llow, it _is_ 'the case.' I can't
imagine what drew your attention to it."

"Can't you?" said Cleek, with a half smile. Then he stretched forth his
hand and touched the word "Nero" with the tip of his forefinger. "That
did. Things awaken a man's memory occasionally, Mr. Narkom, and---- Tell
me, isn't that the beast there was such a stir about in the newspapers a
fortnight or so ago, the lion that crushed the head of a man in full
view of the audience?"

"Yes," replied Narkom, with a slight shudder. "Awful thing, wasn't it?
Gave me the creeps to read about it. The chap who was killed, poor
beggar, was a mere boy, not twenty, son of the Chevalier di Roma
himself. There was a great stir about it. Talk of the authorities
forbidding the performance, and all that sort of thing. They never did,
however, for on investigation---- Ah, the tea at last, thank fortune.
Come, sit down, my dear fellow, and we'll talk whilst we refresh
ourselves. Landlady, see that we are not disturbed, will you, and that
nobody is admitted but the parties I mentioned?"

"Clients?" queried Cleek, as the door closed and they were alone
together.

"Yes. One, Mlle. Zelie, the 'chevalier's' only daughter, a slack-wire
artist; the other, Signor Scarmelli, a trapeze performer, who is the
lady's fiance."

"Ah, then our friend the chevalier is not so young as the picture on the
bill would have us believe he is."

"No, he is not. As a matter of fact, he is considerably past forty, and
is, or rather, was, up to six months ago, a widower, with three
children, two sons and a daughter."

"I suppose," said Cleek, helping himself to a buttered scone, "I am to
infer from what you say that at the period mentioned, six months ago,
the intrepid gentleman showed his courage yet more forcibly by taking a
second wife? Young or old?"

"Young," said Narkom in reply. "Very young, not yet four-and-twenty, in
fact, and very, very beautiful. That is she who is 'featured' on the
bill as the star of the equestrian part of the program: 'Mlle. Marie de
Zanoni.' So far as I have been able to gather, the affair was a love
match. The lady, it appears, had no end of suitors, both in and out of
the profession; it has even been hinted that she could, had she been so
minded, have married an impressionable young Austrian nobleman of
independent means who was madly in love with her; but she appears to
have considered it preferable to become 'an old man's darling,' so to
speak, and