s mutual.
"Thunder of guns!" cried the Major. "It is the Shah de Perse!"

Being thus caught red-handed, the hireling of Monsieur Peloux cowered.
"Brigand!" continued the Major. "Thou hast ravished away this charming
cat by the foulest of robberies. Thou art worse than the scum of Arab
camp-followings. And if I had thee to myself, over there in the desert,"
he added grimly, "thou shouldst go the same way!"

All overawed by the Major's African attitude, the hireling took to
whining. "Monsieur will believe me when I tell him that I am but an
unhappy tool--I, an honest man whom a rich tempter, taking advantage of
my unmerited poverty, has betrayed into crime. Monsieur himself shall
judge me when I have told him all!" And then--with creditably
imaginative variations on the theme of a hypothetical dying wife in
combination with six supposititious starving children--the man came
close enough to telling all to make clear that his backer in
cat-stealing was Monsieur Peloux!

With a gasp of astonishment, the Major again took the word. "What
matters it, animal, by whom thy crime was prompted? Thou art the
perpetrator of it--and to thee comes punishment! Shackles and prisons
are in store for thee! I shall--"

But what the Major Gontard had in mind to do toward assisting the march
of retributive justice is immaterial--since he did not do it. Even as
he spoke--in these terms of doom that qualifying conditions rendered
doomless--the man suddenly dodged past him, bolted across the platform,
jumped to the foot-board of a carriage of the just-starting train,
cleverly bundled himself through an open window, and so was gone:
leaving the Major standing lonely, with impotent rage filling his heart,
and with the Shah de Perse all a purring cuddle in his arms!

Acting on a just impulse, the Major Gontard sped to the telegraph
office. Two hours must pass before he could follow the miscreant; but
the departed train ran express to Marseille, and telegraphic heading-off
was possible. To his flowers, and to the romance of a breakfast that old
Marthe by then was in the very act of preparing for him, his thoughts
went in bitter relinquishment: but his purpose was stern! Plumping the
Shah de Perse down anyway on the telegraph table, and seizing a pen
fiercely, he began his writings. And then, of a sudden, an inspiration
came to him that made him stop in his writings--and that changed his
flames of anger into flames of joy.

His first act under