anation,
at the end of which it was agreed that Richard should yield to all
Moncharmin's wishes, with the object of helping him to discover the
miscreant who was victimizing them.

This brings us to the interval after the Garden Act, with the strange
conduct observed by M. Remy and those curious lapses from the dignity
that might be expected of the managers. It was arranged between
Richard and Moncharmin, first, that Richard should repeat the exact
movements which he had made on the night of the disappearance of the
first twenty-thousand francs; and, second, that Moncharmin should not
for an instant lose sight of Richard's coat-tail pocket, into which
Mme. Giry was to slip the twenty-thousand francs.

M. Richard went and placed himself at the identical spot where he had
stood when he bowed to the under-secretary for fine arts. M.
Moncharmin took up his position a few steps behind him.

Mme. Giry passed, rubbed up against M. Richard, got rid of her
twenty-thousand francs in the manager's coat-tail pocket and
disappeared ... Or rather she was conjured away. In accordance with
the instructions received from Moncharmin a few minutes earlier,
Mercier took the good lady to the acting-manager's office and turned
the key on her, thus making it impossible for her to communicate with
her ghost.

Meanwhile, M. Richard was bending and bowing and scraping and walking
backward, just as if he had that high and mighty minister, the
under-secretary for fine arts, before him. Only, though these marks of
politeness would have created no astonishment if the under-secretary of
state had really been in front of M. Richard, they caused an easily
comprehensible amazement to the spectators of this very natural but
quite inexplicable scene when M. Richard had no body in front of him.

M. Richard bowed ... to nobody; bent his back ... before nobody; and
walked backward ... before nobody ... And, a few steps behind him, M.
Moncharmin did the same thing that he was doing in addition to pushing
away M. Remy and begging M. de La Borderie, the ambassador, and the
manager of the Credit Central "not to touch M. le Directeur."

Moncharmin, who had his own ideas, did not want Richard to come to him
presently, when the twenty-thousand francs were gone, and say:

"Perhaps it was the ambassador ... or the manager of the Credit Central
... or Remy."

The more so as, at the time of the first scene, as Richard himself
admitted, Richard had met n