CHAPTER XLIV
MR. BANKER'S SPECULATION
That night Banker was greatly disturbed by surmises and conjectures concerning the presence of the two negroes in the French capital. He knew Cheditafa quite as well as he knew Mok, and it was impossible that he should be mistaken. It is seldom that any one sees a native African in Paris, and he was positive that the men he had seen, dressed in expensive garments, enjoying themselves like gentlemen of leisure, and living at a grand hotel, were the same negroes he had last seen in rags and shreds, lodged in a cave in the side of a precipice, toiling and shuddering under the commands of a set of desperadoes on a desert coast in South America. There was only one way in which he could explain matters, and that was that the band had had some great success, and that one or more of its members had come to Paris, and had brought the two negroes with them as servants. But of one thing he had no doubts, and that was that he would follow up the case. He had met with no successes of late, but if any of his former comrades had, he wanted to meet those dear old friends. In Paris he was not afraid of anything they might say about his desertion.
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