or complexion,
nothing easier: that's the profile of your rascal, isn't it?"

"Exactly," we both murmured. By two curves of the pencil, and a
shock of false hair, the face was transmuted.

"He had very large eyes, with very big pupils, though," I objected,
looking close; "and the man in the photograph here has them small
and boiled-fishy."

"That's so," the Commissary answered. "A drop of belladonna
expands--and produces the Seer; five grains of opium contract--and
give a dead-alive, stupidly-innocent appearance. Well, you leave
this affair to me, gentlemen. I'll see the fun out. I don't say I'll
catch him for you; nobody ever yet has caught Colonel Clay; but
I'll explain how he did the trick; and that ought to be consolation
enough to a man of your means for a trifle of five thousand!"

"You are not the conventional French office-holder, M. le
Commissaire," I ventured to interpose.

"You bet!" the Commissary replied, and drew himself up like a
captain of infantry. "Messieurs," he continued, in French, with the
utmost dignity, "I shall devote the resources of this office to
tracing out the crime, and, if possible, to effectuating the arrest
of the culpable."

We telegraphed to London, of course, and we wrote to the bank, with
a full description of the suspected person. But I need hardly add
that nothing came of it.

Three days later the Commissary called at our hotel. "Well,
gentlemen," he said, "I am glad to say I have discovered
everything!"

"What? Arrested the Seer?" Sir Charles cried.

The Commissary drew back, almost horrified at the suggestion.

"Arrested Colonel Clay?" he exclaimed. "Mais, monsieur, we are only
human! Arrested him? No, not quite. But tracked out how he did it.
That is already much--to unravel Colonel Clay, gentlemen!"

"Well, what do you make of it?" Sir Charles asked, crestfallen.

The Commissary sat down and gloated over his discovery. It was
clear a well-planned crime amused him vastly. "In the first place,
monsieur," he said, "disabuse your mind of the idea that when
monsieur your secretary went out to fetch Senor Herrera that night,
Senor Herrera didn't know to whose rooms he was coming. Quite
otherwise, in point of fact. I do not doubt myself that Senor
Herrera, or Colonel Clay (call him which you like), came to Nice
this winter for no other purpose than just to rob you."

"But I sent for him," my brother-in-law interposed.

"Yes; he _meant_ you to send for him. He force