'Go back and reread it,' said he,
'and come and talk it over with me to-morrow evening.' As I entered his
room the next night he arose ceremoniously from his chair, and said,
in a tone of well-assumed obsequiousness, 'Si je ne me trompe pas, j'ai
l'honneur de voir Monsieur Bramleigh, n'est-ce pas?' I laughed, and
replied, 'Je ne m'y oppose pas, monsieur;' and we at once launched out
into the details of the story, of which each of us had formed precisely
the same opinion.

"Ill luck would have it, that as I went back to my lodgings on that
night I should meet Bertani, and Varese, and Manini, and be persuaded to
go and sup with them. They were all suspected by the police, from their
connection with Fieschi; and on the morning after I received an order
from the Minister of War to join my regiment at Oran, and an intimation
that my character being fully known it behooved me to take care. I gave
no grounds for more stringent measures towards me. I understood the
'caution,' and, not wishing to compromise Monsieur Lecoq, who had been
so friendly in all his relations with me, I left France, without even an
opportunity of getting back my precious volume, which I never saw again
till I revisited Paris eight years after, having given in my demission
from the service. Lecoq obtained for me that small appointment I held
under Monsieur Lesseps in Egypt, and which I had given up a few weeks
before I met you on the Nile. I ought to tell you that Lecoq, for what
reason I can't tell, was not so fully pursuaded that my claim was as
direct as he had at first thought it; and indeed his advice to me was
rather to address myself seriously to some means of livelihood, or to
try and make some compromise with the Bramleighs, with whom he deemed a
mere penniless pretender would not have the smallest chance of success.
I hesitated a good deal over his counsel. There was much in it that
weighed with me, perhaps convinced me: but I was always more or less of
a gambler, and more than once have I risked a stake, which, if I
lost, would have left me penniless; and at last I resolved to say,
_Va Banque_, here goes; all or nothing. There's my story, _mon cher_,
without any digressions, even one of which, if I had permitted myself to
be led into it, would have proved twice as long."

"The strength of a chain is the strength of its weakest link, the
engineers tell us," said Longworth, "and it is the same with evidence. I
'd like to hear what Kelson says