The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont
Robert Barr



CONTENTS


1.  _The Mystery of the Five Hundred Diamonds_
2.  _The Siamese Twin of a Bomb-Thrower_
3.  _The Clue of the Silver Spoons_
4.  _Lord Chizelrigg's Missing Fortune_
5.  _The Absent-Minded Coterie_
6.  _The Ghost with the Club-Foot_
7.  _The Liberation of Wyoming Ed_
8.  _Lady Alicia's Emeralds_



APPENDIX: TWO SHERLOCK HOLMES PARODIES

1.  The Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs
2.  The Adventure of the Second Swag


       *       *       *       *       *


1. _The Mystery of the Five Hundred Diamonds_


When I say I am called Valmont, the name will convey no impression to
the reader, one way or another. My occupation is that of private
detective in London, but if you ask any policeman in Paris who Valmont
was he will likely be able to tell you, unless he is a recent recruit.
If you ask him where Valmont is now, he may not know, yet I have a
good deal to do with the Parisian police.

For a period of seven years I was chief detective to the Government of
France, and if I am unable to prove myself a great crime hunter, it is
because the record of my career is in the secret archives of Paris.

I may admit at the outset that I have no grievances to air. The French
Government considered itself justified in dismissing me, and it did
so. In this action it was quite within its right, and I should be the
last to dispute that right; but, on the other hand, I consider myself
justified in publishing the following account of what actually
occurred, especially as so many false rumours have been put abroad
concerning the case. However, as I said at the beginning, I hold no
grievance, because my worldly affairs are now much more prosperous
than they were in Paris, my intimate knowledge of that city and the
country of which it is the capital bringing to me many cases with
which I have dealt more or less successfully since I established
myself in London.

Without further preliminary I shall at once plunge into an account of
the case which riveted the attention of the whole world a little more
than a decade ago.

The year 1893 was a prosperous twelve months for France. The weather
was good, the harvest excellent, and the wine of that vintage is
celebrated to this day. Everyone was well off and reasonably happy, a
marked contrast to the state of things a few years later, when
dissension over the Dreyfus case rent the country in twain.

Newspaper readers may remember that in 1893 the Government of France
fell heir to an unexpected treasure which set the civilised world
agog, especially those inhabitants of it who are interested in
historical relics. This was the finding of the diamond necklace in
the Château de Chaumont, where it had rested undiscovered for a
century in a rubbish heap of an attic. I believe it has not been
questioned that this was the veritable necklace which the court
jeweller, Boehmer, hoped to sell to Marie Antoinette, although how it
came to be in the Château de Chaumont no one has been able to form
even a conjecture. For a hundred years it was supposed that the
necklace had been broken up in London, and its half a thousand stones,
great and small, sold separately. It has always seemed strange to me
that the Countess de Lamotte-Valois, who was thought to have profited
by the sale of these jewels, should not have abandoned France if she
possessed money to leave that country, for exposure was inevitable if
she remained. Indeed, the unfortunate woman was branded and
imprisoned, and afterwards was dashed to death from the third storey
of a London house, when, in the direst poverty, she sought escape from
the consequences of the debts she had incurred.

I am not superstitious in the least, yet this celebrated piece of
treasure-trove seems actually to have exerted a malign influence over
everyone who had the misfortune to be connected with it. Indeed, in a
small way, I who write these words suffered dismissal and disgrace,
though I caught but one glimpse of this dazzling scintillation of
jewels. The jeweller who made the necklace met financial ruin; the
Queen for whom it was constructed was beheaded; that high-born Prince
Louis René Edouard, Cardinal de Rohan, who purchased it, was flung
into prison; the unfortunate Countess, who said she acted as
go-between until the transfer was concluded, clung for five awful
minutes to a London window-sill before dropping to her death to the
flags below; and now, a hundred and eight years later, up comes this
devil's display of fireworks to the light again!

Droulliard, the working man who found the ancient box, seems to have
prised it open, and ignorant though he was--he had probably never seen
a diamond in his life before--realised that a fortune was in his
grasp. The baleful glitter from the combination must have sent madness
into his brain, working havoc therein as though the shafts of
brightness were those mysterious rays which scientists have recently
discovered. He might quite easily have walked through the main gate of
the Château unsuspected and unquestioned with the diamonds concealed
about his person, but instead of this he crept from the attic window
on to the steep roof, slipped to the eaves, fell to the ground, and
lay dead with a broken neck, while the necklace, intact, shimmered in
the sunlight beside his body. No matter where these jewels had been
found the Government would have insisted that they belonged to the
Treasury of the Republic; but as the Château de Chaumont was a
historical monument, and the property of France, there could be no
question regarding the ownership of the necklace. The Government at
once claimed it, and ordered it to be sent by a trustworthy military
man to Paris. It was carried safely and delivered promptly to the
authorities by Alfred Dreyfus, a young captain of artillery, to whom
its custody had been entrusted.

In spite of its fall from the tall tower neither case nor jewels were
perceptibly damaged. The lock of the box had apparently been forced by
Droulliard's hatchet, or perhaps by the clasp knife found on his body.
On reaching the ground the lid had flown open, and the necklace was
thrown out.

I believe there was some discussion in the Cabinet regarding the fate
of this ill-omened trophy, one section wishing it to be placed in a
museum on account of its historical interest, another advocating the
breaking up of the necklace and the selling of the diamonds for what
they would fetch. But a third party maintained that the method to get
the most money into the coffers of the country was to sell the
necklace as it stood, for as the world now contains so many rich
amateurs who collect undoubted rarities, regardless of expense, the
historic associations of the jewelled collar would enhance the
intrinsic value of the stones; and, this view prevailing, it was
announced that the necklace would be sold by auction a month later in
the rooms of Meyer, Renault and Co., in the Boulevard des Italians,
near the Bank of the Crédit-Lyonnais.

This announcement elicited much comment from the newspapers of all
countries, and it seemed that, from a financial point of view at
least, the decision of the Government had been wise, for it speedily
became evident that a notable coterie of wealthy buyers would be
congregated in Paris on the thirteenth (unlucky day for me!) when the
sale was to take place. But we of the inner circle were made aware of
another result somewhat more disquieting, which was that the most
expert criminals in the world were also gathering like vultures upon
the fair city. The honour of France was at stake. Whoever bought that
necklace must be assured of a safe conduct out of the country. We
might view with equanimity whatever happened afterwards, but while he
was a resident of France his life and property must not be endangered.
Thus it came about that I was given full authority to ensure that
neither murder nor theft nor both combined should be committed while
the purchaser of the necklace remained within our boundaries, and for
this purpose the police resources of France were placed unreservedly
at my disposal. If I failed there should be no one to blame but
myself; consequently, as I have remarked before, I do not complain of
my dismissal by the Government.

The broken lock of the jewel-case had been very deftly repaired by an
expert locksmith, who in executing his task was so unfortunate as to
scratch a finger on the broken metal, whereupon blood poisoning set
in, and although his life was saved, he was dismissed from the
hospital with his right arm gone and his usefulness destroyed.

When the jeweller Boehmer made the necklace he asked a hundred and
sixty thousand pounds for it, but after years of disappointment he was
content to sell it to Cardinal de Rohan for sixty-four thousand
pounds, to be liquidated in three instalments, not one of which was
ever paid. This latter amount was probably somewhere near the value of
the five hundred and sixteen separate stones, one of which was of
tremendous size, a very monarch of diamonds, holding its court among
seventeen brilliants each as large as a filbert. This iridescent
concentration of wealth was, as one might say, placed in my care, and
I had to see to it that no harm came to the necklace or to its
prospective owner until they were safely across the boundaries of
France.

The four weeks previous to the thirteenth proved a busy and anxious
time for me. Thousands, most of whom were actuated by mere curiosity,
wished to view the diamonds. We were compelled to discriminate, and
sometimes discriminated against the wrong person, which caused
unpleasantness. Three distinct attempts were made to rob the safe, but
luckily these criminal efforts were frustrated, and so we came
unscathed to the eventful thirteenth of the month.

The sale was to begin at two o'clock, and on the morning of that day I
took the somewhat tyrannical precaution of having the more dangerous
of our own malefactors, and as many of the foreign thieves as I could
trump up charges against, laid by the heels, yet I knew very well it
was not these rascals I had most to fear, but the suave, well-groomed
gentlemen, amply supplied with unimpeachable credentials, stopping at
our fine hotels and living like princes. Many of these were foreigners
against whom we could prove nothing, and whose arrest might land us
into temporary international difficulties. Nevertheless, I had each of
them shadowed, and on the morning of the thirteenth if one of them had
even disputed a cab fare I should have had him in prison half an hour
later, and taken the consequences, but these gentlemen are very shrewd
and do not commit mistakes.

I made up a list of all the men in the world who were able or likely
to purchase the necklace. Many of them would not be present in person
at the auction rooms; their bidding would be done by agents. This
simplified matters a good deal, for the agents kept me duly informed
of their purposes, and, besides, an agent who handles treasure every
week is an adept at the business, and does not need the protection
which must surround an amateur, who in nine cases out of ten has but
scant idea of the dangers that threaten him, beyond knowing that if he
goes down a dark street in a dangerous quarter he is likely to be
maltreated and robbed.

There were no less than sixteen clients all told, who we learned were
to attend personally on the day of the sale, any one of whom might
well have made the purchase. The Marquis of Warlingham and Lord Oxtead
from England were well-known jewel fanciers, while at least half a
dozen millionaires were expected from the United States, with a
smattering from Germany, Austria, and Russia, and one each from Italy,
Belgium, and Holland.

Admission to the auction rooms was allowed by ticket only, to be
applied for at least a week in advance, applications to be accompanied
by satisfactory testimonials. It would possibly have surprised many of
the rich men collected there to know that they sat cheek by jowl with
some of the most noted thieves of England and America, but I allowed
this for two reasons: first, I wished to keep these sharpers under my
own eye until I knew who had bought the necklace; and, secondly, I was
desirous that they should not know they were suspected.

I stationed trusty men outside on the Boulevard des Italians, each of
whom knew by sight most of the probable purchasers of the necklace. It
was arranged that when the sale was over I should walk out to the
boulevard alongside the man who was the new owner of the diamonds, and
from that moment until he quitted France my men were not to lose sight
of him if he took personal custody of the stones, instead of doing the
sensible and proper thing of having them insured and forwarded to his
residence by some responsible transit company, or depositing them in
the bank. In fact, I took every precaution that occurred to me. All
police Paris was on the _qui vive_, and felt itself pitted against the
scoundrelism of the world.

For one reason or another it was nearly half-past two before the sale
began. There had been considerable delay because of forged tickets,
and, indeed, each order for admittance was so closely scrutinised that
this in itself took a good deal more time than we anticipated. Every
chair was occupied, and still a number of the visitors were compelled
to stand. I stationed myself by the swinging doors at the entrance end
of the hall, where I could command a view of the entire assemblage.
Some of my men were placed with backs against the wall, whilst others
were distributed amongst the chairs, all in plain clothes. During the
sale the diamonds themselves were not displayed, but the box
containing them rested in front of the auctioneer and three policemen
in uniform stood guard on either side.

       *       *       *       *       *

Very quietly the auctioneer began by saying that there was no need for
him to expatiate on the notable character of the treasure he was
privileged to offer for sale, and with this preliminary, he requested
those present to bid. Someone offered twenty thousand francs, which
was received with much laughter; then the bidding went steadily on
until it reached nine hundred thousand francs, which I knew to be less
than half the reserve the Government had placed upon the necklace. The
contest advanced more slowly until the million and a half was touched,
and there it hung fire for a time, while the auctioneer remarked that
this sum did not equal that which the maker of the necklace had been
finally forced to accept for it. After another pause he added that, as
the reserve was not exceeded, the necklace would be withdrawn, and
probably never again offered for sale. He therefore urged those who
were holding back to make their bids now. At this the contest livened
until the sum of two million three hundred thousand francs had been
offered, and now I knew the necklace would be sold. Nearing the three-
million mark the competition thinned down to a few dealers from
Hamburg and the Marquis of Warlingham, from England, when a voice that
had not yet been heard in the auction room was lifted in a tone of
some impatience:--

    'One million dollars!'

There was an instant hush, followed by the scribbling of pencils, as
each person present reduced the sum to its equivalent in his own
currency--pounds for the English, francs for the French, marks for the
German, and so on. The aggressive tone and the clear-cut face of the
bidder proclaimed him an American, not less than the financial
denomination he had used. In a moment it was realised that his bid was
a clear leap of more than two million francs, and a sigh went up from
the audience as if this settled it, and the great sale was done.
Nevertheless the auctioneer's hammer hovered over the lid of his desk,
and he looked up and down the long line of faces turned towards him.
He seemed reluctant to tap the board, but no one ventured to compete
against this tremendous sum, and with a sharp click the mallet fell.

