at your service—an open book. You have only to turn my leaves."
"Do you remember a double murder—the murder of an actress and her lover—which happened ten years ago, in the forest of Saint-Germain?"
"Do I remember? Yes, as if the thing had happened last week; and for a good reason. The man who was suspected—the lover, or, as some thought, the husband, of the actress—was my familiar friend."
"Great Heaven!" exclaimed Heathcote, almost starting from his chair. "Then my instinct was right. It told me that I should get on the track of that man—it told me that you must have known him."
"The man was well known to me and to a chosen few, but only a few," replied Trottier. "He was a man of eccentric habits—a man of considerable talent and large intellect, who could afford to live his own life, and lived it. What he did with himself in the daytime none of us knew: whether he slept away half his daylight life, or shut himself in his den and smoked and dreamed and read. The latter idea seemed likely enough, for he was a man who had read widely. He was a delightful companion, brilliant, genial, lavish to his friends, a splendid host. I have supped with him and Marie Prévol many a night in this house—sometimes making the third in a cosy trio, sometimes one of that small choice circle with which he occasionally surrounded himself."
"Then I take it that he was known in general society, either the uppermost or the middle circles."
"Not the least in the world. He was a man who scorned society, hated ceremonies and conventionalities. I never saw him in a dress-suit. I doubt if he possessed one. When he went to a theatre, it was to sit in a dark corner, where he could see without being seen. He detested crowds. He had nothing to gain from the great world, and could afford to outrage all its rules and regulations."
"Was he a thoroughbred Parisian?"
"Far from it. He was an American, but he had lived so long in Paris as to be almost as Parisian as a citizen born and bred."
"Had he made his money, or inherited it?"
"Inherited it, without doubt. His habits were those of the spender, not the worker. He was one of the lilies of the field, who toil not, neither do they spin. I take it that his father had been one of those daring speculators who in America begin with nothing and become millionaires in a year or two. As for the man himself, he had no more idea of business or finance than one of those dressed-up dolls of the Quartier Bréda. He took not the faintest interest in the transactions of the Bourse, and in that point alone revealed himself as no true Parisian."
