y the prey of a
diseased and ghastly imagination, felt the pain of the bullet in his
heart. On an easy-chair by the fireside Henri de Bergillac was lounging,
with a queer smile upon his lips.

"My friend," he said quietly, though the scorn which underlay his words
seemed to bite the air, "you have solved for us a double problem: first,
how to account for the absence of our host; and secondly, how to open
that very formidable-looking safe. You will be so good as to place upon
the table that document which you hold in your hands."

For a single second Monsieur Louis hesitated. Some lingering vestige of
a courage, purely hereditary, showed him in one lightning-like flash how
at least he might carry with him to a swift grave some vestige of his
ruined self-respect. A traitor to his old friends, he might keep faith
with the new. He had time to destroy. Even the agonies of death might
last long enough to complete the task. But the impulse was only
momentary. He shuddered afresh at the thought that he might have yielded
to it. He threw it upon the table.

The Vicomte rose to his feet, glanced through the closely written page
with something of the same excitement which had inspired its recent
possessor, and carefully buttoned it up in his breast-pocket. Then he
turned once more to the man who stood before them broken and trembling.

"Louis," he said, "you are the first traitor whom our society has
hatched. I look upon you with curiosity as a thing I once called my
friend. What imbecility prompted you to this?"

Monsieur Louis found nerve to shrug his shoulders.

"A million francs!" he answered.

"Heavens, but what folly!" the Vicomte murmured. "Did we not all know
that a German was in Paris who offered a million, or two million francs
for the missing page of that treaty? Do you think that he was not
watched day and night? Bah! I have no patience to talk of this. What
have you done with our host?"

"Arrested him for--Flossie! He is in a ditch half-way to Norwich."

"Hurt?"

"No! Chloroformed."

"How did you get here?"

"In an automobile from Lynn!"

"Good! It waits for you?"

"Yes."

"We will take it. My good friend here, Toquet, is familiar with the
neighborhood. As Mr. Fielding, the American millionaire, you learned the
excellence of these roads for quick travelling, did you not, _mon ami_?
So!"

"You leave me here?" Monsieur Louis faltered.

"Ay, to rot if you will!" the Vicomte answered with sudden har