lines for inside
information, as I should have done, and would have done had I not been in
a state of hypnotized judgment--I went to Langdon! I who had been studying
those scoundrels for twenty-odd years, and dealing directly with and for
them for ten years!

He wasn't at his office; they told me there that they didn't know whether
he was at his town house or at his place in the country--"probably in the
country," said his down-town secretary, with elaborate carelessness. "He
wouldn't be likely to stay away from the office or not to send for me, if
he were in town, would he?"

It takes an uncommon good liar to lie to me when I'm on the alert. As I was
determined to see Langdon, I was in so far on the alert. And I felt the
fellow was lying. "That's reasonable," said I. "Call me up, if you hear
from him. I want to see him--important, but not immediate." And I went
away, having left the impression that I would make no further effort.

Incredible though it may seem, especially to those who know how careful I
am to guard every point and to see in every friend a possible foe, I still
did not suspect that smooth, that profound scoundrel. I do not use these
epithets with heat. I flatter myself I am a connoisseur of finesse and can
look even at my own affairs with judicial impartiality. And Langdon was,
and is now, such a past master of finesse that he compels the admiration
even of his victims. He's like one of those fabled Damascus blades. When
he takes a leg off, the victim forgets to suffer in his amazement at the
cleanness of the wound, in his incredulity that the leg is no longer
part of him. "Langdon," said I to myself, "is a sly dog. No doubt he's
busy about some woman, and has covered his tracks." Yet I ought, in the
circumstances, instantly to have suspected that I was the person he was
dodging.

I went up to his house. You, no doubt, have often seen and often admired
its beautiful facade, so simple that it hides its own magnificence from
all but experienced eyes, so perfect in its proportions that it hides the
vastness of the palace of which it is the face. I have heard men say: "I'd
like to have a house--a moderate-sized house--one about the size of Mowbray
Langdon's--though perhaps a little more elegant, not so plain."

That's typical of the man. You have to look closely at him, to study him,
before you appreciate how he has combined a thousand details of manner and
dress into an appearance which, while it can n