ed himself,--a
comfortable little place near the Grand Opera House.

All through the afternoon he thought of nothing but the card, and turned
over in his mind various ways of learning its meaning without getting
himself into further trouble. That evening he went again to the _Folies
Bergere_ in the hope of finding the mysterious woman, for he was now
more than ever anxious to discover who she was. It even occurred to him
that she might be one of those beautiful Nihilist conspirators, or,
perhaps, a Russian spy, such as he had read of in novels. But he failed
to find her, either then or on the three subsequent evenings which he
passed in the same place. Meanwhile the card was burning in his pocket
like a hot coal. He dreaded the thought of meeting anyone that he knew,
while this horrible cloud hung over him. He bought a French-English
dictionary and tried to pick out the meaning word by word, but failed.
It was all Greek to him. For the first time in his life, Burwell
regretted that he had not studied French at college.

After various vain attempts to either solve or forget the torturing
riddle, he saw no other course than to lay the problem before a
detective agency. He accordingly put his case in the hands of an _agent
de la surete_ who was recommended as a competent and trustworthy man.
They had a talk together in a private room, and, of course, Burwell
showed the card. To his relief, his adviser at least showed no sign of
taking offence. Only he did not and would not explain what the words
meant.

"It is better," he said, "that monsieur should not know the nature of
this document for the present. I will do myself the honour to call upon
monsieur to-morrow at his hotel, and then monsieur shall know
everything."

"Then it is really serious?" asked the unfortunate man.

"Very serious," was the answer.

The next twenty-four hours Burwell passed in a fever of anxiety. As his
mind conjured up one fearful possibility after another he deeply
regretted that he had not torn up the miserable card at the start. He
even seized it,--prepared to strip it into fragments, and so end the
whole affair. And then his Yankee stubbornness again asserted itself,
and he determined to see the thing out, come what might.

"After all," he reasoned, "it is no crime for a man to pick up a card
that a lady drops on his table."

Crime or no crime, however, it looked very much as if he had committed
some grave offence when, the next day, h