'What name?' he asked, bending over towards the customer.

'Cash,' replied the American; 'here's a cheque for the amount. I'll
take the diamonds with me.'

'Your request is somewhat unusual,' protested the auctioneer mildly.

'I know what you mean,' interrupted the American; 'you think the
cheque may not be cashed. You will notice it is drawn on the
Crédit-Lyonnais, which is practically next door. I must have the
jewels with me. Send round your messenger with the cheque; it will
take only a few minutes to find out whether or not the money is there
to meet it. The necklace is mine, and I insist on having it.'

The auctioneer with some demur handed the cheque to the representative
of the French Government who was present, and this official himself
went to the bank. There were some other things to be sold and the
auctioneer endeavoured to go on through the list, but no one paid the
slightest attention to him.

Meanwhile I was studying the countenance of the man who had made the
astounding bid, when I should instead have adjusted my preparations to
meet the new conditions now confronting me. Here was a man about whom
we knew nothing whatever. I had come to the instant conclusion that he
was a prince of criminals, and that a sinister design, not at that
moment fathomed by me, was on foot to get possession of the jewels.
The handing up of the cheque was clearly a trick of some sort, and I
fully expected the official to return and say the draft was good. I
determined to prevent this man from getting the jewel box until I knew
more of his game. Quickly I removed from my place near the door to
the auctioneer's desk, having two objects in view; first, to warn the
auctioneer not to part with the treasure too easily; and, second, to
study the suspected man at closer range. Of all evil-doers the
American is most to be feared; he uses more ingenuity in the planning
of his projects, and will take greater risks in carrying them out than
any other malefactor on earth.

From my new station I saw there were two men to deal with. The
bidder's face was keen and intellectual; his hands refined, lady-like,
clean and white, showing they were long divorced from manual labour,
if indeed they had ever done any useful work. Coolness and
imperturbability were his beyond a doubt. The companion who sat at his
right was of an entirely different stamp. His hands were hairy and
sun-tanned; his face bore the stamp of grim determination and
unflinching bravery. I knew that these two types usually hunted in
couples--the one to scheme, the other to execute, and they always
formed a combination dangerous to encounter and difficult to
circumvent.

There was a buzz of conversation up and down the hall as these two men
talked together in low tones. I knew now that I was face to face with
the most hazardous problem of my life.

I whispered to the auctioneer, who bent his head to listen. He knew
very well who I was, of course.

'You must not give up the necklace,' I began.

He shrugged his shoulders.

'I am under the orders of the official from the Ministry of the
Interior. You must speak to him.'

'I shall not fail to do so,' I replied. 'Nevertheless, do not give up
the box too readily.'

'I am helpless,' he protested with another shrug. 'I obey the orders
of the Government.'

Seeing it was useless to parley further with the auctioneer, I set my
wits to work to meet the new emergency. I felt convinced that the
cheque would prove to be genuine, and that the fraud, wherever it lay,
might not be disclosed in time to aid the authorities. My duty,
therefore, was to make sure we lost sight neither of the buyer nor the
thing bought. Of course I could not arrest the purchaser merely on
suspicion; besides, it would make the Government the laughing-stock of
the world if they sold a case of jewels and immediately placed the
buyer in custody when they themselves had handed over his goods to
him. Ridicule kills in France. A breath of laughter may blow a
Government out of existence in Paris much more effectually than will a
whiff of cannon smoke. My duty then was to give the Government full
warning, and never lose sight of my man until he was clear of France;
then my responsibility ended.

I took aside one of my own men in plain clothes and said to him,--

'You have seen the American who has bought the necklace?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Very well. Go outside quietly, and station yourself there. He is
likely to emerge presently with the jewels in his possession. You are
not to lose sight of either the man or the casket. I shall follow him
and be close behind him as he emerges, and you are to shadow us. If he
parts with the case you must be ready at a sign from me to follow
either the man or the jewels. Do you understand?' 'Yes, sir,' he
answered, and left the room.

It is ever the unforeseen that baffles us; it is easy to be wise after
the event. I should have sent two men, and I have often thought since
how admirable is the regulation of the Italian Government which sends
out its policemen in pairs. Or I should have given my man power to
call for help, but even as it was he did only half as well as I had a
right to expect of him, and the blunder he committed by a moment's
dull-witted hesitation--ah, well! there is no use of scolding. After
all the result might have been the same.

Just as my man disappeared between the two folding doors the official
from the Ministry of the Interior entered. I intercepted him about
half-way on his journey from the door to the auctioneer.

'Possibly the cheque appears to be genuine,' I whispered to him.

'But certainly,' he replied pompously. He was an individual greatly
impressed with his own importance; a kind of character with which it
is always difficult to deal. Afterwards the Government asserted that
this official had warned me, and the utterances of an empty-headed ass
dressed in a little brief authority, as the English poet says, were
looked upon as the epitome of wisdom.

'I advise you strongly not to hand over the necklace as has been
requested,' I went on.

'Why?' he asked.

'Because I am convinced the bidder is a criminal.'

'If you have proof of that, arrest him.'

'I have no proof at the present moment, but I request you to delay the
delivery of the goods.'

'That is absurd,' he cried impatiently. 'The necklace is his, not
ours. The money has already been transferred to the account of the
Government; we cannot retain the five million francs, and refuse to
hand over to him what he has bought with them,' and so the man left me
standing there, nonplussed and anxious. The eyes of everyone in the
room had been turned on us during our brief conversation, and now the
official proceeded ostentatiously up the room with a grand air of
importance; then, with a bow and a flourish of the hand, he said,
dramatically,--

'The jewels belong to Monsieur.'

The two Americans rose simultaneously, the taller holding out his hand
while the auctioneer passed to him the case he had apparently paid so
highly for. The American nonchalantly opened the box and for the first
time the electric radiance of the jewels burst upon that audience,
each member of which craned his neck to behold it. It seemed to me a
most reckless thing to do. He examined the jewels minutely for a few
moments, then snapped the lid shut again, and calmly put the box in
his outside pocket, and I could not help noticing that the light
overcoat he wore possessed pockets made extraordinarily large, as if
on purpose for this very case. And now this amazing man walked
serenely down the room past miscreants who joyfully would have cut his
throat for even the smallest diamond in that conglomeration; yet he
did not take the trouble to put his hand on the pocket which contained
the case, or in any way attempt to protect it. The assemblage seemed
stricken dumb by his audacity. His friend followed closely at his
heels, and the tall man disappeared through the folding doors. Not so
the other. He turned quickly, and whipped two revolvers out of his
pockets, which he presented at the astonished crowd. There had been a
movement on the part of every one to leave the room, but the sight of
these deadly weapons confronting them made each one shrink into his
place again.

The man with his back to the door spoke in a loud and domineering
voice, asking the auctioneer to translate what he had to say into
French and German; he spoke in English.

'These here shiners are valuable; they belong to my friend who has
just gone out. Casting no reflections on the generality of people in
this room, there are, nevertheless, half a dozen "crooks" among us
whom my friend wishes to avoid. Now, no honest man here will object to
giving the buyer of that there trinket five clear minutes in which to
get away. It's only the "crooks" that can kick. I ask these five
minutes as a favour, but if they are not granted I am going to take
them as a right. Any man who moves will get shot.'

'I am an honest man,' I cried, 'and I object. I am chief detective of
the French Government. Stand aside; the police will protect your
friend.'

'Hold on, my son,' warned the American, turning one weapon directly
upon me, while the other held a sort of roving commission, pointing
all over the room. 'My friend is from New York and he distrusts the
police as much as he does the grafters. You may be twenty detectives,
but if you move before that clock strikes three, I'll bring you down,
and don't you forget it.'

It is one thing to face death in a fierce struggle, but quite another
to advance coldly upon it towardsthe muzzle of a pistol held so
steadily that there could be no chance of escape. The gleam of
determination in the man's eyes convinced me he meant what he said. I
did not consider then, nor have I considered since, that the next five
minutes, precious as they were, would be worth paying my life for.
Apparently everyone else was of my opinion, for none moved hand or
foot until the clock slowly struck three.

'Thank you, gentlemen,' said the American, as he vanished between the
spring-doors. When I say vanished, I mean that word and no other,
because my men outside saw nothing of this individual then or later.
He vanished as if he had never existed, and it was some hours before
we found how this had been accomplished.

I rushed out almost on his heels, as one might say, and hurriedly
questioned my waiting men. They had all seen the tall American come
out with the greatest leisure and stroll towards the west. As he was
not the man any of them were looking for they paid no further
attention to him, as, indeed, is the custom with our Parisian force.
They have eyes for nothing but what they are sent to look for, and
this trait has its drawbacks for their superiors.

I ran up the boulevard, my whole thought intent on the diamonds and
their owner. I knew my subordinate in command of the men inside the
hall would look after the scoundrel with the pistols. A short distance
up I found the stupid fellow I had sent out, standing in a dazed
manner at the corner of the Rue Michodière, gazing alternately down
that short street and towards the Place de l'Opéra. The very fact that
he was there furnished proof that he had failed.

'Where is the American?' I demanded.

'He went down this street, sir.'

'Then why are you standing here like a fool?'

'I followed him this far, when a man came up the Rue Michodière, and
without a word the American handed him the jewel-box, turning
instantly down the street up which the other had come. The other
jumped into a cab, and drove towards the Place de l'Opéra.'

'And what did you do? Stood here like a post, I suppose?'

'I didn't know what to do, sir. It all happened in a moment.'

'Why didn't you follow the cab?'

'I didn't know which to follow, sir, and the cab was gone instantly
while I watched the American.'

'What was its number?'

'I don't know, sir.'

'You clod! Why didn't you call one of our men, whoever was nearest,
and leave him to shadow the American while you followed the cab?'

'I did shout to the nearest man, sir, but he said you told him to stay
there and watch the English lord, and even before he had spoken both
American and cabman were out of sight.'

'Was the man to whom he gave the box an American also?'

'No, sir, he was French.'

'How do you know?'

'By his appearance and the words he spoke.'

'I thought you said he didn't speak.'

'He did not speak to the American, sir, but he said to the cabman,
"Drive to the Madeleine as quickly as you can."'

'Describe the man.'

'He was a head shorter than the American, wore a black beard and
moustache rather neatly trimmed, and seemed to be a superior sort of
artisan.'

'You did not take the number of the cab. Should you know the cabman if
you saw him again?'

'Yes, sir, I think so.'

Taking this fellow with me I returned to the now nearly empty auction
room and there gathered all my men about me. Each in his notebook
took down particulars of the cabman and his passenger from the lips of
my incompetent spy; next I dictated a full description of the two
Americans, then scattered my men to the various railway stations of
the lines leading out of Paris, with orders to make inquiries of the
police on duty there, and to arrest one or more of the four persons
described should they be so fortunate as to find any of them.

I now learned how the rogue with the pistols vanished so completely as
he did. My subordinate in the auction room had speedily solved the
mystery. To the left of the main entrance of the auction room was a
door that gave private access to the rear of the premises. As the
attendant in charge confessed when questioned, he had been bribed by
the American earlier in the day to leave this side door open and to
allow the man to escape by the goods entrance. Thus the ruffian did
not appear on the boulevard at all, and so had not been observed by
any of my men.

Taking my futile spy with me I returned to my own office, and sent an
order throughout the city that every cabman who had been in the
Boulevard des Italiens between half-past two and half-past three that
afternoon, should report immediately to me. The examination of these
men proved a very tedious business indeed, but whatever other
countries may say of us, we French are patient, and if the haystack is
searched long enough, the needle will be found. I did not discover the
needle I was looking for, but I came upon one quite as important, if
not more so.

It was nearly ten o'clock at night when a cabman answered my
oft-repeated questions in the affirmative.

'Did you take up a passenger a few minutes past three o'clock on the
Boulevard des Italiens, near the Crédit-Lyonnais? Had he a short black
beard? Did he carry a small box in his hand and order you to drive to
the Madeleine?'

The cabman seemed puzzled.

'He wore a short black beard when he got out of the cab,' he replied.

'What do you mean by that?'

'I drive a closed cab, sir. When he got in he was a smooth-faced
gentleman; when he got out he wore a short black beard.'

'Was he a Frenchman?'

'No, sir; he was a foreigner, either English or American.'

'Was he carrying a box?'

'No, sir; he held in his hand a small leather bag.'

'Where did he tell you to drive?'

'He told me to follow the cab in front, which had just driven off very
rapidly towards the Madeleine. In fact, I heard the man, such as you
describe, order the other cabman to drive to the Madeleine. I had come
alongside the curb when this man held up his hand for a cab, but the
open cab cut in ahead of me. Just then my passenger stepped up and
said in French, but with a foreign accent: "Follow that cab wherever
it goes."'

