Curious thing happened to my aunt, the one who lives in Paris," he
began. He had several aunts, but they were all geographically
distributed over Greater London.

"She was sitting on a seat in the Bois the other afternoon, after
lunching at the Roumanian Legation."

Whatever the story gained in picturesqueness from the dragging-in of
diplomatic "atmosphere," it ceased from that moment to command any
acceptance as a record of current events. Gorworth had warned his
neophyte that this would be the case, but the traditional enthusiasm of
the neophyte had triumphed over discretion.

"She was feeling rather drowsy, the effect probably of the champagne,
which she's not in the habit of taking in the middle of the day."

A subdued murmur of admiration went round the company. Blenkinthrope's
aunts were not used to taking champagne in the middle of the year,
regarding it exclusively as a Christmas and New Year accessory.

"Presently a rather portly gentleman passed by her seat and paused an
instant to light a cigar. At that moment a youngish man came up behind
him, drew the blade from a swordstick, and stabbed him half a dozen times
through and through. 'Scoundrel,' he cried to his victim, 'you do not
know me. My name is Henri Leturc.' The elder man wiped away some of the
blood that was spattering his clothes, turned to his assailant, and said:
'And since when has an attempted assassination been considered an
introduction?' Then he finished lighting his cigar and walked away. My
aunt had intended screaming for the police, but seeing the indifference
with which the principal in the affair treated the matter she felt that
it would be an impertinence on her part to interfere. Of course I need
hardly say she put the whole thing down to the effects of a warm, drowsy
afternoon and the Legation champagne. Now comes the astonishing part of
my story. A fortnight later a bank manager was stabbed to death with a
swordstick in that very part of the Bois. His assassin was the son of a
charwoman formerly working at the bank, who had been dismissed from her
job by the manager on account of chronic intemperance. His name was
Henri Leturc."

From that moment Blenkinthrope was tacitly accepted as the Munchausen of
the party. No effort was spared to draw him out from day to day in the
exercise of testing their powers of credulity, and Blenkinthrope, in the
false security of an assured and receptive audience, waxed industrious
a