d, after mature consideration, I decided to hire this house, and open
a Servants' Registry Office. Such an occupation would not attract any
attention, and in the end it turned out a perfect success, as my friends
can testify."

Catenac and Hortebise both nodded assent.

"By the system which I have adopted," resumed Mascarin, "the wealthy
and respectable man is as strictly watched in his own house as is the
condemned wretch in his cell; for no act of his escapes the eyes of the
servants whom we have placed around him. He can hardly even conceal his
thoughts from us. Even the very secret that he has murmured to his wife
with closed doors reaches our ears."

The Marquis gave a supercilious smile.

"You must have had some inkling of this," observed Mascarin, "for you
have never taken a servant from our establishment; but for all that,
I am as well posted up in your affairs as yourself. You have even now
about you a valet of whom you know nothing."

"Morel was recommended to me by one of my most intimate friends--Sir
Richard Wakefield."

"But for all that I have had my suspicions of him; but we will talk of
this later, and we will now return to the subject upon which we have
met. As I told you, I conceal the immense power I had attained through
our agency, and use it as occasion presents itself, and after twenty
years' patient labor, I am about to reap a stupendous harvest. The
police pay enormous sums to their secret agents, while I, without
opening my purse, have an army of devoted adherents. I see perhaps fifty
servants of both sexes daily; calculate what this will amount to in a
year."

There was an air of complacency about the man as he explained the
working of his system, and a ring of triumph in his voice.

"You must not think that all my agents are in my secrets, for the
greater part of them are quite unaware of what they are doing, and in
this lies my strength. Each of them brings me a slender thread, which I
twine into the mighty cord by which I hold my slaves. These unsuspecting
agents remind me of those strange Brazilian birds, whose presence is
a sure sign that water is to be found near at hand. When one of them
utters a note, I dig, and I find. And now, Marquis, do you understand
the aim and end of our association?"

"It has," remarked Hortebise quietly, "brought us in some years two
hundred and fifty thousand francs apiece."

If M. de Croisenois disliked prosy tales, he by no means underrated the