I turned with some indignation to my inefficient spy.

'You told me,' I said, 'that the American had gone down a side street.
Yet he evidently met a second man, obtained from him the handbag,
turned back, and got into the closed cab directly behind you.'

'Well, sir,' stammered the spy, 'I could not look in two directions at
the same time. The American certainly went down the side street, but
of course I watched the cab which contained the jewels.'

'And you saw nothing of the closed cab right at your elbow?'

'The boulevard was full of cabs, sir, and the pavement crowded with
passers-by, as it always is at that hour of the day, and I have only
two eyes in my head.'

'I am glad to know you had that many, for I was beginning to think you
were blind.'

Although I said this, I knew in my heart it was useless to censure the
poor wretch, for the fault was entirely my own in not sending two men,
and in failing to guess the possibility of the jewels and their owner
being separated. Besides, here was a clue to my hand at last, and no
time must be lost in following it up. So I continued my interrogation
of the cabman.

'The other cab was an open vehicle, you say?'

'Yes, sir.'

'You succeeded in following it?'

'Oh, yes, sir. At the Madeleine the man in front redirected the
coachman, who turned to the left and drove to the Place de la
Concorde, then up the Champs-Elysées to the Arch and so down the
Avenue de la Grande Armée, and the Avenue de Neuilly, to the Pont de
Neuilly, where it came to a standstill. My fare got out, and I saw he
now wore a short black beard, which he had evidently put on inside the
cab. He gave me a ten-franc piece, which was very satisfactory.

'And the fare you were following? What did he do?'

'He also stepped out, paid the cabman, went down the bank of the river
and got on board a steam launch that seemed to be waiting for him.'

'Did he look behind, or appear to know that he was being followed?'

'No, sir.'

'And your fare?'

'He ran after the first man, and also went aboard the steam launch,
which instantly started down the river.'

'And that was the last you saw of them?'

'Yes, sir.'

'At what time did you reach the Pont de Neuilly?'

'I do not know, sir; I was compelled to drive rather fast, but the
distance is seven to eight kilometres.'

'You would do it under the hour?'

'But certainly, under the hour.'

'Then you must have reached Neuilly bridge about four o'clock?'

'It is very likely, sir.'

The plan of the tall American was now perfectly clear to me, and it
comprised nothing that was contrary to law. He had evidently placed
his luggage on board the steam launch in the morning. The handbag had
contained various materials which would enable him to disguise
himself, and this bag he had probably left in some shop down the side
street, or else someone was waiting with it for him. The giving of the
treasure to another man was not so risky as it had at first appeared,
because he instantly followed that man, who was probably his
confidential servant. Despite the windings of the river there was
ample time for the launch to reach Havre before the American steamer
sailed on Saturday morning. I surmised it was his intention to come
alongside the steamer before she left her berth in Havre harbour, and
thus transfer himself and his belongings unperceived by anyone on
watch at the land side of the liner.

All this, of course, was perfectly justifiable, and seemed, in truth,
merely a well-laid scheme for escaping observation. His only danger of
being tracked was when he got into the cab. Once away from the
neighbourhood of the Boulevard des Italiens he was reasonably sure to
evade pursuit, and the five minutes which his friend with the pistols
had won for him afforded just the time he needed to get so far as the
Place Madeleine, and after that everything was easy. Yet, if it had
not been for those five minutes secured by coercion, I should not have
found the slightest excuse for arresting him. But he was accessory
after the act in that piece of illegality--in fact, it was absolutely
certain that he had been accessory before the act, and guilty of
conspiracy with the man who had presented firearms to the auctioneer's
audience, and who had interfered with an officer in the discharge of
his duty by threatening me and my men. So I was now legally in the
right if I arrested every person on board that steam launch.

       *       *       *       *       *

With a map of the river before me I proceeded to make some
calculations. It was now nearly ten o'clock at night. The launch had
had six hours in which to travel at its utmost speed. It was doubtful
if so small a vessel could make ten miles an hour, even with the
current in its favour, which is rather sluggish because of the locks
and the level country. Sixty miles would place her beyond Meulan,
which is fifty-eight miles from the Pont Royal, and, of course, a
lesser distance from the Pont de Neuilly. But the navigation of the
river is difficult at all times, and almost impossible after dark.
There were chances of the boat running aground, and then there was the
inevitable delay at the locks. So I estimated that the launch could
not yet have reached Meulan, which was less than twenty-five miles
from Paris by rail. Looking up the timetable I saw there were still
two trains to Meulan, the next at 10.25, which reached Meulan at
11.40. I therefore had time to reach St. Lazare station, and accomplish
some telegraphing before the train left.

With three of my assistants I got into a cab and drove to the station.
On arrival I sent one of my men to hold the train while I went into
the telegraph office, cleared the wires, and got into communication
with the lock master at Meulan. He replied that no steam launch had
passed down since an hour before sunset. I then instructed him to
allow the yacht to enter the lock, close the upper gate, let half of
the water out, and hold the vessel there until I came. I also ordered
the local Meulan police to send enough men to the lock to enforce this
command. Lastly, I sent messages all along the river asking the police
to report to me on the train the passage of the steam launch.

The 10.25 is a slow train, stopping at every station. However, every
drawback has its compensation, and these stoppages enabled me to
receive and to send telegraphic messages. I was quite well aware that
I might be on a fool's errand in going to Meulan. The yacht could have
put about before it had steamed a mile, and so returned back to Paris.
There had been no time to learn whether this was so or not if I was to
catch the 10.25. Also, it might have landed its passengers anywhere
along the river. I may say at once that neither of these two things
happened, and my calculations regarding her movements were accurate to
the letter. But a trap most carefully set may be prematurely sprung by
inadvertence, or more often by the over-zeal of some stupid ass who
fails to understand his instructions, or oversteps them if they are
understood. I received a most annoying telegram from Denouval, a lock
about thirteen miles above that of Meulan. The local policeman,
arriving at the lock, found that the yacht had just cleared. The fool
shouted to the captain to return, threatening him with all the pains
and penalties of the law if he refused. The captain did refuse, rung
on full speed ahead, and disappeared in the darkness. Through this
well-meant blunder of an understrapper, those on board the launch had
received warning that we were on their track. I telegraphed to the
lock-keeper at Denouval to allow no craft to pass towards Paris until
further orders. We thus held the launch in a thirteen-mile stretch of
water, but the night was pitch dark, and passengers might be landed on
either bank with all France before them, over which to effect their
escape in any direction.

It was midnight when I reached the lock at Meulan, and, as was to be
expected, nothing had been seen or heard of the launch. It gave me
some satisfaction to telegraph to that dunderhead at Denouval to walk
along the river bank to Meulan, and report if he learnt the launch's
whereabouts. We took up our quarters in the lodgekeeper's house and
waited. There was little sense in sending men to scour the country at
this time of night, for the pursued were on the alert, and very
unlikely to allow themselves to be caught if they had gone ashore. On
the other hand, there was every chance that the captain would refuse
to let them land, because he must know his vessel was in a trap from
which it could not escape, and although the demand of the policeman at
Denouval was quite unauthorised, nevertheless the captain could not
know that, while he must be well aware of his danger in refusing to
obey a command from the authorities. Even if he got away for the
moment he must know that arrest was certain, and that his punishment
would be severe. His only plea could be that he had not heard and
understood the order to return. But this plea would be invalidated if
he aided in the escape of two men, whom he must know were wanted by
the police. I was therefore very confident that if his passengers
asked to be set ashore, the captain would refuse when he had had time
to think about his own danger. My estimate proved accurate, for
towards one o'clock the lock-keeper came in and said the green and red
lights of an approaching craft were visible, and as he spoke the yacht
whistled for the opening of the lock. I stood by the lock-keeper while
he opened the gates; my men and the local police were concealed on
each side of the lock. The launch came slowly in, and as soon as it
had done so I asked the captain to step ashore, which he did.

'I wish a word with you,' I said. 'Follow me.'

I took him into the lock-keeper's house and closed the door.

'Where are you going?'

'To Havre.'

'Where did you come from?'

'Paris.'

'From what quay?'

'From the Pont de Neuilly.'

'When did you leave there?'

'At five minutes to four o'clock this afternoon.'

'Yesterday afternoon, you mean?'

'Yesterday afternoon.'

'Who engaged you to make this voyage?'

'An American; I do not know his name.'

'He paid you well, I suppose?'

'He paid me what I asked.'

'Have you received the money?'

'Yes, sir.'

'I may inform you, captain, that I am Eugène Valmont, chief detective
of the French Government, and that all the police of France at this
moment are under my control. I ask you, therefore, to be careful of
your answers. You were ordered by a policeman at Denouval to return.
Why did you not do so?'

'The lock-keeper ordered me to return, but as he had no right to order
me, I went on.'

'You knew very well it was the police who ordered you, and you ignored
the command. Again I ask you why you did so.'

'I did not know it was the police.'

'I thought you would say that. You knew very well, but were paid to
take the risk, and it is likely to cost you dear. You had two
passengers aboard?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Did you put them ashore between here and Denouval?'

'No, sir; but one of them went overboard, and we couldn't find him
again.'

'Which one?'

'The short man.'

'Then the American is still aboard?'

'What American, sir?'

'Captain, you must not trifle with me. The man who engaged you is
still aboard?'

'Oh, no, sir; he has never been aboard.'

'Do you mean to tell me that the second man who came on your launch at
the Pont de Neuilly is not the American who engaged you?'

'No, sir; the American was a smooth-faced man; this man wore a black
beard.'

'Yes, a false beard.'

'I did not know that, sir. I understood from the American that I was
to take but one passenger. One came aboard with a small box in his
hand; the other with a small bag. Each declared himself to be the
passenger in question. I did not know what to do, so I left Paris with
both of them on board.'

'Then the tall man with the black beard is still with you?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Well, captain, is there anything else you have to tell me? I think
you will find it better in the end to make a clean breast of it.'

The captain hesitated, turning his cap about in his hands for a few
moments, then he said,--

'I am not sure that the first passenger went overboard of his own
accord. When the police hailed us at Denouval--'

'Ah, you knew it was the police, then?'

'I was afraid after I left it might have been. You see, when the
bargain was made with me the American said that if I reached Havre at
a certain time a thousand francs extra would be paid to me, so I was
anxious to get along as quickly as I could. I told him it was
dangerous to navigate the Seine at night, but he paid me well for
attempting it. After the policeman called to us at Denouval the man
with the small box became very much excited, and asked me to put him
ashore, which I refused to do. The tall man appeared to be watching
him, never letting him get far away. When I heard the splash in the
water I ran aft, and I saw the tall man putting the box which the
other had held into his handbag, although I said nothing of it at the
time. We cruised back and forward about the spot where the other man
had gone overboard, but saw nothing more of him. Then I came on to
Meulan, intending to give information about what I had seen. That is
all I know of the matter, sir.'

'Was the man who had the jewels a Frenchman?'

'What jewels, sir?'

'The man with the small box.'

'Oh, yes, sir; he was French.'

'You have hinted that the foreigner threw him overboard. What grounds
have you for such a belief if you did not see the struggle?'

'The night is very dark, sir, and I did not see what happened. I was
at the wheel in the forward part of the launch, with my back turned to
these two. I heard a scream, then a splash. If the man had jumped
overboard as the other said he did, he would not have screamed.
Besides, as I told you, when I ran aft I saw the foreigner put the
little box in his handbag, which he shut up quickly as if he did not
wish me to notice.'

'Very good, captain. If you have told the truth it will go easier with
you in the investigation that is to follow.'

I now turned the captain over to one of my men, and ordered in the
foreigner with his bag and bogus black whiskers. Before questioning
him I ordered him to open the handbag, which he did with evident
reluctance. It was filled with false whiskers, false moustaches, and
various bottles, but on top of them all lay the jewel case. I raised
the lid and displayed that accursed necklace. I looked up at the man,
who stood there calmly enough, saying nothing in spite of the
overwhelming evidence against him.

'Will you oblige me by removing your false beard?'

He did so at once, throwing it into the open bag. I knew the moment I
saw him that he was not the American, and thus my theory had broken
down, in one very important part at least. Informing him who I was,
and cautioning him to speak the truth, I asked how he came in
possession of the jewels.

'Am I under arrest?' he asked.

'But certainly,' I replied.

'Of what am I accused?'

'You are accused, in the first place, of being in possession of
property which does not belong to you.'

'I plead guilty to that. What in the second place?'

'In the second place, you may find yourself accused of murder.'

'I am innocent of the second charge. The man jumped overboard.'

'If that is true, why did he scream as he went over?'

'Because, too late to recover his balance, I seized this box and held
it.'

'He was in rightful possession of the box; the owner gave it to him.'

'I admit that; I saw the owner give it to him.'

