ve to examine people on such questions. I will tell you--I know
because Moczli once told me just such a story about madame."

"Once before?"

"Certainly," said Marton chuckling wickedly. "Ha ha! Madame is a cute
little woman. But then no one knows of it--only Moczli and I; and
Madame's husband. Her husband has already pardoned her for it: Moczli
was well paid; and what business is it of Marton's? All three of us hold
our tongues, like a broiled fish. But it is not the first time it has
happened."

I do not know why, but this discovery somehow relieved my bitterness. I
began to surmise that Lorand was not the most deeply implicated in the
crime.

"Well, let us go first of all to Moczli," said Marton; "But I have a
promise to exact from you. Don't say a word yourself; leave the talking
to me. For he is a cursed fellow, this Moczli; if he finds that we wish
to get information out of him, he will lie like a book: but I will
suddenly drive in upon him, so that he will not know whether to turn to
the right or to the left. I will spring something on him as if I knew
all about it, that will scare him out of his wits and then I'll press
him close, so that it'll take his breath away, and before he knows it
I'll have that secret squeezed out of him to the very last drop. You
must observe how it is done, so that you can make use of similar methods
in the future when in the position of Lieutenant-Governor you will have
to cross-question some suspicious rascal in order to wring the truth out
of him!"

By this time we had started at a brisk pace along the banks of the
Danube. I wasn't dressed for such a dismal night, and old Marton was
doing his best to shield me with the wing of his coat against the
chilling gusts that rushed against us from the river. At the same time
he made every effort to make me believe that what we were engaged in was
one of the finest jokes he had ever taken a hand in, and that our
recollections of it will afford us no end of amusement in the future. At
the foot of the castle-hill, along the banks of the Danube was a group
of tottering houses; tottering because in spring, when the ice broke up,
the Danube roared and dashed among them. Here lived the fiacre drivers.
Here were the cab-horses in tumble-down stables.

It was a ball-night: in the windows of the tumble-down houses candles
were burning, for the cabmen were waiting till midnight, when they would
again harness their horses and return to fetch th