cheerfully. "Very well, see you
to-morrow. Meanwhile, be good. Flee the giddy lure. Go home to your
little bed and sleep sweet." There was seriousness under his
good-natured banter. "Come along and I'll see you as far as the
bullyvards."

Arthur Dean went with him, but did not return to the Grand Hotel. He
found a small hotel for the night, and next morning at ten o'clock he
was at the office of the _Europe Chronicle_, an important daily paper
published simultaneously in Paris, Frankfort, and Florence.

Martin came out from the news room into the adjoining ante-room with a
slip of "flimsy" in his hand.

"Was your man hefty with the shillelagh?" he asked.

"He carried a big, gold-mounted stick."

"Then here's your bird." He read out from the slip of paper: "Last
night, shortly after twelve, a certain Gaspard P---- was brought to the
Hopital Malesherbes suffering from a fractured skull. This morning, on
recovering consciousness, he states that he was attacked without cause
by a drunken Englishman, and struck over the head with a heavy stick.
His state is grave."

Dean felt a warm wave of relief. He thanked the journalist cordially and
was about to leave, when the telephone bell rang sharply in the
adjoining news room. The sub-editor in charge took up the receiver.

"_Ullo, ullo! C'est ici le Chronicle_," said the sub-editor, and after
listening for a moment signed imperatively to Martin to come in and shut
the door.

Presently Martin came out from the news room bustling with energy and
took Dean by the arm. "You specified two _apaches_, didn't you?" he
asked, and hurried on without waiting for an answer. "One was probably
the injured innocence now at the Malesherbes and cursing those _sacres
Angliches_, but the other lies low and says nuffink. That's the one that
interests me. Come along in my taxi and watch me chase a story."

Stopping only to borrow fifty francs for expenses from the cashier's
wicket, Martin hurried his friend into a taximeter cab and gave the
brief direction: "Pont de Neuilly."

Three-quarters of an hour later they had reached the bridge at the end
of the long avenue of the suburb of Neuilly and had dismissed the cab.

"Now for our imitaciong Sherlock Holmes," said Martin. "The 'phone
message was that a man had found a fur coat and a gold-mounted stick
under some bushes by the left bank of the Seine four hundred metres down
stream. He was apparently some sort of workman, and explained tha