in absolute seclusion. But none the
less, I've got some news for you. I know heaps: why, my friends at the
Law Courts call me 'the peripatetic paragraph!' Not bad, eh, what?"
Gurn smiled and Roger de Seras was encouraged. "It's given me no end of
a boom, my leader acting for you, and my being able to come and see you
whenever I like! Everybody asks me how you are, and what you are like,
and what you say, and what you think. You can congratulate yourself on
having caused a sensation in Paris."

Gurn began to be irritated by all this chatter.

"I must confess I'm not the least interested in what people are saying
about me. Is there anything new in my case?"

"Absolutely nothing that I am aware of," Roger de Seras replied
serenely, without stopping to think whether there was or not. "I
say--Lady Beltham----"

"Yes?" said Gurn.

"Well, I know her very well, you know: I go out a frightful lot and I
have often met her: a charming woman, Lady Beltham!"

Gurn really did not know how to treat the idiot. Never one to suffer
fools gladly, he grew irritable and would almost certainly have said
something that would have put the garrulous young bungler in his place,
had not the latter suddenly remembered something, just as he was on the
point of getting up to go.

"Oh, by the way," he said with a laugh, "I was nearly forgetting the
most important thing of all. Just fancy, that beast Juve, the marvellous
detective whom the newspapers rave about, went to your place yesterday
afternoon to make another official search!"

"Alone?" enquired Gurn, much interested.

"Quite alone. Now what do you suppose he found; the place has been
ransacked dozens of times, you know; of course I mean something
sensational in the way of a find. I bet you a thousand----"

"I never bet," Gurn snapped. "Tell me at once what it was."

The young fellow was proud of having caught the attention of his
leader's notorious client, if only for a moment; he paused and wagged
his head, weighing each word to give them greater emphasis.

"He found an ordnance map in your bookcase, my dear chap--an ordnance
map with a bit torn out of it."

"Oh! And what then?" said Gurn, a frown upon his face.

The young barrister did not notice the expression on the murderer's
countenance.

"Well, then it appears that Juve thought it was very important. Between
you and me, my opinion is that Juve tries to be frightfully clever and
succeeds in looking a fool. How, I ask y