'Then why should he jump overboard?'

'I do not know. He seemed to become panic-stricken when the police at
the last lock ordered us to return. He implored the captain to put him
ashore, and from that moment I watched him keenly, expecting that if
we drew near to the land he would attempt to escape, as the captain
had refused to beach the launch. He remained quiet for about half an
hour, seated on a camp chair by the rail, with his eyes turned towards
the shore, trying, as I imagined, to penetrate the darkness and
estimate the distance. Then suddenly he sprung up and made his dash. I
was prepared for this, and instantly caught the box from his hand. He
gave a half turn, trying either to save himself or to retain the box;
then with a scream went down shoulders first into the water. It all
happened within a second after he leaped from his chair.'

'You admit yourself, then, indirectly responsible for his drowning, at
least?'

'I see no reason to suppose that the man was drowned. If able to swim
he could easily have reached the river bank. If unable to swim, why
should he attempt it encumbered by the box?'

'You believe he escaped, then?'

'I think so.'

'It will be lucky for you should that prove to be the case.'

'Certainly.'

'How did you come to be in the yacht at all?' 

'I shall give you a full account of the affair, concealing nothing. I am a
private detective, with an office in London. I was certain that some attempt
would be made, probably by the most expert criminals at large, to rob
the possessor of this necklace. I came over to Paris, anticipating
trouble, determined to keep an eye upon the jewel case if this proved
possible. If the jewels were stolen the crime was bound to be one of
the most celebrated in legal annals. I was present during the sale,
and saw the buyer of the necklace. I followed the official who went to
the bank, and thus learned that the money was behind the cheque. I
then stopped outside and waited for the buyer to appear. He held the
case in his hand.'

'In his pocket, you mean?' I interrupted.

'He had it in his hand when I saw him. Then the man who afterwards
jumped overboard approached him, took the case without a word, held up
his hand for a cab, and when an open vehicle approached the curb he
stepped in, saying, "The Madeleine." I hailed a closed cab, instructed
the cabman to follow the first, disguising myself with whiskers as
near like those the man in front wore as I had in my collection.'

'Why did you do that?'

'As a detective you should know why I did it. I wished as nearly as
possible to resemble the man in front, so that if necessity arose I
could pretend that I was the person commissioned to carry the jewel
case. As a matter of fact, the crisis arose when we came to the end of
our cab journey. The captain did not know which was his true
passenger, and so let us both remain aboard the launch. And now you
have the whole story.'

'An extremely improbable one, sir. Even by your own account you had no
right to interfere in this business at all.'

'I quite agree with you there,' he replied, with great nonchalance,
taking a card from his pocket-book, which he handed to me.

'That is my London address; you may make inquiries, and you will find
I am exactly what I represent myself to be.'

The first train for Paris left Meulan at eleven minutes past four in
the morning. It was now a quarter after two. I left the captain, crew,
and launch in charge of two of my men, with orders to proceed to Paris
as soon as it was daylight. I, supported by the third man, waited at
the station with our English prisoner, and reached Paris at half-past
five in the morning.

The English prisoner, though severely interrogated by the judge, stood
by his story. Inquiry by the police in London proved that what he said
of himself was true. His case, however, began to look very serious
when two of the men from the launch asserted that they had seen him
push the Frenchman overboard, and their statement could not be shaken.
All our energies were bent for the next two weeks on trying to find
something of the identity of the missing man, or to get any trace of
the two Americans. If the tall American were alive, it seemed
incredible that he should not have made application for the valuable
property he had lost. All attempts to trace him by means of the cheque
on the Crédit-Lyonnais proved futile. The bank pretended to give me
every assistance, but I sometimes doubt if it actually did so. It had
evidently been well paid for its services, and evinced no impetuous
desire to betray so good a customer.

We made inquiries about every missing man in Paris, but also without
result.

The case had excited much attention throughout the world, and
doubtless was published in full in the American papers. The Englishman
had been in custody three weeks when the chief of police in Paris
received the following letter:--

'DEAR SIR,--On my arrival in New York by the English steamer
_Lucania_, I was much amused to read in the papers accounts of the
exploits of detectives, French and English. I am sorry that only one
of them seems to be in prison; I think his French _confrère_ ought to
be there also. I regret exceedingly, however, that there is the rumour
of the death by drowning of my friend Martin Dubois, of 375 Rue aux
Juifs, Rouen. If this is indeed the case he has met his death through
the blunders of the police. Nevertheless, I wish you would communicate
with his family at the address I have given, and assure them that I
will make arrangements for their future support.

'I beg to inform you that I am a manufacturer of imitation diamonds,
and through extensive advertising succeeded in accumulating a fortune
of many millions. I was in Europe when the necklace was found, and had
in my possession over a thousand imitation diamonds of my own
manufacture. It occurred to me that here was the opportunity of the
most magnificent advertisement in the world. I saw the necklace,
received its measurements, and also obtained photographs of it taken
by the French Government. Then I set my expert friend Martin Dubois at
work, and, with the artificial stones I gave him, he made an imitation
necklace so closely resembling the original that you apparently do not
know it is the unreal you have in your possession. I did not fear the
villainy of the crooks as much as the blundering of the police, who
would have protected me with brass-band vehemence if I could not elude
them. I knew that the detectives would overlook the obvious, but would
at once follow a clue if I provided one for them. Consequently, I laid
my plans, just as you have discovered, and got Martin Dubois up from
Rouen to carry the case I gave him down to Havre. I had had another
box prepared and wrapped in brown paper, with my address in New York
written thereon. The moment I emerged from the auction room, while my
friend the cowboy was holding up the audience, I turned my face to the
door, took out the genuine diamonds from the case and slipped it into
the box I had prepared for mailing. Into the genuine case I put the
bogus diamonds. After handing the box to Dubois, I turned down a side
street, and then into another whose name I do not know, and there in a
shop with sealing wax and string did up the real diamonds for posting.
I labelled the package "Books", went to the nearest post office, paid
letter postage, and handed it over unregistered as if it were of no
particular value. After this I went to my rooms in the Grand Hotel
where I had been staying under my own name for more than a month. Next
morning I took train for London, and the day after sailed from
Liverpool on the _Lucania_. I arrived before the _Gascoigne_, which
sailed from Havre on Saturday, met my box at the Customs house, paid
duty, and it now reposes in my safe. I intend to construct an
imitation necklace which will be so like the genuine one that nobody
can tell the two apart; then I shall come to Europe and exhibit the
pair, for the publication of the truth of this matter will give me the
greatest advertisement that ever was.

'Yours truly,

'JOHN P HAZARD.'

I at once communicated with Rouen and found Martin Dubois alive and
well. His first words were:--'I swear I did not steal the jewels.'

He had swum ashore, tramped to Rouen, and kept quiet in great fear
while I was fruitlessly searching Paris for him. It took Mr. Hazard
longer to make his imitation necklace than he supposed, and several
years later he booked his passage with the two necklaces on the
ill-fated steamer _Burgoyne_, and now rests beside them at the bottom
of the Atlantic.

    Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
    The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear.




2. _The Siamese Twin of a Bomb-Thrower_


The events previously related in 'The Mystery of the Five Hundred
Diamonds' led to my dismissal by the French Government. It was not
because I had arrested an innocent man; I had done that dozens of
times before, with nothing said about it. It was not because I had
followed a wrong clue, or because I had failed to solve the mystery of
the five hundred diamonds. Every detective follows a wrong clue now
and then, and every detective fails more often than he cares to admit.
No. All these things would not have shaken my position, but the
newspapers were so fortunate as to find something humorous in the
case, and for weeks Paris rang with laughter over my exploits and my
defeat. The fact that the chief French detective had placed the most
celebrated English detective into prison, and that each of them were
busily sleuth-hounding a bogus clue, deliberately flung across their
path by an amateur, roused all France to great hilarity. The
Government was furious. The Englishman was released and I was
dismissed. Since the year 1893 I have been a resident of London.

When a man is, as one might say, the guest of a country, it does not
become him to criticise that country. I have studied this strange
people with interest, and often with astonishment, and if I now set
down some of the differences between the English and the French, I
trust that no note of criticism of the former will appear, even when
my sympathies are entirely with the latter. These differences have
sunk deeply into my mind, because, during the first years of my stay
in London my lack of understanding them was often a cause of my own
failure when I thought I had success in hand. Many a time did I come
to the verge of starvation in Soho, through not appreciating the
peculiar trend of mind which causes an Englishman to do inexplicable
things--that is, of course, from my Gallic standpoint.

For instance, an arrested man is presumed to be innocent until he is
proved guilty. In England, if a murderer is caught red-handed over his
victim, he is held guiltless until the judge sentences him. In France
we make no such foolish assumption, and although I admit that innocent
men have sometimes been punished, my experience enables me to state
very emphatically that this happens not nearly so often as the public
imagines. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred an innocent man can at
once prove his innocence without the least difficulty. I hold it is
his duty towards the State to run the very slight risk of unjust
imprisonment in order that obstacles may not be thrown in the way of
the conviction of real criminals. But it is impossible to persuade an
Englishman of this. _Mon Dieu!_ I have tried it often enough.

Never shall I forget the bitterness of my disappointment when I
captured Felini, the Italian anarchist, in connection with the
Greenwich Park murder. At this time--it gives me no shame to confess
it--I was myself living in Soho, in a state of extreme poverty. Having
been employed so long by the French Government, I had formed the
absurd idea that the future depended on my getting, not exactly a
similar connection with Scotland Yard, but at least a subordinate
position on the police force which would enable me to prove my
capabilities, and lead to promotion. I had no knowledge, at that time,
of the immense income which awaited me entirely outside the Government
circle. Whether it is contempt for the foreigner, as has often been
stated, or that native stolidity which spells complacency, the British
official of any class rarely thinks it worth his while to discover the
real cause of things in France, or Germany, or Russia, but plods
heavily on from one mistake to another. Take, for example, those
periodical outbursts of hatred against England which appear in the
Continental Press. They create a dangerous international situation,
and more than once have brought Britain to the verge of a serious war.
Britain sternly spends millions in defence and preparation, whereas,
if she would place in my hand half a million pounds I would guarantee
to cause Britannia to be proclaimed an angel with white wings in every
European country.

When I attempted to arrive at some connection with Scotland Yard, I
was invariably asked for my credentials. When I proclaimed that I had
been chief detective to the Republic of France, I could see that this
announcement made a serious impression, but when I added that the
Government of France had dismissed me without credentials,
recommendation, or pension, official sympathy with officialism at once
turned the tables against me. And here I may be pardoned for pointing
out another portentous dissimilarity between the two lands which I
think is not at all to the credit of my countrymen.

I was summarily dismissed. You may say it was because I failed, and it
is true that in the case of the Queen's Necklace I had undoubtedly
failed, but, on the other hand, I had followed unerringly the clue
which lay in my path, and although the conclusion was not in
accordance with the facts, it was in accordance with logic. No, I was
not dismissed because I failed. I had failed on various occasions
before, as might happen to any man in any profession. I was dismissed
because I made France for the moment the laughing-stock of Europe and
America. France dismissed me because France had been laughed at. No
Frenchman can endure the turning of a joke against him, but the
Englishman does not appear to care in the least. So far as failure is
concerned, never had any man failed so egregiously as I did with
Felini, a slippery criminal who possessed all the bravery of a
Frenchman and all the subtlety of an Italian. Three times he was in my
hands--twice in Paris, once in Marseilles--and each time he escaped
me; yet I was not dismissed.

When I say that Signor Felini was as brave as a Frenchman, perhaps I
do him a little more than justice. He was desperately afraid of one
man, and that man was myself. Our last interview in France he is not
likely to forget, and although he eluded me, he took good care to get
into England as fast as train and boat could carry him, and never
again, while I was at the head of the French detective force, did he
set foot on French soil. He was an educated villain, a graduate of the
University of Turin, who spoke Spanish, French, and English as well as
his own language, and this education made him all the more dangerous
when he turned his talents to crime.

Now, I knew Felini's handiwork, either in murder or in housebreaking,
as well as I know my own signature on a piece of white paper, and as
soon as I saw the body of the murdered man in Greenwich Park I was
certain Felini was the murderer. The English authorities at that time
looked upon me with a tolerant, good-natured contempt.

Inspector Standish assumed the manner of a man placing at my disposal
plenty of rope with which I might entangle myself. He appeared to
think me excitable, and used soothing expressions as if I were a
fractious child to be calmed, rather than a sane equal to be reasoned
with. On many occasions I had the facts at my finger ends, while he
remained in a state of most complacent ignorance, and though this
attitude of lowering himself to deal gently with one whom he
evidently looked upon as an irresponsible lunatic was most
exasperating, I nevertheless claim great credit for having kept my
temper with him. However, it turned out to be impossible for me to
overcome his insular prejudice. He always supposed me to be a
frivolous, volatile person, and so I was unable to prove myself of any
value to him in his arduous duties.

