you were right. If so, they learned all they needed to know."

"Except possibly the precise location of your strong box."

"They may have learned even that."

"How, madame?"

"I don't know; but if they were what you suspect they were, they were
clever people, far more clever than poor provincials like us." She took
a moment for thought. "But I am puzzled by their harping on the subject
of--I think they called him the Lone Wolf. Now why should they do
that?"

Duchemin was constrained to take refuge in another shrug. "Who knows?"
he iterated. "If they were as clever as we assume, doubtless they were
clever enough to have a motive even for that."

"He really existed, this Lone Wolf? He was more than a creature of
fable?"

"Assuredly, madame. For years he was the nightmare and the scourge of
people of wealth in every capital of Europe."

"Why did they call him the Lone Wolf, do you know?"

"I believe some imaginative Parisian journalist fixed that sobriquet on
him, in recognition of the theory upon which, apparently, he operated."

"And that was--?"

"That a criminal, at least a thief, to be successful must be absolutely
anonymous and friendless; in which case nobody can betray him. As
madame probably understands, criminals above a certain level of
intelligence are seldom caught by the police except through the
treachery of accomplices. The Lone Wolf seems to have exercised a fair
amount of ingenuity and prudence in making his coups; and inasmuch as
he had no confederates, not a living soul in his confidence, there was
no one who could sell him to the authorities."

"Still, in the end--?"

"Oh, no, madame. He was never caught. He simply ceased to thieve."

"I wonder why..."

"I believe because he fell in love and considered good faith with the
object of his affections incompatible with a career of crime."

"So he gave up crime. How romantic! And the woman: did she appreciate
the sacrifice?"

"While she lived, yes, madame. Or so they say. Unfortunately, she
died."

"And then--?"

"So far as is known the converted enemy to Society did not backslide;
the Lone Wolf never prowled again."

"An extraordinary story."

"But is not every story that has to do with the workings of the human
soul? What one of us has not buried in him a story quite as strange?
Even you--"

"Monsieur deceives himself. I am simply--what you see."

"But what I see is not simple, but complex and intriguing beyond
expression. A