l
events. Hum, I don't like the proposition--and yet there's
something--there's something--there's something about it I _do_ like. Then
there's the two thousand francs a month, and not a penny out of pocket,
and there's the Congo, and the guggly-wuggly alligators, and the great big
hairy apes, and the feel of a gun in one's hand again. Oh, my!"

"All the same, it's funny," he went on, as he drew near the Boulevard St.
Michel. "When Thenard spoke of Berselius there was something more than
absence of friendship in his tone. Can old man Thenard have a down on this
Berselius and does he in his heart of hearts imagine that by allotting P.
Quincy Adams to the post of physician extraordinary to the expedition, he
will get even with the Captain? My friend, remember that hymn the English
Salvationists were yelling last Sunday outside the American Presbyterian
Church in the Rue de Berry--'Christian, walk carefully, danger is near.'
Not a bad motto for Paris, and I will take it."

He walked into the _Cafe d'Italie_, which, as everyone knows, is next to
Mouton's, the pork shop, on the left-hand side of the Boul' Miche, as you
go from the Seine; called for a boc, and then plunged into a game of
dominoes with an art student in a magenta necktie, whom he had never met
before, and whom, after the game, he would, a million to one, never meet
again.

That night, when he had blown out his candle, he reviewed Thenard's
proposition in the dark. The more he looked at it the more attraction it
had for him, and--"Whatever comes of it," said he to himself, "I will go
and see this Captain Berselius to-morrow. The animal seems worth the
trouble of inspection."

CHAPTER III

CAPTAIN BERSELIUS

Next morning was chill and a white Seine mist wrapped Paris in its folds.
It clung to the trees of the Avenue Champs Elysees, and it half veiled the
Avenue Malakoff as Adams's _fiacre_ turned into that thoroughfare and drew
up at No. 14, a house with a carriage drive, a porter's lodge, and
wrought-iron gates.

The American paid off his cab, rang at the porter's lodge, was instantly
admitted, and found himself in an enormous courtyard domed in with glass.
He noted the orange and aloe trees growing in tubs of porcelain, as the
porter led him to the big double glass doors giving entrance to the
house.

"He's got the money," thought Adams, as the glass swing-door was opened by
a flunkey as magnificent as a Lord Mayor's footman, who took the vis