ing I put my hand into my pocket for my
cigarette case and didn't find it. I went through all my pockets, and
then I asked Carroll if he'd got it.

"'No,' he replied.... 'Think you left it behind at that place last
night?'

"'Yes; did you?' Rangon popped in with a twinkle.

"I went through all my pockets again. No cigarette case....

"Of course, it was possible that I'd left it behind, and I was annoyed
again. I didn't want to go back, you see.... But, on the other hand, I
didn't want to lose the case--it was a present--and Rangon's smile
nettled me a good deal, too. It was both a challenge to our truthfulness
and a testimonial to that very good wine of his....

"'Might have done,' I grunted.... 'Well, in that case we'll go and get
it.'

"'If one tried the restaurant first--?' Rangon suggested, smiling again.

"'By all means,' said I stuffily, though I remembered having the case
after we'd left the restaurant.

"We were round at the restaurant by half-past nine. The case wasn't
there. I'd known jolly well beforehand it wasn't, and I saw Rangon's
mouth twitching with amusement.

"'So we now seek the abode of these English ladies, _hein_?' he said.

"'Yes,' said I; and we left the restaurant and strode through the village
by the way we'd taken the evening before....

"That vigneron's smile became more and more irritating to me.... 'It is
then the next village?' he said presently, as we left the last house and
came out into the open plain.

"We went back....

"I was irritated because we were two to one, you see, and Carroll backed
me up. 'A double door, with a grille in front of it,' he repeated for
the fiftieth time.... Rangon merely replied that it wasn't our good faith
he doubted. He didn't actually use the word 'drunk.'...

"'_Mais tiens_,' he said suddenly, trying to conceal his mirth. '_Si
c'est possible... si c'est possible_... a double door with a grille? But
perhaps that I know it, the domicile of these so elusive ladies.... Come
this way.'

"He took us back along a plantain-groved street, and suddenly turned up
an alley that was little more than two gutters and a crack of sky
overhead between two broken-tiled roofs. It was a dilapidated, deserted
_ruelle_, and I was positively angry when Rangon pointed to a blistered
old _porte-cochere_ with a half-unhinged railing in front of it.

"'Is it that, your house?' he asked.

"'No,' says I, and 'No,' says Carroll ... and off we started again....