persisting in collecting the
envelopes. "This dreadful news!"

"If you will read the letter," said Vendale, "you will find I have
exaggerated nothing. There it is, open on my desk."

He resumed his search, and in a moment more discovered the forged
receipt. It was on the numbered and printed form, described by the Swiss
firm. Vendale made a memorandum of the number and the date. Having
replaced the receipt and locked up the iron chamber, he had leisure to
notice Obenreizer, reading the letter in the recess of a window at the
far end of the room.

"Come to the fire," said Vendale. "You look perished with the cold out
there. I will ring for some more coals."

Obenreizer rose, and came slowly back to the desk. "Marguerite will be
as sorry to hear of this as I am," he said, kindly. "What do you mean to
do?"

"I am in the hands of Defresnier and Company," answered Vendale. "In my
total ignorance of the circumstances, I can only do what they recommend.
The receipt which I have just found, turns out to be the numbered and
printed form. They seem to attach some special importance to its
discovery. You have had experience, when you were in the Swiss house, of
their way of doing business. Can you guess what object they have in
view?"

Obenreizer offered a suggestion.

"Suppose I examine the receipt?" he said.

"Are you ill?" asked Vendale, startled by the change in his face, which
now showed itself plainly for the first time. "Pray go to the fire. You
seem to be shivering--I hope you are not going to be ill?"

"Not I!" said Obenreizer. "Perhaps I have caught cold. Your English
climate might have spared an admirer of your English institutions. Let
me look at the receipt."

Vendale opened the iron chamber. Obenreizer took a chair, and drew it
close to the fire. He held both hands over the flames. "Let me look at
the receipt," he repeated, eagerly, as Vendale reappeared with the paper
in his hand. At the same moment a porter entered the room with a fresh
supply of coals. Vendale told him to make a good fire. The man obeyed
the order with a disastrous alacrity. As he stepped forward and raised
the scuttle, his foot caught in a fold of the rug, and he discharged his
entire cargo of coals into the grate. The result was an instant
smothering of the flame, and the production of a stream of yellow smoke,
without a visible morsel of fire to account for it.

"Imbecile!" whispered Obenreizer to himsel