tailors' and shirt-makers' bills. But always the
+money was his, you understand? The house in Paris was his, so was the
+chateau on the Loire; he lent them to his daughter. He lent her the
+diamonds, and the carriages, and the boxes at the opera and the
+Francais. But here his generosity ended. He had been deceived in his
+daughter's first husband; some of the money which he had given her had
+gone to pay the gambling debts of an unscrupulous spendthrift. He was
+determined that this should not occur again. A man might spend his
+wife's money--indeed, the law placed most of it at his disposal in
+those days--but he could not touch or mortgage one sou that belonged
+to his father-in-law. And, strangely enough, Mme. la Marquise de
+Firmin-Latour acquiesced and aided her father in his determination.
+Whether it was the Jewish blood in her, or merely obedience to old
+Mosenstein's whim, it were impossible to say. Certain it is that out
+of the lavish pin-money which her father gave her as a free gift from
+time to time, she only doled out a meagre allowance to her husband,
+and although she had everything she wanted, M. le Marquis on his side
+had often less than twenty francs in his pocket.
+
+A very humiliating position, you will admit, Sir, for a dashing young
+cavalry officer. Often have I seen him gnawing his finger-nails with
+rage when, at the end of a copious dinner in one of the fashionable
+restaurants--where I myself was engaged in a business capacity to
+keep an eye on possibly light-fingered customers--it would be Mme. la
+Marquise who paid the bill, even gave the pourboire to the waiter. At
+such times my heart would be filled with pity for his misfortunes,
+and, in my own proud and lofty independence, I felt that I did not
+envy him his wife's millions.
+
+Of course, he borrowed from every usurer in the city for as long as
+they would lend him any money; but now he was up to his eyes in debt,
+and there was not a Jew inside France who would have lent him one
+hundred francs.
+
+You see, his precarious position was as well known as were his
+extravagant tastes and the obstinate parsimoniousness of M.
+Mosenstein.
+
+But such men as M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, you understand, Sir,
+are destined by Nature first and by fortuitous circumstances
+afterwards to become the clients of men of ability like myself. I knew
+that sooner or later the elegant young soldier would be forced to seek
+the advice of someone wiser than himself, for indeed his present
+situation could not last much longer. It would soon be "sink" with
+him, for he could no longer "swim."
+
+And I was determined that when that time came he should turn to me as
+the drowning man turns to the straw.
+
+So where M. le Marquis went in public I went, when possible. I was
+biding my time, and wisely too, as you will judge.
+
+
+
+2.
+
+Then one day our eyes met: not in a fashionable restaurant, I may tell
+you, but in a discreet one situated on the slopes of Montmartre. I was
+there alone, sipping a cup of coffee after a frugal dinner. I had
+drifted in there chiefly because I had quite accidentally caught sight
+of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour walking arm-in-arm up the Rue Lepic
+with a lady who was both youthful and charming--a well-known dancer at
+the opera. Presently I saw him turn into that discreet little
+restaurant, where, in very truth, it was not likely that Mme. la
+Marquise would follow him. But I did. What made me do it, I cannot
+say; but for some time now it had been my wish to make the personal
+acquaintance of M. de Firmin-Latour, and I lost no opportunity which
+might help me to attain this desire.
+
+Somehow the man interested me. His social and financial position was
+peculiar, you will admit, and here, methought, was the beginning of an
+adventure which might prove the turning-point in his career and . . .
+my opportunity. I was not wrong, as you will presently see. Whilst
+silently eating my simple dinner, I watched M. de Firmin-Latour.
+
+He had started the evening by being very gay; he had ordered champagne
+and a succulent meal, and chatted light-heartedly with his companion,
+until presently three young women, flashily dressed, made noisy
+irruption into the restaurant.
+
+M. de Firmin-Latour's friend hailed them, introduced them to him, and
+soon he was host, not to one lady, but to four, and instead of two
+dinners he had to order five, and more champagne, and then
+dessert--peaches, strawberries, bonbons, liqueurs, flowers, and what
+not, until I could see that the bill which presently he would be
+called upon to pay would amount to far more than his quarterly
+allowance from Mme. la Marquise, far more, presumably, than he had in
+his pocket at the present moment.
+
+My brain works with marvellous rapidity, as you know. Already I had
+made up my mind to see the little comedy through to the end, and I
+watched with a good deal of interest and some pity the clouds of
+anxiety gathering over M. de Firmin-Latour's brow.
+
+The dinner party lasted some considerable time; then the inevitable
+cataclysm occurred. The ladies were busy chattering and rouging their
+lips when the bill was presented. They affected to see and hear
+nothing: it is a way ladies have when dinner has to be paid for; but I
+saw and heard everything. The waiter stood by, silent and obsequious
+at first, whilst M. le Marquis hunted through all his pockets. Then
+there was some whispered colloquy, and the waiter's attitude lost
+something of its correct dignity. After that the proprietor was
+called, and the whispered colloquy degenerated into altercation,
+whilst the ladies--not at all unaware of the situation--giggled
+amongst themselves. Finally, M. le Marquis offered a promissory note,
+which was refused.
+
+Then it was that our eyes met. M. de Firmin-Latour had flushed to the
+roots of his hair. His situation was indeed desperate, and my
+opportunity had come. With consummate sang-froid, I advanced towards
+the agitated group composed of M. le Marquis, the proprietor, and the
+head waiter. I glanced at the bill, the cause of all this turmoil,
+which reposed on a metal salver in the head waiter's hand, and with a
+brief:
+
+"If M. le Marquis will allow me . . ." I produced my pocket-book.
+
+The bill was for nine hundred francs.
+
+At first M. le Marquis thought that I was about to pay it--and so did
+the proprietor of the establishment, who made a movement as if he
+would lie down on the floor and lick my boots. But not so. To begin
+with, I did not happen to possess nine hundred francs, and if I did, I
+should not Have been fool enough to lend them to this young
+scapegrace. No! What I did was to extract from my notebook a card, one
+of a series which I always keep by me in case of an emergency like the
+present one. It bore the legend: "Comte Hercule de Montjoie,
+secretaire particulier de M. le Duc d'Otrante," and below it the
+address, "Palais du Commissariat de Police, 12 Quai d'Orsay." This
+card I presented with a graceful flourish of the arm to the proprietor
+of the establishment, whilst I said with that lofty self-assurance
+which is one of my finest attributes and which I have never seen
+equalled:
+
+"M. le Marquis is my friend. I will be guarantee for this trifling
+amount."
+
+The proprietor and head waiter stammered excuses. Private secretary of
+M. le Duc d'Otrante! Think of it! It is not often that such personages
+deign to frequent the .restaurants of Montmartre. M. le Marquis, on
+the other hand, looked completely bewildered, whilst I, taking
+advantage of the situation, seized him familiarly by the arm, and
+leading him toward the door, I said with condescending urbanity:
+
+"One word with you, my dear Marquis. It is so long since we have met."
+
+I bowed to the ladies.
+
+"Mesdames," I said, and was gratified to see that they followed my
+dramatic exit with eyes of appreciation and of wonder. The proprietor
+himself offered me my hat, and a moment or two later M. de
+Firmin-Latour and I were out together in the Rue Lepic.
+
+"My dear Comte," he said as soon as he had recovered his breath, "how
+can I think you? . . ."
+
+"Not now, Monsieur, not now," I replied. "You have only just time to
+make your way as quickly as you can back to your palace in the Rue de
+Grammont before our friend the proprietor discovers the several
+mistakes which he has made in the past few minutes and vents his wrath
+upon your fair guests."
+
+"You are right," he rejoined lightly. "But I will have the pleasure to
+call on you to-morrow at the Palais du Commissariat."
+
+"Do no such thing, Monsieur le Marquis," I retorted with a pleasant
+laugh. "You would not find me there."
+
+"But--" he stammered.
+
+"But," I broke in with my wonted business-like and persuasive manner,
+"if you think that I have conducted this delicate affair for you with
+tact and discretion, then, in your own interest I should advise you to
+call on me at my private office, No. 96 Rue Daunou. Hector Ratichon,
+at your service."
+
+He appeared more bewildered than ever.
+
+"Rue Daunou," he murmured. "Ratichon!"
+
+"Private inquiry and confidential agent," I rejoined. "My brains are
+at your service should you desire to extricate yourself from the
+humiliating financial position in which it has been my good luck to
+find you, and yours to meet with me."
+
+With that I left him, Sir, to walk away or stay as he pleased. As for
+me, I went quickly down the street. I felt that the situation was
+absolutely perfect; to have spoken another word might have spoilt it.
+Moreover, there was no knowing how soon the proprietor of that humble
+hostelry would begin to have doubts as to the identity of the private
+secretary of M. le Duc d'Otrante. So I was best out of the way.
+
+
+
+3.
+
+The very next day M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour called upon me at my
+office in the Rue Daunou. Theodore let him in, and the first thing
+that struck me about him was his curt, haughty manner and the look of
+disdain wherewith he regarded the humble appointments of my business
+premises. He himself was magnificently dressed, I may tell you. His
+bottle-green coat was of the finest cloth and the most perfect cut I
+had ever seen. His kerseymere pantaloons fitted him without a wrinkle.
+He wore gloves, he carried a muff of priceless zibeline, and in his
+cravat there was a diamond the size of a broad bean.
+
+He also carried a malacca cane, which he deposited upon my desk, and a
+gold-rimmed spy-glass which, with a gesture of supreme affectation, he
+raised to his eye.
+
+"Now, M. Hector Ratichon," he said abruptly, "perhaps you will be good
+enough to explain."
+
+I had risen when he entered. But now I sat down again and coolly
+pointed to the best chair in the room.
+
+"Will you give yourself the trouble to sit down, M. le Marquis?" I
+riposted blandly.
+
+He called me names--rude names! but I took no notice of that . . . and
+he sat down.
+
+"Now!" he said once more.
+
+"What is it you desire to know, M. le Marquis?" I queried.
+
+"Why you interfered in my affairs last night?"
+
+"Do you complain?" I asked.
+
+"No," he admitted reluctantly, "but I don't understand your object."
+
+"My object was to serve you then," I rejoined quietly, "and later."
+
+"What do you mean by 'later'?"
+
+"To-day," I replied, "to-morrow; whenever your present position
+becomes absolutely unendurable."
+
+"It is that now," he said with a savage oath.
+
+"I thought as much," was my curt comment.
+
+"And do you mean to assert," he went on more earnestly, "that you can
+find a way out of it?"
+
+"If you desire it--yes!" I said.
+
+"How?"
+
+He drew his chair nearer to my desk, and I leaned forward, with my
+elbows on the table, the finger-tips of one hand in contact with those
+of the other.
+
+"Let us begin by reviewing the situation, shall we, Monsieur?" I
+began.
+
+"If you wish," he said curtly.
+
+"You are a gentleman of refined, not to say luxurious tastes, who
+finds himself absolutely without means to gratify them. Is that so?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"You have a wife and a father-in-law who, whilst lavishing costly
+treasures upon you, leave you in a humiliating dependence on them for
+actual money."
+
+Again he nodded approvingly.
+
+"Human nature," I continued with gentle indulgence, "being what it is,
+you pine after what you do not possess--namely, money. Houses,
+equipages, servants, even good food and wine, are nothing to you
+beside that earnest desire for money that you can call your own, and
+which, if only you had it, you could spend at your pleasure."
+
+"To the point, man, to the point!" he broke in impatiently.
+
+"One moment, M. le Marquis, and I have done. But first of all, with
+your permission, shall we also review the assets in your life which we
+will have to use in order to arrive at the gratification of your
+earnest wish?"
+
+"Assets? What do you mean?"
+
+"The means to our end. You want money; we must find the means to get
+it for you."
+
+"I begin to understand," he said, and drew his chair another inch or
+two closer to me.
+
+"Firstly, M. le Marquis," I resumed, and now my voice had become
+earnest and incisive, "firstly you have a wife, then you have a
+father-in-law whose wealth is beyond the dreams of humble people like
+myself, and whose one great passion in life is the social position of
+the daughter whom he worships. Now," I added, and with the tip of my
+little finger I touched the sleeve of my aristocratic client, "here at
+once is your first asset. Get at the money-bags of papa by threatening
+the social position of his daughter."
+
+Whereupon my young gentleman jumped to his feet and swore and abused
+me for a mudlark and a muckworm and I don't know what. He seized his
+malacca cane and threatened me with it, and asked me how the devil I
+dared thus to speak of Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour. He cursed,
+and he stormed and he raved of his sixteen quarterings and of my
+loutishness. He did everything in fact except walk out of the room.
+
+I let him go on quite quietly. It was part of his programme, and we
+had to go through the performance. As soon as he gave me the chance of
+putting in a word edgeways I rejoined quietly:
+
+"We are not going to hurt Madame la Marquise, Monsieur; and if you do
+not want the money, let us say no more about it."
+
+Whereupon he calmed down; after a while he sat down again, this time
+with his cane between his knees and its ivory knob between his teeth.
+
+"Go on," he said curtly.
+
+Nor did he interrupt me again whilst I expounded my scheme to him--one
+that, mind you, I had evolved during the night, knowing well that I
+should receive his visit during the day; and I flatter myself that no
+finer scheme for the bleeding of a parsimonious usurer was ever
+devised by any man.
+
+If it succeeded--and there was no reason why it should not--M. de
+Firmin-Latour would pocket a cool half-million, whilst I, sir, the
+brain that had devised the whole scheme, pronounced myself satisfied
+with the paltry emolument of one hundred thousand francs, out of
+which, remember, I should have to give Theodore a considerable sum.
+
+We talked it all over, M. le Marquis and I, the whole afternoon. I may
+tell you at once that he was positively delighted with the plan, and
+then and there gave me one hundred francs out of his own meagre purse
+for my preliminary expenses.
+
+The next morning we began work.
+
+I had begged M. le Marquis to find the means of bringing me a few
+scraps of the late M. le Comte de Naquet's--Madame la Marquise's
+first husband--handwriting. This, fortunately, he was able to do. They
+were a few valueless notes penned at different times by the deceased
+gentleman and which, luckily for us all, Madame had not thought it
+worth while to keep under lock and key.
+
+I think I told you before, did I not? what a marvellous expert I am in
+every kind of calligraphy, and soon I had a letter ready which was to
+represent the first fire in the exciting war which we were about to
+wage against an obstinate lady and a parsimonious usurer.
+
+My identity securely hidden under the disguise of a commissionnaire, I
+took that letter to Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour's sumptuous
+abode in the Rue de Grammont.
+
+M. le Marquis, you understand, had in the meanwhile been thoroughly
+primed in the role which he was to play; as for Theodore, I thought it
+best for the moment to dispense with his aid.
+
+The success of our first skirmish surpassed our expectations.
+
+Ten minutes after the letter had been taken upstairs to Mme. la
+Marquise, one of the maids, on going past her mistress's door, was
+startled to hear cries and moans proceeding from Madame's room. She
+entered and found Madame lying on the sofa, her face buried in the
+cushions, and sobbing and screaming in a truly terrifying manner. The
+maid applied the usual restoratives, and after a while Madame became
+more calm and at once very curtly ordered the maid out of the room.
+
+M. le Marquis, on being apprised of this mysterious happening, was
+much distressed; he hurried to his wife's apartments, and was as
+gentle and loving with her as he had been in the early days of their
+honeymoon. But throughout the whole of that evening, and, indeed, for
+the next two days, all the explanation that he could get from Madame
+herself was that she had a headache and that the letter which she had
+received that afternoon was of no consequence and had nothing to do
+with her migraine.
+
+But clearly the beautiful Rachel was extraordinarily agitated. At
+night she did not sleep, but would pace up and down her apartments in
+a state bordering on frenzy, which of course caused M. le Marquis a
+great deal of anxiety and of sorrow.
+
+Finally, on the Friday morning it seemed as if Madame could contain
+herself no longer. She threw herself into her husband's arms and
+blurted out the whole truth. M. le Comte de Naquet, her first husband,
+who had been declared drowned at sea, and therefore officially
+deceased by Royal decree, was not dead at all. Madame had received a
+letter from him wherein he told her that he had indeed suffered
+shipwreck, then untold misery on a desert island for three years,
+until he had been rescued by a passing vessel, and finally been able,
+since he was destitute, to work his way back to France and to Paris.
+Here he had lived for the past few months as best he could, trying to
+collect together a little money so as to render himself presentable
+before his wife, whom he had never ceased to love.
+
+Inquiries discreetly conducted had revealed the terrible truth, that
+Madame had been faithless to him, had light-heartedly assumed the
+death of her husband, and had contracted what was nothing less than a
+bigamous marriage. Now he, M. de Naquet, standing on his rights as
+Rachel Mosenstein's only lawful husband, demanded that she should
+return to him, and as a prelude to a permanent and amicable
+understanding, she was to call at three o'clock precisely on the
+following Friday at No. 96 Rue Daunou, where their reconciliation and
+reunion was to take place.
+
+The letter announcing this terrible news and making this preposterous
+demand she now placed in the hands of M. le Marquis, who at first was
+horrified and thunderstruck, and appeared quite unable to deal with
+the situation or to tender advice. For Madame it meant complete social
+ruin, of course, and she herself declared that she would never survive
+such a scandal. Her tears and her misery made the loving heart of M.
+le Marquis bleed in sympathy. He did all he could to console and
+comfort the lady, whom, alas! he could no longer look upon as his
+wife. Then, gradually, both he and she became more composed. It was
+necessary above all things to make sure that Madame was not being
+victimized by an impostor, and for this purpose M. le Marquis
+generously offered himself as a disinterested friend and adviser. He
+offered to go himself to the Rue Daunou at the hour appointed and to
+do his best to induce M. le Comte de Naquet--if indeed he existed--to
+forgo his rights on the lady who had so innocently taken on the name
+and hand of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour. Somewhat more calm, but
+still unconsoled, the beautiful Rachel accepted this generous offer. I
+believe that she even found five thousand francs in her privy purse
+which was to be offered to M. de Naquet in exchange for a promise
+never to worry Mme. la Marquise again with his presence. But this I
+have never been able to ascertain with any finality. Certain it is
+that when at three o'clock on that same afternoon M. de Firmin-Latour
+presented himself at my office, he did not offer me a share in any
+five thousand francs, though he spoke to me about the money, adding
+that he thought it would look well if he were to give it back to
+Madame, and to tell her that M. de Naquet had rejected so paltry a sum
+with disdain.
+
+I thought such a move unnecessary, and we argued about it rather
+warmly, and in the end he went away, as I say, without offering me any
+share in the emolument. Whether he did put his project into execution
+or not I never knew. He told me that he did. After that there followed
+for me, Sir, many days, nay, weeks, of anxiety and of strenuous work.
+Mme. la Marquise received several more letters from the supposititious
+M. de Naquet, any one of which would have landed me, Sir, in a vessel
+bound for New Caledonia. The discarded husband became more and more
+insistent as time went on, and finally sent an ultimatum to Madame
+saying that he was tired of perpetual interviews with M. le Marquis de
+Firmin-Latour, whose right to interfere in the matter he now wholly
+denied, and that he was quite determined to claim his lawful wife
+before the whole world.
+
+Madame la Marquise, in the meanwhile, had passed from one fit of
+hysterics into another. She denied her door to everyone and lived in
+the strictest seclusion in her beautiful apartment of the Rue de
+Grammont. Fortunately this all occurred in the early autumn, when the
+absence of such a society star from fashionable gatherings was not as
+noticeable as it otherwise would have been. But clearly we were
+working up for the climax, which occurred in the way I am about to
+relate.
+
+
+
+4.
+
+Ah, my dear Sir, when after all these years I think of my adventure
+with that abominable Marquis, righteous and noble indignation almost
+strikes me dumb. To think that with my own hands and brains I
+literally put half a million into that man's pocket, and that he
+repaid me with the basest ingratitude, almost makes me lose my faith
+in human nature. Theodore, of course, I could punish, and did so
+adequately; and where my chastisement failed, Fate herself put the
+finishing touch.
+
+But M. de Firmin-Latour . . .!
+
+However, you shall judge for yourself.
+
+As I told you, we now made ready for the climax; and that climax, Sir,
+I can only describe as positively gorgeous. We began by presuming that
+Mme. la Marquise had now grown tired of incessant demands for
+interviews and small doles of money, and that she would be willing to
+offer a considerable sum to her first and only lawful husband in
+exchange for a firm guarantee that he would never trouble her again as
+long as she lived.
+
+We fixed the sum at half a million francs, and the guarantee was to
+take the form of a deed duly executed by a notary of repute and signed
+by the supposititious Comte de Naquet. A letter embodying the demand
+and offering the guarantee was thereupon duly sent to Mme. la
+Marquise, and she, after the usual attack of hysterics, duly confided
+the matter to M. de Firmin-Latour.
+
+The consultation between husband and wife on the deplorable subject
+was touching in the extreme; and I will give that abominable Marquis
+credit for playing his role in a masterly manner. At first he declared
+to his dear Rachel that he did not know what to suggest, for in truth
+she had nothing like half a million on which she could lay her hands.
+To speak of this awful pending scandal to Papa Mosenstein was not to
+be thought of. He was capable of repudiating the daughter altogether
+who was bringing such obloquy upon herself and would henceforth be of
+no use to him as a society star.
+
+As for himself in this terrible emergency, he, of course, had less
+than nothing, or his entire fortune would be placed--if he had one--at
+the feet of his beloved Rachel. To think that he was on the point of
+losing her was more than he could bear, and the idea that she would
+soon become the talk of every gossip-monger in society, and mayhap be
+put in prison for bigamy, wellnigh drove him crazy.
+
+What could be done in this awful perplexity he for one could not
+think, unless indeed his dear Rachel were willing to part with some of
+her jewellery; but no! he could not think of allowing her to make such
+a sacrifice.
+
+Whereupon Madame, like a drowning man, or rather woman, catching at a
+straw, bethought her of her emeralds. They were historic gems, once
+the property of the Empress Marie-Therese, and had been given to her
+on her second marriage by her adoring father. No, no! she would never
+miss them; she seldom wore them, for they were heavy and more valuable
+than elegant, and she was quite sure that at the Mont de Piete they
+would lend her five hundred thousand francs on them. Then gradually
+they could be redeemed before papa had become aware of their temporary
+disappearance. Madame would save the money out of the liberal
+allowance she received from him for pin-money. Anything, anything was
+preferable to this awful doom which hung over her head.
+
+But even so M. le Marquis demurred. The thought of his proud and
+fashionable Rachel going to the Mont de Piete to pawn her own jewels was
+not to be thought of. She would be seen, recognized, and the scandal
+would be as bad and worse than anything that loomed on the black horizon
+of her fate at this hour.
+
+What was to be done? What was to be done?
+
+Then M. le Marquis had a brilliant idea. He knew of a man, a very
+reliable, trustworthy man, attorney-at-law by profession, and
+therefore a man of repute, who was often obliged in the exercise of
+his profession to don various disguises when tracking criminals in the
+outlying quarters of Paris. M. le Marquis, putting all pride and
+dignity nobly aside in the interests of his adored Rachel, would
+borrow one of these disguises and himself go to the Mont de Piete with
+the emeralds, obtain the five hundred thousand francs, and remit them
+to the man whom he hated most in all the world, in exchange for the
+aforementioned guarantee.
+
+Madame la Marquise, overcome with gratitude, threw herself, in the
+midst of a flood of tears, into the arms of the man whom she no longer
+dared to call her husband, and so the matter was settled for the
+moment. M. le Marquis undertook to have the deed of guarantee drafted
+by the same notary of repute whom he knew, and, if Madame approved of
+it, the emeralds would then be converted into money, and the interview
+with M. le Comte de Naquet fixed for Wednesday, October 10th, at some
+convenient place, subsequently to be determined on--in all
+probability at the bureau of that same ubiquitous attorney-at-law, M.
+Hector Ratichon, at 96 Rue Daunon.
+
+All was going on excellently well, as you observe. I duly drafted the
+deed, and M. de Firmin-Latour showed it to Madame for her approval. It
+was so simply and so comprehensively worded that she expressed herself
+thoroughly satisfied with it, whereupon M. le Marquis asked her to
+write to her shameful persecutor in order to fix the date and hour for
+the exchange of the money against the deed duly signed and witnessed.
+M. le Marquis had always been the intermediary for her letters, you
+understand, and for the small sums of money which she had sent from
+time to time to the factitious M. de Naquet; now he was to be
+entrusted with the final negotiations which, though at a heavy cost,
+would bring security and happiness once more in the sumptuous palace
+of the Rue de Grammont.
+
+Then it was that the first little hitch occurred. Mme. la
+Marquise--whether prompted thereto by a faint breath of suspicion, or
+merely by natural curiosity--altered her mind about the appointment.
+She decided that M. le Marquis, having pledged the emeralds, should
+bring the money to her, and she herself would go to the bureau of M.
+Hector Ratichon in the Rue Daunou, there to meet M. de Naquet, whom
+she had not seen for seven years, but who had once been very dear to
+her, and herself fling in his face the five hundred thousand francs,
+the price of his silence and of her peace of mind.
+
+At once, as you perceive, the situation became delicate. To have
+demurred, or uttered more than a casual word of objection, would in
+the case of M. le Marquis have been highly impolitic. He felt that at
+once, the moment he raised his voice in protest: and when Madame
+declared herself determined he immediately gave up arguing the point.
+
+The trouble was that we had so very little time wherein to formulate
+new plans. Monsieur was to go the very next morning to the Mont de
+Piete to negotiate the emeralds, and the interview with the fabulous
+M. de Naquet was to take place a couple of hours later; and it was now
+three o'clock in the afternoon.
+
+As soon as M. de Firmin-Latour was able to leave his wife, he came
+round to my office. He appeared completely at his wits' end, not
+knowing what to do.
+
+"If my wife," he said, "insists on a personal interview with de
+Naquet, who does not exist, our entire scheme falls to the ground.
+Nay, worse! for I shall be driven to concoct some impossible
+explanation for the non-appearance of that worthy, and heaven only
+knows if I shall succeed in wholly allaying my wife's suspicions.
+
+"Ah!" he added with a sigh, "it is doubly hard to have seen fortune so
+near one's reach and then to see it dashed away at one fell swoop by
+the relentless hand of Fate."
+
+Not one word, you observe, of gratitude to me or of recognition of the
+subtle mind that had planned and devised the whole scheme.
+
+But, Sir, it is at the hour of supreme crises like the present one
+that Hector Ratichon's genius soars up to the empyrean. It became
+great, Sir; nothing short of great; and even the marvellous schemes of
+the Italian Macchiavelli paled before the ingenuity which I now
+displayed.
+
+Half an hour's reflection had sufficed. I had made my plans, and I had
+measured the full length of the terrible risks which I ran. Among
+these New Caledonia was the least. But I chose to take the risks, Sir;
+my genius could not stoop to measuring the costs of its flight. While
+M. de Firmin-Latour alternately raved and lamented I had already
+planned and contrived. As I say, we had very little time: a few hours
+wherein to render ourselves worthy of Fortune's smiles. And this is
+what I planned.
+
+You tell me that you were not in Paris during the year 1816 of which I
+speak. If you had been, you would surely recollect the sensation
+caused throughout the entire city by the disappearance of M. le
+Marquis de Firmin-Latour, one of the most dashing young officers in
+society and one of its acknowledged leaders. It was the 10th day of
+October. M. le Marquis had breakfasted in the company of Madame at
+nine o'clock. A couple of hours later he went out, saying he would be
+home for dejeuner. Madame clearly expected him, for his place was
+laid, and she ordered the dejeuner to be kept back over an hour in
+anticipation of his return. But he did not come. The afternoon wore on
+and he did not come. Madame sat down at two o'clock to dejeuner alone.
+She told the major-domo that M. le Marquis was detained in town and
+might not be home for some time. But the major-domo declared that
+Madame's voice, as she told him this, sounded tearful and forced, and
+that she ate practically nothing, refusing one succulent dish after
+another.
+
+The staff of servants was thus kept on tenterhooks all day, and when
+the shadows of evening began to draw in, the theory was started in the
+kitchen that M. le Marquis had either met with an accident or been
+foully murdered. No one, however, dared speak of this to Madame la
+Marquise, who had locked herself up in her room in the early part of
+the afternoon, and since then had refused to see anyone. The
+major-domo was now at his wits' end. He felt that in a measure the
+responsibility of the household rested upon his shoulders. Indeed he
+would have taken it upon himself to apprise M. Mauruss Mosenstein of
+the terrible happenings, only that the worthy gentleman was absent
+from Paris just then.
+
+Mme. la Marquise remained shut up in her room until past eight
+o'clock. Then she ordered dinner to be served and made pretence of
+sitting down to it; but again the major-domo declared that she ate
+nothing, whilst subsequently the confidential maid who had undressed
+her vowed that Madame had spent the whole night walking up and down
+the room.
+
+Thus two agonizing days went by; agonizing they were to everybody.
+Madame la Marquise became more and more agitated, more and more
+hysterical as time went on, and the servants could not help but notice
+this, even though she made light of the whole affair, and desperate
+efforts to control herself. The heads of her household, the
+major-domo, the confidential maid, the chef de cuisine, did venture to
+drop a hint or two as to the possibility of an accident or of foul
+play, and the desirability of consulting the police; but Madame would
+not hear a word of it; she became very angry at the suggestion, and
+declared that she was perfectly well aware of M. le Marquis's
+whereabouts, that he was well and would return home almost
+immediately.
