for the credit of your house) can be granted to your—to Mr. Alain."
"You forget Clausel, I think," snarled my cousin.
"True, I had forgotten Clausel." Mr. Roniaine stepped to the head of the stairs and called down, "Dudgeon!"
Mr. Dudgeon appeared, and endeavoured to throw into the stiffness of his salutation a denial that he had ever waltzed with me in the moonlight.
"Where is the man Clausel?"
"I hardly know, sir, if you would place the wineshop of the Tête d'Or at the top or the bottom of this street; I presume the top, since the sewer runs in the opposite direction. At all events, Mr. Clausel disappeared about two minutes ago in the same direction as the sewer."
Alain sprang up, whistle in hand.
"Put it down," said Mr. Romaine; "the man was cheating you. I can only hope," he added with a sour smile, "that you paid him on account with an I. O. U."
But Alain turned at bay. "One trivial point seems to have escaped you, Master Attorney, or your courage is more than I give you credit for. The English are none too popular in Paris as yet, and this is not the most scrupulous quarter. One blast of this whistle, a cry of "Espion anglais," and two Englishmen"
"Say three," Mr. Romaine interrupted, and strode to the door. "Will Mr. Burchell Fenn be good enough to step upstairs."
And here let me cry "Halt!" There are things in this world—or that is my belief—too pitiful to be set down in writing, and of these Alain's collapse was one. It may be, too, that Mr. Romaine's British righteousness accorded rather ill with the weapon he used so unsparingly. Of Fenn I need only say chat the luscious rogue shouldered through the doorway as though he had a public duty to