The Felini instance was my last endeavour to win his favour. Inspector
Standish appeared in his most amiable mood when I was admitted to his
presence, and this in spite of the fact that all London was ringing
with the Greenwich Park tragedy, while the police possessed not the
faintest idea regarding the crime or its perpetrator. I judged from
Inspector Standish's benevolent smile that I was somewhat excited when
I spoke to him, and perhaps used many gestures which seemed
superfluous to a large man whom I should describe as immovable, and
who spoke slowly, with no motion of the hand, as if his utterances
were the condensed wisdom of the ages.

'Inspector Standish,' I cried, 'is it within your power to arrest a
man on suspicion?'

'Of course it is,' he replied; 'but we must harbour the suspicion
before we make the arrest.'

'Have confidence in me,' I exclaimed. 'The man who committed the
Greenwich Park murder is an Italian named Felini.'

I gave the address of the exact room in which he was to be found, with
cautions regarding the elusive nature of this individual. I said that
he had been three times in my custody, and those three times he had
slipped through my fingers. I have since thought that Inspector
Standish did not credit a word I had spoken.

'What is your proof against this Italian?' asked the Inspector slowly.

'The proof is on the body of the murdered man, but, nevertheless, if
you suddenly confront Felini with me without giving him any hint of
whom he is going to meet, you shall have the evidence from his own
lips before he recovers from his surprise and fright.'

Something of my confidence must have impressed the official, for the
order of arrest was made. Now, during the absence of the constable
sent to bring in Felini, I explained to the inspector fully the
details of my plan. Practically he did not listen to me, for his head
was bent over a writing-pad on which I thought he was taking down my
remarks, but when I had finished he went on writing as before, so I
saw I had flattered myself unnecessarily. More than two hours passed
before the constable returned, bringing with him the trembling
Italian. I swung round in front of him, and cried, in a menacing
voice:--

'Felini! Regard me! You know Valmont too well to trifle with him! What
have you to say of the murder in Greenwich Park?'

I give you my word that the Italian collapsed, and would have fallen
to the floor in a heap had not the constables upheld him with hands
under each arm. His face became of a pasty whiteness, and he began to
stammer his confession, when this incredible thing happened, which
could not be believed in France. Inspector Standish held up his
finger.

'One moment,' he cautioned solemnly, 'remember that whatever you say
will be used against you!'

The quick, beady black eyes of the Italian shot from Standish to me,
and from me to Standish. In an instant his alert mind grasped the
situation. Metaphorically I had been waved aside. I was not there in
any official capacity, and he saw in a moment with what an opaque
intellect he had to deal. The Italian closed his mouth like a steel
trap, and refused to utter a word. Shortly after he was liberated, as
there was no evidence against him. When at last complete proof was in
the tardy hands of the British authorities, the agile Felini was safe
in the Apennine mountains, and today is serving a life sentence in
Italy for the assassination of a senator whose name I have forgotten.

Is it any wonder that I threw up my hands in despair at finding myself
amongst such a people. But this was in the early days, and now that I
have greater experience of the English, many of my first opinions have
been modified.

I mention all this to explain why, in a private capacity, I often did
what no English official would dare to do. A people who will send a
policeman, without even a pistol to protect him, to arrest a desperate
criminal in the most dangerous quarter of London, cannot be
comprehended by any native of France, Italy, Spain, or Germany. When I
began to succeed as a private detective in London, and had accumulated
money enough for my project, I determined not to be hampered by this
unexplainable softness of the English towards an accused person. I
therefore reconstructed my flat, and placed in the centre of it a dark
room strong as any Bastille cell. It was twelve feet square, and
contained no furniture except a number of shelves, a lavatory in one
corner, and a pallet on the floor. It was ventilated by two flues
from the centre of the ceiling, in one of which operated an electric
fan, which, when the room was occupied, sent the foul air up that
flue, and drew down fresh air through the other. The entrance to this
cell opened out from my bedroom, and the most minute inspection would
have failed to reveal the door, which was of massive steel, and was
opened and shut by electric buttons that were partially concealed by
the head of my bed. Even if they had been discovered, they would have
revealed nothing, because the first turn of the button lit the
electric light at the head of my bed; the second turn put it out; and
this would happen as often as the button was turned to the right. But
turn it three times slowly to the left, and the steel door opened. Its
juncture was completely concealed by panelling. I have brought many a
scoundrel to reason within the impregnable walls of that small room.

Those who know the building regulations of London will wonder how it
was possible for me to delude the Government inspector during the
erection of this section of the Bastille in the midst of the modern
metropolis. It was the simplest thing in the world. Liberty of the
subject is the first great rule with the English people, and thus many
a criminal is allowed to escape. Here was I laying plans for the
contravening of this first great rule, and to do so I took advantage
of the second great rule of the English people, which is, that
property is sacred. I told the building authorities I was a rich man
with a great distrust of banks, and I wished to build in my flat a
safe or strong-room in which to deposit my valuables. I built then
such a room as may be found in every bank, and many private premises
of the City, and a tenant might have lived in my flat for a year and
never suspected the existence of this prison. A railway engine might
have screeched its whistle within it, and not a sound would have
penetrated the apartments that surrounded it unless the door were
open.

But besides M. Eugène Valmont, dressed in elegant attire as if he were
still a boulevardier of Paris, occupier of the top floor in the
Imperial Flats, there was another Frenchman in London to whom I must
introduce you, namely, Professor Paul Ducharme, who occupied a squalid
back room in the cheapest and most undesirable quarter of Soho.
Valmont flatters himself he is not yet middle-aged, but poor Ducharme
does not need his sparse gray beard to proclaim his advancing years.
Valmont vaunts an air of prosperity; Ducharme wears the shabby
habiliments and the shoulder-stoop of hopeless poverty. He shuffles
cringingly along the street, a compatriot not to be proud of. There
are so many Frenchmen anxious to give lessons in their language, that
merely a small living is to be picked up by any one of them. You will
never see the spruce Valmont walking alongside the dejected Ducharme.

'Ah!' you exclaim, 'Valmont in his prosperity has forgotten those less
fortunate of his nationality.'

Pardon, my friends, it is not so. Behold, I proclaim to you, the
exquisite Valmont and the threadbare Ducharme are one and the same
person. That is why they do not promenade together. And, indeed, it
requires no great histrionic art on my part to act the rôle of the
miserable Ducharme, for when I first came to London, I warded off
starvation in this wretched room, and my hand it was that nailed to
the door the painted sign 'Professor Paul Ducharme, Teacher of the
French Language'. I never gave up the room, even when I became
prosperous and moved to Imperial Flats, with its concealed chamber of
horrors unknown to British authority. I did not give up the Soho
chamber principally for this reason: Paul Ducharme, if the truth were
known about him, would have been regarded as a dangerous character;
yet this was a character sometimes necessary for me to assume. He was
a member of the very inner circle of the International, an anarchist
of the anarchists. This malign organisation has its real headquarters
in London, and we who were officials connected with the Secret Service
of the Continent have more than once cursed the complacency of the
British Government which allows such a nest of vipers to exist
practically unmolested. I confess that before I came to know the
English people as well as I do now, I thought that this complacency
was due to utter selfishness, because the anarchists never commit an
outrage in England. England is the one spot on the map of Europe where
an anarchist cannot be laid by the heels unless there is evidence
against him that will stand the test of open court. Anarchists take
advantage of this fact, and plots are hatched in London which are
executed in Paris, Berlin, Petersburg, or Madrid. I know now that this
leniency on the part of the British Government does not arise from
craft, but from their unexplainable devotion to their shibboleth--'The
liberty of the subject.' Time and again France has demanded the
extradition of an anarchist, always to be met with the question,--

'Where is your proof?'

I know many instances where our certainty was absolute, and also cases
where we possessed legal proof as well, but legal proof which, for one
reason or another, we dared not use in public; yet all this had no
effect on the British authorities. They would never give up even the
vilest criminal except on publicly attested legal evidence, and not
even then, if the crime were political.

During my term of office under the French Government, no part of my
duties caused me more anxiety than that which pertained to the
political secret societies. Of course, with a large portion of the
Secret Service fund at my disposal, I was able to buy expert
assistance, and even to get information from anarchists themselves.
This latter device, however, was always more or less unreliable. I
have never yet met an anarchist I could believe on oath, and when one
of them offered to sell exclusive information to the police, we rarely
knew whether he was merely trying to get a few francs to keep himself
from starving, or whether he was giving us false particulars which
would lead us into a trap. I have always regarded our dealings with
nihilists, anarchists, or other secret associations for the
perpetrating of murder as the most dangerous service a detective is
called upon to perform. Yet it is absolutely necessary that the
authorities should know what is going on in these secret conclaves.
There are three methods of getting this intelligence. First,
periodical raids upon the suspected, accompanied by confiscation and
search of all papers found. This method is much in favour with the
Russian police. I have always regarded it as largely futile; first,
because the anarchists are not such fools, speaking generally, as to
commit their purposes to writing; and, second, because it leads to
reprisal. Each raid is usually followed by a fresh outbreak of
activity on the part of those left free. The second method is to bribe
an anarchist to betray his comrades. I have never found any difficulty
in getting these gentry to accept money. They are eternally in need,
but I usually find the information they give in return to be either
unimportant or inaccurate. There remains, then, the third method,
which is to place a spy among them. The spy battalion is the forlorn
hope of the detective service. In one year I lost three men on
anarchist duty, among the victims being my most valuable helper, Henri
Brisson. Poor Brisson's fate was an example of how a man may follow a
perilous occupation for months with safety, and then by a slight
mistake bring disaster on himself. At the last gathering Brisson
attended he received news of such immediate and fateful import that on
emerging from the cellar where the gathering was held, he made
directly for my residence instead of going to his own squalid room in
the Rue Falgarie. My concierge said that he arrived shortly after one
o'clock in the morning, and it would seem that at this hour he could
easily have made himself acquainted with the fact that he was
followed. Still, as there was on his track that human panther, Felini,
it is not strange poor Brisson failed to elude him.

Arriving at the tall building in which my flat was then situated,
Brisson rang the bell, and the concierge, as usual, in that strange
state of semi-somnolence which envelops concierges during the night,
pulled the looped wire at the head of his bed, and unbolted the door.
Brisson assuredly closed the huge door behind him, and yet the moment
before he did so, Felini must have slipped in unnoticed to the
stone-paved courtyard. If Brisson had not spoken and announced
himself, the concierge would have been wide awake in an instant. If he
had given a name unknown to the concierge, the same result would have
ensued. As it was he cried aloud 'Brisson,' whereupon the concierge of
the famous chief of the French detective staff, Valmont, muttered
'_Bon_! and was instantly asleep again.

Now Felini had known Brisson well, but it was under the name of
Revensky, and as an exiled Russian. Brisson had spent all his early
years in Russia, and spoke the language like a native. The moment
Brisson had uttered his true name he had pronounced his own death
warrant. Felini followed him up to the first landing--my rooms were on
the second floor--and there placed his sign manual on the unfortunate
man, which was the swift downward stroke of a long, narrow, sharp
poniard, entering the body below the shoulders, and piercing the
heart. The advantage presented by this terrible blow is that the
victim sinks instantly in a heap at the feet of his slayer, without
uttering a moan. The wound left is a scarcely perceptible blue mark
which rarely even bleeds. It was this mark I saw on the body of the
Maire of Marseilles, and afterwards on one other in Paris besides poor
Brisson. It was the mark found on the man in Greenwich Park; always
just below the left shoulder-blade, struck from behind. Felini's
comrades claim that there was this nobility in his action, namely, he
allowed the traitor to prove himself before he struck the blow. I
should be sorry to take away this poor shred of credit from Felini's
character, but the reason he followed Brisson into the courtyard was
to give himself time to escape. He knew perfectly the ways of the
concierge. He knew that the body would lie there until the morning, as
it actually did, and that this would give him hours in which to effect
his retreat. And this was the man whom British law warned not to
incriminate himself! What a people! What a people!

After Brisson's tragic death, I resolved to set no more valuable men
on the track of the anarchists, but to place upon myself the task in
my moments of relaxation. I became very much interested in the
underground workings of the International. I joined the organisation
under the name of Paul Ducharme, a professor of advanced opinions, who
because of them had been dismissed his situation in Nantes. As a
matter of fact there had been such a Paul Ducharme, who had been so
dismissed, but he had drowned himself in the Loire, at Orleans, as the
records show. I adopted the precaution of getting a photograph of this
foolish old man from the police at Nantes, and made myself up to
resemble him. It says much for my disguise that I was recognised as
the professor by a delegate from Nantes, at the annual Convention held
in Paris, which I attended, and although we conversed for some time
together he never suspected that I was not the professor, whose fate
was known to no one but the police of Orleans. I gained much credit
among my comrades because of this encounter, which, during its first
few moments, filled me with dismay, for the delegate from Nantes held
me up as an example of a man well off, who had deliberately sacrificed
his worldly position for the sake of principle. Shortly after this I
was chosen delegate to carry a message to our comrades in London, and
this delicate undertaking passed off without mishap.