+
+As was only natural, tongues presently began to wag. Soon it was
+common talk in Paris that M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour had
+disappeared from his home and that Madame was trying to put a bold
+face upon the occurrence. There were surmises and there was gossip--
+oh! interminable and long-winded gossip! Minute circumstances in
+connexion with M. le Marquis's private life and Mme. la Marquise's
+affairs were freely discussed in the cafes, the clubs and restaurants,
+and as no one knew the facts of the case, surmises soon became very
+wild.
+
+On the third day of M. le Marquis's disappearance Papa Mosenstein
+returned to Paris from Vichy, where he had just completed his annual
+cure. He arrived at Rue de Grammont at three o'clock in the afternoon,
+demanded to see Mme. la Marquise at once, and then remained closeted
+with her in her apartment for over an hour. After which he sent for
+the inspector of police of the section, with the result that that very
+same evening M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour was found locked up in an
+humble apartment on the top floor of a house in the Rue Daunou, not
+ten minutes' walk from his own house. When the police--acting on
+information supplied to them by M. Mauruss Mosenstein--forced their
+way into that apartment, they were horrified to find M. le Marquis de
+Firmin-Latour there, tied hand and foot with cords to a chair, his
+likely calls for help smothered by a woollen shawl wound loosely round
+the lower part of his face.
+
+He was half dead with inanition, and was conveyed speechless and
+helpless to his home in the Rue de Grammont, there, presumably, to be
+nursed back to health by Madame his wife.
+
+
+
+5.
+
+Now in all this matter, I ask you, Sir, who ran the greatest risk?
+Why, I--Hector Ratichon, of course--Hector Ratichon, in whose
+apartment M. de Firmin-Latour was discovered in a position bordering
+on absolute inanition. And the proof of this is, that that selfsame
+night I was arrested at my lodgings at Passy, and charged with robbery
+and attempted murder.
+
+It was a terrible predicament for a respectable citizen, a man of
+integrity and reputation, in which to find himself; but Papa
+Mosenstein was both tenacious and vindictive. His daughter, driven to
+desperation at last, and terrified that M. le Marquis had indeed been
+foully murdered by M. de Naquet, had made a clean breast of the whole
+affair to her father, and he in his turn had put the minions of the
+law in full possession of all the facts; and since M. le Comte de
+Naquet had vanished, leaving no manner of trace or clue of his person
+behind him, the police, needing a victim, fell back on an innocent
+man. Fortunately, Sir, that innocence clear as crystal soon shines
+through every calumny. But this was not before I had suffered terrible
+indignities and all the tortures which base ingratitude can inflict
+upon a sensitive heart.
+
+Such ingratitude as I am about to relate to you has never been
+equalled on this earth, and even after all these years, Sir, you see
+me overcome with emotion at the remembrance of it all. I was under
+arrest, remember, on a terribly serious charge, but, conscious of mine
+own innocence and of my unanswerable system of defence, I bore the
+preliminary examination by the juge d'instruc-tion with exemplary
+dignity and patience. I knew, you see, that at my very first
+confrontation with my supposed victim the latter would at once say:
+
+"Ah! but no! This is not the man who assaulted me."
+
+Our plan, which so far had been overwhelmingly successful, had been
+this.
+
+On the morning of the tenth, M. de Firmin-Latour having pawned the
+emeralds, and obtained the money for them, was to deposit that money
+in his own name at the bank of Raynal Freres and then at once go to
+the office in the Rue Daunou.
+
+There he would be met by Theodore, who would bind him comfortably but
+securely to a chair, put a shawl around his mouth and finally lock the
+door on him. Theodore would then go to his mother's and there remain
+quietly until I needed his services again.
+
+It had been thought inadvisable for me to be seen that morning
+anywhere in the neighbourhood of the Rue Daunou, but that perfidious
+reptile Theodore ran no risks in doing what he was told. To begin with
+he is a past master in the art of worming himself in and out of a
+house without being seen, and in this case it was his business to
+exercise a double measure of caution. And secondly, if by some unlucky
+chance the police did subsequently connect him with the crime, there
+was I, his employer, a man of integrity and repute, prepared to swear
+that the man had been in my company at the other end of Paris all the
+while that M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour was, by special arrangement,
+making use of my office in the Rue Daunou, which I had lent him for
+purposes of business.
+
+Finally it was agreed between us that when M. le Marquis would
+presently be questioned by the police as to the appearance of the man
+who had assaulted and robbed him, he would describe him as tall and
+blond, almost like an Angliche in countenance. Now I possess--as you
+see, Sir--all the finest characteristics of the Latin race, whilst
+Theodore looks like nothing on earth, save perhaps a cross between a
+rat and a monkey.
+
+I wish you to realize, therefore, that no one ran any risks in this
+affair excepting myself. I, as the proprietor of the apartment where
+the assault was actually supposed to have taken place, did run a very
+grave risk, because I could never have proved an alibi. Theodore was
+such a disreputable mudlark that his testimony on my behalf would have
+been valueless. But with sublime sacrifice I accepted these risks, and
+you will presently see, Sir, how I was repaid for my selflessness. I
+pined in a lonely prison-cell while these two limbs of Satan concocted
+a plot to rob me of my share in our mutual undertaking.
+
+Well, Sir, the day came when I was taken from my prison-cell for the
+purpose of being confronted with the man whom I was accused of having
+assaulted. As you will imagine, I was perfectly calm. According to our
+plan the confrontation would be the means of setting me free at once.
+I was conveyed to the house in the Rue de Grammont, and here I was
+kept waiting for some little time while the juge d'instruction went in
+to prepare M. le Marquis, who was still far from well. Then I was
+introduced into the sick-room. I looked about me with the perfect
+composure of an innocent man about to be vindicated, and calmly gazed
+on the face of the sick man who was sitting up in his magnificent bed,
+propped up with pillows.
+
+I met his glance firmly whilst M. le Juge d'instruction placed the
+question to him in a solemn and earnest tone:
+
+"M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, will you look at the prisoner before
+you and tell us whether you recognize in him the man who assaulted
+you?"
+
+And that perfidious Marquis, Sir, raised his eyes and looked me
+squarely--yes! squarely--in the face and said with incredible
+assurance:
+
+"Yes, Monsieur le Juge, that is the man! I recognize him."
+
+To me it seemed then as if a thunderbolt had crashed through the
+ceiling and exploded at my feet. I was like one stunned and dazed; the
+black ingratitude, the abominable treachery, completely deprived me of
+speech. I felt choked, as if some poisonous effluvia--the poison, Sir,
+of that man's infamy--had got into my throat. That state of inertia
+lasted, I believe, less than a second; the next I had uttered a hoarse
+cry of noble indignation.
+
+"You vampire, you!" I exclaimed. "You viper! You . . ."
+
+I would have thrown myself on him and strangled him with glee, but
+that the minions of the law had me by the arms and dragged me away out
+of the hateful presence of that traitor, despite my objurgations and
+my protestations of innocence. Imagine my feelings when I found myself
+once more in a prison-cell, my heart filled with unspeakable
+bitterness against that perfidious Judas. Can you wonder that it took
+me some time before I could collect my thoughts sufficiently to review
+my situation, which no doubt to the villain himself who had just
+played me this abominable trick must have seemed desperate indeed? Ah!
+I could see it all, of course! He wanted to> see me sent to New
+Caledonia, whilst he enjoyed the fruits of his unpardonable
+backsliding. In order to retain the miserable hundred thousand francs
+which he had promised me he did not hesitate to plunge up to the neck
+in this heinous conspiracy.
+
+Yes, conspiracy! for the very next day, when I was once more hailed
+before the juge d'instruction, another confrontation awaited me: this
+time with that scurvy rogue Theodore. He had been suborned by M. le
+Marquis to turn against the hand that fed him. What price he was paid
+for this Judas trick I shall never know, and all that I do know is
+that he actually swore before the juge d'instruction that M. le
+Marquis de Firmin-Latour called at my office in the late forenoon of
+the tenth of October; that I then ordered him--Theodore--to go out to
+get his dinner first, and then to go all the way over to Neuilly with
+a message to someone who turned out to be non-existent. He went on to
+assert that when he returned at six o'clock in the afternoon he found
+the office door locked, and I--his employer--presumably gone. This at
+first greatly upset him, because he was supposed to sleep on the
+premises, but seeing that there was nothing for it but to accept the
+inevitable, he went round to his mother's rooms at the back of the
+fish-market and remained there ever since, waiting to hear from me.
+
+That, Sir, was the tissue of lies which that jailbird had concocted
+for my undoing, knowing well that I could not disprove them because it
+had been my task on that eventful morning to keep an eye on M. le
+Marquis whilst he went to the Mont de Piete first, and then to MM.
+Raynal Freres, the bankers where he deposited the money. For this
+purpose I had been obliged to don a disguise, which I had not
+discarded till later in the day, and thus was unable to disprove
+satisfactorily the monstrous lies told by that perjurer.
+
+Ah! I can see that sympathy for my unmerited misfortunes has filled
+your eyes with tears. No doubt in your heart you feel that my
+situation at that hour was indeed desperate, and that I--Hector
+Ratichon, the confidant of kings, the benefactor of the oppressed--did
+spend the next few years of my life in a penal settlement, where those
+arch-malefactors themselves should have been. But no, Sir! Fate may be
+a fickle jade, rogues may appear triumphant, but not for long, Sir,
+not for long! It is brains that conquer in the end . . . brains backed
+by righteousness and by justice.
+
+Whether I had actually foreseen the treachery of those two
+rattlesnakes, or whether my habitual caution and acumen alone prompted
+me to take those measures of precaution of which I am about to tell
+you, I cannot truthfully remember. Certain it is that I did take those
+precautions which ultimately proved to be the means of compensating me
+for most that I had suffered.
+
+It had been a part of the original plan that, on the day immediately
+following the tenth of October, I, in my own capacity as Hector
+Ratichon, who had been absent from my office for twenty-four hours,
+would arrive there in the morning, find the place locked, force an
+entrance into the apartment, and there find M. le Marquis in his
+pitiable plight. After which I would, of course, immediately notify
+the police of the mysterious occurrence.
+
+That had been the role which I had intended to play. M. le Marquis
+approved of it and had professed himself quite willing to endure a
+twenty-four-hours' martyrdom for the sake of half a million francs. But,
+as I have just had the honour to tell you, something which I will not
+attempt to explain prompted me at the last moment to modify my plan in
+one little respect. I thought it too soon to go back to the Rue Daunou
+within twenty-four hours of our well-contrived coup, and I did not
+altogether care for the idea of going myself to the police in order to
+explain to them that I had found a man gagged and bound in my office.
+The less one has to do with these minions of the law the better. Mind
+you, I had envisaged the possibility of being accused of assault and
+robbery, but I did not wish to take, as it were, the very first steps
+myself in that direction. You might call this a matter of sentiment or
+of prudence, as you wish.
+
+So I waited until the evening of the second day before I got the key
+from Theodore. Then before the concierge at 96 Rue Daunou had closed
+the porte-cochere for the night, I slipped into the house unobserved,
+ran up the stairs to my office and entered the apartment. I struck a
+light and made my way to the inner room where the wretched Marquis
+hung in the chair like a bundle of rags. I called to him, but he made
+no movement. As I had anticipated, he had fainted for want of food. Of
+course, I was very sorry for him, for his plight was pitiable, but he
+was playing for high stakes, and a little starvation does no man any
+harm. In his case there was half a million at the end of his brief
+martyrdom, which could, at worst, only last another twenty-four hours.
+I reckoned that Mme. la Marquise could not keep the secret of her
+husband's possible whereabouts longer than that, and in any event I was
+determined that, despite all risks, I would go myself to the police on
+the following day.
+
+In the meanwhile, since I was here and since M. le Marquis was
+unconscious, I proceeded then and there to take the precaution which
+prudence had dictated, and without which, seeing this man's treachery
+and Theodore's villainy, I should undoubtedly have ended my days as a
+convict. What I did was to search M. le Marquis's pockets for anything
+that might subsequently prove useful to me.
+
+I had no definite idea in the matter, you understand; but I had vague
+notions of finding the bankers' receipt for the half-million francs.
+
+Well, I did not find that, but I did find the receipt from the Mont de
+Piete for a parure of emeralds on which half a million francs had been
+lent. This I carefully put away in my waistcoat pocket, but as there
+was nothing else I wished to do just then I extinguished the light and
+made my way cautiously out of the apartment and out of the house. No
+one had seen me enter or go out, and M. le Marquis had not stirred
+while I went through his pockets.
+
+
+6.
+
+That, Sir, was the precaution which I had taken in order to safeguard
+myself against the machinations of traitors. And see how right I was;
+see how hopeless would have been my plight at this hour when Theodore,
+too, turned against me like the veritable viper that he was. I never
+really knew when and under what conditions the infamous bargain was
+struck which was intended to deprive me of my honour and of my
+liberty, nor do I know what emolument Theodore was to receive for his
+treachery. Presumably the two miscreants arranged it all some time
+during that memorable morning of the tenth even whilst I was risking
+my life in their service.
+
+As for M. de Firmin-Latour, that worker of iniquity who, in order to
+save a paltry hundred thousand francs from the hoard which I had
+helped him to acquire, did not hesitate to commit such an abominable
+crime, he did not long remain in the enjoyment of his wealth or of his
+peace of mind.
+
+The very next day I made certain statements before M. le Juge
+d'instruction with regard to M. Mauruss Mosenstein, which caused the
+former to summon the worthy Israelite to his bureau, there to be
+confronted with me. I had nothing more to lose, since those execrable
+rogues had already, as it were, tightened the rope about my neck, but
+I had a great deal to gain--revenge above all, and perhaps the
+gratitude of M. Mosenstein for opening his eyes to the rascality of
+his son-in-law.
+
+In a stream of eloquent words which could not fail to carry
+conviction, I gave then and there in the bureau of the juge
+d'instruction my version of the events of the past few weeks, from the
+moment when M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour came to consult me on the
+subject of his wife's first husband, until the hour when he tried to
+fasten an abominable crime upon me. I told how I had been deceived by
+my own employe, Theodore, a man whom I had rescued out of the gutter
+and loaded with gifts, how by dint of a clever disguise which would
+have deceived his own mother he had assumed the appearance and
+personality of M. le Comte de Naquet, first and only lawful lord of
+the beautiful Rachel Mosenstein. I told of the interviews in my
+office, my earnest desire to put an end to this abominable
+blackmailing by informing the police of the whole affair. I told of
+the false M. de Naquet's threats to create a gigantic scandal which
+would forever ruin the social position of the so-called Marquis de
+Firmin-Latour. I told of M. le Marquis's agonized entreaties, his
+prayers, supplications, that I would do nothing in the matter for the
+sake of an innocent lady who had already grievously suffered. I spoke
+of my doubts, my scruples, my desire to do what was just and what was
+right.
+
+A noble expose of the situation, Sir, you will admit. It left me hot
+and breathless. I mopped my head with a handkerchief and sank back,
+gasping, in the arms of the minions of the law. The juge d'instruction
+ordered my removal, not back to my prison-cell but into his own
+ante-room, where I presently collapsed upon a very uncomfortable bench
+and endured the additional humiliation of having a glass of water held
+to my lips. Water! when I had asked for a drink of wine as my throat
+felt parched after that lengthy effort at oratory.
+
+However, there I sat and waited patiently whilst, no doubt, M. le Juge
+d'Instruction and the noble Israelite were comparing notes as to their
+impression of my marvellous speech. I had not long to wait. Less than
+ten minutes later I was once more summoned into the presence of M. le
+Juge; and this time the minions of the law were ordered to remain in
+the antechamber. I thought this was of good augury; and I waited to
+hear M. le Juge give forth the order that would at once set me free.
+But it was M. Mosenstein who first addressed me, and in very truth
+surprise rendered me momentarily dumb when he did it thus:
+
+"Now then, you consummate rascal, when you have given up the receipt
+of the Mont de Piete which you stole out of M. le Marquis's pocket you
+may go and carry on your rogueries elsewhere and call yourself
+mightily lucky to have escaped so lightly."
+
+I assure you, Sir, that a feather would have knocked me down. The
+coarse insult, the wanton injustice, had deprived me of the use of my
+limbs and of my speech. Then the juge d'instruction proceeded dryly:
+
+"Now then, Ratichon, you have heard what M. Mauruss Mosenstein has
+been good enough to say to you. He did it with my approval and
+consent. I am prepared to give an _ordonnance de non-lieu_ in your
+favour which will have the effect of at once setting you free if you
+will restore to this gentleman here the Mont de Piete receipt which
+you appear to have stolen."
+
+"Sir," I said with consummate dignity in the face of this reiterated
+taunt, "I have stolen nothing--"
+
+M. le Juge's hand was already on the bell-pull.
+
+"Then," he said coolly, "I can ring for the gendarmes to take you back
+to the cells, and you will stand your trial for blackmail, theft,
+assault and robbery."
+
+I put up my hand with an elegant and perfectly calm gesture.
+
+"Your pardon, M. le Juge," I said with the gentle resignation of
+undeserved martyrdom, "I was about to say that when I re-visited my
+rooms in the Rue Daunou after a three days' absence, and found the
+police in possession, I picked up on the floor of my private room a
+white paper which on subsequent examination proved to be a receipt
+from the Mont de Piete for some valuable gems, and made out in the
+name of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour."
+
+"What have you done with it, you abominable knave?" the irascible old
+usurer rejoined roughly, and I regret to say that he grasped his
+malacca cane with ominous violence.
+
+But I was not to be thus easily intimidated.
+
+"Ah! voila, M. le Juge," I said with a shrug of the shoulders. "I have
+mislaid it. I do not know where it is."
+
+"If you do not find it," Mosenstein went on savagely, "you will find
+yourself on a convict ship before long."
+
+"In which case, no doubt," I retorted with suave urbanity, "the police
+will search my rooms where I lodge, and they will find the receipt
+from the Mont de Piete, which I had mislaid. And then the gossip will
+be all over Paris that Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour had to pawn
+her jewels in order to satisfy the exigencies of her first and only
+lawful husband who has since mysteriously disappeared; and some people
+will vow that he never came back from the Antipodes, whilst others--by
+far the most numerous--will shrug their shoulders and sigh: 'One never
+knows!' which will be exceedingly unpleasant for Mme. la Marquise."
+
+Both M. Mauruss Mosenstein and the juge d'instruc-tion said a great
+deal more that afternoon. I may say that their attitude towards me and
+the language that they used were positively scandalous. But I had
+become now the master of the situation and I could afford to ignore
+their insults. In the end everything was settled quite amicably. I
+agreed to dispose of the receipt from the Mont de Piete to M. Mauruss
+Mosenstein for the sum of two hundred francs, and for another hundred
+I would indicate to him the banking house where his precious
+son-in-law had deposited the half-million francs obtained for the
+emeralds. This latter information I would indeed have offered him
+gratuitously had he but known with what immense pleasure I thus put a
+spoke in that knavish Marquis's wheel of fortune.
+
+The worthy Israelite further agreed to pay me an annuity of two
+hundred francs so long as I kept silent upon the entire subject of
+Mme. la Marquise's first husband and of M. le Marquis's role in the
+mysterious affair of the Rue Daunou. For thus was the affair classed
+amongst the police records. No one outside the chief actors of the
+drama and M. le Juge d'Instruction ever knew the true history of how a
+dashing young cavalry officer came to be assaulted and left to starve
+for three days in the humble apartment of an attorney-at-law of
+undisputed repute. And no one outside the private bureau of M. le Juge
+d'Instruction ever knew what it cost the wealthy M. Mosenstein to have
+the whole affair "classed" and hushed up.
+
+As for me, I had three hundred francs as payment for work which I had
+risked my neck and my reputation to accomplish. Three hundred instead
+of the hundred thousand which I had so richly deserved: that, and a
+paltry two hundred francs a year, which was to cease the moment that
+as much as a rumour of the whole affair was breathed in public. As if
+I could help people talking!
+
+But M. le Marquis did not enjoy the fruits of his villainy, and I had
+again the satisfaction of seeing him gnaw his finger-nails with rage
+whenever the lovely Rachel paid for his dinner at fashionable
+restaurants. Indeed Papa Mosenstein tightened the strings of his
+money-bags even more securely than he had done in the past. Under
+threats of prosecution for theft and I know not what, he forced his
+son-in-law to disgorge that half-million which he had so pleasantly
+tucked away in the banking house of Raynal Freres, and I was indeed
+thankful that prudence had, on that memorable morning, suggested to me
+the advisability of dogging the Marquis's footsteps. I doubt not but
+what he knew whence had come the thunderbolt which had crushed his
+last hopes of an independent fortune, and no doubt too he does not
+cherish feelings of good will towards me.
+
+But this eventuality leaves me cold. He has only himself to thank for
+his misfortune. Everything would have gone well but for his treachery.
+We would have become affluent, he and I and Theodore. Theodore has
+gone to live with his mother, who has a fish-stall in the Halles; she
+gives him three sous a day for washing down the stall and selling the
+fish when it has become too odorous for the ordinary customers.
+
+And he might have had five hundred francs for himself and remained my
+confidential clerk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+CARISSIMO
+
+
+
+1.
+
+You must not think for a moment, my dear Sir, that I was ever actually
+deceived in Theodore. Was it likely that I, who am by temperament and
+habit accustomed to read human visages like a book, was it likely, I
+say, that I would fail to see craftiness in those pale, shifty eyes,
+deceit in the weak, slobbering mouth, intemperance in the whole aspect
+of the shrunken, slouchy figure which I had, for my subsequent sorrow,
+so generously rescued from starvation?
+
+Generous? I was more than generous to him. They say that the poor are
+the friends of the poor, and I told you how poor we were in those
+days! Ah! but poor! my dear Sir, you have no conception! Meat in Paris
+in the autumn of 1816 was 24 francs the kilo, and milk 1 franc the
+quarter litre, not to mention eggs and butter, which were delicacies
+far beyond the reach of cultured, well-born people like myself.
+
+And yet throughout that trying year I fed Theodore--yes, I fed him.
+He used to share onion pie with me whenever I partook of it, and he
+had haricot soup every day, into which I allowed him to boil the skins
+of all the sausages and the luscious bones of all the cutlets of which
+I happened to partake. Then think what he cost me in drink! Never
+could I leave a half or quarter bottle of wine but he would finish it;
+his impudent fingers made light of every lock and key. I dared not
+allow as much as a sou to rest in the pocket of my coat but he would
+ferret it out the moment I hung the coat up in the outer room and my
+back was turned for a few seconds. After a while I was forced--yes, I,
+Sir, who have spoken on terms of equality with kings--I was forced to
+go out and make my own purchases in the neighbouring provision shops.
+And why? Because if I sent Theodore and gave him a few sous wherewith
+to make these purchases, he would spend the money at the nearest
+cabaret in getting drunk on absinthe.
+
+He robbed me, Sir, shamefully, despite the fact that he had ten per
+cent, commission on all the profits of the firm. I gave him twenty
+francs out of the money which I had earned at the sweat of my brow in
+the service of Estelle Bachelier. Twenty francs, Sir! Reckoning two
+hundred francs as business profit on the affair, a generous provision
+you will admit! And yet he taunted me with having received a thousand.
+This was mere guesswork, of course, and I took no notice of his
+taunts: did the brains that conceived the business deserve no payment?
+Was my labour to be counted as dross?--the humiliation, the blows
+which I had to endure while he sat in hoggish content, eating and
+sleeping without thought for the morrow? After which he calmly
+pocketed the twenty francs to earn which he had not raised one finger,
+and then demanded more.
+
+No, no, my dear Sir, you will believe me or not, that man could not go
+straight. Times out of count he would try and deceive me, despite the
+fact that, once or twice, he very nearly came hopelessly to grief in
+the attempt.
+
+Now, just to give you an instance. About this time Paris was in the
+grip of a gang of dog-thieves as unscrupulous and heartless as they
+were daring. Can you wonder at it? with that awful penury about and a
+number of expensive "tou-tous" running about the streets under the
+very noses of the indigent proletariat? The ladies of the aristocracy
+and of the wealthy bourgeoisie had imbibed this craze for lap-dogs
+during their sojourn in England at the time of the emigration, and
+being women of the Latin race and of undisciplined temperament, they
+were just then carrying their craze to excess.
+
+As I was saying, this indulgence led to wholesale thieving. Tou-tous
+were abstracted from their adoring mistresses with marvellous
+adroitness; whereupon two or three days would elapse while the adoring
+mistress wept buckets full of tears and set the police of M. Fouche,
+Duc d'Otrante, by the ears in search of her pet. The next act in the
+tragi-comedy would be an anonymous demand for money--varying in amount
+in accordance with the known or supposed wealth of the lady--and an
+equally anonymous threat of dire vengeance upon the tou-tou if the
+police were put upon the track of the thieves.
+
+You will ask me, no doubt, what all this had to do with Theodore.
+Well! I will tell you.
+
+You must know that of late he had become extraordinarily haughty and
+independent. I could not keep him to his work. His duties were to
+sweep the office--he did not do it; to light the fires--I had to light
+them myself every morning; to remain in the anteroom and show clients
+in--he was never at his post. In fact he was never there when I did
+want him: morning, noon and night he was out--gadding about and coming
+home, Sir, only to eat and sleep. I was seriously thinking of giving
+him the sack. And then one day he disappeared! Yes, Sir, disappeared
+completely as if the earth had swallowed him up. One morning--it was
+in the beginning of December and the cold was biting--I arrived at the
+office and found that his chair-bed which stood in the antechamber had
+not been slept in; in fact that it had not been made up overnight. In
+the cupboard I found the remnants of an onion pie, half a sausage, and
+a quarter of a litre of wine, which proved conclusively that he had
+not been in to supper.
+
+At first I was not greatly disturbed in my mind. I had found out quite
+recently that Theodore had some sort of a squalid home of his own
+somewhere behind the fish-market, together with an old and wholly
+disreputable mother who plied him with drink whenever he spent an
+evening with her and either he or she had a franc in their pocket.
+Still, after these bouts spent in the bosom of his family he usually
+returned to sleep them off at my expense in my office.
+
+I had unfortunately very little to do that day, so in the late
+afternoon, not having seen anything of Theodore all day, I turned my
+steps toward the house behind the fish-market where lived the mother
+of that ungrateful wretch.
+
+The woman's surprise when I inquired after her precious son was
+undoubtedly genuine. Her lamentations and crocodile tears certainly
+were not. She reeked of alcohol, and the one room which she inhabited
+was indescribably filthy. I offered her half a franc if she gave me
+authentic news of Theodore, knowing well that for that sum she would
+have sold him to the devil. But very obviously she knew nothing of his
+whereabouts, and I soon made haste to shake the dirt of her abode from
+my heels.
+
+I had become vaguely anxious.
+
+I wondered if he had been murdered somewhere down a back street, and
+if I should miss him very much.
+
+I did not think that I would.
+
+Moreover, no one could have any object in murdering Theodore. In his
+own stupid way he was harmless enough, and he certainly was not
+possessed of anything worth stealing. I myself was not over-fond of
+the man--but I should not have bothered to murder him.
+
+Still, I was undoubtedly anxious, and slept but little that night
+thinking of the wretch. When the following morning I arrived at my
+office and still could see no trace of him, I had serious thoughts of
+putting the law in motion on his behalf.
+
+Just then, however, an incident occurred which drove all thoughts of
+such an insignificant personage as Theodore from my mind.
+
+I had just finished tidying up the office when there came a peremptory
+ring at the outer door, repeated at intervals of twenty seconds or so.
+It meant giving a hasty glance all round to see that no fragments of
+onion pie or of cheap claret lingered in unsuspected places, and it
+meant my going, myself, to open the door to my impatient visitor.
+
+I did it, Sir, and then at the door I stood transfixed. I had seen
+many beautiful women in my day--great ladies of the Court, brilliant
+ladies of the Consulate, the Directorate and the Empire--but never in
+my life had I seen such an exquisite and resplendent apparition as the
+one which now sailed through the antechamber of my humble abode.
+
+Sir, Hector Ratichon's heart has ever been susceptible to the charms
+of beauty in distress. This lovely being, Sir, who now at my
+invitation entered my office and sank with perfect grace into the
+arm-chair, was in obvious distress. Tears hung on the fringe of her
+dark lashes, and the gossamer-like handkerchief which she held in her
+dainty hand was nothing but a wet rag. She gave herself exactly two
+minutes wherein to compose herself, after which she dried her eyes and
+turned the full artillery of her bewitching glance upon me.
+
+"Monsieur Ratichon," she began, even before I had taken my accustomed
+place at my desk and assumed that engaging smile which inspires
+confidence even in the most timorous; "Monsieur Ratichon, they tell me
+that you are so clever, and--oh! I am in such trouble."
+
+"Madame," I rejoined with noble simplicity, "you may trust me
+to do the impossible in order to be of service to you."
+
+Admirably put, you will admit. I have always been counted a master of
+appropriate diction, and I had been quick enough to note the plain
+band of gold which encircled the third finger of her dainty left hand,
+flanked though it was by a multiplicity of diamond, pearl and other
+jewelled rings.
