ters and sending for another
chap with a shirt-front like a Mercedes bonnet, they directed me to a
little hotel down by Monaco; and there the head waiter received me
quite affably, and said, "Certainly, the gentleman was at home." When
I had given my name, but not my business, I was ushered up, perhaps
after an interval of ten minutes, to a sitting-room on the first floor,
and there I found myself face to face with a fat, red-faced man in
evening dress; and if ever there was a martinet down Montey way, this
fine gentleman was that same. He was fat, I say, and forty--but to
write that he was fair would be impossible, for he hadn't more than
about half a dozen hairs on his head, and those had drifted down his
neck to get out of the wind. When I came in he appeared to be sipping
Cognac out of a long green bottle, and to be reading private papers
just as fast as he could get through them, but he looked up presently,
and a pair of wickeder eyes I do not want to see.

"Who sent you here?" he asked.

"A lady," said I.

"Her name?"

"Madame Clara."

He turned and snuffed the wick of a candle standing on the table by his
side. From his manner I did not think him quite sober, but he appeared
to pull himself together by-and-by, and then he exclaimed:

"Repeat your message."

"I am to say that if you wish for news of Madame Clara, I can take you
where you will get it."

Well, I thought that he smiled, though I cannot be quite sure of that.
Presently, however, he stood up without a word, and, going into his
bedroom, he brought a heavy fur coat and cap into the sitting-room, and
motioned me to help him on with them. When that was done, he opened
the door and invited me to precede him down the corridor.

"I will see the lady," he said--and that was all. We were in the car
two minutes afterwards, making for Nice on the "fourth," and not a soul
to interfere with us or to do more than take a glance at our papers as
we passed the stations. Never had there been a lighter job; never had
a man helped a woman so easily.

I thought about all this, be sure, as we drew near Nice and the end of
our game appeared to be at hand. The old women tell us not to count
our chickens before they are hatched, and that's a thing I am not in
the habit of doing; but the more I reflected upon it, the better
pleased did I feel with myself, and the greater was my wonder at the
lady's tastes. That such a pretty little woman, such a gay soul,