must find the means to get
it for you."

"I begin to understand," he said, and drew his chair another inch or
two closer to me.

"Firstly, M. le Marquis," I resumed, and now my voice had become
earnest and incisive, "firstly you have a wife, then you have a
father-in-law whose wealth is beyond the dreams of humble people like
myself, and whose one great passion in life is the social position of
the daughter whom he worships. Now," I added, and with the tip of my
little finger I touched the sleeve of my aristocratic client, "here at
once is your first asset. Get at the money-bags of papa by threatening
the social position of his daughter."

Whereupon my young gentleman jumped to his feet and swore and abused
me for a mudlark and a muckworm and I don't know what. He seized his
malacca cane and threatened me with it, and asked me how the devil I
dared thus to speak of Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour. He cursed,
and he stormed and he raved of his sixteen quarterings and of my
loutishness. He did everything in fact except walk out of the room.

I let him go on quite quietly. It was part of his programme, and we
had to go through the performance. As soon as he gave me the chance of
putting in a word edgeways I rejoined quietly:

"We are not going to hurt Madame la Marquise, Monsieur; and if you do
not want the money, let us say no more about it."

Whereupon he calmed down; after a while he sat down again, this time
with his cane between his knees and its ivory knob between his teeth.

"Go on," he said curtly.

Nor did he interrupt me again whilst I expounded my scheme to him--one
that, mind you, I had evolved during the night, knowing well that I
should receive his visit during the day; and I flatter myself that no
finer scheme for the bleeding of a parsimonious usurer was ever
devised by any man.

If it succeeded--and there was no reason why it should not--M. de
Firmin-Latour would pocket a cool half-million, whilst I, sir, the
brain that had devised the whole scheme, pronounced myself satisfied
with the paltry emolument of one hundred thousand francs, out of
which, remember, I should have to give Theodore a considerable sum.

We talked it all over, M. le Marquis and I, the whole afternoon. I may
tell you at once that he was positively delighted with the plan, and
then and there gave me one hundred francs out of his own meagre purse
for my preliminary expenses.

The next morning we began work.

I had begge