+
+"You are kind, Monsieur Ratichon," resumed the beauteous creature more
+calmly. "But indeed you will require all the ingenuity of your
+resourceful brain in order to help me in this matter. I am struggling
+in the grip of a relentless fate which, if you do not help me, will
+leave me broken-hearted."
+
+"Command me, Madame," I riposted quietly.
+
+From out the daintiest of reticules the fair lady now extracted a very
+greasy and very dirty bit of paper, and handed it to me with the brief
+request: "Read this, I pray you, my good M. Ratichon." I took the
+paper. It was a clumsily worded, ill-written, ill-spelt demand for
+five thousand francs, failing which sum the thing which Madame had
+lost would forthwith be destroyed.
+
+I looked up, puzzled, at my fair client.
+
+"My darling Carissimo, my dear M. Ratichon," she said in reply to my
+mute query.
+
+"Carissimo?" I stammered, yet further intrigued.
+
+"My darling pet, a valuable creature, the companion of my lonely
+hours," she rejoined, once more bursting into tears. "If I lose him,
+my heart will inevitably break."
+
+I understood at last.
+
+"Madame has lost her dog?" I asked.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"It has been stolen by one of those expert dog thieves, who then levy
+blackmail on the unfortunate owner?"
+
+Again she nodded in assent.
+
+I read the dirty, almost illegible scrawl through more carefully this
+time. It was a clumsy notification addressed to Mme. la Comtesse de
+Nole de St. Pris to the effect that her tou-tou was for the moment
+safe, and would be restored to the arms of his fond mistress provided
+the sum of five thousand francs was deposited in the hands of the
+bearer of the missive.
+
+Minute directions were then given as to where and how the money was to
+be deposited. Mme. la Comtesse de Nole was, on the third day from this
+at six o'clock in the evening precisely, to go in person and alone to
+the angle of the Rue Guenegaud and the Rue Mazarine, at the rear of
+the Institut.
+
+There two men would meet her, one of whom would have Carissimo in his
+arms; to the other she must hand over the money, whereupon the pet
+would at once be handed back to her. But if she failed to keep this
+appointment, or if in the meanwhile she made the slightest attempt to
+trace the writer of the missive or to lay a trap for his capture by
+the police, Carissimo would at once meet with a summary death.
+
+These were the usual tactics of experienced dog thieves, only that in
+this case the demand was certainly exorbitant. Five thousand francs!
+But even so . . . I cast a rapid and comprehensive glance on the
+brilliant apparition before me--the jewelled rings, the diamonds in
+the shell-like ears, the priceless fur coat--and with an expressive
+shrug of the shoulders I handed the dirty scrap of paper back to its
+fair recipient.
+
+"Alas, Madame," I said, taking care that she should not guess how much
+it cost me to give her such advice, "I am afraid that in such cases
+there is nothing to be done. If you wish to save your pet you will
+have to pay. . ."
+
+"Ah! but, Monsieur," she exclaimed tearfully, "you don't understand.
+Carissimo is all the world to me, and this is not the first time, nor
+yet the second, that he has been stolen from me. Three times, my good
+M. Ratichon, three times has he been stolen, and three times have I
+received such peremptory demands for money for his safe return; and
+every time the demand has been more and more exorbitant. Less than a
+month ago M. le Comte paid three thousand francs for his recovery."
+
+"Monsieur le Comte?" I queried.
+
+"My husband, Sir," she replied, with an exquisite air of hauteur.
+"M. le Comte de Nole de St. Pris."
+
+"Ah, then," I continued calmly, "I fear me that Monsieur de Nole de
+St. Pris will have to pay again."
+
+"But he won't!" she now cried out in a voice broken with sobs, and
+incontinently once more saturated her gossamer handkerchief with her
+tears.
+
+"Then I see nothing for it, Madame," I rejoined, much against my will
+with a slight touch of impatience, "I see nothing for it but that
+yourself . . ."
+
+"Ah! but, Monsieur," she retorted, with a sigh that would have melted
+a heart of stone, "that is just my difficulty. I cannot pay . . ."
+
+"Madame," I protested.
+
+"Oh! if I had money of my own," she continued, with an adorable
+gesture of impatience, "I would not worry. Mais voila: I have not a
+silver franc of my own to bless myself with. M. le Comte is over
+generous. He pays all my bills without a murmur--he pays my
+dressmaker, my furrier; he loads me with gifts and dispenses charity
+on a lavish scale in my name. I have horses, carriages,
+servants--everything I can possibly want and more, but I never have
+more than a few hundred francs to dispose of. Up to now I have never
+for a moment felt the want of money. To-day, when Carissimo is being
+lost to me, I feel the entire horror of my position."
+
+"But surely, Madame," I urged, "M. le Comte . . ."
+
+"No, Monsieur," she replied. "M. le Comte has flatly refused this time
+to pay these abominable thieves for the recovery of Carissimo. He
+upbraids himself for having yielded to their demands on the three
+previous occasions. He calls these demands blackmailing, and vows that
+to give them money again is to encourage them in their nefarious
+practices. Oh! he has been cruel to me, cruel!--for the first time in
+my life, Monsieur, my husband has made me unhappy, and if I lose my
+darling now I shall indeed be broken-hearted."
+
+I was silent for a moment or two. I was beginning to wonder what part
+I should be expected to play in the tragedy which was being unfolded
+before me by this lovely and impecunious creature.
+
+"Madame la Comtesse," I suggested tentatively, after a while, "your
+jewellery . . . you must have a vast number which you seldom wear
+. . . five thousand francs is soon made up. . . ."
+
+You see, Sir, my hopes of a really good remunerative business had by
+now dwindled down to vanishing point. All that was left of them was a
+vague idea that the beautiful Comtesse would perhaps employ me as an
+intermediary for the sale of some of her jewellery, in which case . . .
+But already her next words disillusioned me even on that point.
+
+"No, Monsieur," she said; "what would be the use? Through one of the
+usual perverse tricks of fate, M. le Comte would be sure to inquire
+after the very piece of jewellery of which I had so disposed, and
+moreover . . ."
+
+"Moreover--yes, Mme. la Comtesse?"
+
+"Moreover, my husband is right," she concluded decisively. "If I give
+in to those thieves to-day and pay them five thousand francs, they
+would only set to work to steal Carissimo again and demand ten
+thousand francs from me another time."
+
+I was silent. What could I say? Her argument was indeed unanswerable.
+
+"No, my good M. Ratichon," she said very determinedly after a while.
+"I have quite decided that you must confound those thieves. They have
+given me three days' grace, as you see in their abominable letter. If
+after three days the money is not forthcoming, and if in the meanwhile
+I dare to set a trap for them or in any way communicate with the
+police, my darling Carissimo will be killed and my heart be broken."
+
+"Madame la Comtesse," I entreated, for of a truth I could not bear to
+see her cry again.
+
+"You must bring Carissimo back to me, M. Ratichon," she continued
+peremptorily, "before those awful three days have elapsed."
+
+"I swear that I will," I rejoined solemnly; but I must admit that I
+did it entirely on the spur of the moment, for of a truth I saw no
+prospect whatever of being able to accomplish what she desired.
+
+"Without my paying a single louis to those execrable thieves," the
+exquisite creature went on peremptorily,
+
+"It shall be done, Madame la Comtesse."
+
+"And let me tell you," she now added, with the sweetest and archest of
+smiles, "that if you succeed in this, M. le Comte de Nole de St. Pris
+will gladly pay you the five thousand francs which he refuses to give
+to those miscreants."
+
+Five thousand francs! A mist swam before my eyes,
+
+"Mais, Madame la Comtesse . . ." I stammered.
+
+"Oh!" she added, with an adorable uptilting of her little chin, "I am
+not promising what I cannot fulfil. M. le Comte de Nole only said
+this morning, apropos of dog thieves, that he would gladly give ten
+thousand francs to anyone who succeeded in ridding society of such
+pests."
+
+I could have knelt down on the hard floor, Sir, and . . .
+
+"Well then, Madame," was my ready rejoinder, "why not ten thousand
+francs to me?"
+
+She bit her coral lips . . . but she also smiled. I could see that
+my personality and my manners had greatly impressed her.
+
+"I will only be responsible for the first five thousand," she said
+lightly. "But, for the rest, I can confidently assure you that you
+will not find a miser in M. le Comte de Nole de St. Pris."
+
+I could have knelt down on the hard floor, Sir, and kissed her
+exquisitely shod feet. Five thousand francs certain! Perhaps ten! A
+fortune, Sir, in those days! One that would keep me in comfort--nay,
+affluence, until something else turned up. I was swimming in the
+empyrean and only came rudely to earth when I recollected that I
+should have to give Theodore something for his share of the business.
+Ah! fortunately that for the moment he was comfortably out of the way!
+Thoughts that perhaps he had been murdered after all once more coursed
+through my brain: not unpleasantly, I'll admit. I would not have
+raised a finger to hurt the fellow, even though he had treated me with
+the basest ingratitude and treachery; but if someone else took the
+trouble to remove him, why indeed should I quarrel with fate?
+
+Back I came swiftly to the happy present. The lovely creature was
+showing me a beautifully painted miniature of Carissimo, a King
+Charles spaniel of no common type. This she suggested that I should
+keep by me for the present for purposes of identification. After this
+we had to go into the details of the circumstances under which she had
+lost her pet. She had been for a walk with him, it seems, along the
+Quai Voltaire, and was returning home by the side of the river, when
+suddenly a number of workmen in blouses and peaked caps came trooping
+out of a side street and obstructed her progress. She had Carissimo on
+the lead, and she at once admitted to me that at first she never
+thought of connecting this pushing and jostling rabble with any
+possible theft. She held her ground for awhile, facing the crowd: for
+a few moments she was right in the midst of it, and just then she felt
+the dog straining at the lead. She turned round at once with the
+intention of picking him up, when to her horror she saw that there was
+only a bundle of something weighty at the end of the lead, and that
+the dog had disappeared.
+
+The whole incident occurred, the lovely creature declared, within the
+space of thirty seconds; the next instant the crowd had scattered in
+several directions, the men running and laughing as they went. Mme. la
+Comtesse was left standing alone on the quay. Not a passer-by in
+sight, and the only gendarme visible, a long way down the Quai, had
+his back turned toward her. Nevertheless she ran and hied him, and
+presently he turned and, realizing that something was amiss, he too
+ran to meet her. He listened to her story, swore lustily, but shrugged
+his shoulders in token that the tale did not surprise him and that but
+little could be done. Nevertheless he at once summoned those of his
+colleagues who were on duty in the neighbourhood, and one of them went
+off immediately to notify the theft at the nearest commissariat of
+police. After which they all proceeded to a comprehensive scouring of
+the many tortuous sidestreets of the quartier; but, needless to say,
+there was no sign of Carissimo or of his abductors.
+
+That night my lovely client went home distracted.
+
+The following evening, when, broken-hearted, she wandered down the
+quays living over again the agonizing moments during which she lost
+her pet, a workman in a blue blouse, with a peaked cap pulled well
+over his eyes, lurched up against her and thrust into her hand the
+missive which she had just shown me. He then disappeared into the
+night, and she had only the vaguest possible recollection of his
+appearance.
+
+That, Sir, was the substance of the story which the lovely creature
+told me in a voice oft choked with tears. I questioned her very
+closely and in my most impressive professional manner as to the
+identity of any one man among the crowd who might have attracted her
+attention, but all that she could tell me was that she had a vague
+impression of a wizened hunchback with evil face, shaggy red beard
+and hair, and a black patch covering the left eye.
+
+
+
+2.
+
+Not much data to go on, you will, I think, admit, and I Can assure
+you, Sir, that had I not possessed that unbounded belief in myself
+which is the true hall-mark of genius, I would at the outset have felt
+profoundly discouraged.
+
+As it was, I found just the right words of consolation and of hope
+wherewith to bow my brilliant client out of my humble apartments, and
+then to settle down to deep and considered meditation. Nothing, Sir,
+is so conducive to thought as a long, brisk walk through the crowded
+streets of Paris. So I brushed my coat, put on my hat at a becoming
+angle, and started on my way.
+
+I walked as far as Suresnes, and I thought. After that, feeling
+fatigued, I sat on the terrace of the Cafe Bourbon, overlooking the
+river. There I sipped my coffee and thought. I walked back into Paris
+in the evening, and still thought, and thought, and thought. After
+that I had some dinner, washed down by an agreeable bottle of
+wine--did I mention that the lovely creature had given me a hundred
+francs on account?--then I went for a stroll along the Quai Voltaire,
+and I may safely say that there is not a single side and tortuous
+street in its vicinity that I did not explore from end to end during
+the course of that never to be forgotten evening.
+
+But still my mind remained in a chaotic condition. I had not succeeded
+in forming any plan. What a quandary, Sir! Oh! what a quandary! Here
+was I, Hector Ratichon, the confidant of kings, the right hand of two
+emperors, set to the task of stealing a dog--for that is what I should
+have to do--from an unscrupulous gang of thieves whose identity, abode
+and methods were alike unknown to me. Truly, Sir, you will own that
+this was a herculean task.
+
+Vaguely my thoughts reverted to Theodore. He might have been of good
+counsel, for he knew more about thieves than I did, but the ungrateful
+wretch was out of the way on the one occasion when he might have been
+of use to me who had done so much for him. Indeed, my reason told me
+that I need not trouble my head about Theodore. He had vanished; that
+he would come back presently was, of course, an indubitable fact;
+people like Theodore never vanish completely. He would come back and
+demand I know not what, his share, perhaps, in a business which was so
+promising even if it was still so vague.
+
+Five thousand francs! A round sum! If I gave Theodore five hundred
+the sum would at once appear meagre, unimportant. Four thousand five
+hundred francs!--it did not even _sound_ well to my mind.
+
+So I took care that Theodore vanished from my mental vision as
+completely as he had done for the last two days from my ken, and as
+there was nothing more that could be done that evening, I turned my
+weary footsteps toward my lodgings at Passy.
+
+All that night, Sir, I lay wakeful and tossing in my bed, alternately
+fuming and rejecting plans for the attainment of that golden goal--the
+recovery of Mme. de Nole's pet dog. And the whole of the next day I
+spent in vain quest. I visited every haunt of ill-fame known to me
+within the city. I walked about with a pistol in my belt, a hunk of
+bread and cheese in my pocket, and slowly growing despair in my heart.
+
+In the evening Mme. la Comtesse de Nole called for news of Carissimo,
+and I could give her none. She cried, Sir, and implored, and her tears
+and entreaties got on to my nerves until I felt ready to fall into
+hysterics. One more day and all my chances of a bright and wealthy
+future would have vanished. Unless the money was forthcoming on the
+morrow, the dog would be destroyed, and with him my every hope of that
+five thousand francs. And though she still irradiated charm and luxury
+from her entire lovely person, I begged her not to come to the office
+again, and promised that as soon as I had any news to impart I would
+at once present myself at her house in the Faubourg St. Germain.
+
+That night I never slept one wink. Think of it, Sir! The next few
+hours were destined to see me either a prosperous man for many days to
+come, or a miserable, helpless, disappointed wretch. At eight o'clock
+I was at my office. Still no news of Theodore. I could now no longer
+dismiss him from my mind. Something had happened to him, I could have
+no doubt. This anxiety, added to the other more serious one, drove me
+to a state bordering on frenzy. I hardly knew what I was doing. I
+wandered all day up and down the Quai Voltaire, and the Quai des
+Grands Augustins, and in and around the tortuous streets till I was
+dog-tired, distracted, half crazy.
+
+I went to the Morgue, thinking to find there Theodore's dead body, and
+found myself vaguely looking for the mutilated corpse of Carissimo.
+Indeed, after a while Theodore and Carissimo became so inextricably
+mixed up in my mind that I could not have told you if I was seeking
+for the one or for the other and if Mme. la Comtesse de Nole was now
+waiting to clasp her pet dog or my man-of-all-work to her exquisite
+bosom.
+
+She in the meanwhile had received a second, yet more peremptory,
+missive through the same channel as the previous one. A grimy deformed
+man, with ginger-coloured hair, and wearing a black patch over one
+eye, had been seen by one of the servants lolling down the street
+where Madame lived, and subsequently the concierge discovered that an
+exceedingly dirty scrap of paper had been thrust under the door of his
+lodge. The writer of the epistle demanded that Mme. la Comtesse should
+stand in person at six o'clock that same evening at the corner of the
+Rue Guenegaud, behind the Institut de France. Two men, each wearing a
+blue blouse and peaked cap, would meet her there. She must hand over
+the money to one of them, whilst the other would have Carissimo in his
+arms. The missive closed with the usual threats that if the police
+were mixed up in the affair, or the money not forthcoming, Carissimo
+would be destroyed.
+
+Six o'clock was the hour fixed by these abominable thieves for the
+final doom of Carissimo. It was now close on five. In a little more
+than an hour my last hope of five or ten thousand francs and a smile
+of gratitude from a pair of lovely lips would have gone, never again
+to return. A great access of righteous rage seized upon me. I
+determined that those miserable thieves, whoever they were, should
+suffer for the disappointment which I was now enduring. If I was to
+lose five thousand francs, they at least should not be left free to
+pursue their evil ways. I would communicate with the police; the
+police should meet the miscreants at the corner of the Rue Guenegaud.
+Carissimo would die; his lovely mistress would be brokenhearted. I
+would be left to mourn yet another illusion of a possible fortune, but
+they would suffer in gaol or in New Caledonia the consequences of all
+their misdeeds.
+
+Fortified by this resolution, I turned my weary footsteps in the
+direction of the gendarmerie where I intended to lodge my denunciation
+of those abominable thieves and blackmailers. The night was dark, the
+streets ill-lighted, the air bitterly cold. A thin drizzle, half rain,
+half snow, was descending, chilling me to the bone.
+
+I was walking rapidly along the river bank with my coat collar pulled
+up to my ears, and still instinctively peering up every narrow street
+which debouches on the quay. Then suddenly I spied Theodore. He was
+coming down the Rue Beaune, slouching along with head bent in his
+usual way. He appeared to be carrying something, not exactly heavy,
+but cumbersome, under his left arm. Within the next few minutes he
+would have been face to face with me, for I had come to a halt at the
+angle of the street, determined to have it out with the rascal then
+and there in spite of the cold and in spite of my anxiety about
+Carissimo.
+
+All of a sudden he raised his head and saw me, and in a second he
+turned on his heel and began to run up the street in the direction
+whence he had come. At once I gave chase. I ran after him--and then,
+Sir, he came for a second within the circle of light projected by a
+street lanthorn. But in that one second I had seen that which turned
+my frozen blood into liquid lava--a tail, Sir!--a dog's tail, fluffy
+and curly, projecting from beneath that recreant's left arm.
+
+A dog, Sir! a dog! Carissimo! the darling of Mme. la Comtesse de
+Nole's heart! Carissimo, the recovery of whom would mean five thousand
+francs into my pocket! Carissimo! I knew it! For me there existed but
+one dog in all the world; one dog and one spawn of the devil, one
+arch-traitor, one limb of Satan! Theodore!
+
+How he had come by Carissimo I had not time to con-conjecture. I
+called to him. I called his accursed name, using appellations which
+fell far short of those which he deserved. But the louder I called the
+faster he ran, and I, breathless, panting, ran after him, determined
+to run him to earth, fearful lest I should lose him in the darkness of
+the night. All down the Rue Beaune we ran, and already I could hear
+behind me the heavy and more leisured tramp of a couple of gendarmes
+who in their turn had started to give chase.
+
+I tell you, Sir, the sound lent wings to my feet. A chance--a last
+chance--was being offered me by a benevolent Fate to earn that five
+thousand francs, the keystone to my future fortune. If I had the
+strength to seize and hold Theodore until the gendarmes came up, and
+before he had time to do away with the dog, the five thousand francs
+could still be mine.
+
+So I ran, Sir, as I had never run before; the beads of perspiration
+poured down from my forehead; the breath came stertorous and hot from
+my heaving breast.
+
+Then suddenly Theodore disappeared!
+
+Disappeared, Sir, as if the earth had swallowed him up! A second ago I
+had seen him dimly, yet distinctly through the veil of snow and rain
+ahead of me, running with that unmistakable shuffling gait of his,
+hugging the dog closely under his arm. I had seen him--another effort
+and I might have touched him!--now the long and deserted street lay
+dark and mysterious before me, and behind me I could hear the measured
+tramp of the gendarmes and their peremptory call of "Halt, in the name
+of the King!"
+
+But not in vain, Sir, am I called Hector Ratichon; not in vain have
+kings and emperors reposed confidence in my valour and my presence of
+mind. In less time than it takes to relate I had already marked with
+my eye the very spot--down the street--where I had last seen Theodore.
+I hurried forward and saw at once that my surmise had been correct. At
+that very spot, Sir, there was a low doorway which gave on a dark and
+dank passage. The door itself was open. I did not hesitate. My life
+stood in the balance but I did not falter. I might be affronting
+within the next second or two a gang of desperate thieves, but I did
+not quake.
+
+I turned into that doorway, Sir; the next moment I felt a stunning
+blow between my eyes. I just remember calling out with all the
+strength of my lungs: "Police! Gendarmes! A moi!" Then nothing more.
+
+
+
+3.
+
+I woke with the consciousness of violent wordy warfare carried on
+around me. I was lying on the ground, and the first things I saw were
+three or four pairs of feet standing close together. Gradually out of
+the confused hubbub a few sentences struck my reawakened senses.
+
+"The man is drunk."
+
+"I won't have him inside the house."
+
+"I tell you this is a respectable house." This from a shrill feminine
+voice. "We've never had the law inside our doors before."
+
+By this time I had succeeded in raising myself on my elbow, and, by
+the dim light of a hanging lamp somewhere down the passage, I was
+pretty well able to take stock of my surroundings.
+
+The half-dozen bedroom candlesticks on a table up against the wall,
+the row of keys hanging on hooks fixed to a board above, the glass
+partition with the words "Concierge" and "Reception" painted across
+it, all told me that this was one of those small, mostly squalid and
+disreputable lodging houses or hotels in which this quarter of Paris
+still abounds.
+
+The two gendarmes who had been running after me were arguing the
+matter of my presence here with the proprietor of the place and with
+the concierge.
+
+I struggled to my feet. Whereupon for the space of a solid two minutes
+I had to bear as calmly as I could the abuse and vituperation which
+the feminine proprietor of this "respectable house" chose to hurl at
+my unfortunate head. After which I obtained a hearing from the
+bewildered minions of the law. To them I gave as brief and succinct a
+narrative as I could of the events of the past three days. The theft
+of Carissimo--the disappearance of Theodore--my meeting him a while
+ago, with the dog under his arm--his second disappearance, this time
+within the doorway of this "respectable abode," and finally the blow
+which alone had prevented me from running the abominable thief to
+earth.
+
+The gendarmes at first were incredulous. I could see that they were
+still under the belief that my excitement was due to over-indulgence
+in alcoholic liquor, whilst Madame the proprietress called me an
+abominable liar for daring to suggest that she harboured thieves
+within her doors. Then suddenly, as if in vindication of my character,
+there came from a floor above the sound of a loud, shrill bark.
+
+"Carissimo!" I cried triumphantly. Then I added in a rapid whisper,
+"Mme. la Comtesse de Nole is rich. She spoke of a big reward for the
+recovery of her pet."
+
+These happy words had the effect of stimulating the zeal of the
+gendarmes. Madame the proprietress grew somewhat confused and
+incoherent, and finally blurted it out that one of her lodgers--a
+highly respectable gentleman--did keep a dog, but that there was no
+crime in that surely.
+
+"One of your lodgers?" queried the representative of the law. "When
+did he come?"
+
+"About three days ago," she replied sullenly.
+
+"What room does he occupy?"
+
+"Number twenty-five on the third floor."
+
+"He came with his dog?" I interposed quickly, "a spaniel?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And your lodger, is he an ugly, slouchy creature--with hooked nose,
+bleary eyes and shaggy yellow hair?"
+
+But to this she vouchsafed no reply.
+
+Already the matter had passed out of my hands. One of the gendarmes
+prepared to go upstairs and bade me follow him, whilst he ordered his
+comrade to remain below and on no account to allow anyone to enter or
+leave the house. The proprietress and concierge were warned that if
+they interfered with the due execution of the law they would be
+severely dealt with; after which we went upstairs.
+
+For a while, as we ascended, we could hear the dog barking furiously,
+then, presently, just as we reached the upper landing, we heard a loud
+curse, a scramble, and then a piteous whine quickly smothered.
+
+My very heart stood still. The next moment, however, the gendarme had
+kicked open the door of No. 25, and I followed him into the room. The
+place looked dirty and squalid in the extreme--just the sort of place
+I should have expected Theodore to haunt. It was almost bare save for
+a table in the centre, a couple of rickety chairs, a broken-down
+bedstead and an iron stove in the corner. On the table a tallow candle
+was spluttering and throwing a very feeble circle of light around.
+
+At first glance I thought that the room was empty, then suddenly I
+heard another violent expletive and became aware of a man sitting
+close beside the iron stove. He turned to stare at us as we entered,
+but to my surprise it was not Theodore's ugly face which confronted
+us. The man sitting there alone in the room where I had expected to
+see Theodore and Carissimo had a shaggy beard of an undoubted ginger
+hue. He had on a blue blouse and a peaked cap; beneath his cap his
+lank hair protruded more decided in colour even than his beard. His
+head was sunk between his shoulders, and right across his face, from
+the left eyebrow over the cheek and as far as his ear, he had a
+hideous crimson scar, which told up vividly against the ghastly pallor
+of his face.
+
+But there was no sign of Theodore!
+
+At first my friend the gendarme was quite urbane. He asked very
+politely to see Monsieur's pet dog. Monsieur denied all knowledge of a
+dog, which denial only tended to establish his own guilt and the
+veracity of mine own narrative. The gendarme thereupon became more
+peremptory and the man promptly lost his temper.
+
+I, in the meanwhile, was glancing round the room and soon spied a wall
+cupboard which had obviously been deliberately screened by the
+bedstead. While my companion was bringing the whole majesty of the law
+to bear upon the miscreant's denegations I calmly dragged the bedstead
+aside and opened the cupboard door.
+
+An ejaculation from my quivering throat brought the gendarme to my
+side. Crouching in the dark recess of the wall cupboard was
+Carissimo--not dead, thank goodness! but literally shaking with
+terror. I pulled him out as gently as I could, for he was so
+frightened that he growled and snapped viciously at me. I handed him
+to the gendarme, for by the side of Carissimo I had seen something
+which literally froze my blood within my veins. It was Theodore's hat
+and coat, which he had been wearing when I chased him to this house of
+mystery and of ill-fame, and wrapped together with it was a rag all
+smeared with blood, whilst the same hideous stains were now distinctly
+visible on the door of the cupboard itself.
+
+I turned to the gendarme, who at once confronted the abominable
+malefactor with the obvious proofs of a horrible crime. But the
+depraved wretch stood by, Sir, perfectly calm and with a cynicism in
+his whole bearing which I had never before seen equalled!
+
+"I know nothing about that coat," he asserted with a shrug of the
+shoulders, "nor about the dog."
+
+The gendarme by this time was purple with fury.
+
+"Not know anything about the dog?" he exclaimed in a voice choked with
+righteous indignation. "Why, he . . . he barked!"
+
+But this indisputable fact in no way disconcerted the miscreant.
+
+"I heard a dog yapping," he said with consummate impudence, "but I
+thought he was in the next room. No wonder," he added coolly, "since
+he was in a wall cupboard."
+
+"A wall cupboard," the gendarme rejoined triumphantly, "situated in
+the very room which you occupy at this moment."
+
+"That is a mistake, my friend," the cynical wretch retorted,
+undaunted. "I do not occupy this room. I do not lodge in this hotel at
+all."
+
+"Then how came you to be here?"
+
+"I came on a visit to a friend who happened to be out when I arrived.
+I found a pleasant fire here, and I sat down to warm myself. Your
+noisy and unwarranted irruption into this room has so bewildered me
+that I no longer know whether I am standing on my head or on my
+heels."
+
+"We'll show you soon enough what you are standing on, my fine fellow,"
+the gendarme riposted with breezy, cheerfulness. "Allons!"
+
+I must say that the pampered minion of the law arose splendidly to the
+occasion. He seized the miscreant by the arm and took him downstairs,
+there to confront him with the proprietress of the establishment,
+while I--with marvellous presence of mind--took possession of
+Carissimo and hid him as best I could beneath my coat.
+
+In the hall below a surprise and a disappointment were in store for
+me. I had reached the bottom of the stairs when the shrill feminine
+accents of Mme. the proprietress struck unpleasantly on my ear.
+
+"No! no! I tell you!" she was saying. "This man is not my lodger. He
+never came here with a dog. There," she added volubly, and pointing an
+unwashed finger at Carissimo who was struggling and growling in my
+arms, "there is the dog. A gentleman brought him with him last
+Wednesday, when he inquired if he could have a room here for a few
+nights. Number twenty-five happened to be vacant, and I have no
+objection to dogs. I let the gentleman have the room, and he paid me
+twenty sous in advance when he took possession and told me he would
+keep the room three nights."