It was perhaps natural then, that when I came to London after my
dismissal by the French Government, I should assume the name and
appearance of Paul Ducharme, and adopt the profession of French
teacher. This profession gave me great advantages. I could be absent
from my rooms for hours at a time without attracting the least
attention, because a teacher goes wherever there are pupils. If any of
my anarchist comrades saw me emerging shabbily from the grand Imperial
Flats where Valmont lived, he greeted me affably, thinking I was
coming from a pupil.

The sumptuous flat was therefore the office in which I received my
rich clients, while the squalid room in Soho was often the workshop in
which the tasks entrusted to me were brought to completion.

       *       *       *       *       *

I now come to very modern days indeed, when I spent much time with the
emissaries of the International.

It will be remembered that the King of England made a round of visits
to European capitals, the far-reaching results of which in the
interest of peace we perhaps do not yet fully understand and
appreciate. His visit to Paris was the beginning of the present
_entente cordiale_, and I betray no confidence when I say that this
brief official call at the French capital was the occasion of great
anxiety to the Government of my own country and also of that in which
I was domiciled. Anarchists are against all government, and would like
to see each one destroyed, not even excepting that of Great Britain.

My task in connection with the visit of King Edward to Paris was
entirely unofficial. A nobleman, for whom on a previous occasion I had
been so happy as to solve a little mystery which troubled him,
complimented me by calling at my flat about two weeks before the
King's entry into the French capital. I know I shall be pardoned if I
fail to mention this nobleman's name. I gathered that the intended
visit of the King met with his disapproval. He asked if I knew
anything, or could discover anything, of the purposes animating the
anarchist clubs of Paris, and their attitude towards the royal
function, which was now the chief topic in the newspapers. I replied
that within four days I would be able to submit to him a complete
report on the subject. He bowed coldly and withdrew. On the evening of
the fourth day I permitted myself the happiness of waiting upon his
lordship at his West End London mansion.

'I have the honour to report to your lordship,' I began, 'that the
anarchists of Paris are somewhat divided in their opinions regarding
His Majesty's forthcoming progress through that city. A minority,
contemptible in point of number, but important so far as the extremity
of their opinions are concerned, has been trying--'

'Excuse me,' interrupted the nobleman, with some severity of tone,
'are they going to attempt to injure the King or not?'

'They are not, your lordship,' I replied, with what, I trust, is my
usual urbanity of manner, despite his curt interpolation. 'His most
gracious Majesty will suffer no molestation, and their reason for
quiescence--'

'Their reasons do not interest me,' put in his lordship gruffly. 'You
are sure of what you say?'

'Perfectly sure, your lordship.'

'No precautions need be taken?'

'None in the least, your lordship.'

'Very well,' concluded the nobleman shortly, 'if you tell my secretary
in the next room as you go out how much I owe you, he will hand you a
cheque,' and with that I was dismissed.

I may say that, mixing as I do with the highest in two lands, and
meeting invariably such courtesy as I myself am always eager to
bestow, a feeling almost of resentment arose at this cavalier
treatment. However, I merely bowed somewhat ceremoniously in silence,
and availed myself of the opportunity in the next room to double my
bill, which was paid without demur.

Now, if this nobleman had but listened, he would have heard much that
might interest an ordinary man, although I must say that during my
three conversations with him his mind seemed closed to all outward
impressions save and except the grandeur of his line, which he traced
back unblemished into the northern part of my own country.

The King's visit had come as a surprise to the anarchists, and they
did not quite know what to do about it. The Paris Reds were rather in
favour of a demonstration, while London bade them, in God's name, to
hold their hands, for, as they pointed out, England is the only refuge
in which an anarchist is safe until some particular crime can be
imputed to him, and what is more, proven up to the hilt.

It will be remembered that the visit of the King to Paris passed off
without incident, as did the return visit of the President to London.
On the surface all was peace and goodwill, but under the surface
seethed plot and counterplot, and behind the scenes two great
governments were extremely anxious, and high officials in the Secret
Service spent sleepless nights. As no 'untoward incident' had
happened, the vigilance of the authorities on both sides of the
Channel relaxed at the very moment when, if they had known their
adversaries, it should have been redoubled. Always beware of the
anarchist when he has been good: look out for the reaction. It annoys
him to be compelled to remain quiet when there is a grand opportunity
for strutting across the world's stage, and when he misses the
psychological moment, he is apt to turn 'nasty,' as the English say.

When it first became known that there was to be a Royal procession
through the streets of Paris, a few fanatical hot-heads, both in that
city and in London, wished to take action, but they were overruled by
the saner members of the organisation. It must not be supposed that
anarchists are a band of lunatics. There are able brains among them,
and these born leaders as naturally assume control in the underground
world of anarchy as would have been the case if they had devoted their
talents to affairs in ordinary life. They were men whose minds, at one
period, had taken the wrong turning. These people, although they
calmed the frenzy of the extremists, nevertheless regarded the
possible _rapprochement_ between England and France with grave
apprehension. If France and England became as friendly as France and
Russia, might not the refuge which England had given to anarchy become
a thing of the past? I may say here that my own weight as an anarchist
while attending these meetings in disguise under the name of Paul
Ducharme was invariably thrown in to help the cause of moderation. My
rôle, of course, was not to talk too much; not to make myself
prominent, yet in such a gathering a man cannot remain wholly a
spectator. Care for my own safety led me to be as inconspicuous as
possible, for members of communities banded together against the laws
of the land in which they live, are extremely suspicious of one
another, and an inadvertent word may cause disaster to the person
speaking it.

Perhaps it was this conservatism on my part that caused my advice to
be sought after by the inner circle; what you might term the governing
body of the anarchists; for, strange as it may appear, this
organisation, sworn to put down all law and order, was itself most
rigidly governed, with a Russian prince elected as its chairman, a man
of striking ability, who, nevertheless, I believe, owed his election
more to the fact that he was a nobleman than to the recognition of his
intrinsic worth. And another point which interested me much was that
this prince ruled his obstreperous subjects after the fashion of
Russian despotism, rather than according to the liberal ideas of the
country in which he was domiciled. I have known him more than once
ruthlessly overturn the action of the majority, stamp his foot, smite
his huge fist on the table, and declare so and so should not be done,
no matter what the vote was. And the thing was not done, either.

At the more recent period of which I speak, the chairmanship of the
London anarchists was held by a weak, vacillating man, and the mob had
got somewhat out of hand. In the crisis that confronted us, I yearned
for the firm fist and dominant boot of the uncompromising Russian. I
spoke only once during this time, and assured my listeners that they
had nothing to fear from the coming friendship of the two nations. I
said the Englishman was so wedded to his grotesque ideas regarding the
liberty of the subject he so worshipped absolute legal evidence, that
we would never find our comrades disappear mysteriously from England
as had been the case in Continental countries.

Although restless during the exchange of visits between King and
President, I believe I could have carried the English phalanx with me,
if the international courtesies had ended there. But after it was
announced that members of the British Parliament were to meet the
members of the French Legislature, the Paris circle became alarmed,
and when that conference did not end the _entente_, but merely paved
the way for a meeting of business men belonging to the two countries
in Paris, the French anarchists sent a delegate over to us, who made a
wild speech one night, waving continually the red flag. This aroused
all our own malcontents to a frenzy. The French speaker practically
charged the English contingent with cowardice; said that as they were
safe from molestation, they felt no sympathy for their comrades in
Paris, at any time liable to summary arrest and the torture of the
secret cross-examination. This Anglo-French love-feast must be wafted
to the heavens in a halo of dynamite. The Paris anarchists were
determined, and although they wished the co-operation of their London
brethren, yet if the speaker did not bring back with him assurance of
such co-operation, Paris would act on its own initiative.

The Russian despot would have made short work of this blood-blinded
rhetoric, but alas, he was absent, and an overwhelming vote in favour
of force was carried and accepted by the trembling chairman. My French
_confrère_ took back with him to Paris the unanimous consent of the
English comrades to whom he had appealed. All that was asked of the
English contingent was that it should arrange for the escape and safe
keeping of the assassin who flung the bomb into the midst of the
English visitors, and after the oratorical madman had departed, I, to
my horror, was chosen to arrange for the safe transport and future
custody of the bomb-thrower. It is not etiquette in anarchist circles
for any member to decline whatever task is given him by the vote of
his comrades. He knows the alternative, which is suicide. If he
declines the task and still remains upon earth, the dilemma is solved
for him, as the Italian Felini solved it through the back of my
unfortunate helper Brisson. I therefore accepted the unwelcome office
in silence, and received from the treasurer the money necessary for
carrying out the same.

I realised for the first time since joining the anarchist association
years before that I was in genuine danger. A single false step, a
single inadvertent word, might close the career of Eugène Valmont, and
at the same moment terminate the existence of the quiet, inoffensive
Paul Ducharme, teacher of the French language. I knew perfectly well I
should be followed. The moment I received the money the French
delegate asked when they were to expect me in Paris. He wished to know
so that all the resources of their organisation might be placed at my
disposal. I replied calmly enough that I could not state definitely on
what day I should leave England. There was plenty of time, as the
business men's representatives from London would not reach Paris for
another two weeks. I was well known to the majority of the Paris
organisation, and would present myself before them on the first night
of my arrival. The Paris delegate exhibited all the energy of a new
recruit, and he seemed dissatisfied with my vagueness, but I went on
without heeding his displeasure. He was not personally known to me,
nor I to him, but if I may say so, Paul Ducharme was well thought of
by all the rest of those present.

I had learned a great lesson during the episode of the Queen's
Necklace, which resulted in my dismissal by the French Government. I
had learned that if you expect pursuit it is always well to leave a
clue for the pursuer to follow. Therefore I continued in a low
conversational tone:--

'I shall want the whole of tomorrow for myself: I must notify my
pupils of my absence. Even if my pupils leave me it will not so much
matter. I can probably get others. But what does matter is my
secretarial work with Monsieur Valmont of the Imperial Flats. I am
just finishing for him the translation of a volume from French into
English, and tomorrow I can complete the work, and get his permission
to leave for a fortnight. This man, who is a compatriot of my own,
has given me employment ever since I came to London. From him I have
received the bulk of my income, and if it had not been for his
patronage, I do not know what I should have done. I not only have no
desire to offend him, but I wish the secretarial work to continue when
I return to London.'

There was a murmur of approval at this. It was generally recognised
that a man's living should not be interfered with, if possible.
Anarchists are not poverty-stricken individuals, as most people think,
for many of them hold excellent situations, some occupying positions
of great trust, which is rarely betrayed.

It is recognised that a man's duty, not only to himself, but to the
organisation, is to make all the money he can, and thus not be liable
to fall back on the relief fund. This frank admission of my dependence
on Valmont made it all the more impossible that anyone there listening
should suspect that it was Valmont himself who was addressing the
conclave.

'You will then take the night train tomorrow for Paris?' persisted the
inquisitive French delegate.

'Yes, and no. I shall take the night train, and it shall be for Paris,
but not from Charing Cross, Victoria, or Waterloo. I shall travel on
the 8.30 Continental express from Liverpool Street to Harwich, cross
to the Hook of Holland, and from there make my way to Paris through
Holland and Belgium. I wish to investigate that route as a possible
path for our comrade to escape. After the blow is struck, Calais,
Boulogne, Dieppe, and Havre will be closely watched. I shall perhaps
bring him to London by way of Antwerp and the Hook.'

These amiable disclosures were so fully in keeping with Paul
Ducharme's reputation for candour and caution that I saw they made an
excellent impression on my audience, and here the chairman intervened,
putting an end to further cross-examination by saying they all had the
utmost confidence in the judgment of Monsieur Paul Ducharme, and the
Paris delegate might advise his friends to be on the lookout for the
London representative within the next three or four days.

