hambermaid not to quit the room
till he should come back, Captain Ducie went downstairs with the
intention of revisiting the scene of the disaster. He called in at the
bar to obtain his favourite "thimbleful" of cognac, and there he found a
very agreeable landlady, with whom he got into conversation respecting
the accident. Some five minutes had passed thus when the chambermaid
came up to him. "If you please, sir, the foreign gentleman has woke up,
and is anxiously asking to see you."

With a shrug of the shoulders and a slight lowering of his black
eyebrows, Captain Ducie went back upstairs. Platzoff's eager eyes fixed
him as he entered the room. Ducie sat down close by the bed and said in
a kindly tone: "What is it? What can I do for you? Command me in any
way."

"My servant--where is he? And--and my despatch box. Valuable papers. Try
to find it."

Ducie nodded and left the room. The inquiries he made soon elicited the
fact that Platzoff's servant had been even more severely injured than
his master, and was at that moment lying, more dead than alive, in a
little room upstairs. Slowly and musingly, with hands in pocket, Captain
Ducie then took his way towards the scene of the accident. "It may suit
my book very well to make friends with this Russian," he thought as he
went along. "He is no doubt very rich; and I am very poor. In us the two
extremes meet and form the perfect whole. He might serve my purposes in
more ways than one, and it is just as likely that his purposes might be
served by me: for a man like that must have purposes that want serving.
Nous verrons. Meanwhile, I am his obedient servant to command."

Captain Ducie, hunting about among the debris of the train, was not long
in finding the fragments of M. Platzoff's despatch box. Its contents
were scattered about. Ducie spent ten minutes in gathering together the
various letters and documents which it had contained. Then, with the
broken box under his arm and the papers in his hands, he went back to
the Russian.

He showed the papers one by one to Platzoff, who was strangely eager in
the matter. When Ducie held up the last of them, Platzoff groaned and
shut his eyes. "They are all there as far as I can judge," he murmured,
"except the most important one of all--a paper covered with figures, of
no use to anyone but myself. Oh, dear Captain Ducie! do please go once
more and try to find the one that is still missing. If I only knew that
it was burnt, or