+
+"The gentleman? What gentleman?" the gendarme queried, rather inanely
+I thought.
+
+"My lodger," the woman replied. "He is out for the moment, but he
+will be back presently I make no doubt. The dog is his. . . ."
+
+"What is he like?" the minion of the law queried abruptly.
+
+"Who? the dog?" she retorted impudently.
+
+"No, no! Your lodger."
+
+Once more the unwashed finger went up and pointed straight at me.
+
+"He described him well enough just now; thin and slouchy in his ways.
+He has lank, yellow hair, a nose perpetually crimson--with the cold no
+doubt--and pale, watery eyes. . . ."
+
+"Theodore," I exclaimed mentally.
+
+Bewildered, the gendarme pointed to his prisoner.
+
+"But this man . . . ?" he queried.
+
+"Why," the proprietress replied. "I have seen Monsieur twice, or was
+it three times? He would visit number twenty-five now and then."
+
+I will not weary you with further accounts of the close examination to
+which the representative of the law subjected the personnel of the
+squalid hotel. The concierge and the man of all work did indeed
+confirm what the proprietress said, and whilst my friend the gendarme
+--puzzled and floundering--was scratching his head in complete
+bewilderment, I thought that the opportunity had come for me to slip
+quietly out by the still open door and make my way as fast as I could
+to the sumptuous abode in the Faubourg St. Germain, where the
+gratitude of Mme. de Nole, together with five thousand francs, were
+even now awaiting me.
+
+After Madame the proprietress had identified Carissimo, I had once
+more carefully concealed him under my coat. I was ready to seize my
+opportunity, after which I would be free to deal with the matter of
+Theodore's amazing disappearance. Unfortunately just at this moment
+the little brute gave a yap, and the minion of the law at once
+interposed and took possession of him.
+
+"The dog belongs to the police now, Sir," he said sternly.
+
+The fatuous jobbernowl wanted his share of the reward, you see.
+
+
+
+4.
+
+Having been forced thus to give up Carissimo, and with him all my
+hopes of a really substantial fortune, I was determined to make the
+red-polled miscreant suffer for my disappointment, and the minions of
+the law sweat in the exercise of their duty.
+
+I demanded Theodore! My friend, my comrade, my right hand! I had seen
+him not ten minutes ago, carrying in his arms this very dog, whom I
+had subsequently found inside a wall cupboard beside a blood-stained
+coat. Where was Theodore? Pointing an avenging finger at the
+red-headed reprobate, I boldly accused him of having murdered my
+friend with a view to robbing him of the reward offered for the
+recovery of the dog.
+
+This brought a new train of thought into the wooden pates of the
+gendarmes. A quartet of them had by this time assembled within the
+respectable precincts of the Hotel des Cadets. One of them--senior to
+the others--at once dispatched a younger comrade to the nearest
+commissary of police for advice and assistance.
+
+Then he ordered us all into the room pompously labelled "Reception,"
+and there proceeded once more to interrogate us all, making copious
+notes in his leather-bound book all the time, whilst I, moaning and
+lamenting the loss of my faithful friend and man of all work, loudly
+demanded the punishment of his assassin.
+
+Theodore's coat, his hat, the blood-stained rag, had all been brought
+down from No. 25 and laid out upon the table ready for the inspection
+of M. the Commissary of Police.
+
+That gentleman arrived with two private agents, armed with full powers
+and wrapped in the magnificent imperturbability of the law. The
+gendarme had already put him _au fait_ of the events, and as soon as
+he was seated behind the table upon which reposed the "pieces de
+conviction," he in his turn proceeded to interrogate the ginger-pated
+miscreant.
+
+But strive how he might, M. the Commissary elicited no further
+information from him than that which we all already possessed. The man
+gave his name as Aristide Nicolet. He had no fixed abode. He had come
+to visit his friend who lodged in No. 25 in the Hotel des Cadets. Not
+finding him at home he had sat by the fire and had waited for him. He
+knew absolutely nothing of the dog and absolutely nothing of the
+whereabouts of Theodore.
+
+"We'll soon see about that!" asserted M. the Commissary.
+
+He ordered a perquisition of every room and every corner of the hotel,
+Madame the proprietress loudly lamenting that she and her respectable
+house would henceforth be disgraced for ever. But the thieves--whoever
+they were--were clever. Not a trace of any illicit practice was found
+on the premises--and not a trace of Theodore.
+
+Had he indeed been murdered? The thought now had taken root in my
+mind. For the moment I had even forgotten Carissimo and my vanished
+five thousand francs.
+
+Well, Sir! Aristide Nicolet was marched off to the depot--still
+protesting his innocence. The next day he was confronted with Mme. la
+Comtesse de Nole, who could not say more than that he might have
+formed part of the gang who had jostled her on the Quai Voltaire,
+whilst the servant who had taken the missive from him failed to
+recognize him.
+
+Carissimo was restored to the arms of his loving mistress, but the
+reward for his recovery had to be shared between the police and
+myself: three thousand francs going to the police who apprehended the
+thief, and two thousand to me who had put them on the track.
+
+It was not a fortune, Sir, but I had to be satisfied. But in the
+meanwhile the disappearance of Theodore had remained an unfathomable
+mystery. No amount of questionings and cross-questionings, no amount
+of confrontations and perquisitions, had brought any new matter to
+light. Aristide Nicolet persisted in his statements, as did the
+proprietress and the concierge of the Hotel des Cadets in theirs.
+Theodore had undoubtedly occupied room No. 25 in the hotel during the
+three days while I was racking my brain as to what had become of him.
+I equally undoubtedly saw him for a few moments running up the Rue
+Beaune with Carissimo's tail projecting beneath his coat. Then he
+entered the open doorway of the hotel, and henceforth his whereabouts
+remained a baffling mystery.
+
+Beyond his coat and hat, the stained rag and the dog himself, there
+was not the faintest indication of what became of him after that. The
+concierge vowed that he did not enter the hotel--Aristide Nicolet
+vowed that he did not enter No. 25. But then the dog was in the
+cupboard, and so were the hat and coat; and even the police were bound
+to admit that in the short space of time between my last glimpse of
+Theodore and the gendarme's entry into room 25 it would be impossible
+for the most experienced criminal on earth to murder a man, conceal
+every trace of the crime, and so to dispose of the body as to baffle
+the most minute inquiry and the most exhaustive search.
+
+Sometimes when I thought the whole matter out I felt that I was
+growing crazy.
+
+
+
+5.
+
+Thus about a week or ten days went by and I had just come reluctantly
+to the conclusion that there must be some truth in the old mediaeval
+legends which tell us that the devil runs away with his elect from
+time to time, when I received a summons from M. the Commissary of
+Police to present myself at his bureau.
+
+He was pleasant and urbane as usual, but to my anxious query after
+Theodore he only gave me the old reply: "No trace of him can be
+found."
+
+Then he added: "We must therefore take it for granted, my good M.
+Ratichon, that your man of all work is--of his own free will--keeping
+out of the way. The murder theory is untenable; we have had to abandon
+it. The total disappearance of the body is an unanswerable argument
+against it. Would you care to offer a reward for information leading
+to the recovery of your missing friend?"
+
+I hesitated. I certainly was not prepared to pay anyone for finding
+Theodore.
+
+"Think it over, my good M. Ratichon," rejoined M. le Commissaire
+pleasantly. "But in the meanwhile I must tell you that we have decided
+to set Aristide Nicolet free. There is not a particle of evidence
+against him either in the matter of the dog or of that of your friend.
+Mme. de Nole's servants cannot swear to his identity, whilst you have
+sworn that you last saw the dog in your man's arms. That being so, I
+feel that we have no right to detain an innocent man."
+
+Well, Sir, what could I say? I knew well enough that there was not a
+tittle of solid evidence against the man Nicolet, nor had I the power
+to move the police of His Majesty the King from their decision. In my
+heart of hearts I had the firm conviction that the ginger-polled
+ruffian knew all about Carissimo and all about the present whereabouts
+of that rascal Theodore. But what could I say, Sir? What could I do?
+
+I went home that night to my lodgings at Passy more perplexed than
+ever I had been in my life before.
+
+The next morning I arrived at my office soon after nine. The problem
+had presented itself to me during the night of finding a new man of
+all work who would serve me on the same terms as that ungrateful
+wretch Theodore.
+
+I mounted the stairs with a heavy step and opened the outer door of my
+apartment with my private key; and then, Sir, I assure you that for
+one brief moment I felt that my knees were giving way under me and
+that I should presently measure my full length on the floor.
+
+There, sitting at the table in my private room, was Theodore. He had
+donned one of the many suits of clothes which I always kept at the
+office for purposes of my business, and he was calmly consuming a
+luscious sausage which was to have been part of my dinner today, and
+finishing a half-bottle of my best Bordeaux.
+
+He appeared wholly unconscious of his enormities, and when I taxed him
+with his villainies and plied him with peremptory questions he met me
+with a dogged silence and a sulky attitude which I have never seen
+equalled in all my life. He flatly denied that he had ever walked the
+streets of Paris with a dog under his arm, or that I had ever chased
+him up the Rue Beaune. He denied ever having lodged in the Hotel des
+Cadets, or been acquainted with its proprietress, or with a
+red-polled, hunchback miscreant named Aristide Nicolet. He denied that
+the coat and hat found in room No. 25 were his; in fact, he denied
+everything, and with an impudence, Sir, which was past belief.
+
+But he put the crown to his insolence when he finally demanded two
+hundred francs from me: his share in the sum paid to me by Mme. de
+Nole for the recovery of her dog. He demanded this, Sir, in the name
+of justice and of equity, and even brandished our partnership contract
+in my face.
+
+I was so irate at his audacity, so disgusted that presently I felt
+that I could not bear the sight of him any longer. I turned my back on
+him and walked out of my own private room, leaving him there still
+munching my sausage and drinking my Bordeaux.
+
+I was going through the antechamber with a view to going out into the
+street for a little fresh air when something in the aspect of the
+chair-bedstead on which that abominable brute Theodore had apparently
+spent the night attracted my attention. I turned over one of the
+cushions, and with a cry of rage which I took no pains to suppress I
+seized upon what I found lying beneath: a blue linen blouse, Sir, a
+peaked cap, a ginger-coloured wig and beard!
+
+The villain! The abominable mountebank! The wretch! The . . . I was
+wellnigh choking with wrath.
+
+With the damning pieces of conviction in my hand, I rushed back into
+the inner room. Already my cry of indignation had aroused the vampire
+from his orgy. He stood before me sheepish, grinning, and taunted me,
+Sir--taunted me for my blindness in not recognizing him under the
+disguise of the so-called Aristide Nicolet.
+
+It was a disguise which he had kept by him in case of an emergency
+when first he decided to start business as a dog thief. Carissimo had
+been his first serious venture and but for my interference it would
+have been a wholly successful one. He had worked the whole thing out
+with marvellous cleverness, being greatly assisted by Madame Sand, the
+proprietress of the Hotel des Cadets, who was a friend of his
+mother's. The lady, it seems, carried on a lucrative business of the
+same sort herself, and she undertook to furnish him with the necessary
+confederates for the carrying out of his plan. The proceeds of the
+affair were to be shared equally between himself and Madame; the
+confederates, who helped to jostle Mme. de Nole whilst her dog was
+being stolen, were to receive five francs each for their trouble.
+
+When he met me at the corner of the Rue Beaune he was on his way to
+the Rue Guenegaud, hoping to exchange Carissimo for five thousand
+francs. When he met me, however, he felt that the best thing to do for
+the moment was to seek safety in flight. He had only just time to run
+back to the hotel to warn Mme. Sand of my approach and beg her to
+detain me at any cost. Then he flew up the stairs, changed into his
+disguise, Carissimo barking all the time furiously. Whilst he was
+trying to pacify the dog, the latter bit him severely in the arm,
+drawing a good deal of blood--the crimson scar across his face was a
+last happy inspiration which put the finishing touch to his disguise
+and to the hoodwinking of the police and of me. He had only just time
+to staunch the blood from his arm and to thrust his own clothes and
+Carissimo into the wall cupboard when the gendarme and I burst in upon
+him.
+
+I could only gasp. For one brief moment the thought rushed through my
+mind that I would denounce him to the police for . . . for . . .
+
+But that was just the trouble. Of what could I accuse him? Of
+murdering himself or of stealing Mme. de Nole's dog? The commissary
+would hardly listen to such a tale . . . and it would make me seem
+ridiculous. . . .
+
+So I gave Theodore the soundest thrashing he ever had in his life, and
+fifty francs to keep his mouth shut.
+
+But did I not tell you that he was a monster of ingratitude?
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE TOYS
+
+
+
+1.
+
+You are right, Sir, I very seldom speak of my halcyon days--those days
+when the greatest monarch the world has ever known honoured me with
+his intimacy and confidence. I had my office in the Rue St. Roch then,
+at the top of a house just by the church, and not a stone's throw from
+the palace, and I can tell you, Sir, that in those days ministers of
+state, foreign ambassadors, aye! and members of His Majesty's
+household, were up and down my staircase at all hours of the day. I
+had not yet met Theodore then, and fate was wont to smile on me.
+
+As for M. le Duc d'Otrante, Minister of Police, he would send to me or
+for me whenever an intricate case required special acumen,
+resourcefulness and secrecy. Thus in the matter of the English
+files--have I told you of it before? No? Well, then, you shall hear.
+
+Those were the days, Sir, when the Emperor's Berlin Decrees were going
+to sweep the world clear of English commerce and of English
+enterprise. It was not a case of paying heavy duty on English goods,
+or a still heavier fine if you smuggled; it was total prohibition, and
+hanging if you were caught bringing so much as a metre of Bradford
+cloth or half a dozen Sheffield files into the country. But you know
+how it is, Sir: the more strict the law the more ready are certain
+lawless human creatures to break it. Never was smuggling so rife as it
+was in those days--I am speaking now of 1810 or 11--never was it so
+daring or smugglers so reckless.
+
+M. le Duc d'Otrante had his hands full, I can tell you. It had become
+a matter for the secret police; the coastguard or customs officials
+were no longer able to deal with it.
+
+Then one day Hypolite Leroux came to see me. I knew the man well--a
+keen sleuthhound if ever there was one--and well did he deserve his
+name, for he was as red as a fox.
+
+"Ratichon," he said to me, without preamble, as soon as he had seated
+himself opposite to me, and I had placed half a bottle of good
+Bordeaux and a couple of glasses on the table. "I want your help in
+the matter of these English files. We have done all that we can in our
+department. M. le Duc has doubled the customs personnel on the Swiss
+frontier, the coastguard is both keen and efficient, and yet we know
+that at the present moment there are thousands of English files used
+in this country, even inside His Majesty's own armament works. M. le
+Duc d'Otrante is determined to put an end to the scandal. He has
+offered a big reward for information which will lead to the conviction
+of one or more of the chief culprits, and I am determined to get that
+reward--with your help, if you will give it."
+
+"What is the reward?" I asked simply.
+
+"Five thousand francs," he replied. "Your knowledge of English and
+Italian is what caused me to offer you a share in this splendid
+enterprise--"
+
+"It's no good lying to me, Leroux," I broke in quietly, "if we are
+going to work amicably together."
+
+He swore.
+
+"The reward is ten thousand francs." I made the shot at a venture,
+knowing my man well.
+
+"I swear that it is not," he asserted hotly.
+
+"Swear again," I retorted, "for I'll not deal with you for less than
+five thousand."
+
+He did swear again and protested loudly. But I was firm.
+
+"Have another glass of wine," I said.
+
+After which he gave in.
+
+The affair was bound to be risky. Smugglers of English goods were
+determined and desperate men who were playing for high stakes and
+risking their necks on the board. In all matters of smuggling a
+knowledge of foreign languages was an invaluable asset. I spoke
+Italian well and knew some English. I knew my worth. We both drank a
+glass of cognac and sealed our bond then and there.
+
+After which Leroux drew his chair closer to my desk.
+
+"Listen, then," he said. "You know the firm of Fournier Freres, in
+the Rue Colbert?"
+
+"By name, of course. Cutlers and surgical instrument makers by
+appointment to His Majesty. What about them?"
+
+"M. le Duc has had his eyes on them for some time."
+
+"Fournier Freres!" I ejaculated. "Impossible! A more reputable firm
+does not exist in France."
+
+"I know, I know," he rejoined impatiently. "And yet it is a curious
+fact that M. Aristide Fournier, the junior partner, has lately bought
+for himself a house at St. Claude."
+
+"At St. Claude?" I ejaculated.
+
+"Yes," he responded dryly. "Very near to Gex, what?"
+
+I shrugged my shoulders, for indeed the circumstances did appear
+somewhat strange.
+
+Do you know Gex, my dear Sir? Ah, it is a curious and romantic spot.
+It has possibilities, both natural and political, which appear to have
+been expressly devised for the benefit of the smuggling fraternity.
+Nestling in the midst of the Jura mountains, it is outside the customs
+zone of the Empire. So you see the possibilities, do you not? Gex soon
+became the picturesque warehouse of every conceivable kind of
+contraband goods. On one side of it there was the Swiss frontier, and
+the Swiss Government was always willing to close one eye in the matter
+of customs provided its palm was sufficiently greased by the
+light-fingered gentry. No difficulty, therefore, as you see, in
+getting contraband goods--even English ones--as far as Gex.
+
+Here they could be kept hidden until a fitting opportunity occurred
+for smuggling them into France, opportunities for which the Jura, with
+their narrow defiles and difficult mountain paths, afforded
+magnificent scope. St. Claude, of which Leroux had just spoken as the
+place where M. Aristide Fournier had recently bought himself a house,
+is in France, only a few kilometres from the neutral zone of Gex. It
+seemed a strange spot to choose for a wealthy and fashionable member
+of Parisian bourgeois society, I was bound to admit.
+
+"But," I mused, "one cannot go to Gex without a permit from the
+police."
+
+"Not by road," Leroux assented. "But you will own that there are means
+available to men who are young and vigorous like M. Fournier, who
+moreover, I understand, is an accomplished mountaineer. You know Gex,
+of course?"
+
+I had crossed the Jura once, in my youth, but was not very intimately
+familiar with the district. Leroux had a carefully drawn-out map of it
+in his pocket; this he laid out before me.
+
+"These two roads," he began, tracing the windings of a couple of thin
+red lines on the map with the point of his finger, "are the only two
+made ones that lead in and out of the district. Here is the
+Valserine," he went on, pointing to a blue line, "which flows from
+north to south, and both the roads wind over bridges that span the
+river close to our frontier. The French customs stations are on our
+side of those bridges. But, besides those two roads, the frontier can,
+of course, be crossed by one or other of the innumerable mountain
+tracks which are only accessible to pedestrians or mules. That is
+where our customs officials are powerless, for the tracks are
+precipitous and offer unlimited cover to those who know every inch of
+the ground. Several of them lead directly into St. Claude, at some
+considerable distance from the customs stations, and it is these
+tracks which are being used by M. Aristide Fournier for the felonious
+purpose of trading with the enemy--on this I would stake my life. But
+I mean to be even with him, and if I get the help which I require from
+you, I am convinced that I can lay him by the heels."
+
+"I am your man," I concluded simply.
+
+"Very well," he resumed. "Are you prepared to journey with me to Gex?"
+
+"When do you start?"
+
+"To-day."
+
+"I shall be ready."
+
+He gave a deep sigh of satisfaction.
+
+"Then listen to my plan," he said. "We'll journey together as far as
+St. Claude; from there you will push on to Gex, and take up your abode
+in the city, styling yourself an interpreter. This will give you the
+opportunity of mixing with some of the smuggling fraternity, and it
+will be your duty to keep both your eyes and ears open. I, on the
+other hand, will take up my quarters at Mijoux, the French customs
+station, which is on the frontier, about half a dozen kilometres from
+Gex. Every day I'll arrange to meet you, either at the latter place or
+somewhere half-way, and hear what news you may have to tell me. And
+mind, Ratichon," he added sternly, "it means running straight, or the
+reward will slip through our fingers."
+
+I chose to ignore the coarse insinuation, and only riposted quietly:
+
+"I must have money on account. I am a poor man, and will be out of
+pocket by the transaction from the hour I start for Gex to that when
+you pay me my fair share of the reward."
+
+By way of a reply he took out a case from his pocket. I saw that it
+was bulging over with banknotes, which confirmed me in my conviction
+both that he was actually an emissary of the Minister of Police and
+that I could have demanded an additional thousand francs without fear
+of losing the business.
+
+"I'll give you five hundred on account," he said as he licked his ugly
+thumb preparatory to counting out the money before me.
+
+"Make it a thousand," I retorted; "and call it 'additional,' not 'on
+account.'"
+
+He tried to argue.
+
+"I am not keen on the business," I said with calm dignity, "so if you
+think that I am asking too much--there are others, no doubt, who would
+do the work for less."
+
+It was a bold move. But it succeeded. Leroux laughed and shrugged his
+shoulders. Then he counted out ten hundred-franc notes and laid them
+out upon the desk. But before I could touch them he laid his large
+bony hands over the lot and, looking me straight between the eyes, he
+said with earnest significance:
+
+"English files are worth as much as twenty francs apiece in the
+market."
+
+"I know."
+
+"Fournier Freres would not take the risks which they are doing for a
+consignment of less than ten thousand."
+
+"I doubt if they would," I rejoined blandly.
+
+"It will be your business to find out how and when the smugglers
+propose to get their next consignment over the frontier."
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"And to communicate any information you may have obtained to me."
+
+"And to keep an eye on the valuable cargo, of course?" I concluded.
+
+"Yes," he said roughly, "an eye. But hands off, understand, my good
+Ratichon, or there'll be trouble."
+
+He did not wait to hear my indignant protest. He had risen to his
+feet, and had already turned to go. Now he stretched his great coarse
+hand out to me.
+
+"All in good part, eh?"
+
+I took his hand. He meant no harm, did old Leroux. He was just a
+common, vulgar fellow who did not know a gentleman when he saw one.
+
+And we parted the best of friends.
+
+
+
+2.
+
+A week later I was at Gex. At St. Claude I had parted from Leroux, and
+then hired a chaise to take me to my destination. It was a matter of
+fifteen kilometres by road over the frontier of the customs zone and
+through the most superb scenery I had ever seen in my life. We drove
+through narrow gorges, on each side of which the mountain heights rose
+rugged and precipitous to incalculable altitudes above. From time to
+time only did I get peeps of almost imperceptible tracks along the
+declivities, tracks on which it seemed as if goats alone could obtain
+a footing. Once--hundreds of feet above me--I spied a couple of mules
+descending what seemed like a sheer perpendicular path down the
+mountain side. The animals appeared to be heavily laden, and I
+marvelled what forbidden goods lay hidden within their packs and
+whether in the days that were to come I too should be called upon to
+risk my life on those declivities following in the footsteps of the
+reckless and desperate criminals whom it was my duty to pursue.
+
+I confess that at the thought, and with those pictures of grim nature
+before me, I felt an unpleasant shiver coursing down my spine.
+
+Nothing of importance occurred during the first fortnight of my
+sojourn at Gex. I was installed in moderately comfortable, furnished
+rooms in the heart of the city, close to the church and market square.
+In one of my front windows, situated on the ground floor, I had placed
+a card bearing the inscription: "Aristide Barrot, Interpreter," and
+below, "Anglais, Allemand, Italien." I had even had a few
+clients--conversations between the local police and some poor wretches
+caught in the act of smuggling a few yards of Swiss silk or a couple
+of cream cheeses over the French frontier, and sent back to Gex to be
+dealt with by the local authorities.
+
+Leroux had found lodgings at Mijoux, and twice daily he walked over to
+Gex to consult with me. We met, mornings and evenings, at the cafe
+restaurant of the Crane Chauve, an obscure little tavern situated on
+the outskirts of the city. He was waxing impatient at what he called
+my supineness, for indeed so far I had had nothing to report.
+
+There was no sign of M. Aristide Fournier. No one in Gex appeared to
+know anything about him, though the proprietor of the principal hotel
+in the town did recollect having had a visitor of that name once or
+twice during the past year. But, of course, during this early stage of
+my stay in the town it was impossible for me to believe anything that
+I was told. I had not yet succeeded in winning the confidence of the
+inhabitants, and it was soon pretty evident to me that the whole
+countryside was engaged in the perilous industry of smuggling.
+Everyone from the mayor downwards did a bit of a deal now and again in
+contraband goods. In ordinary cases it only meant fines if one was
+caught, or perhaps imprisonment for repeated offenses.
+
+But four or five days after my arrival at Gex I saw three fellows
+handed over to the police of the department. They had been caught in
+the act of trying to ford the Valserine with half a dozen pack-mules
+laden with English cloth. They were hanged at St. Claude two days
+later.
+
+I can assure you, Sir, that the news of this summary administration of
+justice sent another cold shiver down my spine, and I marvelled if
+indeed Leroux's surmises were correct and if a respectable tradesman
+like Aristide Fournier would take such terrible risks even for the
+sake of heavy gains.
+
+I had been in Gex just a fortnight when the weather, which hitherto
+had been splendid, turned to squalls and storms. We were then in the
+second week of September. A torrential rain had fallen the whole of
+one day, during which I had only been out in order to meet Leroux, as
+usual, at the Cafe du Crane Chauve. I had just come home from our
+evening meeting--it was then ten o'clock--and I was preparing to go
+comfortably to bed, when I was startled by a violent ring at the
+front-door bell.
+
+I had only just time to wonder if this belated visitor desired to see
+me or my worthy landlady, Mme. Bournon, when her heavy footsteps
+resounded along the passage. The next moment I heard my name spoken
+peremptorily by a harsh voice, and Mme. Bournon's reply that M.
+Aristide Barrot was indeed within. A few seconds later she ushered my
+nocturnal visitor into my room.
+
+He was wrapped in a dark mantle from head to foot, and he wore a
+wide-brimmed hat pulled right over his eyes. He did not remove either
+as he addressed me without further preamble.
+
+"You are an interpreter, Sir?" he queried, speaking very rapidly and
+in sharp commanding tones.
+
+"At your service," I replied.
+
+"My name is Ernest Berty. I want you to come with me at once to my
+house. I require your services as intermediary between myself and some
+men who have come to see me on business. These men whom I wish you to
+see are Russians," he added, I fancied as an afterthought, "but they
+speak English fluently."
+
+I suppose that I looked just as I felt--somewhat dubious owing to the
+lateness of the hour and the darkness of the night, not to speak of
+the abominable weather, for he continued with marked impatience:
+
+"It is imperative that you should come at once. Though my house is at
+some little distance from here, I have a chaise outside which will
+also bring you back, and," he added significantly, "I will pay you
+whatever you demand."
+
+"It is very late," I demurred, "the weather--"
+
+"Your fee, man!" he broke in roughly, "and let's get on!"
+
+"Five hundred francs," I said at a venture.
+
+"Come!" was his curt reply. "I will give you the money as we drive
+along."
+
+I wished I had made it a thousand; apparently my services were worth a
+great deal to him. However, I picked up my mantle and my hat, and
+within a few seconds was ready to go. I shouted up to Mme. Bournon
+that I would not be home for a couple of hours, but that as I had my
+key I need not disturb her when I returned.
+
+Once outside the door I almost regretted my ready acquiescence in this
+nocturnal adventure. The rain was beating down unmercifully, and at
+first I saw no sign of a vehicle; but in answer to my visitor's sharp
+command I followed him down the street as far as the market square, at
+the corner of which I spied the dim outline of a carriage and a couple
+of horses.
+
+Without wasting too many words, M. Ernest Berty bundled me into the
+carriage, and very soon we were on the way. The night was impenetrably
+dark and the chaise more than ordinarily rickety. I had but little
+opportunity to ascertain which way we were going. A small lanthorn
+fixed opposite to me in the interior of the carriage, and flickering
+incessantly before my eyes, made it still more impossible for me to
+see anything outside the narrow window. My companion sat beside me,
+silent and absorbed. After a while I ventured to ask him which way we
+were driving.
+
+"Through the town," he replied curtly. "My house is just outside
+Divonne."
+
+Now, Divonne is, as I knew, quite close to the Swiss frontier. It is a
+matter of seven or eight kilometres--an hour's drive at the very
+least in this supremely uncomfortable vehicle. I tried to induce
+further conversation, but made no headway against my companion's
+taciturnity. However, I had little cause for complaint in another
+direction. After the first quarter of an hour, and when we had left
+the cobblestones of the city behind us, he drew a bundle of notes from
+his pocket, and by the flickering light of the lanthorn he counted out
+ten fifty-franc notes and handed them without another word to me.
+
+The drive was unspeakably wearisome; but after a while I suppose that
+the monotonous rumbling of the wheels and the incessant patter of the
+rain against the window-panes lulled me into a kind of torpor. Certain
+it is that presently--much sooner than I had anticipated--the chaise
+drew up with a jerk, and I was roused to full consciousness by hearing
+M. Berty's voice saying curtly:
+
+"Here we are! Come with me!"
