vague
impression of a wizened hunchback with evil face, shaggy red beard
and hair, and a black patch covering the left eye.

2.

Not much data to go on, you will, I think, admit, and I Can assure
you, Sir, that had I not possessed that unbounded belief in myself
which is the true hall-mark of genius, I would at the outset have felt
profoundly discouraged.

As it was, I found just the right words of consolation and of hope
wherewith to bow my brilliant client out of my humble apartments, and
then to settle down to deep and considered meditation. Nothing, Sir,
is so conducive to thought as a long, brisk walk through the crowded
streets of Paris. So I brushed my coat, put on my hat at a becoming
angle, and started on my way.

I walked as far as Suresnes, and I thought. After that, feeling
fatigued, I sat on the terrace of the Cafe Bourbon, overlooking the
river. There I sipped my coffee and thought. I walked back into Paris
in the evening, and still thought, and thought, and thought. After
that I had some dinner, washed down by an agreeable bottle of
wine--did I mention that the lovely creature had given me a hundred
francs on account?--then I went for a stroll along the Quai Voltaire,
and I may safely say that there is not a single side and tortuous
street in its vicinity that I did not explore from end to end during
the course of that never to be forgotten evening.

But still my mind remained in a chaotic condition. I had not succeeded
in forming any plan. What a quandary, Sir! Oh! what a quandary! Here
was I, Hector Ratichon, the confidant of kings, the right hand of two
emperors, set to the task of stealing a dog--for that is what I should
have to do--from an unscrupulous gang of thieves whose identity, abode
and methods were alike unknown to me. Truly, Sir, you will own that
this was a herculean task.

Vaguely my thoughts reverted to Theodore. He might have been of good
counsel, for he knew more about thieves than I did, but the ungrateful
wretch was out of the way on the one occasion when he might have been
of use to me who had done so much for him. Indeed, my reason told me
that I need not trouble my head about Theodore. He had vanished; that
he would come back presently was, of course, an indubitable fact;
people like Theodore never vanish completely. He would come back and
demand I know not what, his share, perhaps, in a business which was so
promising even if it was still so vague.

Five thousand f