er: and were always closeted privately with Platzoff for several
hours. In appearance some of them were strangely shabby and unkempt, in
a wild, un-English sort of fashion, while others among them seemed like
men to whom the good things of this world were no strangers. But
whatever their appearance, they were all treated by Platzoff as honoured
guests for whom nothing at his command was too good.

As a matter of course, they were all introduced to Captain Ducie, but
none of their names had been heard by him before--indeed, he had a dim
suspicion, gathered, he could not have told how, that the names by which
they were made known to him were in some cases fictitious ones, and
appropriated for that occasion only. But to the Captain that fact
mattered nothing. They were people whom he should never meet after
leaving Bon Repos, or if he did chance to meet them, whom he should
never recognise.

One other noticeable feature there was about these birds of passage.
They were all men of considerable intelligence--men who could talk
tersely and well on almost any topic that might chance to come uppermost
at table, or during the after-dinner smoke. Literature, art, science,
travel--on any or all of these subjects they had opinions to offer; but
one subject there was that seemed tabooed among them as by common
consent: that subject was politics. Captain Ducie saw and recognised the
fact, but as he himself was a man who cared nothing for politics of any
kind, and would have voted them a bore in general conversation, he was
by no means disposed to resent their extrusion from the table talk at
Bon Repos.

As to whom and what these strangers might be, no direct information was
vouchsafed by the Russian. Captain Ducie was left in a great measure to
draw his own conclusions. A certain conversation which he had one day
with his host seemed to throw some light on the matter. Ducie had been
asking Platzoff whether he did not sometimes regret having secluded
himself so entirely from the world; whether he did not long sometimes to
be in the great centres of humanity, in London or Paris, where alone
life's full flavour can be tasted.

"Whenever Bon Repos becomes Mal Repos," answered Platzoff--"whenever a
longing such as you speak of comes over me--and it does come
sometimes--then I flee away for a few weeks, to London oftener than
anywhere else--certainly not to Paris: that to me is forbidden ground.
By-and-by I come back to my nest among t