+
+I was stiff, Sir, and I was shivering--not so much with cold as with
+excitement. You will readily understand that all my faculties were now
+on the qui vive. Somehow or other during the wearisome drive by the
+side of my close-tongued companion my mind had fastened on the
+certitude that my adventure of this night bore a close connexion to
+the firm of Fournier Freres and to the English files which were
+causing so many sleepless nights to M. le Duc d'Otrante, Minister of
+Police.
+
+But nothing in my manner, as I stepped out of the carriage under the
+porch of the house which loomed dark and massive out of the
+surrounding gloom, betrayed anything of what I felt. Outwardly I was
+just a worthy bourgeois, an interpreter by profession, and delighted
+at the remunerative work so opportunely put in my way.
+
+The house itself appeared lonely as well as dark. M. Berty led the way
+across a narrow passage, at the end of which there was a door which he
+pushed open, saying in his usual abrupt manner: "Go in there and wait.
+I'll send for you directly."
+
+Then he closed the door on me, and I heard his footsteps recrossing
+the corridor and presently ascending some stairs. I was left alone in
+a small, sparsely furnished room, dimly lighted by an oil lamp which
+hung down from the ceiling. There was a table in the middle of the
+room, a square of carpet on the floor, and a couple of chairs beside a
+small iron stove. I noticed that the single window was closely
+shuttered and barred. I sat down and waited. At first the silence
+around me was only broken by the pattering of the rain against the
+shutters and the soughing of the wind down the iron chimney pipe, but
+after a little while my senses, which by this time had become
+super-acute, were conscious of various noises within the house itself:
+footsteps overhead, a confused murmur of voices, and anon the
+unmistakable sound of a female voice raised as if in entreaty or in
+complaint.
+
+Somehow a vague feeling of alarm possessed itself of my nervous
+system. I began to realise my position--alone, a stranger in a house
+as to whose situation I had not the remotest idea, and among a set of
+men who, if my surmises were correct, were nothing less than a gang of
+determined and dangerous criminals. The voices, especially the female
+one, were now sounding more clear. I tiptoed to the door, and very
+gently opened it. There was indeed no mistaking the tone of desperate
+pleading which came from some room above and through & woman's lips. I
+even caught the words: "Oh, don't! Oh, don't! Not again!" repeated at
+intervals with pitiable insistence.
+
+Mastering my not unnatural anxiety, I opened the door a little farther
+and slipped out into the passage, all my instincts of chivalry towards
+beauty in distress aroused by those piteous cries. Forgetful of every
+possible danger and of all prudence, I had already darted down the
+corridor, determined to do my duty as a gentleman as soon as I had
+ascertained whence had come those cries of anguish, when I heard the
+frou-frou of skirts and a rapid patter of small feet down the stairs.
+The next moment a radiant vision, all white muslin, fair curls and the
+scent of violets, descended on me from above, a soft hand closed over
+mine and drew me, unresisting, back into the room from whence I had
+just come.
+
+Bewildered, I gazed on the winsome apparition before me, and beheld a
+young girl, slender as a lily, dressed in a soft, clinging gown which
+made her appear more slender still, her fair hair arranged in a tangle
+of unruly curls round the dainty oval of her face.
+
+She was exquisite, Sir! And the slenderness of her! You cannot imagine
+it! She looked like a young sapling bending to the gale. But what cut
+me to the heart was the look of terror and of misery in her face. She
+clasped her hands together and the tears gathered in her eyes.
+
+"Go, Sir, go at once!" she murmured under her breath, speaking very
+rapidly. "Do not waste a minute, I beg of you! As you value your life,
+go before it is too late!"
+
+"But, Mademoiselle," I stammered; for indeed her words and appearance
+had roused all my worst fears, but also all my instincts of the
+sleuth-hound scenting his quarry.
+
+"Don't argue, I beg of you," continued the lovely creature, who indeed
+seemed the prey of overwhelming emotions--fear, horror, pity. "When he
+comes back do not let him find you here. I'll explain, I'll know what
+to say, only I entreat you--go!"
+
+Sir, I have many faults, but cowardice does not happen to be one of
+them, and the more the angel pleaded the more determined was I to see
+this business through. I was, of course, quite convinced by now that I
+was on the track of M. Aristide Fournier and the English files, and I
+was not going to let five thousand francs and the gratitude of the
+Minister of Police slip through my fingers so easily.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I rejoined as calmly as I could, "let me assure you
+that though your anxiety for me is like manna to a starving man, I
+have no fears for my own safety. I have come here in the capacity of a
+humble interpreter; I certainly am not worth putting out of the way.
+Moreover, I have been paid for my services, and these I will render to
+my employer to the best of my capabilities."
+
+"Ah, but you don't know," she retorted, not departing one jot from her
+attitude of terror and of entreaty, "you don't understand. This house,
+Monsieur," she added in a hoarse whisper, "is nothing but a den of
+criminals wherein no honest man or woman is safe."
+
+"Pardon, Mademoiselle," I riposted as lightly and as gallantly as I
+could, "I see before me the living proof that angels, at any rate,
+dwell therein."
+
+"Alas! Sir," she rejoined, with a heart-rending sigh, "if you mean me,
+I am only to be pitied. My dear mother and I are naught but slaves to
+the will of my brother, who uses us as tools for his nefarious ends."
+
+"But . . ." I stammered, horrified beyond speech at the vista of
+villainy which her words had opened up before me.
+
+"My mother, Sir," she said simply, "is old and ailing; she is dying of
+anguish at sight of her son's misdeeds. I would not, could not leave
+her, yet I would give my life to see her free from that miscreant's
+clutches!"
+
+My whole soul was stirred to its depths by the intensity of passion
+which rang through this delicate creature's words. What weird and
+awesome mystery of iniquity and of crime lay hid, I wondered, between
+these walls? In what tragedy had I thus accidentally become involved
+while fulfilling my prosaic duty in the interest of His Majesty's
+exchequer? As in a flash it suddenly came to me that perhaps I could
+serve both this lovely creature and the Emperor better by going out of
+the house now, and lying hidden all the night through somewhere in its
+vicinity until in daylight I could locate its exact situation. Then I
+could communicate with Leroux at once and procure the apprehension of
+this Berty--or Fournier--who apparently was a desperate criminal.
+Already a bold plan was taking shape in my brain, and with my mind's
+eye I had measured the distance which separated me from the front door
+and safety when, in the distance, I heard heavy footsteps slowly
+descending the stairs. I looked at my lovely companion, and saw her
+eyes gradually dilating with increased horror. She gave a smothered
+cry, pressed her handkerchief to her lips, then she murmured hoarsely,
+"Too late!" and fled precipitately from the room, leaving me a prey to
+mingled emotions such as I had never experienced before.
+
+
+
+3.
+
+A moment or two later M. Ernest Berty, or whatever his real name may
+have been, entered the room. Whether he had encountered his exquisite
+sister on the corridor or the stairs, I could not tell; his face, in
+the dim light of the hanging lamp, looked impenetrable and sinister.
+
+"This way, M. Barrot," he said curtly.
+
+Just for one brief moment the thought occurred to me to throw myself
+upon him with my whole weight--which was considerable--and make a wild
+dash for the front door. But it was more than probable that I should
+be intercepted and brought back, after which no doubt I would be an
+object of suspicion to these rascals and my life would not be worth an
+hour's purchase. With the young girl's warnings ringing in my ears, I
+felt that my one chance of safety and of circumventing these criminals
+lay in my seeming ingenuousness and complete guileless-ness.
+
+I assumed a perfect professional manner and followed my companion up
+the stairs. He ushered me into a room just above the one where I had
+been waiting up to now. Three men dressed in rough clothes were
+sitting at a table on which stood a couple of tankards and four empty
+pewter mugs. My employer offered me a glass of ale, which I declined.
+Then we got to work.
+
+At the first words which M. Berty uttered I knew that all my surmises
+had been correct. Whether he himself was M. Aristide Fournier, or
+another partner of that firm, or some other rascal engaged in
+nefarious doings, I could not know; certain it was that through the
+medium of cipher words and phrases which he thought were
+unintelligible to me, and which he ordered me to interpret into
+English, he was giving directions to the three men with regard to the
+convoying of contraband cargo over the frontier.
+
+There was much talk of "toys" and "babies"--the latter were to take a
+walk in the mountains and to avoid the "thorns"; the "toys" were to be
+securely fastened and well protected against water. It was obviously a
+case of mules and of the goods, the "thorns" being the customs
+officials. By the time that we had finished I was absolutely convinced
+in my mind that the cargo was one of English files or razors, for it
+was evidently extraordinarily valuable and not at all bulky, seeing
+that two "babies" were to carry all the "toys" for a considerable
+distance. The men, too, were obviously English. I tried the few words
+of Russian that I knew on them, and their faces remained perfectly
+blank.
+
+Yes, indeed, I was on the track of M. Aristide Fournier, and of one of
+the most important hauls of enemy goods which had ever been made in
+France. Not only that. I had also before me one of the most brutish
+criminals it had ever been my misfortune to come across. A bully, a
+fiend of cruelty. In very truth my fertile brain was seething with
+plans for eventually laying that abominable ruffian by the heels:
+hanging would be a merciful punishment for such a miscreant. Yes,
+indeed, five thousand francs--a goodly sum in those days, Sir--was
+practically assured me. But over and above mere lucre there was the
+certainty that in a few days' time I should see the light of gratitude
+shining out of a pair of lustrous blue eyes, and a winning smile
+chasing away the look of fear and of sorrow from the sweetest face I
+had seen for many a day.
+
+Despite the turmoil that was raging in my brain, however, I flatter
+myself that my manner with the rascals remained consistently calm,
+businesslike, indifferent to all save to the work in hand. The
+soi-disant Ernest Berty spoke invariably in French, either dictating
+his orders or seeking information, and I made verbal translation into
+English of all that he said. The seance lasted close upon an hour, and
+presently I gathered that the affair was terminated and that I could
+consider myself dismissed.
+
+I was about to take my leave, having apparently completed my work,
+when M. Ernest Berty called me back with a curt command.
+
+"One moment, M. Barrot," he said.
+
+"At Monsieur's service," I responded blandly.
+
+"As you see," he continued, "these fellows do not know a word of
+French. All along the way which they will have to traverse they will
+meet friendly outposts, who will report to them on the condition of
+the roads and warn them of any danger that might be ahead. Their
+ignorance of our language may be a source of infinite peril to them.
+They need an interpreter to accompany them over the mountains."
+
+He paused for a moment or two, then added abruptly:
+
+"Would you care to go? The matter is important," he went on quietly,
+"and I am willing to pay you. It means a couple of nights' journey--a
+halt in the mountains during the day--and there will be ten thousand
+francs for you if the 'toys' reach St. Claude safely."
+
+I suppose that something in my face betrayed the eagerness which I
+felt. Here was indeed the finger of Providence pointing to the best
+means of undoing this abominable criminal. Not that I intended to risk
+my neck for any ten thousand francs he chose to offer me, but as the
+trusted guide of his ingenuous "babies" I could convoy them--not to
+St. Claude, as he blandly believed, but straight into the arms of
+Leroux and the customs officials.
+
+"Then that is understood," he said in his usual dictatorial manner,
+taking my consent for granted. "Ten thousand francs. And you will
+accompany these gentlemen and their 'babies' as far as St. Claude?"
+
+"I am a poor man, Sir," I responded meekly.
+
+"Of course you are," he broke in roughly.
+
+Then from a number of papers which lay upon the table, he selected one
+which he held out to me.
+
+"Do you know St. Cergues?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," I replied. "It is a short walk from Gex."
+
+"This," he added, pointing to a paper which I had taken from him, "is
+a plan of the village and of the Pass of Cergues close by. Study it
+carefully. At some point some way up the pass, which I have marked
+with a cross, I and my men with the 'babies' will be waiting for you
+to-morrow evening at eight o'clock. You cannot possibly fail to find
+the spot, for the plan is very accurate and very minute, and it is
+less than five hundred metres from the last house at the entrance of
+the pass. I shall escort the men until then, and hand them over into
+your charge for the mountain journey. Is that clear?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Very well, then; you may go. The carriage is outside the door. You
+know your way."
+
+He dismissed me with a curt nod, and the next two minutes saw me
+outside this house of mystery and installed inside the ramshackle
+vehicle on my way back to my lodgings.
+
+I was worn out with fatigue and excitement, and I imagine that I slept
+most of the way. Certain it is that the journey home was not nearly so
+long as the outward one had been. The rain was still coming down
+heavily, but I cared nothing about the weather, nothing about fatigue.
+My path to fame and fortune had been made easier for me than in my
+wildest dreams I would have dared to hope. In the morning I would see
+Leroux and make final arrangements for the capture of those impudent
+smugglers, and I thought the best way would be for him to meet me and
+the "babies" and the "toys" at the very outset of our journey, as I
+did not greatly relish the idea of crossing lonely and dangerous
+mountain paths in the company of these ruffians.
+
+I reached home without adventure. The vehicle drew up just outside my
+lodgings, and I was about to alight when my eyes were attracted by
+something white which lay on the front seat of the carriage,
+conspicuously placed so that the light from the inside lanthorn fell
+full upon it. I had been too tired and too dazed, I suppose, to notice
+the thing before, but now, on closer inspection, I saw that it was a
+note, and that it was addressed to me: "M. Aristide Barrot,
+Interpreter," and below my name were the words: "Very urgent."
+
+I took the note feeling a thrill of excitement running through my
+veins at its touch. I alighted, and the vehicle immediately
+disappeared into the night. I had only caught one glimpse of the
+horses, and none at all of the coachman. Then I went straight into my
+room, and by the light of the table lamp I unfolded and read the
+mysterious note. It bore no signature, but at the first words I knew
+that the writer was none other than the lovely young creature who had
+appeared to me like an angel of innocence in the midst of that den of
+thieves.
+
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+"Monsieur," she had written in a hand which had clearly been trembling
+with agitation, "you are good, you are kind; I entreat you to be
+merciful. My dear mother, whom I worship, is sick with terror and
+misery. She will die if she remains any longer under the sway of that
+inhuman monster who, alas! is my own brother. And if I lose her I
+shall die, too, for I should no longer have anyone to stand between me
+and his cruelties.
+
+"My dear mother has some relations living at St. Claude. She would
+have gone to them before now, but my brother keeps us both virtual
+prisoners here, and we have no means of arranging for such a perilous
+journey for ourselves. Now, by the most extraordinary stroke of good
+fortune, my brother will be absent all day to-morrow and the following
+night. My dear mother and I feel that God Himself is showing us the
+way to our release.
+
+"Will you, can you help us, dear M. Barrot? Mother and I will be at
+Gex to-morrow at one hour after sundown. We will lie perdu in the
+little Taverne du Roi de Rome, where, if you come to us, you will find
+us waiting anxiously. If you can do nothing to help us, we must return
+broken-hearted to our hated prison; but something in my heart tells me
+that you can help us. All that we want is a vehicle of some sort and
+the escort of a brave man like yourself as far as St. Claude, where
+our relatives will thank you on their knees for your kindness and
+generosity to two helpless, miserable, unprotected women, and I will
+kiss your hands in unbounded gratitude and devotion."
+
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+It were impossible, Monsieur, to tell you of the varied emotions which
+filled my heart when I had perused that heart-rending appeal. All my
+instincts of chivalry were aroused. I was determined to do my duty to
+these helpless ladies as a man and as a gallant knight. Even before I
+finally went to bed I had settled in my mind what I meant to do.
+Fortunately it was quite possible for me to reconcile my duties to my
+Emperor and those which I owed to myself in the matter of the reward
+for the apprehension of the smugglers, with my burning desire to be
+the saviour and protector of the lovely creature whose beauty had
+inflamed my impressionable heart, and to have my hands kissed by her
+in gratitude and devotion.
+
+The next morning Leroux and I were deep in our plans, whilst we sipped
+our coffee outside the Crane Chauve. He was beside himself with joy
+and excitement at the prospective haul, which would, of course,
+redound enormously to his credit, even though the success of the whole
+undertaking would be due to my acumen, my resourcefulness and my
+pluck. Fortunately I found him not only ready but eager to render me
+what assistance he could in the matter of the two ladies who had
+thrown themselves so entirely on my protection.
+
+"We might get valuable information out of them," he remarked. "In the
+excess of their gratitude they may betray many more secrets and
+nefarious doings of the firm of Fournier Freres."
+
+"Which further proves," I remarked, "how deeply you and Monsieur le
+Ministre of Police are indebted to me over this affair."
+
+He did not argue the point. Indeed, we were both of us far too much
+excited to waste words in useless bickerings. Our plans for the
+evening were fairly simple. We both pored over the map which
+Fournier-Berty had given me, until we felt that we could reach
+blindfolded the spot which had been marked with a cross. We then
+arranged that Leroux should betake himself thither with a strong posse
+of gendarmes during the day, and lie hidden in the vicinity until such
+time as I myself appeared upon the scene, identified my friends of the
+night before, parleyed with them for a minute or two, and finally
+retired, leaving the law in all its majesty, as represented by Leroux,
+to deal with the rascals.
+
+In the meantime I also mapped out for myself my own share in this
+night's adventurous work. I had hired a vehicle to take me as far as
+St. Cergues; here I intended to leave it at the local inn, and then
+proceed on foot up the mountain pass to the appointed spot. As soon as
+I had seen the smugglers safely in the hands of Leroux and the
+gendarmes, I would make my way back to St. Cergues as rapidly as I
+could, step into my vehicle, drive like the wind back to Gex, and
+place myself at the disposal of my fair angel and her afflicted
+mother.
+
+Leroux promised me that at the customs station on the French frontier
+the officials would look after me and the ladies, and that a pair of
+fresh horses would be ready to take us straight on to St. Claude,
+which, if all was well, we could then reach by daybreak.
+
+Having settled all these matters we parted company, he to arrange his
+own affairs with the Commissary of Police and the customs officials,
+and I to await with as much patience as I could the hour when I could
+start for St. Cergues.
+
+
+
+4.
+
+The night--just as I anticipated--promised to be very dark. A thin
+drizzle, which wetted the unfortunate pedestrian to the marrow, had
+replaced the torrential rain of the previous day.
+
+Twilight was closing in very fast. In the late autumn afternoon I
+drove to St. Cergues, after which I left the chaise in the village and
+boldly started to walk up the mountain pass. I had studied the map so
+carefully that I was quite sure of my way, but though my appointment
+with the rascals was for eight o'clock, I wished to reach the
+appointed spot before the last flicker of grey light had disappeared
+from the sky.
+
+Soon I had left the last house well behind me. Boldly I plunged into
+the narrow path. The loneliness of the place was indescribable. Every
+step which I took on the stony track seemed to rouse the echoes of the
+grim heights which rose precipitously on either side of me, and in my
+mind I felt aghast at the extraordinary courage of those men who--like
+Aristide Fournier and his gang--chose to affront such obvious and
+manifold dangers as these frowning mountain regions held for them for
+the sake of paltry lucre.
+
+I had walked, according to my reckoning, just upon five hundred metres
+through the gorge, when on ahead I perceived the flicker of lights
+which appeared to be moving to and fro. The silence and loneliness no
+longer seemed to be absolute. A few metres from where I was men were
+living and breathing, plotting and planning, unconscious of the net
+which the unerring hand of a skilful fowler had drawn round them and
+their misdeeds.
+
+The next moment I was challenged by a peremptory "Halt!" Recognition
+followed. M. Ernest Berty, or Aristide Fournier, whichever he was,
+acknowledged with a few words my punctuality, whilst through the gloom
+I took rapid stock of his little party. I saw the vague outline of
+three men and a couple of mules which appeared to be heavily laden.
+They were assembled on a flat piece of ground which appeared like a
+roofless cavern carved out of the mountain side. The walls of rock
+around them afforded them both cover and refuge. They seemed in no
+hurry to start. They had the long night before them, so one of them
+remarked in English.
+
+However, presently M. Fournier-Berty gave the signal for the start to
+be made, he himself preparing to take leave of his men. Just at that
+moment my ears caught the welcome sound of the tramping of feet, and
+before any of the rascals there could realise what was happening,
+their way was barred by Leroux and his gendarmes, who loudly gave the
+order, "Hands up, in the name of the Emperor!"
+
+I was only conscious of a confused murmur of voices, of the click of
+firearms, of words of command passing to and fro, and of several
+violent oaths uttered in the not unfamiliar voice of M. Aristide
+Fournier. But already I had spied Leroux. I only exchanged a few words
+with him, for indeed my share of the evening's work was done as far as
+he was concerned, and I made haste to retrace my steps through the
+darkness and the rain along the lonely mountain path toward the goal
+where chivalry and manly ardour beckoned to me from afar.
+
+I found my vehicle waiting for me at St. Cergues, and by the promise
+of an additional pourboire, I succeeded in making the driver whip up
+his horses to some purpose. Less than an hour later we drew up at Gex
+outside the little inn, pretentiously called Le Roi de Rome. On
+alighting I was met by the proprietress who, in answer to my inquiry
+after two ladies who had arrived that afternoon, at once conducted me
+upstairs.
+
+Already my mind was busy conjuring up visions of the fair lady of
+yester-eve. The landlady threw open a door and ushered me into a small
+room which reeked of stale food and damp clothes. I stepped in and
+found myself face to face with a large and exceedingly ugly old woman
+who rose with difficulty from the sofa as I entered.
+
+"M. Aristide Barrot," she said as soon as the landlady had closed the
+door behind me.
+
+"At your service, Madame," I stammered. "But--"
+
+I was indeed almost aghast. Never in my life had I seen anything so
+grotesque as this woman. To begin with she was more than ordinarily
+stout and unwieldy--indeed, she appeared like a veritable mountain of
+flesh; but what was so disturbing to my mind was that she was nothing
+but a hideous caricature of her lovely daughter, whose dainty features
+she grotesquely recalled. Her face was seamed and wrinkled, her white
+hair was plastered down above her yellow forehead. She wore an
+old-fashioned bonnet tied under her chin, and her huge bulk was draped
+in a large-patterned cashmere shawl.
+
+"You expected to see my dear daughter beside me, my good M. Barrot,"
+she said after a while speaking with remarkable gentleness and
+dignity.
+
+"I confess, Madame--" I murmured.
+
+"Ah! the darling has sacrificed herself for my sake. We found to-day
+that though my son was out of the way, he had set his abominable
+servants to watch over us. Soon we realized that we could not both get
+away. It meant one of us staying behind to act the part of unconcern
+and to throw dust in the eyes of our jailers. My daughter--ah! she is
+an angel, Monsieur--feared that the disappointment and my son's
+cruelty, when he returned on the morrow and found that he had been
+tricked, would seriously endanger my life. She decided that I must go
+and that she would remain."
+
+"But, Madame--" I protested.
+
+"I know, Monsieur," she rejoined with the same calm dignity which
+already had commanded my respect, "I know that you think me a selfish
+old woman; but my Angele--she is an angel, of a truth!--made all the
+arrangements, and I could not help but obey her. But have no fears for
+her safety, Monsieur. My son would not dare lay hands on her as often
+as he has done on me. Angele will be brave, and our relations at St.
+Claude will, directly we arrive, make arrangements to go and fetch her
+and bring her back to me. My brother is an influential man; he would
+never have allowed my son to martyrize me and Angele had he known what
+we have had to endure."
+
+Of course I could not then tell her that all her fears for herself and
+the lovely Angele could now be laid to rest. Her ruffianly son was
+even now being conveyed by Leroux and his gendarmes to the frontier,
+where the law would take its course. I was indeed not sorry for him. I
+was not sorry to think that he would end his evil life upon the
+guillotine or the gallows. I was only grieved for Angele who would
+spend a night and a day, perhaps more, in agonized suspense, knowing
+nothing of the events which at one great swoop would free her and her
+beloved mother from the tyranny of a hated brother and send him to
+expiate his crimes. Not only did I grieve, Sir, for the tender victim
+of that man's brutality, but I trembled for her safety. I did not know
+what minions or confederates Fournier-Berty had left in the lonely
+house yonder, or under what orders they were in case he did not return
+from his nocturnal expedition.
+
+Indeed for the moment I felt so agitated at thought of that beautiful
+angel's peril that I looked down with anger and scorn at the fat old
+woman who ought to have remained beside her daughter to comfort and to
+shield her.
+
+I was on the point of telling her everything, and dragging her back to
+her post of duty which she should never have relinquished. Fortunately
+my sense of what I owed to my own professional dignity prevented my
+taking such a step. It was clearly not for me to argue. My first duty
+was to stand by this helpless woman in distress, who had been
+committed to my charge, and to convey her safely to St. Claude. After
+which I could see to it that Mademoiselle Angele was brought along too
+as quickly as influential relatives could contrive.
+
+In the meanwhile I derived some consolation from the thought that at
+any rate for the next four and twenty hours the lovely creature would
+be safe. No news of the arrest of Aristide Fournier could possibly
+reach the lonely house until I myself could return thither and take
+her under my protection.
+
+So I said nothing; but with perfect gallantry, just as if fat Mme.
+Fournier had been a young and beautiful woman, I begged her to give
+herself the trouble of mounting into the carriage which was waiting
+for her.
+
+It took time and trouble, Sir, to hoist that mass of solid flesh into
+the vehicle, and the driver grumbled not a little at the unexpected
+weight. However, his horses were powerful, wiry, mountain ponies, and
+we made headway through the darkness and along the smooth,
+departmental road at moderate speed. I may say that it was a miserably
+uncomfortable journey for me, sitting, as I was forced to do, on the
+narrow front seat of the carriage, without support for my head or room
+for my legs. But Madame's bulk filled the whole of the back seat, and
+it never seemed to enter her head that I too might like the use of a
+cushion. However, even the worst moments and the weariest journeys
+must come to an end, and we reached the frontier in the small hours of
+the morning. Here we found the customs officials ready to render us
+any service we might require. Leroux had not failed to order the fresh
+relay of horses, and whilst these were being put to, the polite
+officers of the station gave Madame and myself some excellent coffee.
+Beyond the formal: "Madame has nothing to declare for His Majesty's
+customs?" and my companion's equally formal: "Nothing, Monsieur,
+except my personal belongings," they did not ply us with questions,
+and after half an hour's halt we again proceeded on our way.
+
+We reached St. Claude at daybreak, and following Madame's directions,
+the driver pulled up in front of a large house in the Avenue du Jura.
+Again there was the same difficulty in hoisting the unwieldy lady out
+of the vehicle, but this time, in response to my vigorous pull at the
+outside bell, the concierge and another man came out of the house, and
+very respectfully they approached Madame and conveyed her into the
+house.
+
+While they did so she apparently gave them some directions about
+myself, for anon the concierge returned, and with extreme politeness
+told me that Madame Fournier greatly hoped that I would stay in St.
+Claude a day or two as she had the desire to see me again very soon.
+She also honoured me with an invitation to dine with her that same
+evening at seven of the clock. This was the first time, I noticed,
+that the name Fournier was actually used in connexion with any of the
+people with whom I had become so dramatically involved. Not that I had
+ever doubted the identity of the ruffianly Ernest Berty; still it was
+very satisfactory to have my surmises confirmed. I concluded that the
+fine house in the Avenue du Jura belonged to Mme. Fournier's brother,
+and I vaguely wondered who he was. The invitation to dinner had
+certainly been given in her name, and the servants had received her
+with a show of respect which suggested that she was more than a guest
+in her brother's house.
+
+Be that as it may, I betook myself for the nonce to the Hotel des
+Moines in the centre of the town and killed time for the rest of the
+day as best I could. For one thing I needed rest after the emotions
+and the fatigue of the past forty-eight hours. Remember, Sir, I had
+not slept for two nights and had spent the last eight hours on the
+narrow front seat of a jolting chaise. So I had a good rest in the
+afternoon, and at seven o'clock I presented myself once more at the
+house in the Avenue du Jura.
+
+My intention was to retire early to bed after spending an agreeable
+evening with the family, who would no doubt overwhelm me with their
+gratitude, and at daybreak I would drive back to Gex after I had heard
+all the latest news from Leroux.
+
+I confess that it was with a pardonable feeling of agitation that I
+tugged at the wrought-iron bell-pull on the perron of the magnificent
+mansion in the Avenue du Jura. To begin with I felt somewhat rueful at
+having to appear before ladies at this hour in my travelling clothes,
+and then, you will admit, Sir, that it was a somewhat awkward
+predicament for a man of highly sensitive temperament to meet on terms
+of equality a refined if stout lady whose son he had just helped to
+send to the gallows. Fortunately there was no likelihood of Mme.
+Fournier being as yet aware of this unpleasant fact: even if she did
+know at this hour that her son's illicit adventure had come to grief,
+she could not possibly in her mind connect me with his ill-fortune. So
+I allowed the sumptuous valet to take my hat and coat and I followed
+him with as calm a demeanour as I could assume up the richly carpeted
+stairs. Obviously the relatives of Mme. Fournier were more than well
+to do. Everything in the house showed evidences of luxury, not to say
+wealth. I was ushered into an elegant salon wherein every corner
+showed traces of dainty feminine hands. There were embroidered silk
+cushions upon the sofa, lace covers upon the tables, whilst a work
+basket, filled with a riot of many coloured silks, stood invitingly
+open. And through the apartment, Sir, a scent of violets lingered and
+caressed my nostrils, reminding me of a beauteous creature in distress
+whom it had been my good fortune to succour.
