firmative reply.

"In Paris. A press friend of mine had to go and see two fellows
guillotined, and managed to work me in with him. We were as close to the
machine, too, as it was possible to get."

"Did it make you feel sick at all?"

"Not any. The other Johnny took it pretty badly, though. I had to fill
him up with cocktails before he could eat any breakfast."

"That's a very good test. I never expected you to say you had stood it.
Well, you may see a little more in that line before we come through.
Can't make omelettes without breaking eggs though, as the French say.
Well now, Stanninghame, I've had my eye on you ever since you came up
here. I'm pretty good at reading people, and I read you. 'That's the man
for me,' I said to myself. 'He's come to the end of his tether. He's
just at that stage of life when it's kill or cure, and he means kill or
cure.'"

"Well, we had talked enough together to let you into that much, eh,
Hazon?" said Laurence, with a laugh which was not altogether free from a
dash of scepticism.

"We have. Still, I'm not gassing when I tell you I knew all about it
before. How? you want to ask. Because I've been through it all myself. I
thought, 'That chap is throwing his last card; if he loses, he's my
man.' And you have lost."

"But what's the object of the trip, Hazon? Gold?"

"No."

"Stones?"

"Not stones."

"Ivory, then?"

"That's it; ivory," and a gleam of saturnine mirth shot across the
other's dark features.

"You have to go a good way up for that now, don't you, Hazon?"

"Yes, a good way up. And it's contraband."

"The devil it is!"

Hazon nodded. Then he went to the door and looked out.

"Leave it open. It's better so. We can hear any one coming," he said,
returning. "And now, Stanninghame, listen carefully, and we'll talk out
the scheme. If you're on, well and good; if you're dead off it, why, I
told you I had read you, and you're not the man to let drop by word or
hint to a living soul any of what has passed between us."

"Quite right, Hazon. You never formed a safer judgment in your life."

Then, for upwards of an hour, the pair talked together; and when the
luncheon bell rang, and Laurence Stanninghame took his seat at the table
along with the rest, to talk scrip in the scathingly despondent way in
which the darling topic was conversationally dealt with in these days,
he was conscious that he had turned the corner of a curious
psychological crisis in his life.