ng, and we slurred his
sweets and coffee to hasten to the apartment. On a dressing table faced
to the wall was a little panel which he slowly turned into view. For a
moment I gasped for joy, it was the Del Puente Giorgione; and then an
awful misgiving overcame me--I saw it as it was. Brooks marked my
amazement and, misreading the cause, slapped me on the back and asked
what I thought of that for a hundred thousand pesetas. The figure again
bowled me over. For the picture as it stood it was a thousand times too
much, while a mere tithe of the value of the name the panel bore. I
blurted out that the price was suspiciously wrong, and added that I must
see the portrait by daylight before venturing an opinion. The thought
that Mantovani had owned it for twenty years and more made a sleepless
night hideous; at sunrise my loyalty reasserted itself by a lame
compromise.

"I daresay you will not blame me for hoping against hope, as I did the
next day and for some months after, that somewhere under that modern
paint there was indeed a sketch by Giorgione's hand. You must remember
that I could as little doubt my own existence as Mantovani's judgment on
such a point. In the sequel it seemed as if no humiliation were to be
spared me. It was Mantovani's chief rival and favourite victim, Merck,
who after a torturing correspondence had the pleasure of telling me he
had seen the 'Zorzi' painted by the amateur Ricard; it was Campbell who,
after recommending it to Brooks, publicly accused me of dishonest
brokerage. That's all I can tell you about the Del Puente Giorgione."

I seized his hand impulsively, and clumsily offered him, in a breath,
whisky, shuffleboard, or cowboy pool--sound Pretorian remedies for all
human woes. These consolations he refused and took his leave. Midnight
found me in the same chair, thinking less of Anitchkoff, whose case now
lay clear, than of Mantovani and the Marquesa del Puente, about whom it
seemed there still might be something to say.

The chances of a roving life have brought some slight addition to the
evidence. Stopping over a boat at Dieppe, a few summers ago, I happened
to see my good friend Mme. Vezin registered at the Casino, where I
recognised an acquaintance or two. That decided me to spend the night and
call at her villa. Her salon never failed to divert me, for, drawing
together the most disparate people, she handled them with easy
generalship. Under her chandelier ardent art students from th