+
+I had waited less than five minutes when I heard a swift, elastic step
+approaching through the next room, and a second or so later, before I
+had time to take up an appropriate posture, the door was thrown open
+and the exquisite vision of my waking dreams--the beautiful Angele--
+stood smiling before me.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I stammered somewhat clumsily, for of a truth I was
+hardly able to recover my breath, and surprise had well nigh robbed me
+of speech, "how comes it that you are here?"
+
+She only smiled in reply, the most adorable smile I had ever seen on
+any human face, so full of joy, of mischief--aye, of triumph, was it.
+I asked after Madame. Again she smiled, and said Madame was in her
+room, resting from the fatigues of her journey. I had scarce recovered
+from my initial surprise when another--more complete still--confronted
+me. This was the appearance of Monsieur Aristide Fournier, whom I had
+fondly imagined already expiating his crimes in a frontier prison, but
+who now entered, also smiling, also extremely pleasant, who greeted me
+as if we were lifelong friends, and who then--I scarce could believe
+my eyes--placed his arm affectionately round his sister's waist, while
+she turned her sweet face up to his and gave him a fond--nay, a loving
+look. A loving look to him who was a brute and a bully and a miscreant
+amenable to the gallows! True his appearance was completely changed:
+his eyes were bright and kindly, his mouth continued to smile, his
+manner was urbane in the extreme when he finally introduced himself to
+me as: "Aristide Fournier, my dear Monsieur Ratichon, at your
+service."
+
+He knew my name, he knew who I was! whilst I . . . I had to pass my hand
+once or twice over my forehead and to close and reopen my eyes several
+times, for, of a truth, it all seemed like a dream. I tried to stammer
+out a question or two, but I could only gasp, and the lovely Angele
+appeared highly amused at my distress.
+
+"Let us dine," she said gaily, "after which you may ask as many
+questions as you like."
+
+In very truth I was in no mood for dinner. Puzzlement and anxiety
+appeared to grip me by the throat and to choke me. It was all very
+well for the beautiful creature to laugh and to make merry. She had
+cruelly deceived me, played upon the chords of my sensitive heart for
+purposes which no doubt would presently be made clear, but in the
+meanwhile since the smuggling of the English files had been
+successful--as it apparently was--what had become of Leroux and his
+gendarmes?
+
+What tragedy had been enacted in the narrow gorge of St. Cergues, and
+what, oh! what had become of my hopes of that five thousand francs for
+the apprehension of the smugglers, promised me by Leroux? Can you
+wonder that for the moment the very thought of dinner was abhorrent to
+me? But only for the moment. The next a sumptuous valet had thrown
+open the folding-doors, and down the vista of the stately apartment I
+perceived a table richly laden with china and glass and silver, whilst
+a distinctly savoury odour was wafted to my nostrils.
+
+"We will not answer a single question," the fair Angele reiterated
+with adorable determination, "until after we have dined."
+
+What, Sir, would you have done in my place? I believe that never until
+this hour had Hector Ratichon reached to such a sublimity of manner. I
+bowed with perfect dignity in token of obedience to the fair creature,
+Sir; then without a word I offered her my arm. She placed her hand
+upon it, and I conducted her to the dining-room, whilst Aristide
+Fournier, who at this hour should have been on a fair way to being
+hanged, followed in our wake.
+
+Ah! it seemed indeed a lovely dream: one that lasted through an
+excellent and copious dinner, and which turned to delightful reality
+when, over a final glass of succulent Madeira, Monsieur Aristide
+Fournier slowly counted out one hundred notes, worth one hundred
+francs each, and presented these to me with a gracious nod.
+
+"Your fee, Monsieur," he said, "and allow me to say that never have I
+paid out so large a sum with such a willing hand."
+
+"But I have done nothing," I murmured from out the depths of my
+bewilderment.
+
+Mademoiselle Angele and Monsieur Fournier looked at one another, and,
+no doubt, I presented a very comical spectacle; for both of them burst
+into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.
+
+"Indeed, Monsieur," quoth Monsieur Fournier as soon as he could speak
+coherently, "you have done everything that you set out to do and done
+it with perfect chivalry. You conveyed 'the toys' safely over the
+frontier as far as St. Claude."
+
+"But how?" I stammered, "how?"
+
+Again Mademoiselle Angele laughed, and through the ripples of her
+laughter came her merry words:
+
+"Maman was very fat, was she not, my good Monsieur Ratichon? Did you
+not think she was extraordinarily like me?"
+
+I caught the glance in her eyes, and they were literally glowing with
+mischief. Then all of a sudden I understood. She had impersonated a
+fat mother, covered her lovely face with lines, worn a disfiguring wig
+and an antiquated bonnet, and round her slender figure she had tucked
+away thousands of packages of English files. I could only gasp.
+Astonishment, not to say admiration, at her pluck literally took my
+breath away.
+
+"But, Monsieur Berty?" I murmured, my mind in a turmoil, my thoughts
+running riot through my brain. "The Englishmen, the mules, the packs?"
+
+"Monsieur Berty, as you see, stands before you now in the person of
+Monsieur Fournier," she replied. "The Englishmen were three faithful
+servants who threw dust not only in your eyes, my dear M. Ratichon,
+but in those of the customs officials, while the packs contained
+harmless personal luggage which was taken by your friend and his
+gendarmes to the customs station at Mijoux, and there, after much
+swearing, equally solemnly released with many apologies to M.
+Fournier, who was allowed to proceed unmolested on his way, and who
+arrived here safely this afternoon, whilst Maman divested herself of
+her fat and once more became the slender Mme. Aristide Fournier, at
+your service."
+
+She bobbed me a dainty curtsy, and I could only try and hide the pain
+which this last cruel stab had inflicted on my heart. So she was not
+"Mademoiselle" after all, and henceforth it would even be wrong to
+indulge in dreams of her.
+
+But the ten thousand francs crackled pleasantly in my breast pocket,
+and when I finally took leave of Monsieur Aristide Fournier and his
+charming wife, I was an exceedingly happy man.
+
+But Leroux never forgave me. Of what he suspected me I do not know, or
+if he suspected me at all. He certainly must have known about fat
+Maman from the customs officials who had given us coffee at Mijoux.
+
+But he never mentioned the subject to me at all, nor has he spoken to
+me since that memorable night. To one of his colleagues he once said
+that no words in his vocabulary could possibly be adequate to express
+his feelings.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+HONOUR AMONG ------
+
+
+
+1.
+
+Ah, my dear Sir, it is easy enough to despise our profession, but
+believe me that all the finer qualities--those of loyalty and of
+truth--are essential, not only to us, but to our subordinates, if we
+are to succeed in making even a small competence out of it.
+
+Now let me give you an instance. Here was I, Hector Ratichon, settled
+in Paris in that eventful year 1816 which saw the new order of things
+finally swept aside and the old order resume its triumphant sway,
+which saw us all, including our God-given King Louis XVIII, as poor as
+the proverbial church mice and as eager for a bit of comfort and
+luxury as a hungry dog is for a bone; the year which saw the army
+disbanded and hordes of unemployed and unemployable men wandering
+disconsolate and half starved through the country seeking in vain for
+some means of livelihood, while the Allied troops, well fed and well
+clothed, stalked about as if the sacred soil of France was so much
+dirt under their feet; the year, my dear Sir, during which more
+intrigues were hatched and more plots concocted than in any previous
+century in the whole history of France. We were all trying to make
+money, since there was so precious little of it about. Those of us who
+had brains succeeded, and then not always.
+
+Now, I had brains--I do not boast of them; they are a gift from
+Heaven--but I had them, and good looks, too, and a general air of
+strength, coupled with refinement, which was bound to appeal to anyone
+needing help and advice, and willing to pay for both, and yet--but you
+shall judge.
+
+You know my office in the Rue Daunou, you have been in it--plainly
+furnished; but, as I said, these were not days of luxury. There was an
+antechamber, too, where that traitor, blackmailer and thief, Theodore,
+my confidential clerk in those days, lodged at my expense and kept
+importunate clients at bay for what was undoubtedly a liberal
+salary--ten per cent, on all the profits of the business--and yet he
+was always complaining, the ungrateful, avaricious brute!
+
+Well, Sir, on that day in September--it was the tenth, I
+remember--1816, I must confess that I was feeling exceedingly
+dejected. Not one client for the last three weeks, half a franc in my
+pocket, and nothing but a small quarter of Strasburg patty in the
+larder. Theodore had eaten most of it, and I had just sent him out to
+buy two sous' worth of stale bread wherewith to finish the remainder.
+But after that? You will admit, Sir, that a less buoyant spirit would
+not have remained so long undaunted.
+
+I was just cursing that lout Theodore inwardly, for he had been gone
+half an hour, and I strongly suspected him of having spent my two sous
+on a glass of absinthe, when there was a ring at the door, and I,
+Hector Ratichon, the confidant of kings and intimate counsellor of
+half the aristocracy in the kingdom, was forced to go and open the
+door just like a common lackey.
+
+But here the sight which greeted my eyes fully compensated me for the
+temporary humiliation, for on the threshold stood a gentleman who had
+wealth written plainly upon his fine clothes, upon the dainty linen at
+his throat and wrists, upon the quality of his rich satin necktie and
+the perfect set of his fine cloth pantaloons, which were of an
+exquisite shade of dove-grey. When, then, the apparition spoke,
+inquiring with just a sufficiency of aristocratic hauteur whether M.
+Hector Ratichon were in, you cannot be surprised, my dear Sir, that my
+dejection fell from me like a cast-off mantle and that all my usual
+urbanity of manner returned to me as I informed the elegant gentleman
+that M. Ratichon was even now standing before him, and begged him to
+take the trouble to pass through into my office.
+
+This he did, and I placed a chair in position for him. He sat down,
+having previously dusted the chair with a graceful sweep of his
+lace-edged handkerchief. Then he raised a gold-rimmed eyeglass to his
+right eye with a superlatively elegant gesture, and surveyed me
+critically for a moment or two ere he said:
+
+"I am told, my good M. Ratichon, that you are a trustworthy fellow,
+and one who is willing to undertake a delicate piece of business for a
+moderate honorarium."
+
+Except for the fact that I did not like the word "moderate," I was
+enchanted with him.
+
+"Rumour for once has not lied, Monsieur," I replied in my most
+attractive manner.
+
+"Well," he rejoined--I won't say curtly, but with businesslike
+brevity, "for all purposes connected with the affair which I desire to
+treat with you my name, as far as you are concerned, shall be Jean
+Duval. Understand?"
+
+"Perfectly, Monsieur le Marquis," I replied with a bland smile.
+
+It was a wild guess, but I don't think that I underestimated my new
+client's rank, for he did not wince.
+
+"You know Mlle. Mars?" he queried.
+
+"The actress?" I replied. "Perfectly."
+
+"She is playing in _Le Reve_ at the Theatre Royal just now."
+
+"She is."
+
+"In the first and third acts of the play she wears a gold bracelet set
+with large green stones."
+
+"I noticed it the other night. I had a seat in the parterre, I may
+say."
+
+"I want that bracelet," broke in the soi-disant Jean Duval
+unceremoniously. "The stones are false, the gold strass. I admire
+Mlle. Mars immensely. I dislike seeing her wearing false jewellery. I
+wish to have the bracelet copied in real stones, and to present it to
+her as a surprise on the occasion of the twenty-fifth performance of
+_Le Reve_. It will cost me a king's ransom, and her, for the time
+being, an infinite amount of anxiety. She sets great store by the
+valueless trinket solely because of the merit of its design, and I
+want its disappearance to have every semblance of a theft. All the
+greater will be the lovely creature's pleasure when, at my hands, she
+will receive an infinitely precious jewel the exact counterpart in all
+save its intrinsic value of the trifle which she had thought lost."
+
+It all sounded deliciously romantic. A flavour of the past
+century--before the endless war and abysmal poverty had killed all
+chivalry in us--clung to this proposed transaction. There was nothing
+of the roturier, nothing of a Jean Duval, in this polished man of the
+world who had thought out this subtle scheme for ingratiating himself
+in the eyes of his lady fair.
+
+I murmured an appropriate phrase, placing my services entirely at M.
+le Marquis's disposal, and once more he broke in on my polished
+diction with that brusquerie which betrayed the man accustomed to be
+silently obeyed.
+
+"Mlle. Mars wears the bracelet," he said, "during the third act of _Le
+Reve_. At the end of the act she enters her dressing-room, and her
+maid helps her to change her dress. During this entr'acte Mademoiselle
+with her own hands puts by all the jewellery which she has to wear
+during the more gorgeous scenes of the play. In the last act--the
+finale of the tragedy--she appears in a plain stuff gown, whilst all
+her jewellery reposes in the small iron safe in her dressing-room. It
+is while Mademoiselle is on the stage during the last act that I want
+you to enter her dressing-room and to extract the bracelet out of the
+safe for me."
+
+"I, M. le Marquis?" I stammered. "I, to steal a--"
+
+"Firstly, M.--er--er--Ratichon, or whatever your confounded name may
+be," interposed my client with inimitable hauteur, "understand that my
+name is Jean Duval, and if you forget this again I shall be under the
+necessity of laying my cane across your shoulders and incidentally to
+take my business elsewhere. Secondly, let me tell you that your
+affectations of outraged probity are lost on me, seeing that I know
+all about the stolen treaty which--"
+
+"Enough, M. Jean Duval," I said with a dignity equal, if not greater,
+than his own; "do not, I pray you, misunderstand me. I am ready to do
+you service. But if you will deign to explain how I am to break open
+an iron safe inside a crowded building and extract therefrom a
+trinket, without being caught in the act and locked up for
+house-breaking and theft, I shall be eternally your debtor."
+
+"The extracting of the trinket is your affair," he rejoined dryly. "I
+will give you five hundred francs if you bring the bracelet to me
+within fourteen days."
+
+"But--" I stammered again.
+
+"Your task will not be such a difficult one after all. I will give you
+the duplicate key of the safe."
+
+He dived into the breast pocket of his coat, and drew from it a
+somewhat large and clumsy key, which he placed upon my desk.
+
+"I managed to get that easily enough," he said nonchalantly, "a couple
+of nights ago, when I had the honour of visiting Mademoiselle in her
+dressing-room. A piece of wax in my hand, Mademoiselle's momentary
+absorption in her reflection while her maid was doing her hair, and
+the impression of the original key was in my possession. But between
+taking a model of the key and the actual theft of the bracelet out of
+the safe there is a wide gulf which a gentleman cannot bridge over.
+Therefore, I choose to employ you, M.--er--er--Ratichon, to complete
+the transaction for me."
+
+"For five hundred francs?" I queried blandly.
+
+"It is a fair sum," he argued.
+
+"Make it a thousand," I rejoined firmly, "and you shall have the
+bracelet within fourteen days."
+
+He paused a moment in order to reflect; his steel-grey eyes, cool and
+disdainful, were fixed searchingly on my face. I pride myself on the
+way that I bear that kind of scrutiny, so even now I looked bland and
+withal purposeful and capable.
+
+"Very well," he said, after a few moments, and he rose from his chair
+as he spoke; "it shall be a thousand francs, M.--er--er--Ratichon, and
+I will hand over the money to you in exchange for the bracelet--but it
+must be done within fourteen days, remember."
+
+I tried to induce him to give me a small sum on account. I was about
+to take terrible risks, remember; housebreaking, larceny, theft--call
+it what you will, it meant the _police correctionelle_ and a couple of
+years in New Orleans for sure. He finally gave me fifty francs, and
+once more threatened to take his business elsewhere, so I had to
+accept and to look as urbane and dignified as I could.
+
+He was out of the office and about to descend the stairs when a
+thought struck me.
+
+"Where and how can I communicate with M. Jean Duval," I asked, "when
+my work is done?"
+
+"I will call here," he replied, "at ten o'clock of every morning that
+follows a performance of _Le Reve_. We can complete our transaction
+then across your office desk."
+
+The next moment he was gone. Theodore passed him on the stairs and
+asked me, with one of his impertinent leers, whether we had a new
+client and what we might expect from him. I shrugged my shoulders. "A
+new client!" I said disdainfully. "Bah! Vague promises of a couple of
+louis for finding out if Madame his wife sees more of a certain
+captain of the guards than Monsieur the husband cares about."
+
+Theodore sniffed. He always sniffs when financial matters are on the
+tapis.
+
+"Anything on account?" he queried.
+
+"A paltry ten francs," I replied, "and I may as well give you your
+share of it now."
+
+I tossed a franc to him across the desk. By the terms of my contract
+with him, you understand, he was entitled to ten per cent, of every
+profit accruing from the business in lieu of wages, but in this
+instance do you not think that I was justified in looking on one franc
+now, and perhaps twenty when the transaction was completed, as a more
+than just honorarium for his share in it? Was I not taking all the
+risks in this delicate business? Would it be fair for me to give him a
+hundred francs for sitting quietly in the office or sipping absinthe
+at a neighbouring bar whilst I risked New Orleans--not to speak of the
+gallows?
+
+He gave me a strange look as he picked up the silver franc, spat on it
+for luck, bit it with his great yellow teeth to ascertain if it were
+counterfeit or genuine, and finally slipped it into his pocket, and
+shuffled out of the office whistling through his teeth.
+
+An abominably low, deceitful creature, that Theodore, you will see
+anon. But I won't anticipate.
+
+
+
+2.
+
+The next performance of _Le Reve_ was announced for the following
+evening, and I started on my campaign. As you may imagine, it did not
+prove an easy matter. To obtain access through the stage-door to the
+back of the theatre was one thing--a franc to the doorkeeper had done
+the trick--to mingle with the scene-shifters, to talk with the supers,
+to take off my hat with every form of deep respect to the principals
+had been equally simple.
+
+I had even succeeded in placing a bouquet on the dressing-table of the
+great tragedienne on my second visit to the theatre. Her dressing-room
+door had been left ajar during that memorable fourth act which was to
+see the consummation of my labours. I had the bouquet in my hand,
+having brought it expressly for that purpose. I pushed open the door,
+and found myself face to face with a young though somewhat forbidding
+damsel, who peremptorily demanded what my business might be.
+
+In order to minimise the risk of subsequent trouble, I had assumed the
+disguise of a middle-aged Angliche--red side-whiskers, florid
+complexion, a ginger-coloured wig plastered rigidly over the ears
+towards the temples, high stock collar, nankeen pantaloons, a patch
+over one eye and an eyeglass fixed in the other. My own sainted mother
+would never have known me.
+
+With becoming diffidence I explained in broken French that my deep
+though respectful admiration of Mlle. Mars had prompted me to lay a
+floral tribute at her feet. I desired nothing more.
+
+The damsel eyed me coldly, though at the moment I was looking quite my
+best, diffident yet courteous, a perfect gentleman of the old regime.
+Then she took the bouquet from me and put it down on the
+dressing-table.
+
+I fancied that she smiled, not unkindly, and I ventured to pass the
+time of day. She replied not altogether disapprovingly. She sat down
+by the dressing-table and took up some needlework which she had
+obviously thrown aside on my arrival. Close by, on the floor, was a
+solid iron chest with huge ornamental hinges and a large escutcheon
+over the lock. It stood about a foot high and perhaps a couple of feet
+long.
+
+There was nothing else in the room that suggested a receptacle for
+jewellery; this, therefore, was obviously the safe which contained the
+bracelet. At the self-same second my eyes alighted on a large and
+clumsy-looking key which lay upon the dressing-table, and my hand at
+once wandered instinctively to the pocket of my coat and closed
+convulsively on the duplicate one which the soi-disant Jean Duval had
+given me.
+
+I talked eloquently for a while. The damsel answered in monosyllables,
+but she sat unmoved at needlework, and after ten minutes or so I was
+forced to beat a retreat.
+
+I returned to the charge at the next performance of _Le Reve_, this
+time with a box of bonbons for the maid instead of the bouquet for the
+mistress. The damsel was quite amenable to a little conversation,
+quite willing that I should dally in her company. She munched the
+bonbons and coquetted a little with me. But she went on stolidly with
+her needlework, and I could see that nothing would move her out of
+that room, where she had obviously been left in charge.
+
+Then I bethought me of Theodore. I realised that I could not carry
+this affair through successfully without his help. So I gave him a
+further five francs--as I said to him it was out of my own
+savings--and I assured him that a certain M. Jean Duval had promised
+me a couple of hundred francs when the business which he had entrusted
+to me was satisfactorily concluded. It was for this business--so I
+explained--that I required his help, and he seemed quite satisfied.
+
+His task was, of course, a very easy one. What a contrast to the risk
+I was about to run! Twenty-five francs, my dear Sir, just for knocking
+at the door of Mlle. Mars' dressing-room during the fourth act, whilst
+I was engaged in conversation with the attractive guardian of the iron
+safe, and to say in well-assumed, breathless tones:
+
+"Mademoiselle Mars has been taken suddenly unwell on the stage.
+Will her maid go to her at once?"
+
+It was some little distance from the dressing-room to the wings--down
+a flight of ill-lighted stone stairs which demanded cautious ascent
+and descent. Theodore had orders to obstruct the maid during her
+progress as much as he could without rousing her suspicions.
+
+I reckoned that she would be fully three minutes going, questioning,
+finding out that the whole thing was a hoax, and running back to the
+dressing-room--three minutes in which to open the chest, extract the
+bracelet and, incidentally, anything else of value there might be
+close to my hand. Well, I had thought of that eventuality, too; one
+must think of everything, you know--that is where genius comes in.
+Then, if possible, relock the safe, so that the maid, on her return,
+would find everything apparently in order and would not, perhaps,
+raise the alarm until I was safely out of the theatre.
+
+It could be done--oh, yes, it could be done--with a minute to spare!
+And to-morrow at ten o'clock M. Jean Duval would appear, and I would
+not part with the bracelet until a thousand francs had passed from his
+pocket into mine. I must get Theodore out of the house, by the way,
+before the arrival of M. Duval.
+
+A thousand francs! I had not seen a thousand francs all at once for
+years. What a dinner I would have tomorrow! There was a certain little
+restaurant in the Rue des Pipots where they concocted a cassolette of
+goose liver and pork chops with haricot beans which . . . ! I only
+tell you that.
+
+How I got through the rest of that day I cannot tell you. The evening
+found me--quite an habitue now--behind the stage of the Theatre
+Royal, nodding to one or two acquaintances, most of the people looking
+on me with grave respect and talking of me as the eccentric milor. I
+was supposed to be pining for an introduction to the great
+tragedienne, who, very exclusive as usual, had so far given me the
+cold shoulder.
+
+Ten minutes after the rise of the curtain on the fourth act I was in
+the dressing-room, presenting the maid with a gold locket which I had
+bought from a cheapjack's barrow for five and twenty francs--almost
+the last of the fifty which I had received from M. Duval on account.
+The damsel was eyeing the locket somewhat disdainfully and giving me
+grudging thanks for it when there came a hurried knock at the door.
+The next moment Theodore poked his ugly face into the room. He, too,
+had taken the precaution of assuming an excellent disguise--peaked cap
+set aslant over one eye, grimy face, the blouse of a scene-shifter.
+
+"Mlle. Mars," he gasped breathlessly; "she has been taken ill--on the
+stage--very suddenly. She is in the wings--asking for her maid. They
+think she will faint."
+
+The damsel rose, visibly frightened.
+
+"I'll come at once," she said, and without the slightest flurry she
+picked up the key of the safe and slipped it into her pocket. I
+fancied that she gave me a look as she did this. Oh, she was a pearl
+among Abigails! Then she pointed unceremoniously to the door.
+
+"Milor!" was all she said, but of course I understood. I had no idea
+that English milors could be thus treated by pert maidens. But what
+cared I for social amenities just then? My hand had closed over the
+duplicate key of the safe, and I walked out of the room in the wake of
+the damsel. Theodore had disappeared.
+
+Once in the passage, the girl started to run. A second or two later
+I heard the patter of her high-heeled shoes down the stone stairs. I
+had not a moment to lose.
+
+To slip back into the dressing-room was but an instant's work. The
+next I was kneeling in front of the chest. The key fitted the lock
+accurately; one turn, and the lid flew open.
+
+The chest was filled with a miscellaneous collection of theatrical
+properties all lying loose--showy necklaces, chains, pendants, all of
+them obviously false; but lying beneath them, and partially hidden by
+the meretricious ornaments, were one or two boxes covered with velvet
+such as jewellers use. My keen eyes noted these at once. I was indeed
+in luck! For the moment, however, my hand fastened on a leather case
+which reposed on the top in one corner, and which very obviously, from
+its shape, contained a bracelet. My hands did not tremble, though I
+was quivering with excitement. I opened the case. There, indeed, was
+the bracelet--the large green stones, the magnificent gold setting,
+the whole jewel dazzlingly beautiful. If it were real--the thought
+flashed through my mind--it would be indeed priceless. I closed the
+case and put it on the dressing-table beside me. I had at least
+another minute to spare--sixty seconds wherein to dive for those
+velvet-covered boxes which-- My hand was on one of them when a slight
+noise caused me suddenly to turn and to look behind me. It all happened
+as quickly as a flash of lightning. I just saw a man disappearing
+through the door. One glance at the dressing-table showed me the whole
+extent of my misfortune. The case containing the bracelet had gone, and
+at that precise moment I heard a commotion from the direction of the
+stairs and a woman screaming at the top of her voice: "Thief! Stop
+thief!"
+
+Then, Sir, I brought upon the perilous situation that presence of mind
+for which the name of Hector Ratichon will for ever remain famous.
+Without a single flurried movement, I slipped one of the
+velvet-covered cases which I still had in my hand into the breast
+pocket of my coat, I closed down the lid of the iron chest and locked
+it with the duplicate key, and I went out of the room, closing the
+door behind me.
+
+The passage was dark. The damsel was running up the stairs with a
+couple of stage hands behind her. She was explaining to them volubly,
+and to the accompaniment of sundry half-hysterical little cries, the
+infamous hoax to which she had fallen a victim. You might think, Sir,
+that here was I caught like a rat in a trap, and with that
+velvet-covered case in my breast pocket by way of damning evidence
+against me!
+
+Not at all, Sir! Not at all! Not so is Hector Ratichon, the keenest
+secret agent France has ever known, the confidant of kings, brought to
+earth by an untoward move of fate. Even before the damsel and the
+stage hands had reached the top of the stairs and turned into the
+corridor, which was on my left, I had slipped round noiselessly to my
+right and found shelter in a narrow doorway, where I was screened by
+the surrounding darkness and by a projection of the frame. While the
+three of them made straight for Mademoiselle's dressing-room, and
+spent some considerable time there in uttering varied ejaculations
+when they found the place and the chest to all appearances untouched,
+I slipped out of my hiding-place, sped rapidly along the corridor, and
+was soon half-way down the stairs.
+
+Here my habitual composure in the face of danger stood me in good
+stead. It enabled me to walk composedly and not too hurriedly through
+the crowd behind the scenes--supers, scene-shifters, principals, none
+of whom seemed to be aware as yet of the hoax practised on
+Mademoiselle Mars' maid; and I reckon that I was out of the stage door
+exactly five minutes after Theodore had called the damsel away.
+
+But I was minus the bracelet, and in my mind there was the firm
+conviction that that traitor Theodore had played me one of his
+abominable tricks. As I said, the whole thing had occurred as quickly
+as a flash of lightning, but even so my keen, experienced eyes had
+retained the impression of a peaked cap and the corner of a blue
+blouse as they disappeared through the dressing-room door.
+
+
+
+3.
+
+Tact, wariness and strength were all required, you must admit, in
+order to deal with the present delicate situation. I was speeding
+along the Rue de Richelieu on my way to my office. My intention was to
+spend the night there, where I had a chair-bedstead on which I had oft
+before slept soundly after a day's hard work, and anyhow it was too
+late to go to my lodgings at Passy at this hour.
+
+Moreover, Theodore slept in the antechamber of the office, and I was
+more firmly convinced than ever that it was he who had stolen the
+bracelet. "Blackleg! Thief! Traitor!" I mused. "But thou hast not done
+with Hector Ratichon yet."
+
+In the meanwhile I bethought me of the velvet-covered box in my breast
+pocket, and of the ginger-coloured hair and whiskers that I was still
+wearing, and which might prove an unpleasant "piece de conviction" in
+case the police were after the stolen bracelet.
+
+With a view to examining the one and getting rid of the other, I
+turned into the Square Louvois, which, as usual, was very dark and
+wholly deserted. Here I took off my wig and whiskers and threw them
+over the railings into the garden. Then I drew the velvet-covered box
+from my pocket, opened it, and groped for its contents. Imagine my
+feelings, my dear Sir, when I realised that the case was empty! Fate
+was indeed against me that night. I had been fooled and cheated by a
+traitor, and had risked New Orleans and worse for an empty box.
+
+For a moment I must confess that I lost that imperturbable sang-froid
+which is the admiration of all my friends, and with a genuine oath I
+flung the case over the railings in the wake of the milor's hair and
+whiskers. Then I hurried home.
+
+Theodore had not returned. He did not come in until the small hours of
+the morning, and then he was in a state that I can only describe, with
+your permission, as hoggish. He could hardly speak. I had him at my
+mercy. Neither tact nor wariness was required for the moment. I
+stripped him to his skin; he only laughed like an imbecile. His eyes
+had a horrid squint in them; he was hideous. I found five francs in
+one of his pockets, but neither in his clothes nor on his person did I
+find the bracelet.
