he, "this is the queerest stuff I've heard for a
long time! This is hallucination with a vengeance! I don't like to apply
such a tomfool word to anything, but observe how all this has come
about. An excellent old gentleman, who has been dining out or something,
has a glimpse at night, on a crowded pavement, of a man who looks like a
friend of his youth. Very well. The excellent old gentleman tells you of
that, and it impresses you. _You_ walk on the same pavement the next
evening--I won't emphasise the fact of its being after dinner, though I
daresay it was--"

"It was."

"--_You_ have a glimpse of a man who looks--well, something like me;
and you instantly conclude, 'Ah! the Courtney person--the friend of Dr
Rippon's youth!--and, surely, some relative of my friend Julius!' Next
day this hospital case turns up, and because the description of its
author, given by more or less unobservant persons, fits the person you
saw, _argal_, you jump to the conclusion that the three are one! Is your
conclusion clear upon the evidence? Is it inevitable? Is it necessary?
Is it not forced?"

"Well," began Lefevre.

"It is bad detective business," broke in Julius, "though it may be good
friendship. You have thought there was trouble in this for me, and you
wished to give me warning of it. But--_que diable vas-tu faire dans
cette galere?_ You are the best friend in the world, and whenever I am
in trouble--and who knows? who knows? 'Man is born unto trouble, as the
sparks fly upward'--I may ask of you both your friendship and your
skill. One thing I ask of you here: don't speak of me as you see me now,
thus miserably moved, to any one! Now I must go. Good-bye." And before
Lefevre could find another word, Julius had opened the door and was
gone.

"If it moves him like that," said the doctor to himself, through his
bewilderment, "there must be something worse in it--God forgive me for
thinking so!--than I have ever imagined."

Chapter VII.

Contains a Love Interlude.

Next day Lefevre learned that the police had been again baffled in their
part of the inquiry. The detective had contrived to trace his
man--though not till the morning after the event--to the St Pancras
Hotel, where he had dined in private, and gone to bed early, and whence
he had departed on foot before any one was astir, to catch, it was
surmised, the first train. But wherever he had gone, it was just as in
the former case: from the time the hotel door ha