I left the meeting and went directly to my room in Soho, without even
taking the trouble to observe whether I was watched or not. There I
stayed all night, and in the morning quitted Soho as Ducharme, with a
gray beard and bowed shoulders, walked west to the Imperial Flats,
took the lift to the top, and, seeing the corridor was clear, let
myself in to my own flat. I departed from my flat promptly at six
o'clock, again as Paul Ducharme, carrying this time a bundle done up
in brown paper under my arm, and proceeded directly to my room in
Soho. Later I took a bus, still carrying my brown paper parcel, and
reached Liverpool Street in ample time for the Continental train. By a
little private arrangement with the guard, I secured a compartment for
myself, although up to the moment the train left the station, I could
not be sure but that I might be compelled to take the trip to the Hook
of Holland after all. If any one had insisted on coming into my
compartment, I should have crossed the North Sea that night. I knew I
should be followed from Soho to the station, and that probably the spy
would go as far as Harwich, and see me on the boat. It was doubtful if
he would cross. I had chosen this route for the reason that we have no
organisation in Holland: the nearest circle is in Brussels, and if
there had been time, the Brussels circle would have been warned to
keep an eye on me. There was, however, no time for a letter, and
anarchists never use the telegraph, especially so far as the Continent
is concerned, unless in cases of the greatest emergency. If they
telegraphed my description to Brussels the chances were it would not
be an anarchist who watched my landing, but a member of the Belgian
police force.

The 8.30 Continental express does not stop between Liverpool Street
and Parkeston Quay, which it is timed to reach three minutes before
ten. This gave me an hour and a half in which to change my apparel.
The garments of the poor old professor I rolled up into a ball one by
one and flung out through the open window, far into the marsh past
which we were flying in a pitch dark night. Coat, trousers, and
waistcoat rested in separate swamps at least ten miles apart. Gray
whiskers and gray wig I tore into little pieces, and dropped the bits
out of the open window.

I had taken the precaution to secure a compartment in the front of
the train, and when it came to rest at Parkeston Quay Station, the
crowd, eager for the steamer, rushed past me, and I stepped out into
the midst of it, a dapper, well-dressed young man, with black beard
and moustaches, my own closely cropped black hair covered by a new
bowler hat. Anyone looking for Paul Ducharme would have paid small
attention to me, and to any friend of Valmont's I was equally
unrecognisable.

I strolled in leisurely manner to the Great Eastern Hotel on the Quay,
and asked the clerk if a portmanteau addressed to Mr. John Wilkins had
arrived that day from London. He said 'Yes,' whereupon I secured a
room for the night, as the last train had already left for the
metropolis.

Next morning, Mr. John Wilkins, accompanied by a brand new and rather
expensive portmanteau, took the 8.57 train for Liverpool Street, where
he arrived at half-past ten, stepped into a cab, and drove to the
Savoy Restaurant, lunching there with the portmanteau deposited in the
cloak room. When John Wilkins had finished an excellent lunch in a
leisurely manner at the Café Parisien of the Savoy, and had paid his
bill, he did not go out into the Strand over the rubber-paved court by
which he had entered, but went through the hotel and down the stairs,
and so out into the thoroughfare facing the Embankment. Then turning
to his right he reached the Embankment entrance of the Hotel Cecil.
This leads into a long, dark corridor, at the end of which the lift
may be rung for. It does not come lower than the floor above unless
specially summoned. In this dark corridor, which was empty, John
Wilkins took off the black beard and moustache, hid it in the inside
pocket of his coat, and there went up into the lift a few moments
later to the office floor, I, Eugène Valmont, myself for the first
time in several days.

Even then I did not take a cab to my flat, but passed under the arched
Strand front of the 'Cecil' in a cab, bound for the residence of that
nobleman who had formerly engaged me to see after the safety of the
King.

You will say that this was all very elaborate precaution to take when
a man was not even sure he was followed. To tell you the truth, I do
not know to this day whether anyone watched me or not, nor do I care.
I live in the present: when once the past is done with, it ceases to
exist for me. It is quite possible, nay, entirely probable, that no
one tracked me farther than Liverpool Street Station the night before,
yet it was for lack of such precaution that my assistant Brisson
received the Italian's dagger under his shoulder-blade fifteen years
before. The present moment is ever the critical time; the future is
merely for intelligent forethought. It was to prepare for the future
that I was now in a cab on the way to my lord's residence. It was not
the French anarchists I feared during the contest in which I was about
to become engaged, but the Paris police. I knew French officialdom too
well not to understand the futility of going to the authorities there
and proclaiming my object. If I ventured to approach the chief of
police with the information that I, in London, had discovered what it
was his business in Paris to know, my reception would be far from
cordial, even though, or rather because, I announced myself as Eugène
Valmont. The exploits of Eugène had become part of the legends of
Paris, and these legends were extremely distasteful to those men in
power. My doings have frequently been made the subject of _feuilletons_
in the columns of the Paris Press, and were, of course, exaggerated by
the imagination of the writers, yet, nevertheless, I admit I did some
good strokes of detection during my service with the French
Government. It is but natural, then, that the present authorities
should listen with some impatience when the name of Eugène Valmont is
mentioned. I recognise this as quite in the order of things to be
expected, and am honest enough to confess that in my own time I often
hearkened to narratives regarding the performances of Lecocq with a
doubting shrug of the shoulders.

Now, if the French police knew anything of this anarchist plot, which
was quite within the bounds of possibility, and if I were in
surreptitious communication with the anarchists, more especially with
the man who was to fling the bomb, there was every chance I might find
myself in the grip of French justice. I must, then, provide myself
with credentials to show that I was acting, not against the peace and
quiet of my country, but on the side of law and order. I therefore
wished to get from the nobleman a commission in writing, similar to
that command which he had placed upon me during the King's visit. This
commission I should lodge at my bank in Paris, to be a voucher for me
at the last extremity. I had no doubt his lordship would empower me to
act in this instance as I had acted on two former occasions.

       *       *       *       *       *

Perhaps if I had not lunched so well I might have approached his
lordship with greater deference than was the case; but when ordering
lunch I permitted a bottle of Château du Tertre, 1878, a most
delicious claret, to be decanted carefully for my delectation at the
table, and this caused a genial glow to permeate throughout my system,
inducing a mental optimism which left me ready to salute the greatest
of earth on a plane of absolute equality. Besides, after all, I am the
citizen of a Republic.

The nobleman received me with frigid correctness, implying disapproval
of my unauthorised visit, rather than expressing it. Our interview was
extremely brief.

'I had the felicity of serving your lordship upon two occasions,' I
began.

'They are well within my recollection,' he interrupted, 'but I do not
remember sending for you a third time.'

'I have taken the liberty of coming unrequested, my lord, because of
the importance of the news I carry. I surmise that you are interested
in the promotion of friendship between France and England.'

'Your surmise, sir, is incorrect. I care not a button about it. My
only anxiety was for the safety of the King.'

Even the superb claret was not enough to fortify me against words so
harsh, and tones so discourteous, as those his lordship permitted
himself to use.

'Sir,' said I, dropping the title in my rising anger, 'it may interest
you to know that a number of your countrymen run the risk of being
blown to eternity by an anarchist bomb in less than two weeks from
today. A party of business men, true representatives of a class to
which the pre-eminence of your Empire is due, are about to proceed--'

'Pray spare me,' interpolated his lordship wearily, 'I have read that
sort of thing so often in the newspapers. If all these estimable City
men are blown up, the Empire would doubtless miss them, as you hint,
but I should not, and their fate does not interest me in the least,
although you did me the credit of believing that it would. Thompson,
you will show this person out? Sir, if I desire your presence here in
future I will send for you.'

'You may send for the devil!' I cried, now thoroughly enraged, the
wine getting the better of me.

'You express my meaning more tersely than I cared to do,' he replied
coldly, and that was the last I ever saw of him.

Entering the cab I drove to my flat, indignant at the reception I
had met with. However, I knew the English people too well to malign
them for the action of one of their number, and resentment never
dwells long with me. Arriving at my rooms I looked through the
newspapers to learn all I could of the proposed business men's
excursion to Paris, and in reading the names of those most prominent
in carrying out the necessary arrangements, I came across that of W.
Raymond White, which caused me to sit back in my chair and wrinkle my
brow in an endeavour to stir my memory. Unless I was much mistaken, I
had been so happy as to oblige this gentleman some dozen or thirteen
years before. As I remembered him, he was a business man who engaged
in large transactions with France, dealing especially in Lyons and
that district. His address was given in the newspaper as Old Change,
so at once I resolved to see him. Although I could not recall the
details of our previous meeting, if, indeed, he should turn out to be
the same person, yet the mere sight of the name had produced a mental
pleasure, as a chance chord struck may bring a grateful harmony to the
mind. I determined to get my credentials from Mr. White if possible,
for his recommendation would in truth be much more valuable than that
of the gruff old nobleman to whom I had first applied, because, if I
got into trouble with the police of Paris, I was well enough
acquainted with the natural politeness of the authorities to know that
a letter from one of the city's guests would secure my instant
release.

I took a hansom to the head of that narrow thoroughfare known as Old
Change, and there dismissed my cab. I was so fortunate as to recognise
Mr. White coming out of his office. A moment later, and I should have
missed him.

'Mr. White,' I accosted him, 'I desire to enjoy both the pleasure and
the honour of introducing myself to you.'

'Monsieur,' replied Mr. White with a smile, 'the introduction is not
necessary, and the pleasure and honour are mine. Unless I am very much
mistaken, this is Monsieur Valmont of Paris?'

'Late of Paris,' I corrected.

'Are you no longer in Government service then?'

'For a little more than ten years I have been a resident of London.'

'What, and have never let me know? That is something the diplomatists
call an unfriendly act, monsieur. Now, shall we return to my office,
or go to a café?'

'To your office, if you please, Mr. White. I come on rather important
business.'

Entering his private office the merchant closed the door, offered me a
chair, and sat down himself by his desk. From the first he had
addressed me in French, which he spoke with an accent so pure that it
did my lonesome heart good to hear it.

'I called upon you half a dozen years ago,' he went on, 'when I was
over in Paris on a festive occasion, where I hoped to secure your
company, but I could not learn definitely whether you were still with
the Government or not.'

'It is the way of the French officialism,' I replied. 'If they knew my
whereabouts they would keep the knowledge to themselves.'

'Well, if you have been ten years in London, Monsieur Valmont, we may
now perhaps have the pleasure of claiming you as an Englishman; so I
beg you will accompany us on another festive occasion to Paris next
week. Perhaps you have seen that a number of us are going over there
to make the welkin ring.'

'Yes; I have read all about the business men's excursion to Paris, and
it is with reference to this journey that I wish to consult you,' and
here I gave Mr. White in detail the plot of the anarchists against the
growing cordiality of the two countries. The merchant listened quietly
without interruption until I had finished; then he said,--'I suppose
it will be rather useless to inform the police of Paris?'

'Indeed, Mr. White, it is the police of Paris I fear more than the
anarchists. They would resent information coming to them from the
outside, especially from an ex-official, the inference being that they
were not up to their own duties. Friction and delay would ensue until
the deed was inevitable. It is quite on the cards that the police of
Paris may have some inkling of the plot, and in that case, just before
the event, they are reasonably certain to arrest the wrong men. I
shall be moving about Paris, not as Eugène Valmont, but as Paul
Ducharme, the anarchist; therefore, there is some danger that as a
stranger and a suspect I may be laid by the heels at the critical
moment. If you would be so good as to furnish me with credentials
which I can deposit somewhere in Paris in case of need, I may thus be
able to convince the authorities that they have taken the wrong man.'

Mr. White, entirely unperturbed by the prospect of having a bomb thrown
at him within two weeks, calmly wrote several documents, then turned
his untroubled face to me, and said, in a very confidential, winning
tone:--'Monsieur Valmont, you have stated the case with that clear
comprehensiveness pertaining to a nation which understands the
meaning of words, and the correct adjustment of them; that felicity of
language which has given France the first place in the literature of
nations. Consequently, I think I see very clearly the delicacies of
the situation. We may expect hindrances, rather than help, from
officials on either side of the Channel. Secrecy is essential to
success. Have you spoken of this to anyone but me?'

'Only to Lord Blank,' I replied; 'and now I deeply regret having made
a confidant of him.'

'That does not in the least matter,' said Mr. White, with a smile;
'Lord Blank's mind is entirely occupied by his own greatness. Chemists
tell me that you cannot add a new ingredient to a saturated solution;
therefore your revelation will have made no impression upon his
lordship's intellect. He has already forgotten all about it. Am I
right in supposing that everything hinges on the man who is to throw
the bomb?'

'Quite right, sir. He may be venal, he may be traitorous, he may be a
coward, he may be revengeful, he may be a drunkard. Before I am in
conversation with him for ten minutes, I shall know what his weak spot
is. It is upon that spot I must act, and my action must be delayed
till the very last moment; for, if he disappears too long before the
event, his first, second, or third substitute will instantly step into
his place.'

'Precisely. So you cannot complete your plans until you have met this
man?'

'_Parfaitement._'

'Then I propose,' continued Mr. White, 'that we take no one into our
confidence. In a case like this there is little use in going before a
committee. I can see that you do not need any advice, and my own part
shall be to remain in the background, content to support the most
competent man that could have been chosen to grapple with a very
difficult crisis.'