+
+"What have you done with it?" I cried, for by this time I was maddened
+with rage.
+
+"I don't know what you are talking about!" he stammered thickly, as he
+tottered towards his bed. "Give me back my five francs, you thief!"
+the brutish creature finally blurted out ere he fell into a hog-like
+sleep.
+
+
+
+4.
+
+Desperate evils need desperate remedies. I spent the rest of the night
+thinking hard. By the time that dawn was breaking my mind was made up.
+Theodore's stertorous breathing assured me that he was still
+insentient. I was muscular in those days, and he a meagre, attenuated,
+drink-sodden creature. I lifted him out of his bed in the antechamber
+and carried him into mine in the office. I found a coil of rope, and
+strapped him tightly in the chair-bedstead so that he could not move.
+I tied a scarf round his mouth so that he could not scream. Then, at
+six o'clock, when the humbler eating-houses begin to take down their
+shutters, I went out.
+
+I had Theodore's five francs in my pocket, and I was desperately
+hungry. I spent ten sous on a cup of coffee and a plate of fried
+onions and haricot beans, and three francs on a savoury pie, highly
+flavoured with garlic, and a quarter-bottle of excellent cognac. I
+drank the coffee and ate the onions and the beans, and I took the pie
+and cognac home.
+
+I placed a table close to the chair-bedstead and on it I disposed the
+pie and the cognac in such a manner that the moment Theodore woke his
+eyes were bound to alight on them. Then I waited. I absolutely ached
+to have a taste of that pie myself, it smelt so good, but I waited.
+
+Theodore woke at nine o'clock. He struggled like a fool, but he still
+appeared half dazed. No doubt he thought that he was dreaming. Then I
+sat down on the edge of the bed and cut myself off a large piece of
+the pie. I ate it with marked relish in front of Theodore, whose eyes
+nearly started out of their sockets. Then I brewed myself a cup of
+coffee. The mingled odour of coffee and garlic filled the room. It was
+delicious. I thought that Theodore would have a fit. The veins stood
+out on his forehead and a kind of gurgle came from behind the scarf
+round his mouth. Then I told him he could partake of the pie and
+coffee if he told me what he had done with the bracelet. He shook his
+head furiously, and I left the pie, the cognac and the coffee on the
+table before him and went into the antechamber, closing the office
+door behind me, and leaving him to meditate on his treachery.
+
+What I wanted to avoid above everything was the traitor meeting M.
+Jean Duval. He had the bracelet--of that I was as convinced as that I
+was alive. But what could he do with a piece of false jewellery? He
+could not dispose of it, save to a vendor of theatrical properties,
+who no doubt was well acquainted with the trinket and would not give
+more than a couple of francs for what was obviously stolen property.
+After all, I had promised Theodore twenty francs; he would not be such
+a fool as to sell that birthright for a mess of pottage and the sole
+pleasure of doing me a bad turn.
+
+There was no doubt in my mind that he had put the thing away somewhere
+in what he considered a safe place pending a reward being offered by
+Mlle. Mars for the recovery of the bracelet. The more I thought of
+this the more convinced I was that that was, indeed, his proposed plan
+of action--oh, how I loathed the blackleg!--and mine henceforth would
+be to dog his every footstep and never let him out of my sight until I
+forced him to disgorge his ill-gotten booty.
+
+At ten o'clock M. Jean Duval arrived, as was his wont, supercilious
+and brusque as usual. I was just explaining to him that I hoped to
+have excellent news for him after the next performance of _Le Reve_
+when there was a peremptory ring at the bell. I went to open the door,
+and there stood a police inspector in uniform with a sheaf of papers
+in his hand.
+
+Now, I am not over-fond of our Paris police; they poke their noses in
+where they are least wanted. Their incompetence favours the
+machinations of rogues and frustrates the innocent ambitions of the
+just. However, in this instance the inspector looked amiable enough,
+though his manner, I must say, was, as usual, unpleasantly curt.
+
+"Here, Ratichon," he said, "there has been an impudent theft of a
+valuable bracelet out of Mademoiselle Mars' dressing-room at the
+Theatre Royal last night. You and your mate frequent all sorts of
+places of ill-fame; you may hear something of the affair."
+
+I chose to ignore the insult, and the inspector detached a paper from
+the sheaf which he held and threw it across the table to me.
+
+"There is a reward of two thousand five hundred francs," he said, "for
+the recovery of the bracelet. You will find on that paper an accurate
+description of the jewel. It contains the celebrated Maroni emerald,
+presented to the ex-Emperor by the Sultan, and given by him to Mlle.
+Mars."
+
+Whereupon he turned unceremoniously on his heel and went, leaving me
+face to face with the man who had so shamefully tried to swindle me. I
+turned, and resting my elbow on the table and my chin in my hand, I
+looked mutely on the soi-disant Jean Duval and equally mutely pointed
+with an accusing finger to the description of the famous bracelet
+which he had declared to me was merely strass and base metal.
+
+But he had the impudence to turn on me before I could utter a
+syllable.
+
+"Where is the bracelet?" he demanded. "You consummate liar, you! Where
+is it? You stole it last night! What have you done with it?"
+
+"I extracted, at your request," I replied with as much dignity as I
+could command, "a piece of theatrical jewellery, which you stated to
+me to be worthless, out of an iron chest, the key of which you placed
+in my hands. I . . ."
+
+"Enough of this rubbish!" he broke in roughly. "You have the bracelet.
+Give it me now, or . . ."
+
+He broke off and looked somewhat alarmed in the direction of the
+office door, from the other side of which there had just come a loud
+crash, followed by loud, if unintelligible, vituperation. What had
+happened I could not guess; all that I could do was to carry off the
+situation as boldly as I dared.
+
+"You shall have the bracelet, Sir," I said in my most suave manner.
+"You shall have it, but not unless you will pay me three thousand
+francs for it. I can get two thousand five hundred by taking it
+straight to Mlle. Mars."
+
+"And be taken up by the police for stealing it," he retorted. "How
+will you explain its being in your possession?"
+
+I did not blanch.
+
+"That is my affair," I replied. "Will you give me three thousand
+francs for it? It is worth sixty thousand francs to a clever thief
+like you."
+
+"You hound!" he cried, livid with rage, and raised his cane as if he
+would strike me.
+
+"Aye, it was cleverly done, M. Jean Duval, whoever you may be. I know
+that the gentleman-thief is a modern product of the old regime, but I
+did not know that the fraternity could show such a fine specimen as
+yourself. Pay Hector Ratichon a thousand francs for stealing a
+bracelet for you worth sixty! Indeed, M. Jean Duval, you deserved to
+succeed!"
+
+Again he shook his cane at me.
+
+"If you touch me," I declared boldly, "I shall take the bracelet at
+once to Mlle. Mars."
+
+He bit his lip and made a great effort to pull himself together.
+
+"I haven't three thousand francs by me," he said.
+
+"Go, fetch the money," I retorted, "and I'll fetch the bracelet."
+
+He demurred for a while, but I was firm, and after he had threatened
+to thrash me, to knock me down, and to denounce me to the police, he
+gave in and went to fetch the money.
+
+
+
+5.
+
+When I remembered Theodore--Theodore, whom only a thin partition wall
+had separated from the full knowledge of the value of his ill-gotten
+treasure!--I could have torn my hair out by the roots with the
+magnitude of my rage. He, the traitor, the blackleg, was about to
+triumph, where I, Hector Ratichon, had failed! He had but to take the
+bracelet to Mlle. Mars himself and obtain the munificent reward whilst
+I, after I had taken so many risks and used all the brains and tact
+wherewith Nature had endowed me, would be left with the meagre
+remnants of the fifty francs which M. Jean Duval had so grudgingly
+thrown to me. Twenty-five francs for a gold locket, ten francs for a
+bouquet, another ten for bonbons, and five for gratuities to the
+stage-doorkeeper! Make the calculation, my good Sir, and see what I
+had left. If it had not been for the five francs which I had found in
+Theodore's pocket last night, I would at this moment not only have
+been breakfastless, but also absolutely penniless.
+
+As it was, my final hope--and that a meagre one--was to arouse one
+spark of honesty in the breast of the arch-traitor, and either by
+cajolery or threats, to induce him to share his ill-gotten spoils with
+me.
+
+I had left him snoring and strapped to the chair-bedstead, and when I
+opened the office door I was marvelling in my mind whether I could
+really bear to see him dying slowly of starvation with that savoury
+pie tantalizingly under his nose. The crash which I had heard a few
+minutes ago prepared me for a change of scene. Even so, I confess that
+the sight which I beheld glued me to the threshold. There sat Theodore
+at the table, finishing the last morsel of pie, whilst the
+chair-bedstead lay in a tangled heap upon the floor.
+
+I cannot tell you how nasty he was to me about the whole thing,
+although I showed myself at once ready to forgive him all his lies and
+his treachery, and was at great pains to explain to him how I had
+given up my own bed and strapped him into it solely for the benefit of
+his health, seeing that at the moment he was threatened with delirium
+tremens.
+
+He would not listen to reason or to the most elementary dictates of
+friendship. Having poured the vials of his bilious temper over my
+devoted head, he became as perverse and as obstinate as a mule. With
+the most consummate impudence I ever beheld in any human being, he
+flatly denied all knowledge of the bracelet.
+
+Whilst I talked he stalked past me into the ante-chamber, where
+he at once busied himself in collecting all his goods and chattels.
+These he stuffed into his pockets until he appeared to be bulging all
+over his ugly-body; then he went to the door ready to go out. On the
+threshold he turned and gave me a supercilious glance over his
+shoulder.
+
+"Take note, my good Ratichon," he said, "that our partnership is
+dissolved as from to-morrow, the twentieth day of September."
+
+"As from this moment, you infernal scoundrel!" I cried.
+
+But he did not pause to listen, and slammed the door in my face.
+
+For two or three minutes I remained quite still, whilst I heard the
+shuffling footsteps slowly descending the corridor. Then I followed
+him, quietly, surreptitiously, as a fox will follow its prey. He never
+turned round once, but obviously he knew that he was being followed.
+
+I will not weary you, my dear Sir, with the details of the dance which
+he led me in and about Paris during the whole of that memorable day.
+Never a morsel passed my lips from breakfast to long after sundown. He
+tried every trick known to the profession to throw me off the scent.
+But I stuck to him like a leech. When he sauntered I sauntered; when
+he ran I ran; when he glued his nose to the window of an eating house
+I halted under a doorway close by; when he went to sleep on a bench in
+the Luxembourg Gardens I watched over him as a mother over a babe.
+
+Towards evening--it was an hour after sunset and the street-lamps were
+just being lighted--he must have thought that he had at last got rid
+of me; for, after looking carefully behind him, he suddenly started to
+walk much faster and with an amount of determination which he had
+lacked hitherto. I marvelled if he was not making for the Rue Daunou,
+where was situated the squalid tavern of ill-fame which he was wont to
+frequent. I was not mistaken.
+
+I tracked the traitor to the corner of the street, and saw him
+disappear beneath the doorway of the Taverne des Trois Tigres. I
+resolved to follow. I had money in my pocket--about twenty-five
+sous--and I was mightily thirsty. I started to run down the street,
+when suddenly Theodore came rushing back out of the tavern, hatless
+and breathless, and before I succeeded in dodging him he fell into my
+arms.
+
+"My money!" he said hoarsely. "I must have my money at once! You
+thief! You . . ."
+
+Once again my presence of mind stood me in good stead.
+
+"Pull yourself together, Theodore," I said with much dignity, "and do
+not make a scene in the open street."
+
+But Theodore was not at all prepared to pull himself together. He
+was livid with rage.
+
+"I had five francs in my pocket last night!" he cried. "You have
+stolen them, you abominable rascal!"
+
+"And you stole from me a bracelet worth three thousand francs to the
+firm," I retorted. "Give me that bracelet and you shall have your
+money back."
+
+"I can't," he blurted out desperately.
+
+"How do you mean, you can't?" I exclaimed, whilst a horrible fear like
+an icy claw suddenly gripped at my heart. "You haven't lost it, have
+you?"
+
+"Worse!" he cried, and fell up against me in semi-unconsciousness.
+
+I shook him violently. I bellowed in his ear, and suddenly, after that
+one moment of apparent unconsciousness, he became, not only wide
+awake, but as strong as a lion and as furious as a bull. We closed in
+on one another. He hammered at me with his fists, calling me every
+kind of injurious name he could think of, and I had need of all my
+strength to ward off his attacks.
+
+For a few moments no one took much notice of us. Fracas and quarrels
+outside the drinking-houses in the mean streets of Paris were so
+frequent these days that the police did not trouble much about them.
+But after a while Theodore became so violent that I was forced to call
+vigorously for help. I thought he meant to murder me. People came
+rushing out of the tavern, and someone very officiously started
+whistling for the gendarmes. This had the effect of bringing Theodore
+to his senses. He calmed down visibly, and before the crowd had had
+time to collect round us we had both sauntered off, walking in
+apparent amity side by side down the street.
+
+But at the first corner Theodore halted, and this time he confined
+himself to gripping me by the arm with one hand whilst with the other
+he grasped one of the buttons of my coat.
+
+"That five francs," he said in a hoarse, half-choked voice. "I must
+have that five francs! Can't you see that I can't have that bracelet
+till I have my five francs wherewith to redeem it?"
+
+"To redeem it!" I gasped. I was indeed glad then that he held me by
+the arm, for it seemed to me as if I was falling down a yawning abyss
+which had opened at my feet.
+
+"Yes," said Theodore, and his voice sounded as if it came from a great
+distance and through cotton-wool,
+
+"I knew that you would be after that bracelet like a famished hyena
+after a bone, so I tied it securely inside the pocket of the blouse I
+was wearing, and left this with Legros, the landlord of the Trois
+Tigres. It was a good blouse; he lent me five francs on it. Of course,
+he knew nothing about the bracelet then. But he only lends money to
+clients in this manner on the condition that it is repaid within
+twenty-four hours. I have got to pay him back before eight o'clock
+this evening or he will dispose of the blouse as he thinks best. It is
+close on eight o'clock now. Give me back my five francs, you
+confounded thief, before Legros has time to discover the bracelet!
+We'll share the reward, I promise you. Faith of an honest man. You
+liar, you cheat, you--"
+
+What was the use of talking? I had not got five francs. I had spent
+ten sous in getting myself some breakfast, and three francs in a
+savoury pie flavoured with garlic and in a quarter of a bottle of
+cognac. I groaned aloud. I had exactly twenty-five sous left.
+
+We went back to the tavern hoping against hope that Legros had not yet
+turned out the pockets of the blouse, and that we might induce him, by
+threat or cajolery or the usurious interest of twenty-five sous, to
+grant his client a further twenty-four hours wherein to redeem the
+pledge.
+
+One glance at the interior of the tavern, however, told us that all
+our hopes were in vain. Legros, the landlord, was even then turning
+the blouse over and over, whilst his hideous hag of a wife was talking
+to the police inspector, who was showing her the paper that announced
+the offer of two thousand five hundred francs for the recovery of a
+valuable bracelet, the property of Mlle. Mars, the distinguished
+tragedienne.
+
+We only waited one minute with our noses glued against the windows of
+the Trois Tigres, just long enough to see Legros extracting the
+leather case from the pocket of the blouse, just long enough to hear
+the police inspector saying peremptorily:
+
+"You, Legros, ought to be able to let the police know who stole the
+bracelet. You must know who left that blouse with you last night."
+
+Then we both fled incontinently down the street.
+
+Now, Sir, was I not right when I said that honour and loyalty are the
+essential qualities in our profession? If Theodore had not been such a
+liar and such a traitor, he and I, between us, would have been richer
+by three thousand francs that day.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+AN OVER-SENSITIVE HEART
+
+
+
+1.
+
+No doubt, Sir, that you have noticed during the course of our
+conversations that Nature has endowed me with an over-sensitive heart.
+I feel keenly, Sir, very keenly. Blows dealt me by Fate, or, as has
+been more often the case, by the cruel and treacherous hand of man,
+touch me on the raw. I suffer acutely. I am highly strung. I am one of
+those rare beings whom Nature pre-ordained for love and for happiness.
+I am an ideal family man.
+
+What? You did not know that I was married? Indeed, Sir, I am. And
+though Madame Ratichon does not perhaps fulfil all my ideals of
+exquisite womanhood, nevertheless she has been an able and willing
+helpmate during these last years of comparative prosperity. Yes, you
+see me fairly prosperous now. My industry, my genius--if I may so
+express myself--found their reward at last. You will be the first to
+acknowledge--you, the confidant of my life's history--that that reward
+was fully deserved. I worked for it, toiled and thought and struggled,
+up to the last; and had Fate been just, rather than grudging, I should
+have attained that ideal which would have filled my cup of happiness
+to the brim.
+
+But, anyway, the episode connected with my marriage did mark the close
+of my professional career, and is therefore worthy of record. Since
+that day, Sir--a happy one for me, a blissful one for Mme. Ratichon--I
+have been able, thanks to the foresight of an all-wise Providence, to
+gratify my bucolic tastes. I live now, Sir, amidst my flowers, with my
+dog and my canary and Mme. Ratichon, smiling with kindly indulgence on
+the struggles and the blunders of my younger colleagues, oft consulted
+by them in matters that require special tact and discretion. I sit and
+dream now beneath the shade of a vine-clad arbour of those glorious
+days of long ago, when kings and emperors placed the destiny of their
+inheritance in my hands, when autocrats and dictators came to me for
+assistance and advice, and the name of Hector Ratichon stood for
+everything that was most astute and most discreet. And if at times a
+gentle sigh of regret escapes my lips, Mme. Ratichon--whose thinness
+is ever my despair, for I admire comeliness, Sir, as being more
+womanly--Mme. Ratichon, I say, comes to me with the gladsome news that
+dinner is served; and though she is not all that I could wish in the
+matter of the culinary arts, yet she can fry a cutlet passably, and
+one of her brothers is a wholesale wine merchant of excellent
+reputation.
+
+It was soon after my connexion with that abominable Marquis de
+Firmin-Latour that I first made the acquaintance of the present Mme.
+Ratichon, under somewhat peculiar circumstances.
+
+I remember it was on the first day of April in the year 1817 that M.
+Rochez--Fernand Rochez was his exact name--came to see me at my office
+in the Rue Daunou, and the date proved propitious, as you will
+presently see. How M. Rochez came to know of my gifts and powers, I
+cannot tell you. He never would say. He had heard of me through a
+friend, was all that he vouchsafed to say.
+
+Theodore had shown him in. Ah! have I not mentioned the fact that I
+had forgiven Theodore his lies and his treachery, and taken him back
+to my bosom and to my board? My sensitive heart had again got the
+better of my prudence, and Theodore was installed once more in the
+antechamber of my apartments in the Rue Daunou, and was, as
+heretofore, sharing with me all the good things that I could afford.
+So there he was on duty on that fateful first of April which was
+destined to be the turning-point of my destiny. And he showed M. de
+Rochez in.
+
+At once I knew my man--the type, I mean. Immaculately dressed, scented
+and befrilled, haughty of manner and nonchalant of speech, M. Rochez
+had the word "adventurer" writ all over his well-groomed person. He
+was young, good-looking, his nails were beautifully polished, his
+pantaloons fitted him without a wrinkle. These were of a soft putty
+shade; his coat was bottle-green, and his hat of the latest modish
+shape. A perfect exquisite, in fact.
+
+And he came to the point without much preamble.
+
+"M.--er--Ratichon," he said, "I have heard of you through a friend,
+who tells me that you are the most unscrupulous scoundrel he has ever
+come across."
+
+"Sir--!" I began, rising from my seat in indignant protest at the
+coarse insult. But with an authoritative gesture he checked the flow
+of my indignation.
+
+"No comedy, I pray you, Sir," he said. "We are not at the Theatre
+Moliere, but, I presume, in an office where business is transacted
+both briefly and with discretion."
+
+"At your service, Monsieur," I replied.
+
+"Then listen, will you?" he went on curtly, "and pray do not
+interrupt. Only speak in answer to a question from me."
+
+I bowed my head in silence. Thus must the proud suffer when they
+happen to be sparsely endowed with riches.
+
+"You have no doubt heard of Mlle. Goldberg," M. Rochez continued after
+a moment's pause, "the lovely daughter of the rich usurer in the Rue
+des Medecins."
+
+I had heard of Mlle. Goldberg. Her beauty and her father's wealth were
+reported to be fabulous. I indicated my knowledge of the beautiful
+lady by a mute inclination of the head.
+
+"I love Mlle. Goldberg," my client resumed, "and I have reason for the
+belief that I am not altogether indifferent to her. Glances, you
+understand, from eyes as expressive as those of the exquisite Jewess
+speak more eloquently than words."
+
+He had forbidden me to speak, so I could only express concurrence in
+the sentiments which he expressed by a slight elevation of my left
+eyebrow.
+
+"I am determined to win the affections of Mlle. Goldberg," M. Rochez
+went on glibly, "and equally am I determined to make her my wife."
+
+"A very natural determination," I remarked involuntarily.
+
+"My only trouble with regard to pressing my court is the fact that my
+lovely Leah is never allowed outside her father's house, save in his
+company or that of his sister--an old maid of dour mien and sour
+disposition, who acts the part of a duenna with dog-like tenacity.
+Over and over again have I tried to approach the lady of my heart,
+only to be repelled or roughly rebuked for my insolence by her
+irascible old aunt."
+
+"You are not the first lover, Sir," I remarked drily, "who hath seen
+obstacles thus thrown in his way, and--"
+
+"One moment, M.--er--Ratichon," he broke in sharply. "I have not
+finished. I will not attempt to describe my feelings to you. I have
+been writhing--yes, writhing!--in face of those obstacles of which
+you speak so lightly, and for a long time I have been cudgelling my
+brains as to the possible means whereby I might approach my divinity
+unchecked. Then one day I bethought me of you--"
+
+"Of me, Sir?" I ejaculated, sorely puzzled. "Why of me?"
+
+"None of my friends," he replied nonchalantly, "would care to
+undertake so scrubby a task as I would assign to you."
+
+"I pray you to be more explicit," I retorted with unimpaired dignity.
+
+Once more he paused. Obviously he was a born mountebank, and he
+calculated all his effects to a nicety.
+
+"You, M.--er--Ratichon," he said curtly at last, "will have to take
+the duenna off my hands."
+
+I was beginning to understand. So I let him prattle on the while my
+busy brain was already at work evolving the means to render this man
+service, which in its turn I expected to be amply repaid. Thus I
+cannot repeat exactly all that he said, for I was only listening with
+half an ear. But the substance of it all was this: I was to pose as
+the friend of M. Fernand Rochez, and engage the attention of Mlle.
+Goldberg senior the while he paid his court to the lovely Leah. It was
+not a repellent task altogether, because M. Rochez's suggestion opened
+a vista of pleasant parties at open-air cafes, with foaming tankards
+of beer, on warm afternoons the while the young people sipped sirops
+and fed on love. My newly found friend was pleased to admit that my
+personality and appearance would render my courtship of the elderly
+duenna a comparatively easy one. She would soon, he declared, fall a
+victim to my charms.
+
+After which the question of remuneration came in, and over this we did
+not altogether agree. Ultimately I decided to accept an advance of two
+hundred francs and a new suit of clothes, which I at once declared was
+indispensable under the circumstances, seeing that in my well-worn
+coat I might have the appearance of a fortune-hunter in the eyes of
+the suspicious old dame.
+
+Within my mind I envisaged the possibility of touching M. Rochez for a
+further two hundred francs if and when opportunity arose.
+
+
+
+2.
+
+The formal introduction took place on the boulevards one fine
+afternoon shortly after that. Mlle. Leah was walking under the trees
+with her duenna when we--M. Rochez and I--came face to face with them.
+My friend raised his hat, and I did likewise. Mademoiselle Leah
+blushed and the ogre frowned. Sir, she was an ogre!--bony and angular
+and hook-nosed, with thin lips that closed with a snap, and cold grey
+eyes that sent a shiver down your spine! Rochez introduced me to her,
+and I made myself exceedingly agreeable to her, while my friend
+succeeded in exchanging two or three whispered words with his
+inamorata.
+
+But we did not get very far that day. Mlle. Goldberg senior soon
+marched her lovely charge away.
+
+Ah, Sir, she was lovely indeed! And in my heart I not only envied
+Rochez his good fortune but I also felt how entirely unworthy he was
+of it. Nor did the beautiful Leah give me the impression of being
+quite so deeply struck with his charms as he would have had me
+believe. Indeed, it struck me during those few minutes that I stood
+dutifully talking to her duenna that the fair young Jewess cast more
+than one approving glance in my direction.
+
+Be that as it may, the progress of our respective courtships, now that
+the ice was broken, took on a more decided turn. At first it only
+amounted to meetings on the boulevards and a cursory greeting, but
+soon Mlle. Goldberg senior, delighted with my conversation, would
+deliberately turn to walk with me under the trees the while Fernand
+Rochez followed by the side of his adored. A week later the ladies
+accepted my friend's offer to sit under the awning of the Cafe
+Bourbon and to sip sirops, whilst we indulged in tankards of
+foaming "blondes."
+
+Within a fortnight, Sir--I may say it without boasting--I had Mlle.
+Goldberg senior in the hollow of my hand. On the boulevards, as soon
+as she caught sight of me, her dour face would be wreathed in smiles,
+a row of large yellow teeth would appear between her thin lips, and
+her cold, grey eyes would soften with a glance of welcome which more
+than ever sent a cold shudder down my spine. While we four were
+together, either promenading or sitting at open-air cafes in the cool
+of the evening, the old duenna had eyes and ears only for me, and if
+my friend Rochez did not get on with his own courtship as fast as he
+would have wished the fault rested entirely with him.
+
+For he did _not_ get on with his courtship, and that was a fact. The
+fair Leah was very sweet, very coy, greatly amused, I fancy, at her
+aunt's obvious infatuation for me, and not a little flattered at the
+handsome M. Rochez's attentions to herself. But there it all ended.
+And whenever I questioned Rochez on the subject, he flew into a temper
+and consigned all middle-aged Jewesses to perdition, and all the
+lovely and young ones to a comfortable kind of Hades to which he alone
+amongst the male sex would have access. From which I gathered that I
+was not wrong in my surmises, that the fair Leah had been smitten by
+my personality and my appearance rather than by those of my friend,
+and that he was suffering the pangs of an insane jealousy.
+
+This, of course, he never would admit. All that he told me one day was
+that Leah, with the characteristic timidity of her race, refused to
+marry him unless she could obtain her father's consent to the union.
+Old Goldberg, duly approached on the matter, flatly forbade his
+daughter to have anything further to do with that fortune-hunter, that
+parasite, that beggarly pick-thank--such, Sir, were but a few
+complimentary epithets which he hurled with great volubility at his
+daughter's absent suitor.
+
+It was from Mlle. Goldberg, senior, that my friend and I had the
+details of that stormy interview between father and daughter; after
+which, she declared that interviews between the lovers would
+necessarily become very difficult of arrangement. From which you will
+gather that the worthy soul, though she was as ugly as sin, was by
+this time on the side of the angels. Indeed, she was more than that.
+She professed herself willing to aid and abet them in every way she
+could. This Rochez confided to me, together with his assurance that he
+was determined to take his Fate into his own hands and, since the
+beautiful Leah would not come to him of her own accord, to carry her
+off by force.
+
+Ah, my dear Sir, those were romantic days, you must remember! Days
+when men placed the possession of the woman they loved above every
+treasure, every consideration upon earth. Ah, romance! Romance, Sir,
+was the breath of our nostrils, the blood in our veins! Imagine how
+readily we all fell in with my friend's plans. I, of course, was the
+moving spirit in it all; mine was the genius which was destined to
+turn gilded romance into grim reality. Yes, grim! For you shall see! . . .
+
+Mlle. Goldberg, senior, who appropriately enough was named Sarah, gave
+us the clue how to proceed, after which my genius worked alone.
+
+You must know that old Goldberg's house in the Rue des Medecins--a
+large apartment house in which he occupied a few rooms on the ground
+floor behind his shop--backed on to a small uncultivated garden which
+ended in a tall brick wall, the meeting-place of all the felines in
+the neighbourhood, and in which there was a small postern gate, now
+disused. This gate gave on a narrow cul-de-sac--grandiloquently named
+Passage Corneille--which was flanked on the opposite side by the tall
+boundary wall of an adjacent convent.
+
+That cul-de-sac was marked out from the very first in my mind as our
+objective. Around and about it, as it were, did I build the edifice of
+my schemes, aided by the ever-willing Sarah. The old maid threw
+herself into the affair with zest, planning and contriving like a
+veritable strategist; and I must admit that she was full of resource
+and invention. We were now in mid-May and enjoying a spell of hot
+summer weather. This gave the inventive Sarah the excuse for using the
+back garden as a place wherein to sit in the cool of the evening in
+the company of her niece.
+
+Ah, you see the whole thing now at a glance, do you not? The postern
+gate, the murky night, the daring lover, the struggling maiden, the
+willing accomplices. The actors were all there, ready for the curtain
+to be rung up on the palpitating drama.
