It was all very simple, my good M. Ratichon," now concluded my
tormentor still quite amiably. "Another time you will have to be more
careful, will you not? You will also have to bestow more confidence upon
your partner or servant. Directly I had seen that commissionnaire's
blouse and cap, I set to work to make friends with M. Theodore. When my
sister and I left your office in the Rue Daunou, we found him waiting
for us at the bottom of the stairs. Five francs loosened his tongue: he
suspected that you were up to some game in which you did not mean him to
have a share; he also told us that you had spent two hours in laborious
writing, and that you and he both lodged at a dilapidated little inn,
called the 'Grey Cat,' in Passy. I think he was rather disappointed that
we did not shower more questions, and therefore more emoluments, upon
him. Well, after I had denounced this house to the police as a
Bonapartiste club, and saw it put under the usual consigne, I bribed the
corporal of the gendarmerie in charge of it to let me have Theodore's
company for the little job I had in hand, and also to clear the back
garden of sentries so as to give you a chance and the desire to escape.
All the rest you know. Money will do many things, my good M. Ratichon,
and you see how simple it all was. It would have been still more simple
if the stolen document had not been such an important one that the very
existence of it must be kept a secret even from the police. So I could
not have you shadowed and arrested as a thief in the usual manner!
However, I have the document and its ingenious copy, which is all that
matters. Would to God," he added with a suppressed curse, "that I could
get hold equally easily of the Secret Service agent to whom you, a
Frenchman, were going to sell the honour of your country!"

Then it was that--though broken in spirit and burning with thoughts of
the punishment I would mete out to Theodore--my full faculties
returned to me, and I queried abruptly:

"What would you give to get him?"

"Five hundred francs," he replied without hesitation. "Can you find
him?"

"Make it a thousand," I retorted, "and you shall have him."

"How?"

"Will you give me five hundred francs now," I insisted, "and another
five hundred when you have the man, and I will tell you?"

"Agreed," he said impatiently.

But I was not to be played with by him again. I waited in silence
until he had taken a pocket-book from the inside of his co