I bowed profoundly. There was a compliment in his glance as well as in
his words. Never before had I met so charming a man.

'Here,' he continued, handing me one of the papers he had written, 'is
a letter to whom it may concern, appointing you my agent for the next
three weeks, and holding myself responsible for all you see fit to do.
Here,' he went on, passing to me a second sheet, 'is a letter of
introduction to Monsieur Largent, the manager of my bank in Paris, a
man well known and highly respected in all circles, both official and
commercial. I suggest that you introduce yourself to him, and he will
hold himself in readiness to respond to any call you may make, night
or day. I assure you that his mere presence before the authorities
will at once remove any ordinary difficulty. And now,' he added,
taking in hand the third slip of paper, speaking with some hesitation,
and choosing his words with care, 'I come to a point which cannot be
ignored. Money is a magician's wand, which, like faith, will remove
mountains. It may also remove an anarchist hovering about the route of
a business man's procession.'

He now handed to me what I saw was a draft on Paris for a thousand
pounds.

'I assure you, monsieur,' I protested, covered with confusion, 'that
no thought of money was in my mind when I took the liberty of
presenting myself to you. I have already received more than I could
have expected in the generous confidence you were good enough to
repose in me, as exhibited by these credentials, and especially the
letter to your banker. Thanks to the generosity of your countrymen, Mr
White, of which you are a most notable example, I am in no need of
money.'

'Monsieur Valmont, I am delighted to hear that you have got on well
amongst us. This money is for two purposes. First, you will use what
you need. I know Paris very well, monsieur, and have never found gold
an embarrassment there. The second purpose is this: I suggest that
when you present the letter of introduction to Monsieur Largent, you
will casually place this amount to your account in his bank. He will
thus see that besides writing you a letter of introduction, I transfer
a certain amount of my own balance to your credit. That will do you no
harm with him, I assure you. And now, Monsieur Valmont, it only
remains for me to thank you for the opportunity you have given me, and
to assure you that I shall march from the Gare du Nord without a
tremor, knowing the outcome is in such capable custody.'

And then this estimable man shook hands with me in action the most
cordial. I walked away from Old Change as if I trod upon air; a
feeling vastly different from that with which I departed from the
residence of the old nobleman in the West End but a few hours before.

       *       *       *       *       *

Next morning I was in Paris, and next night I attended the underground
meeting of the anarchists, held within a quarter of a mile of the
Luxembourg. I was known to many there assembled, but my acquaintance
of course was not so large as with the London circle. They had half
expected me the night before, knowing that even going by the Hook of
Holland I might have reached Paris in time for the conclave. I was
introduced generally to the assemblage as the emissary from England,
who was to assist the bomb-throwing brother to escape either to that
country, or to such other point of safety as I might choose. No
questions were asked me regarding my doings of the day before, nor was
I required to divulge the plans for my fellow-member's escape. I was
responsible; that was enough. If I failed through no fault of my own,
it was but part of the ill-luck we were all prepared to face. If I
failed through treachery, then a dagger in the back at the earliest
possible moment. We all knew the conditions of our sinister contract,
and we all recognised that the least said the better.

The cellar was dimly lighted by one oil lamp depending from the
ceiling. From this hung a cord attached to an extinguisher, and one
jerk of the cord would put out the light. Then, while the main entry
doors were being battered down by police, the occupants of the room
escaped through one of three or four human rat-holes provided for that
purpose.

If any Parisian anarchist does me the honour to read these jottings, I
beg to inform him that while I remained in office under the Government
of France there was never a time when I did not know the exit of each
of these underground passages, and could during any night there was
conference have bagged the whole lot of those there assembled. It was
never my purpose, however, to shake the anarchists' confidence in
their system, for that merely meant the removal of the gathering to
another spot, thus giving us the additional trouble of mapping out
their new exits and entrances. When I did make a raid on anarchist
headquarters in Paris, it was always to secure some particular man. I
had my emissaries in plain clothes stationed at each exit. In any
case, the rats were allowed to escape unmolested, sneaking forth with
great caution into the night, but we always spotted the man we wanted,
and almost invariably arrested him elsewhere, having followed him from
his kennel. In each case my uniformed officers found a dark and empty
cellar, and retired apparently baffled. But the coincidence that on
the night of every raid some member there present was secretly
arrested in another quarter of Paris, and perhaps given a free passage
to Russia, never seemed to awaken suspicion in the minds of the
conspirators.

I think the London anarchists' method is much better, and I have ever
considered the English nihilist the most dangerous of this fraternity,
for he is cool-headed and not carried away by his own enthusiasm, and
consequently rarely carried away by his own police. The authorities of
London meet no opposition in making a raid. They find a well-lighted
room containing a more or less shabby coterie playing cards at cheap
pine tables. There is no money visible, and, indeed, very little coin
would be brought to light if the whole party were searched; so the
police are unable to convict the players under the Gambling Act.
Besides, it is difficult in any case to obtain a conviction under the
Gambling Act, because the accused has the sympathy of the whole
country with him. It has always been to me one of the anomalies of the
English nature that a magistrate can keep a straight face while he
fines some poor wretch for gambling, knowing that next race day (if
the court is not sitting) the magistrate himself, in correct sporting
costume, with binoculars hanging at his hip, will be on the lawn by
the course backing his favourite horse.

After my reception at the anarchists' club of Paris, I remained seated
unobtrusively on a bench waiting until routine business was finished,
after which I expected an introduction to the man selected to throw
the bomb. I am a very sensitive person, and sitting there quietly I
became aware that I was being scrutinised with more than ordinary
intensity by someone, which gave me a feeling of uneasiness. At last,
in the semi-obscurity opposite me I saw a pair of eyes as luminous as
those of a tiger peering fixedly at me. I returned the stare with such
composure as I could bring to my aid, and the man, as if fascinated by
a look as steady as his own, leaned forward, and came more and more
into the circle of light.

Then I received a shock which it required my utmost self-control to
conceal. The face, haggard and drawn, was none other than that of
Adolph Simard, who had been my second assistant in the Secret Service
of France during my last year in office. He was a most capable and
rising young man at that time, and, of course, he knew me well. Had
he, then, penetrated my disguise? Such an event seemed impossible; he
could not have recognised my voice, for I had said nothing aloud
since entering the room, my few words to the president being spoken in
a whisper. Simard's presence there bewildered me; by this time he
should be high up in the Secret Service. If he were now a spy, he
would, of course, wish to familiarise himself with every particular of
my appearance, as in my hands lay the escape of the criminal. Yet, if
such were his mission, why did he attract the attention of all members
by this open-eyed scrutiny? That he recognised me as Valmont I had not
the least fear; my disguise was too perfect; and, even if I were there
in my own proper person, I had not seen Simard, nor he me, for ten
years, and great changes occur in a man's appearance during so long a
period. Yet I remembered with disquietude that Mr. White recognised me,
and here tonight I had recognised Simard. I could not move my bench
farther back because it stood already against the wall.

Simard, on the contrary, was seated on one of the few chairs in the
room, and this he periodically hitched forward, the better to continue
his examination, which now attracted the notice of others besides
myself. As he came forward, I could not help admiring the completeness
of his disguise so far as apparel was concerned. He was a perfect
picture of the Paris wastrel, and what was more, he wore on his head a
cap of the Apaches, the most dangerous band of cut-throats that have
ever cursed a civilised city. I could understand that even among
lawless anarchists this badge of membership of the Apache band might
well strike terror. I felt that before the meeting adjourned I must
speak with him, and I determined to begin our conversation by asking
him why he stared so fixedly at me. Yet even then I should have made
little progress. I did not dare to hint that he belonged to the Secret
Service; nevertheless, if the authorities had this plot in charge, it
was absolutely necessary we should work together, or, at least, that I
should know they were in the secret, and steer my course accordingly.
The fact that Simard appeared with undisguised face was not so
important as might appear to an outsider.

It is always safer for a spy to preserve his natural appearance if
that is possible, because a false beard or false moustache or wig run
the risk of being deranged or torn away. As I have said, an anarchist
assemblage is simply a room filled with the atmosphere of suspicion. I
have known instances where an innocent stranger was suddenly set upon
in the midst of solemn proceedings by two or three impetuous
fellow-members, who nearly jerked his own whiskers from his face
under the impression that they were false. If Simard, therefore,
appeared in his own scraggy beard and unkempt hair it meant that he
communicated with headquarters by some circuitous route. I realised,
therefore, that a very touchy bit of diplomacy awaited me if I was to
learn from himself his actual status. While I pondered over this
perplexity, it was suddenly dissolved by the action of the president,
and another substituted for it.

'Will Brother Simard come forward?' asked the president.

My former subordinate removed his eyes from me, slowly rose from his
chair, and shuffled up to the president's table.

'Brother Ducharme,' said that official to me in a quiet tone, 'I
introduce you to Brother Simard, whom you are commissioned to see into
a place of safety when he has dispersed the procession.'

Simard turned his fishy goggle eyes upon me, and a grin disclosed
wolf-like teeth. He held out his hand, which, rising to my feet, I
took. He gave me a flabby grasp, and all the time his inquiring eyes
travelled over me.

'You don't look up to much,' he said. 'What are you?'

'I am a teacher of the French language in London.'

'Umph!' growled Simard, evidently in no wise prepossessed by my
appearance. 'I thought you weren't much of a fighter. The gendarmes
will make short work of this fellow,' he growled to the chairman.

'Brother Ducharme is vouched for by the whole English circle,' replied
the president firmly.

'Oh, the English! I think very little of them. Still, it doesn't
matter,' and with a shrug of the shoulders he shuffled to his seat
again, leaving me standing there in a very embarrassed state of mind;
my brain in a whirl. That the man was present with his own face was
bewildering enough, but that he should be here under his own name was
simply astounding. I scarcely heard what the president said. It seemed
to the effect that Simard would take me to his own room, where we
might talk over our plans. And now Simard rose again from his chair,
and said to the president that if nothing more were wanted of him, we
should go. Accordingly we left the place of meeting together. I
watched my comrade narrowly. There was now a trembling eagerness in
his action, and without a word he hurried me to the nearest café,
where we sat down before a little iron table on the pavement.

'Garçon!' he shouted harshly, 'bring me four absinthes. What will you
drink, Ducharme?'

'A café-cognac, if you please.'

'Bah!' cried Simard; 'better have absinthe.'

Then he cursed the waiter for his slowness. When the absinthe came he
grasped the half-full glass and swallowed the liquid raw, a thing I
had never seen done before. Into the next measure of the wormwood he
poured the water impetuously from the carafe, another thing I had
never seen done before, and dropped two lumps of sugar into it. Over
the third glass he placed a flat perforated plated spoon, piled the
sugar on this bridge, and now quite expertly allowed the water to drip
through, the proper way of concocting this seductive mixture.
Finishing his second glass he placed the perforated spoon over the
fourth, and began now more calmly sipping the third while the water
dripped slowly into the last glass.

Here before my eyes was enacted a more wonderful change than the
gradual transformation of transparent absinthe into an opaque
opalescent liquid. Simard, under the influence of the drink, was
slowly becoming the Simard I had known ten years before. Remarkable!
Absinthe having in earlier years made a beast of the man was now
forming a man out of the beast. His staring eyes took on an expression
of human comradeship. The whole mystery became perfectly clear to me
without a question asked or an answer uttered. This man was no spy,
but a genuine anarchist. However it happened, he had become a victim
of absinthe, one of many with whom I was acquainted, although I never
met any so far sunk as he. He was into his fourth glass, and had
ordered two more when he began to speak.

'Here's to us,' he cried, with something like a civilised smile on his
gaunt face. 'You're not offended at what I said in the meeting, I
hope?'

'Oh, no,' I answered.

'That's right. You see, I once belonged to the Secret Service, and if
my chief was there today, we would soon find ourselves in a cool
dungeon. We couldn't trip up Eugène Valmont.'

At these words, spoken with sincerity, I sat up in my chair, and I am
sure such an expression of enjoyment came into my face that if I had
not instantly suppressed it, I might have betrayed myself.

'Who was Eugène Valmont?' I asked, in a tone of assumed indifference.

Mixing his fifth glass he nodded sagely.

'You wouldn't ask that question if you'd been in Paris a dozen years
ago. He was the Government's chief detective, and he knew more of
anarchists, yes, and of Apaches, too, than either you or I do. He had
more brains in his little finger than that whole lot babbling there
tonight. But the Government being a fool, as all governments are,
dismissed him, and because I was his assistant, they dismissed me as
well. They got rid of all his staff. Valmont disappeared. If I could
have found him, I wouldn't be sitting here with you tonight; but he
was right to disappear. The Government did all they could against us
who had been his friends, and I for one came through starva