hat reason can you have for seeking to shield these
men who treated you in a barbarous way and left you to die a cruel
death?"

"On my honour----" began the thief melodramatically, but Brett here
interrupted the conversation.

"Will you allow me," he said to the commissary, "to put a few questions
to this man?"

"Certainly," was the answer.

"Now listen," said Brett, sternly gazing at the truculent little rascal
with those searching eyes of his, which seemed to reach to the very
spine. "It is useless for you to attempt any further prevarication. We
know exactly who are your confederates. We are acquainted with a large
number of the gang that frequents the Cafe Noir. Do not forget that I
was present when you tried to palm off on Hussein-ul-Mulk the false
diamonds, which your confederates hoped he would accept. For you to
attempt now to escape from the law is hopeless. The sole chance you have
of remitting a punishment which may even lead you beneath the guillotine
is to confess fully and freely all that you know concerning the outrage
which has been committed.

"No, don't interrupt me," he continued with even greater emphasis, when
"Le Ver" tried to break in. "You will tell me that you merely acted as
the agent of others, and that you yourself are not conscious of the
nature of any crime that has been committed. I know that to be so. You
have been made a mere tool. You are the cat, simply employed by the
monkey to pull the chestnuts out of the fire, and you have only
succeeded in getting your own paws burnt. Your sole chance of safety now
is to inform the commissary and me exactly how you came to be mixed up
with this affair."

The Frenchman's truculency seemed to vanish under Brett's cutting words.
His wizened face even manifested a faint flush of anger as the barrister
pointed out how he had been duped by his employers and made to run risks
which they avoided.

Yet the order of his craft was strong in its influence, and he commenced
another series of protestations.

"I assure you, gentlemen," he cried, "that with respect to the Turks I
have no knowledge whatever of their pursuits or motives. I was present
when this English gentleman here was debating with them, and I
understood that they even went so far as to use threats against him. My
mission was to give to the leaders of the Turks a package which I did
not even know contained diamonds, either genuine or false. No one could
be more surprised than myself w