, Jean Hautecoeur.

At all events, it was to this address that Steele directed his
message. Its purport was to inform St. John that Americans, who had
only a short stay in Paris, were anxious to procure a Marston of late
date, and to summon him to the Hotel Palais d'Orsay for the day of
their arrival there.

When they reached the hotel, he told the girl of his plan, suggesting
that it might be best for him to have this interview with the agent
alone, but admitting that, if she insisted on being present, it was
her right. She elected to hear the conversation, and, when St. John
arrived, he was conducted to the sitting-room of Mrs. Horton's suite.

Pleased with the prospect of remunerative sales, Marston's agent made
his entrance jauntily. The shabbiness of the old days had been put by.
He was now sprucely clothed, and in his lapel he wore a bunch of
violets.

His thin, dissipated face was adorned with a rakishly trimmed mustache
and Vandyke of gray which still held a fading trace of its erstwhile
sandy red. His eyes were pale and restless as he stood bowing at the
door. The afternoon was waning, and the lights had not yet been turned
on.

"Mr. Steele?" he inquired.

Steele nodded.

St. John looked expectantly toward the girl in the shadow, as though
awaiting an introduction, which was not forthcoming. As he looked, he
seemed to grow suddenly nervous and ill-at-ease.

"You are Mr. Marston's agent, I believe?" Steele spoke crisply.

"I have had that honor since Mr. Marston left Paris some years ago.
You know, doubtless, that the master spends his time in foreign
travel." The agent spoke with a touch of self-importance.

"I want you to deliver to me here the portrait and the landscape now
on exhibition at Milan," ordered the American.

"It will be difficult--perhaps expensive--but I think it may be
possible." St. John spoke dubiously.

Steele's eyes narrowed.

"I am not requesting," he announced, "I am ordering."

"But those canvases, my dear sir, represent the highest note of a
master's work!" began St. John, almost indignantly. "They are the
perfection of the art of the greatest living painter, and you direct
me to procure them as though they were a grocer's staple on a shelf!
Already, they are as good as sold. One does not have to peddle
Marston's canvases!"

Steele walked over to the door, and, planting his back against its
panels, folded his arms. His voice was deliberate and dangerous:

"It's not