face and stout figure, and then
he began quietly walking up the now deserted arcades of the Rue de
Rivoli; with a certain grim amusement, he gradually increased his pace,
and when at last he turned into the great court of the Louvre, and stood
for a moment at the base of the Gambetta Monument, he assured himself
that he had out-distanced his pursuer.

Striding quickly across the most historic of Paris bridges, he threaded
the narrow, tortuous thoroughfares dear to every lover of old Paris,
till he reached the Place St. Sulpice. There, forming one of the corners
of the square, was the house wherein was housed the Bibliotheque
Cardinal, looking exactly as Vanderlyn remembered its having looked
twenty years before. Even the huge leather-bound books in the windows
seemed to be the same as in the days when the future American
diplomatist had been, if not a merry-hearted, then a most enthusiastic
student, making eager acquaintance with "The Quarter."

He walked into the shop, and recognised, in the stout, middle-aged woman
sitting there, the trim young bourgeoise to whom he had often handed a
fifty centime piece in those days which seemed so distant as almost to
belong to another life.

"Have you still a provincial paper room?" he asked, in a low tone.

"Yes," said the dame du comptoir, suavely, "but we have to charge a
franc for admission."

Vanderlyn smiled. "It used to be fifty centimes," he said.

"Ah! Monsieur, that was long ago! There are ten times as many provincial
papers now as then!"

He put the piece of silver on the counter. As he did so, he heard the
door of the shop quietly open, and, with a disagreeable feeling of
surprise, he saw the man, the detective he believed he had shaken off,
come up unobtrusively to where he was standing.

Vanderlyn hesitated----Then he reminded himself that what he was about
to do belonged to the part he had set himself to play: "Well, Madame,"
he said, "I will go through into your second reading-room and glance
over the papers;" he forced himself to add, "I am anxious to find news
of a person who has disappeared--who has, I fear, met with an accident."

The detective asked a question of the woman; he spoke in a low voice,
but Vanderlyn heard what he said--that is, whether there was any other
way out of the two reading-rooms except through the shop. On the woman's
replying in the negative, he settled himself down and opened an
illustrated paper.

Vanderlyn began systematic