it. I can get two thousand five hundred by taking it
straight to Mlle. Mars."

"And be taken up by the police for stealing it," he retorted. "How
will you explain its being in your possession?"

I did not blanch.

"That is my affair," I replied. "Will you give me three thousand
francs for it? It is worth sixty thousand francs to a clever thief
like you."

"You hound!" he cried, livid with rage, and raised his cane as if he
would strike me.

"Aye, it was cleverly done, M. Jean Duval, whoever you may be. I know
that the gentleman-thief is a modern product of the old regime, but I
did not know that the fraternity could show such a fine specimen as
yourself. Pay Hector Ratichon a thousand francs for stealing a
bracelet for you worth sixty! Indeed, M. Jean Duval, you deserved to
succeed!"

Again he shook his cane at me.

"If you touch me," I declared boldly, "I shall take the bracelet at
once to Mlle. Mars."

He bit his lip and made a great effort to pull himself together.

"I haven't three thousand francs by me," he said.

"Go, fetch the money," I retorted, "and I'll fetch the bracelet."

He demurred for a while, but I was firm, and after he had threatened
to thrash me, to knock me down, and to denounce me to the police, he
gave in and went to fetch the money.

5.

When I remembered Theodore--Theodore, whom only a thin partition wall
had separated from the full knowledge of the value of his ill-gotten
treasure!--I could have torn my hair out by the roots with the
magnitude of my rage. He, the traitor, the blackleg, was about to
triumph, where I, Hector Ratichon, had failed! He had but to take the
bracelet to Mlle. Mars himself and obtain the munificent reward whilst
I, after I had taken so many risks and used all the brains and tact
wherewith Nature had endowed me, would be left with the meagre
remnants of the fifty francs which M. Jean Duval had so grudgingly
thrown to me. Twenty-five francs for a gold locket, ten francs for a
bouquet, another ten for bonbons, and five for gratuities to the
stage-doorkeeper! Make the calculation, my good Sir, and see what I
had left. If it had not been for the five francs which I had found in
Theodore's pocket last night, I would at this moment not only have
been breakfastless, but also absolutely penniless.

As it was, my final hope--and that a meagre one--was to arouse one
spark of honesty in the breast of the arch-traitor, and either by
cajolery or threats, to i