dges and
glistening roofs which steamed vapour from every wet tile.

Without asking anybody's opinion, one of the men opposite raised the
window. But Neeland did not object; the rain-washed air was
deliciously fragrant; and he leaned his elbow on his chair arm and
looked out across the loveliest land in Europe.

"Say, friend," said an East Side voice at his elbow, "does smoking
go?"

He glanced back over his shoulder at the speaker--a little, pallid,
sour-faced man with the features of a sick circus clown and eyes like
two holes burnt in a lump of dough.

"_Pardon, monsieur?_" he said politely.

"Can't you even pick a Frenchman, Ben?" sneered one of the men
opposite--a square, smoothly shaven man with slow, heavy-lidded eyes
of a greenish tinge.

The fox-faced man said:

"He had me fooled, too, Eddie. If Ben Stull didn't get his number it
don't surprise me none, becuz he was on the damn boat I crossed in,
and I certainly picked him for New York."

"Aw," said the pasty-faced little man referred to as Ben Stull, "Eddie
knows it all. He never makes no breaks, of course. You make 'em, Doc,
but he doesn't. That's why me and him and you is travelling here--this
minute--because the great Eddie Brandes never makes no breaks----"

"Go on and smoke and shut up," said Brandes, with a slow, sidewise
glance at Neeland, whose eyes remained fastened on the pages of "Les
Bizarettes," but whose ears were now very wide open.

"Smoke," repeated Stull, "when this here Frenchman may make a
holler?"

"Wait till I ask him," said the man addressed as Doc, with dignity.
And to Neeland:

"_Pardong, musseer, permitty vous moi de fumy ung cigar?_"

"_Mais comment, donc, monsieur! Je vous en prie----_"

"He says politely," translated Doc, "that we can smoke and be damned
to us."

They lighted three obese cigars; Neeland, his eyes on his page,
listened attentively and stole a glance at the man they called
Brandes.

So this was the scoundrel who had attempted to deceive the young girl
who had come to him that night in his studio, bewildered with what she
believed to be her hopeless disgrace!

This was the man--this short, square, round-faced individual with his
minutely shaven face and slow greenish eyes, and his hair combed back
and still reeking with perfumed tonic--this shiny, scented, and
overgroomed sport with rings on his fat, blunt fingers and the silk
laces on his tan oxfords as fastidiously tied as though a valet had