eipt.

'I will interview the burglar,' said Hugo. 'But just run down first and
get me a pair of handcuffs.'

In ten minutes Simon returned crestfallen.

'We do not keep handcuffs, sir,' he stammered.

'Not--keep--! What nonsense! First you tell me that "Fidelio" is not in
the repertoire, and then you have the effrontery to add that we do not
keep handcuffs. Shawn, are you not aware that the fundamental principle
of this establishment is that we keep everything? If we received an
order for a herd of white elephants--'

'No doubt our arrangement with Jamrach's would enable us to supply them,
sir,' Simon put in rapidly. 'But handcuffs seem to be a monopoly of the
State.'

'Evidently, Shawn, you are not familiar with the famous remark of Louis
the Fourteenth.'

'I am not, sir.'

'He said, "_L'etat, c'est moi_." Show me the catalogue.'

Simon, bearing on his shoulders at that moment the sins of ten managers,
scurried to bring an immense tome, bound in crimson leather, and
inscribed in gold, 'Hugo, General Catalogue.' It contained nearly two
thousand large quarto pages, and above six thousand illustrations. Hugo
turned solemnly to the exhaustive index, which alone occupied seventy
pages of small type, and, running his finger down a column, he read
out, Handbells, handbell-ringers, handbills, hand-embroidered sheets,
handkerchiefs, handles, handsaws, hansoms, Hardemann's beetle powder,
hares, haricot beans....'

'Lamentable!' he ejaculated--'lamentable! You will tell Mr.--Mr. Banbury
this morning to procure some handcuffs, assorted sizes, at once, and to
add them to the--the--Explorers' Outfit Department.'

'Precisely, sir.'

'In the meantime I shall have to ascend the dome, and face the burglar
without this necessary of life. Give me the revolver instead.'

CHAPTER VII

POSSIBLE ESCAPE OF SECRETS

The top of the dome was fashioned into a kind of belvedere, with a small
circular gallery. Hugo emerged at the head of the stairs, and saw no
living thing; but at the sound of his footstep a man sprang nervously
into view round the curve of the gallery, and fronted him.

Hugo, with his hands still on either rail of the staircase, took the top
step, gazing the while at his burglar, first in wonder, and then with a
capricious abandonment to what he considered the humour of the
situation. He thought of Albert Shawn's account of the meeting between
Francis Tudor and his visitor in Tudor's flat on the previou