+
+Then it was that a brilliant idea came into my brain. It was born on
+the very day that I realized with indisputable certainty that the
+lovely Leah was not in reality in love with Rochez. He fatuously
+believed that she was ready to fall into his arms, that only maidenly
+timidity held her back, and that the moment she had been snatched from
+her father's house and found herself in the arms of her adoring lover,
+she would turn to him in the very fullness of love and confidence.
+
+But I knew better. I had caught a look now and again--an undefinable
+glance, which told me the whole pitiable tale. She did not love
+Rochez; and in the drama which we were preparing to enact the curtain
+would fall on his rapture and her unhappiness.
+
+Ah, Sir! imagine what my feelings were when I realized this! This fair
+girl, against whom we were all conspiring like so many traitors, was
+still ignorant of the fatal brink on which she stood. She chatted and
+coquetted and smiled, little dreaming that in a very few days her
+happiness would be wrecked and she would be linked for life to a man
+whom she could never love. Rochez's idea, of course, was primarily to
+get hold of her fortune. I had already ascertained for him, through
+the ever-willing Sarah, that this fortune came from Leah's
+grandfather, who had left a sum of two hundred thousand francs on
+trust for her children, she to enjoy the income for her life. There
+certainly was a clause in the will whereby the girl would forfeit that
+fortune if she married without her father's consent; but according to
+Rochez's plans this could scarcely be withheld once she had been taken
+forcibly away from home, held in durance, and with her reputation
+hopelessly compromised. She could then pose as an injured victim,
+throw herself at her father's feet, and beg him to give that consent
+without which she would for ever remain an outcast of society, a
+pariah amongst her kind.
+
+A pretty piece of villainous combination, you will own! And I, Sir,
+was to lend a hand in this abomination!--nay, I was to be the chief
+villain in the drama! It was I who, even now, was spending the hours
+of the night, when I might have been dreaming sentimental dreams, in
+oiling the lock of the postern gate which was to give us access into
+papa Goldberg's garden. It was I who, under cover of darkness and
+guided by that old jade Sarah, was to sneak into that garden on the
+appointed night and forcibly seize the unsuspecting maiden and carry
+her to the carriage which Rochez would have in readiness for her.
+
+You see what a coward he was! It was a criminal offence in those days,
+punishable with deportation to New Caledonia, to abduct a young lady
+from her parents' house; and Rochez left me the dirty work to do in
+case the girl screamed and attracted the police. Now you will tell me
+if I was not justified in doing what I did, and I will abide by your
+judgment.
+
+I was to take all the risks, remember!--New Caledonia, the police, the
+odium attached to so foul a deed; and do you know for what? For a
+paltry thousand francs, which with much difficulty I had induced
+Rochez--nay, forced him!--to hand over to me in anticipation of what I
+was about to accomplish for his sake. A thousand francs! Did this
+miserliness not characterize the man? Was it to such a scrubby knave
+that I, at risk of my life and of my honour, would hand over that
+jewel amongst women, that pearl above price?--a lady with a personal
+fortune amounting to two hundred thousand francs?
+
+No, Sir; I would not! Then and there I vowed that I would not! Mine
+were to be all the risks; then mine should be the reward! What Rochez
+meant to do, that I could too, and with far greater reason. The lovely
+Leah did at times frown on Fernand; but she invariably smiled on me.
+She would fall into my arms far more readily than into his, and papa
+Goldberg would be equally forced to give his consent to her marriage
+with me as with that self-seeking carpet-knight whom he abhorred.
+
+Needless to say, I kept my own counsel, and did not speak of my
+project even to Sarah. To all appearances I was to be the mere tool in
+this affair, the unfortunate cat employed to snatch the roast
+chestnuts out of the fire for the gratification of a mealy-mouthed
+monkey.
+
+
+
+3.
+
+The appointed day and hour were at hand. Fernand Rochez had engaged a
+barouche which was to take him and his lovely victim to a little house
+at Auteuil, which he had rented for the purpose. There the lovers were
+to lie perdu until such time as papa Goldberg had relented and the
+marriage could be duly solemnized in the synagogue of the Rue des
+Halles. Sarah had offered in the meanwhile to do all that in her power
+lay to soften the old man's heart and to bring about the happy
+conclusion of the romantic adventure.
+
+For the latter we had chosen the night of May 23rd. It was a moonless
+night, and the Passage Corneille, from whence I was to operate, was
+most usefully dark. Sarah Goldberg had, according to convention, left
+the postern gate on the latch, and at ten o'clock precisely I made my
+way up the cul-de-sac and cautiously turned the handle of the door. I
+confess that my heart beat somewhat uncomfortably in my bosom.
+
+I had left Rochez and his barouche in the Rue des Pipots, about a
+hundred metres from the angle of the Passage Corneille, and it was
+along those hundred metres of a not altogether unfrequented street
+that he expected me presently to carry a possibly screaming and
+struggling burden in the very teeth of a gendarmerie always on the
+look-out for exciting captures.
+
+No, Sir; that was not to be! And it was with a resolute if beating
+heart that I presently felt the postern gate yielding to the pressure
+of my hand. The neighbouring church clock of St. Sulpice had just
+finished striking ten. I pushed open the gate and tip-toed across the
+threshold.
+
+In the garden the boughs of a dilapidated old ash tree were soughing
+in the wind above my head, whilst from the top of the boundary wall
+the yarring and yowling of beasts of the feline species grated
+unpleasantly on my ear. I could not see my hand before my eyes, and
+had just stretched it out in order to guide my footsteps when it was
+seized with a kindly yet firm pressure, whilst a voice murmured
+softly:
+
+"Hush!"
+
+"Who is it?" I whispered in response.
+
+"It is I--Sarah!" the voice replied. "Everything is all right, but
+Leah is unsuspecting. I am sure that if she suspected anything she
+would not set foot outside the door."
+
+"What shall we do?" I asked.
+
+"Wait here a moment quietly," Sarah rejoined, speaking in a rapid
+whisper, "under cover of this wall. Within the next few minutes Leah
+will come out of the house. I have left my knitting upon a garden
+chair, and I will ask her to run out and fetch it. That will be your
+opportunity. The chair is in the angle of the wall, there," she added,
+pointing to her right, "not three paces from where you are standing
+now. Leah has a white dress on. She will have to stoop in order to
+pick up the knitting. I have taken the precaution to entangle the wool
+in the leg of the chair, so she will be some few seconds entirely at
+your mercy. Have you a shawl?"
+
+I had, of course, provided myself with one. A shawl is always a
+necessary adjunct to such adventures. Breathlessly, silently, I
+intimated to my kind accomplice that I would obey her behests and that
+I was prepared for every eventuality. The next moment her hold upon my
+hand relaxed, she gave another quickly-whispered "Hush!" and
+disappeared into the night.
+
+For a second or two after that my ear caught the soft sound of her
+retreating footsteps, then nothing more. To say that I felt anxious
+and ill at ease was but to put it mildly. I was face to face with an
+adventure which might cost me at least five years' acute discomfort in
+New Caledonia, but which might also bring me as rich a reward as could
+befall any man of modest ambitions: a lovely wife and a comfortable
+fortune. My whole life seemed to be hanging on a thread, and my
+overwrought senses seemed almost to catch the sound of the
+spinning-wheel of Fate weaving the web of my destiny.
+
+A moment or two later I again caught the distinct sound of a gentle
+footfall upon the soft earth. My eyes by now were somewhat accustomed
+to the gloom. It was very dark, you understand; but through the
+darkness I saw something white moving slowly toward me. Then my heart
+thumped more furiously than ever before. I dared not breathe. I saw
+the lovely Leah approaching, or, rather, I felt her approach, for it
+was too dark to see. She moved in the direction which Sarah had
+indicated to me as being the place where stood the garden chair with
+the knitting upon it. I grasped the shawl. I was ready.
+
+Another few seconds of agonising suspense went by. The fair Leah had
+ceased to move. Undoubtedly she was engaged in disentangling the wool
+from the leg of the chair. That was my opportunity. More stealthy than
+any cat, I tiptoed toward the chair--and, indeed, at that moment I
+blessed the sudden yowl set up by some feline in its wrath which rent
+the still night air and effectually drowned any sound which I might
+make.
+
+There, not three paces away from me, was the dim outline of the young
+girl's form vaguely discernible in the gloom--a white mass, almost
+motionless, against a background of inky blackness. With a quick
+intaking of my breath I sprang forward, the shawl outspread in my
+hand, and with a quick dexterous gesture I threw it over her head, and
+the next second had her, faintly struggling, in my arms. She was as
+light as a feather, and I was as strong as a giant. Think of it, Sir!
+There was I, alone in the darkness, holding in my arms, together with
+a lovely form, a fortune of two hundred thousand francs!
+
+Of that fool Fernand Rochez I did not trouble to think. He had a
+barouche waiting _up_ the Rue des Pipots, a hundred metres from the
+corner of the Passage Corneille, but I had a chaise and pair of horses
+waiting _down_ that same street, and that now was my objective. Yes,
+Sir! I had arranged the whole thing! But I had done it for mine own
+advantage, not for that of the miserly friend who had been too great a
+coward to risk his own skin for the sake of his beloved.
+
+The guerdon was mine, and I was determined this time that no traitor
+or ingrate should filch from me the reward of my labours. With the
+thousand francs which Rochez had given me for my services I had
+engaged the chaise and horses, paid the coachman lavishly, and secured
+a cosy little apartment for my future wife in a pleasant hostelry I
+knew of at Suresnes.
+
+I had taken the precaution to leave the wicket-gate on the latch. With
+my foot I pushed it open, and, keeping well under the cover of the
+tall convent wall, I ran swiftly to the corner of the Rue des Pipots.
+Here I paused a moment. Through the silence of the night my ear caught
+the faint sound of horses snorting and harness jingling in the
+distance, both sides from where I stood; but of gendarmes or
+passers-by there was no sign. Gathering up the full measure of my
+courage and holding my precious burden closer to my heart, I ran
+quickly down the street.
+
+Within the next few seconds I had the seemingly inanimate maiden
+safely deposited in the inside of the barouche and myself sitting by
+her side. The driver cracked his whip, and whilst I, happy but
+exhausted, was mopping my streaming forehead the chaise rattled gaily
+along the uneven pavements of the great city in the direction of
+Suresnes.
+
+What that fool Rochez was doing I could not definitely ascertain. I
+looked through the vasistas of the coach, but could see nothing in
+pursuit of us. Then I turned my full attention to my lovely companion.
+It was pitch dark inside the carriage, you understand; only from time
+to time, as we drove past an overhanging street lanthorn, I caught a
+glimpse of that priceless bundle beside me, which lay there so still
+and so snug, still wrapped up in the shawl.
+
+With cautious, loving fingers I undid its folds. Under cover of the
+darkness the sweet and modest creature, released of her bonds, turned
+for an instant to me, and for a few, very few, happy seconds I held
+her in my arms.
+
+"Have no fear, fair one," I murmured in her ear. "It is I, Hector
+Ratichon, who adores you and who cannot live without you! Forgive me
+for this seeming violence, which was prompted by an undying passion,
+and remember that to me you are as sacred as a divinity until the
+happy hour when I can proclaim you to the world as my beloved wife!"
+
+I pressed her against my heart, and my lips imprinted a delicate kiss
+upon her forehead. After which, with chaste decorum, she once more
+turned away from me, covered her face and head with the shawl, and
+drew back into the remote corner of the carriage, where she remained,
+silent and absorbed, no doubt, in the contemplation of her happiness.
+
+I respected her silence, and I, too, fell to meditating upon my good
+fortune. Here was I, Sir, within sight of a haven wherein I could live
+through the twilight of my days in comfort and in peace, a beautiful
+young wife, a modest fortune! I had never in my wildest dreams
+envisaged a Fate more fair. The little house at Chantilly which I
+coveted, the plot of garden, the espalier peaches--all, all would be
+mine now! It seemed indeed too good to be true!
+
+The very next moment I was rudely awakened from those golden dreams by
+a loud clatter, and stern voices shouting the ominous word, "Halt!"
+The carriage drew up with such a jerk that I was flung off my seat
+against the front window and my nose seriously bruised. A faint cry of
+terror came from the precious bundle beside me.
+
+"Have no fear, my beloved," I whispered hurriedly. "Your own Hector
+will protect you!"
+
+Already the door of the carriage had been violently torn open;
+the next moment a gruff voice called out peremptorily:
+
+"By order of the Chief Commissary of Police!"
+
+I was dumbfounded. In what manner had the Chief Commissary of Police
+been already apprised of this affair? The whole thing was, of course,
+a swift and vengeful blow dealt to me by that cowardly Rochez. But
+how, in the name of thunder, had he got to work so quickly? But, of
+course, there was no time now for reflection. The gruff voice was
+going on more peremptorily and more insistently:
+
+"Is Hector Ratichon here?"
+
+I was dumb. My throat had closed up, and I could not have uttered a
+sound to save my life. The police had even got my name quite straight!
+
+"Now then, Ratichon," that same irascible voice continued, "get out of
+there! In the name of the law I charge you with the abduction of a
+defenceless female, and my orders are to bring you forthwith before
+the Chief Commissary of Police."
+
+Then it was, Sir, that bliss once more re-entered my soul. I had just
+felt a small hand pressing something crisp into mine, whilst a soft
+voice whispered in my ear:
+
+"Give him this, and tell him to let you go in peace. Say that I am
+Mademoiselle Goldberg, your promised wife."
+
+The feel of that crackling note in my hand at once restored my
+courage. Covering the lovely creature beside me with a protecting arm,
+I replied boldly to the minion of the law.
+
+"This lady," I said, "is my affianced wife. You, Sir Gendarme, are
+overstepping your powers. I demand that you let us proceed in peace."
+
+"My orders are--" the gendarme resumed; but already my sensitive
+ear had detected a faint wavering in the gruffness of his voice. The
+hectoring tone had gone out of it. I could not see him, of course, but
+somehow I felt that his attitude had become less arrogant and his
+glance more shifty.
+
+"This gentleman has spoken the truth," now came in soft, dulcet tones
+from under the shawl that wrapped the head of my beloved. "I am Mlle.
+Goldberg, M. le Gendarme, and I am travelling with M. Hector Ratichon
+entirely of my own free will, since I have promised him that I would
+be his wife."
+
+"Ah!" the gendarme ejaculated, obviously mollified.
+
+"If Mademoiselle is the fiancee of Monsieur, and is acting of her own
+free will--"
+
+"It is not for you to interfere, eh, my friend?" I broke in jocosely.
+"You will now let us proceed in peace, and for your trouble you will
+no doubt accept this token of my consideration." And, groping in the
+darkness, I found the rough hand of the gendarme, and speedily pressed
+into it the crisp note which my adored one had given to me.
+
+"Ah!" he said, with very obvious gratification. "If Monsieur Ratichon
+will assure me that Mademoiselle here is indeed his affianced wife, then
+indeed it is not a case of abduction, and--"
+
+"Abduction!" I retorted, flaring up in righteous indignation. "Who
+dares to use the word in connexion with this lovely lady? Mademoiselle
+Goldberg, I swear, will be Madame Ratichon within the next four and
+twenty hours. And the sooner you, Sir Gendarme, allow us to proceed on
+our way the less pain will you cause to this distressed and virtuous
+damsel."
+
+This settled the whole affair quite comfortably. The gendarme shut the
+carriage door with a bang, and at my request gave the order to the
+driver to proceed. The latter once again cracked his whip, and once
+again the cumbrous vehicle, after an awkward lurch, rattled on its way
+along the cobblestones of the sleeping city.
+
+Once more I was alone with the priceless treasure by my side--alone
+and happy--more happy, I might say, than I had been before. Had not my
+adored one openly acknowledged her love for me and her desire to stand
+with me at the hymeneal altar? To put it vulgarly--though vulgarity
+in every form is repellent to me--she had burnt her boats. She had
+allowed her name to be coupled with mine in the presence of the
+minions of the law. What, after that, could her father do but give his
+consent to a union which alone would save his only child's reputation
+from the cruelty of waggish tongues?
+
+No doubt, Sir, that I was happy. True, that when the uncouth gendarme
+finally slammed to the door of our carriage and we restarted on our
+way, my ears had been unpleasantly tickled by the sound of prolonged
+and ribald laughter--laughter which sounded strangely and unpleasantly
+familiar. But after a few seconds' serious reflection I dismissed the
+matter from my thoughts. If, as indeed I gravely suspected, it was
+Fernand Rochez who had striven thus to put a spoke in the wheel of my
+good fortune, he would certainly not have laughed when I drove
+triumphantly away with my conquered bride by my side. And, of course,
+my ears _must_ have deceived me when they caught the sound of a girl's
+merry laugh mingling with the more ribald one of the man.
+
+
+
+4.
+
+I have paused purposely, Sir, ere I embark upon the narration of the
+final stage of this, my life's adventure.
+
+The chaise was bowling along the banks of the river toward Suresnes.
+Presently the driver struck to his right and plunged into the
+fastnesses of the Bois de Boulogne. For a while, therefore, we were in
+utter darkness. My lovely companion neither moved nor spoke. Somewhere
+in the far distance a church clock struck eleven. One whole hour had
+gone by since first I had embarked on this great undertaking.
+
+I was excited, feverish. The beautiful Leah's silence and tranquillity
+grated upon my nerves. I could not understand how she could remain
+there so placid when her whole life's happiness had so suddenly, so
+unexpectedly, been assured. I became more and more fidgety as time
+went on. Soon I felt that I could no longer hold myself in proper
+control. Being of an impulsive disposition, this tranquil acceptance
+of so great a joy became presently intolerable, and, unable to
+restrain my ardour any longer, I seized that passive bundle of
+loveliness in my arms.
+
+"Have no fear," I murmured once again, as I pressed her to my heart.
+
+But my admonition was obviously unnecessary. The beautiful Leah showed
+not the slightest sign of fear. She rested her head against my
+shoulder and put one arm around my neck. I was in raptures.
+
+Just then the vehicle swung out of the Bois and once more rattled upon
+the cobblestones. This time we were nearing Suresnes. A vague light,
+emanating from the lanthorns at the bridge-head, was already faintly
+visible ahead of us. Soon it grew brighter. The next moment we passed
+immediately beneath the lanthorns. The interior of the carriage was
+flooded with light . . . and, Sir, I gave a gasp of unadulterated
+dismay! The being whom I held in my arms, whose face was even at that
+moment raised up to my own, was not the lovely Leah! It was Sarah,
+Sir! Sarah Goldberg, the dour, angular aunt, whose yellow teeth
+gleamed for one brief moment through her thin lips as she threw me one
+of those glances of amorous welcome which invariably sent a cold
+shiver down my spine. Sarah Goldberg! I scarce could believe my eyes,
+and for a moment did indeed think that the elusive, swiftly-vanished
+light of the bridge-head lanthorns had played my excited senses a
+weird and cruel trick. But no! The very next second proved my
+disillusionment. Sarah spoke to me!
+
+She spoke to me and laughed! Ah, she was happy, Sir! Happy in that she
+had completely and irrevocably tricked me! That traitor Fernand Rochez
+was up to the neck in the plot which had saddled me for ever with an
+ugly, elderly wife of dour mien and no fortune, while he and the
+lovely Leah were spinning the threads of perfect love at the other end
+of Paris and laughing their fill at my discomfiture. Think, Sir, what
+I suffered during those few brief minutes while the coach lurched
+through the narrow streets of Suresnes, and I had perforce to listen
+to the protestations of undying love from this unprepossessing female!
+
+That love, she vowed, was her excuse, and everything, she asserted,
+was fair in love and war. She knew that after Rochez had attained his
+heart's desire and carried off the lady of his choice--which he had
+successfully done half an hour before I myself made my way up the
+Passage Corneille--I would pass out of her life for ever. This she
+could not endure. Life at once would become intolerable. And, aided
+and abetted by Rochez and Leah, she had planned and contrived my
+mystification and won me by foul means, since she could not do so by
+fair; and it seemed as if her volubility then was the forecast of what
+my life with her would be in the future. Talk! Talk! Talk! She never
+ceased!
+
+She told me the whole story of the abominable conspiracy against my
+liberty. Her brother, M. Goldberg, she explained, had determined upon
+remarriage. She, Sarah, felt that henceforth she would be in the way
+of everybody; she would have no home. Leah married to Rochez; a new
+and young Mme. Goldberg ruling in the old house of the Rue des
+Medecins! Ah, it was unthinkable!
+
+And I, Sir--I, Hector Ratichon--had, it appears, by my polite manners
+and prepossessing ways, induced this dour old maid to believe that she
+was not altogether indifferent to me. Ah, how I cursed my own charms,
+when I realised whither they had led me! It seems that it was that
+fickle jade Leah who first imagined the whole execrable plot. Rochez
+was to entrust me with the task of carrying off his beloved, and thus
+I would be tricked in the darkness into abducting Mlle. Goldberg
+senior from her home. Then some friends of Rochez arranged to play the
+comedy of false gendarmes, and again I was tricked into acknowledging
+Sarah as my affianced wife before independent witnesses. After that I
+could no longer repudiate mine honourable intentions, for if I did,
+then I should be arraigned before the law on a criminal charge of
+abduction. In this comedy of false gendarmes Rochez himself and the
+heartless Leah had joined with zest and laughed over my discomfiture,
+whilst the friends who played their roles to such perfection had a
+paltry hundred francs each as the price of this infamous trick. Now my
+doom was sealed, and all that was left for me to do was to think
+disconsolately over my future.
+
+I did bitterly reproach Sarah for her treachery and tried to still her
+protestations of love by pointing out to her that I had absolutely no
+fortune, and could only offer her a life of squalor, not to say of
+what. But this she knew, and vowed that penury by my side would make
+her happier than luxury beside any other man. Ah, Sir, 'tis given to
+few men to arouse such selfless passion in a woman's heart, and it
+hath oft been my dream in the past one day thus to be adored for
+myself alone!
+
+But for the moment I was too deeply angered to listen placidly to
+Sarah's vows of undying affection. My nerves were irritated by her
+fulsome adulation; indeed, I could not bear the sight of her nor yet
+the sound of her voice. You may imagine how thankful I was when the
+chaise came at last to a halt outside the humble little hostelry where
+I had engaged the room which I had so fondly hoped would have been
+occupied by the lovely and fickle Leah.
+
+I bundled Mlle. Goldberg senior into the house, and here again I had
+to endure galling mortification in the shape of sidelong glances cast
+at me and my future bride by the landlord of the hostelry and his
+ill-bred daughter. When I engaged the room I had very foolishly told
+them that it would be occupied by a lovely lady who had consented to
+be my wife, and that she would remain here in happy seclusion until
+such time as all arrangements for our wedding were complete. The
+humiliation of these vulgar people's irony seemed like the last straw
+which overweighed my forbearance. The room and pension I had already
+paid two days in advance, so I had nothing more to say either to the
+ribald landlord or to Mlle. Goldberg senior. I was bitterly angered
+against her, and refused her the solace of a kindly look or of an
+encouraging pressure from my hand, even though she waited for both
+with the pathetic patience of an old spaniel.
+
+I re-entered the coach, which was to take me back to mine own humble
+lodgings in Passy. Here at least I was alone--alone with my gloomy
+thoughts. My heart was full of wrath against the woman who had so
+basely tricked me, and I viewed with dismay amounting almost to
+despair the prospect of spending the rest of my life in her company.
+That night I slept but little, nor yet the following night, or the
+night after that. Those days I spent in seclusion, thankful for my
+solitude.
+
+Twice each day did Mlle. Goldberg come to my lodgings. In the foolish
+past I had somewhat injudiciously acquainted her of where I lived. Now
+she came and asked to be allowed to see me, but invariably did I
+refuse thus to gratify her. I felt that time alone would perhaps
+soften my feelings a little towards her. In the meanwhile I must
+commend her discretion and delicacy of procedure. She did not in any
+way attempt to molest me. When she was told by Theodore--whom I
+employed during the day to guard me against unwelcome visitors--that I
+refused to see her, she invariably went away without demur, nor did
+she refer in any way, either with adjurations or threats, to the
+impending wedding. Indeed, Sir, she was a lady of vast discretion.
+
+On the third day, however, I received a visit from M. Goldberg
+himself. I could not refuse to see him. Indeed, he would not be
+denied, but roughly pushed Theodore aside, who tried to hinder him. He
+had come armed with a riding-whip, and nothing but mine own innate
+dignity saved me from outrage. He came, Sir, with a marriage licence
+for his sister and me in one pocket and with a denunciation to the
+police against me for abduction in another. He gave me the choice.
+What could I do, Sir? I was like a helpless babe in the hands of
+unscrupulous brigands!
+
+The marriage licence was for the following day--at the mairie of the
+eighth arrondissement first, and in the synagogue of the Rue des
+Halles afterwards. I chose the marriage licence. What could I do, Sir?
+I was helpless!
+
+Of my wedding day I have but a dim recollection. It was all hustle and
+bustle; from the mairie to the synagogue, and thence to the house of
+M. Goldberg in the Rue des Medecins. I must say that the old usurer
+received me and my bride with marked amiability. He was, I gathered,
+genuinely pleased that his sister had found happiness and a home by
+the side of an honourable man, seeing that he himself was on the point
+of contracting a fresh alliance with a Jewish lady of unsurpassed
+loveliness.
+
+Of Rochez and Leah we saw nothing that day, and from one or two words
+which M. Goldberg let fall I concluded that he was greatly angered
+against his daughter because of her marriage with a fortune-hunting
+adventurer, who, he weirdly hinted, had already found quick and
+exemplary punishment for his crime. I was sincerely glad to hear this,
+even though I could not get M. Goldberg to explain in what that
+exemplary punishment consisted.
+
+The climax came at six o'clock of that eventful afternoon, at the hour
+when I, with the newly-enthroned Mme. Ratichon on my arm, was about to
+take leave of M. Goldberg. I must admit that at that moment my heart
+was overflowing with bitterness. I had been led like a lamb to the
+slaughter; I had been made to look foolish and absurd in the midst of
+this Israelite community which I despised; I was saddled for the rest
+of my life with an unprepossessing elderly wife, who could do naught
+for me but share the penury, the hard crusts, the onion pies with me
+and Theodore. The only advantage I might ever derive from her was that
+she would darn my stockings, sew the buttons on my vests, and goffer
+the frills of my shirts!
+
+Was this not enough to turn any man's naturally sweet disposition to
+gall? No doubt my mobile face betrayed something of the bitterness of
+my thoughts, for M. Goldberg at one moment slapped me vigorously on
+the back and bade me be of good cheer, as things were not so bad as I
+imagined. I was on the point of asking him what he meant when I saw
+another gentleman advancing toward me. His face, which was sallow and
+oily, bore a kind of obsequious smile; his clothes were of rusty
+black, and his features were markedly Jewish in character. He had some
+law papers under his arm, and he was perpetually rubbing his thin,
+bony hands together as if he were for ever washing them.
+
+"Monsieur Hector Ratichon," he said unctuously, "it is with much
+gratification that I bring you the joyful news."
+
+Joyful news!--to me! Ah, Sir, the words struck at first with cruel
+irony upon mine ear. But not so a second later, for the Jewish
+gentleman went on speaking, and what he said appeared to my reeling
+senses like songs of angels from paradise.
+
+At first I could not grasp his full meaning. A moment ago I had been
+in the depths of despair, and now--now--a whole vista of beatitude
+opened out before me! What the worthy Israelite said was that, by the
+terms of Grandpapa Goldberg's will, if Leah married without her
+father's consent, one-half of the fortune destined for her would
+revert to her aunt, Sarah Goldberg, now Madame Hector Ratichon.
+
+Can you wonder that I could scarce believe my ears? One-half that
+fortune meant that a hundred thousand francs would now become mine! M.
+Goldberg had already made it very clear to his daughter and to Rochez
+that he would never give his consent to their marriage, and, as this
+was now consummated, they had already forfeited one-half of the
+grandfather's fortune in favour of my Sarah. That was the exemplary
+punishment which they were to suffer for their folly.
+
+But their folly--aye! and their treachery--had become my joy. In this
+moment of heavenly rapture I was speechless, but I turned to Sarah
+with loving arms outstretched, and the next instant she nestled
+against my heart like a joyful if elderly bird.
+
+What is said of a people, Sir, is also true of the individual. Happy
+he who hath no history. Since that never-to-be-forgotten hour my life
+has run its simple, uneventful course here in this quiet corner of our
+beautiful France, with my pony and my dog and my chickens, and Mme.
+Ratichon to minister to my creature comforts.
+
+I bought this little property, Sir, soon after my marriage, and my
+office in the Rue Daunou knows me no more. You like the house, Sir?
+Ah, yes! And the garden? . . . After dejeuner you must see my prize
+chickens. Theodore will show them to you. You did not know Theodore
+was here? Well, yes! He lives with us. Madame Ratichon finds him
+useful about the house, and, not being used to luxuries, he is on the
+whole pleasantly contented.
+
+Ah, here comes Madame Ratichon to tell us that the dejeuner is served!
+This way, Sir, under the porch. . . . After you!
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Castles in the Air, by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
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+
+An alternative method of locating eBooks:
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL
+
+
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