* *

Three weeks later, Hollingsworth Chase stepped from the deck of the
yacht to the pier in Marseilles; the next day he was in Paris, attended
by the bewildered and almost useless Selim. An old and valued friend, a
campaigner of the war-time days, met him at the Gare de Lyon in response
to a telegram.

"I'll tell you the whole story of Japat, Arch, but not until to-morrow,"
Chase said to him as they drove toward the Ritz. "I arrived yesterday on
the Marquess of B----'s yacht--the _Cricket_. Do you know him? Of course
you do. Everybody does. The _Cricket_ was cruising down my way and
picked me up--Bowles and me. The captain came a bit out of his way to
call at Aratat, but he had orders of some sort from the Marquess, by
cable, I fancy, to stop off for me."

He did not regard it as necessary to tell his correspondent friend that
the _Cricket_ had sailed from Marseilles with but one port in
view--Aratat. He did not tell him that the _Cricket_ had come with a
message to him and that he was answering it in person, as it was
intended that he should--a message written six weeks before his arrival
in France. There were many things that Chase did not explain to
Archibald James.

"You're looking fine, Chase, old man. Did you a lot of good out there.
You're as brown as that Arab in the taximetre back there. By Jove, old
man, that Persian girl is ripping. You say she's his wife? She's--"
Chase broke in upon this far from original estimate of the picturesque
Neenah.

"I say, Arch, there's something I want to know before I go to the
Marquess's this evening. I'm due there with my thanks. He lives in the
Boulevard St. Germain--I've got the number all right. Is one likely to
find the house full of swells? I'm a bit of a savage just now and I'm
correspondingly timid."

His friend stared at him for a moment.

"I can save you the trouble of going to the Marquess," he said. "He and
the Marchioness are in London at present. Left Paris a month ago."

"What? The house is closed?" in deep anxiety.

"I think not. Servants are all there, I daresay. Their place adjoins the
Brabetz palace. The Princess is his niece, you know."

"You say the Brabetz palace is next door?" demanded Chase, steadying his
voice with an effort.

"Yes--the old Flaurebert mansion. The Princess was to have been the
social sensation of Paris this year. She's a wonderful beauty, you
know."

"Was to have been?"

"She married that rotten Brabetz last