hat I was
safer than if broad daylight was in the thoroughfare, with a meridian
sun shining down upon us. I was doubly safe, being in no fear of harm
from midnight prowlers, and equally free from danger of arrest by the
police. Every officer we met avoided us, and casually stepped to the
other side of the street. We turned down a narrow lane, then through a
still narrower one, which terminated at a courtyard. Entering a tall
building, we climbed up five flights of stairs to a landing, where one
of the scouts kicked open a door, into a room so miserable that there
was not even a lock to protect its poverty. Here they allowed the
insensible Simard to drop with a crash on the floor, thus they left us
alone without even an adieu. The Apaches take care of their own--after
a fashion.

I struck a match, and found part of a bougie stuck in the mouth of an
absinthe bottle, resting on a rough deal table. Lighting the bougie, I
surveyed the horrible apartment. A heap of rags lay in a corner, and
this was evidently Simard's bed. I hauled him to it, and there he lay
unconscious, himself a bundle of rags. I found one chair, or, rather,
stool, for it had no back. I drew the table against the lockless door,
blew out the light, sat on the stool, resting my arms on the table,
and my head on my arms, and slept peacefully till long after daybreak.

Simard awoke in the worst possible humour. He poured forth a great
variety of abusive epithets at me. To make himself still more
agreeable, he turned back the rags on which he had slept, and brought
to the light a round, black object, like a small cannon-ball, which he
informed me was the picric bomb that was to scatter destruction among
my English friends, for whom he expressed the greatest possible
loathing and contempt. Then sitting up, he began playing with this
infernal machine, knowing, as well as I, that if he allowed it to drop
that was the end of us two.

I shrugged my shoulders at this display, and affected a nonchalance I
was far from feeling, but finally put an end to his dangerous
amusement by telling him that if he came out with me I would pay for
his breakfast, and give him a drink of absinthe.

The next few days were the most anxious of my life. Never before had I
lived on terms of intimacy with a picric bomb, that most deadly and
uncertain of all explosive agencies. I speedily found that Simard was
so absinthe-soaked I could do nothing with him. He could not be bribed
or ca