wice or thrice
of late, and that he had been in exile because, if anything, of a
hopeless passion for Madame his sister-in-law, and that his name was
Philippe, Waring looked dazed. Then a sudden light, as of newer, fresher
memory, flashed up in his eyes. He seemed about to speak, but as
suddenly controlled himself and turned his face to the wall. From that
time on he was determinedly dumb about the stranger. What roused him to
lively interest and conjecture, however, was Cram's query as to whether
he had not recognized in the cabman, called in by the stranger, the very
one whom he had "knocked endwise" and who had tried to shoot him that
morning. "No," said Waring: "the man did not speak at all, that I
noticed, and I did not once see his face, he was so bundled up against
the storm." But if it was the same party, suggested he, it seemed hardly
necessary to look any further in explanation of his own disappearance.
Cabby had simply squared matters by knocking him senseless, helping
himself to his watch and ring, and turning out his pockets, then
hammering him until frightened off, and then, to cover his tracks,
setting him afloat in Anatole's boat.

"Perhaps cabby took a hand in the murder, too," suggested Sam, with
eager interest. "You say he had disappeared,--gone with his plunder.
Now, who else could have taken my knife?"

Then Reynolds had something to tell him: that the "lady" who wrote the
anonymous letters, the _belle amie_ whom Lascelles proposed to visit,
the occupant of the upper floor of "the dove-cot," was none other than
the blighted floweret who had appealed to him for aid and sympathy, for
fifty dollars at first and later for more, the first year of his army
service in the South, "for the sake of the old home." Then Waring grew
even more excited and interested. "Pills" put a stop to further
developments for a few days. He feared a relapse. But, in spite of
"Pills," the developments, like other maladies, throve. The little
detective came down again. He was oddly inquisitive about that _chanson
a boire_ from "_Fleur de The_." Would Mr. Waring hum it for him? And
Sam, now sitting up in his parlor, turned to his piano, and with long,
slender, fragile-looking fingers rattled a lively prelude and then
faintly quavered the rollicking words.

"Odd," said Mr. Pepper, as they had grown to call him, "I heard that
sung by a fellow up in Chartres Street two nights hand-running before
this thing happened,--a merry cus