work. He threw off his overcoat and
lit a cigarette. His fingers were steady enough, but he was conscious of
an unwonted sense of excitement. He was face to face with destiny. He
had played before for great stakes, but never such as these. A single
false step, an evil turn in the wheel of fortune, spelt death--and he
was afraid to die. He moved to the sideboard. Everything there was as
they had left it. He poured out some brandy and drank it off.

With fresh courage he moved to the safe, which stood in the corner of
the room. It must be there, if anywhere, that this precious document
lay. He tried his keys one by one. At last he found the right one. The
great door swung slowly open.

He was spared all anxiety. There, on the top of a pile of legal-looking
documents, leases, title-deeds, and the like, was a long envelope, and
across it in Duncombe's sprawling writing these few words:--

"Entrusted to me by Miss Poynton.--Sept. 4th."

He grasped it in his fingers and tore open the envelope. As he read the
single page of closely written writing his eyes seemed almost to
protrude. He gave a little gasp. No wonder there were those who reckoned
this single page of manuscript worth a great fortune. Every sentence,
every word told its own story. It was a page of the world's history.

Then a strange thing happened. Some part of him rebelled against the
instinct which prompted him carefully to fold and place in his
breast-pocket this wonderful find of his. His nerves seemed suddenly
frozen in his body. There was a curious numb sensation at the back of
his neck which forbade him to turn round. His hands shook, his teeth
chattered. The sweat of death was upon his forehead and despair in his
heart. He had heard nothing, seen nothing; yet he knew that he was no
longer alone.

When at last he turned round he turned his whole body. The muscles of
his neck were numbed still his knees shook, and his face was ghastly.
Monsieur Louis of the Cafe Montmartre, brave of tongue and gallant of
bearing, had suddenly collapsed. Monsieur Louis, the drug-sodden
degenerate of a family whose nobles had made gay the scaffolds of the
Place de la Republique, cowered in his place.

It was the worst upon which he looked with chattering teeth, but without
surprise. The door of the inner room was open, and upon the threshold
stood Toquet, small, dark, and saturnine--Toquet, with something which
glittered in his hand, so that Monsieur Louis, alread