to boast of it? What is your reward? A colonelcy in the Military
Police with a few thousand francs salary, and, in your old age, a
pension which might permit you to eat meat twice a week. Against that,
balance what I offer--free play in a helpless city, and no one to
hinder you from salting away as many millions as you can carry off!"

Presently I said, weakly, "And what, once more, is the service you
ask of me?"

"I ask you to notify the government that you are watching Paradise,
that you do not arrest the Countess and Dr. Delmont because you desire
to use them as a bait to catch me."

"Is that all?"

"That is all. We will start for Paris together; I shall leave you
before we get there. But I'll see you later in Paradise."

"You refuse to tell me why you wish to stay at the house in
Paradise?"

"Yes,... I refuse. And, by-the-way, the Countess is to think that I
have presented myself in Paris and that the government has pardoned
me."

"You are willing to believe that I will not have you arrested?"

"I don't ask you to promise. If you are fool enough to try it--try
it! But I'm not going to give you the chance in Paris--only in
Paradise."

"You don't require my word of honor?"

"Word of--what? Well--no;... it's a form I can dispense with."

"But how can you protect yourself?"

"If all the protection I had was a 'word of honor,' I'd be in a
different business, my friend."

"And you are willing to risk me, and you are perfectly capable of
taking care of yourself?"

"I think so," he said, quietly.

"Trusting to my common-sense as a business man not to be fool enough
to cut my own throat by cutting yours?" I persisted.

"Exactly, and trusting to a few other circumstances, the details of
which I beg permission to keep to myself," he said, with a faint
sneer.

He rose and walked to the window; at the same moment I heard the sound
of wheels below.

"I believe that is our carriage," he said. "Are you ready to start,
Mr. Scarlett?"

"Now?" I exclaimed.

"Why not? I'm not in the habit of dawdling over anything. Come, sir,
there is nothing very serious the matter with you, is there?"

I said nothing; he knew, of course, the exact state of the wound I had
received, that the superficial injury was of no account, that the
shock had left me sound as a silver franc though a trifle weak in the
hips and knees.

"Is the Countess de Vassart to go with us?" I asked, trying to find a
reason for these events whic