ed when he finds none of them
made immortal in this book. His purpose in sending them to me will
have been ruthlessly defeated.

A week after Madame had vanished down my lift for the last time,
Dawson--in the make-up with which I was most familiar--called upon me
at my office. He also came to say good-bye, for a turn of the official
wheel had come, and he was ordered south to resume his duties at the
Yard. He was, he told me, taking a last tour of inspection to make
certain that the Secret Service net, which he had designed and laid,
would be deftly worked by the hands of his subordinates. "I shall not
be sorry," said he, "to get back to my deserted family and to be once
more the plain man Dawson whom God made."

"You have so many different incarnations," I observed, "that I wonder
the original has not escaped your memory."

He smiled. "If I had forgotten," said he, "my wife would soon remind
me. She always insists that she married a certain man Dawson and
declines to recognise any other."

"So if I come south to visit you, I shall see the original?"

"You will."

"Thanks," said I; "I will come at the earliest opportunity."

"I don't say that if you call at the Yard you will see quite the same
person whom you will meet at Acacia Villas, Primrose Road, Tooting."

"That would be too much to expect. But under any guise, Dawson, I am
always sure of knowing you."

"Yes, confound you. I would give six months' pay to know how you do
it."

"You shall know some day, and without any bribery. Now that you are
here, talk, talk, talk. I want to get the taste of those rotten
letters of yours out of my mouth."

He looked surprised and hurt. He looked exactly as a famous sculptor
looked who, when a beautiful work of his hands was unveiled, wished me
to publish a descriptive sonnet from his pen. I bluntly refused. He
was an admirable sculptor, but a dreadful sonneteer. Yet in his secret
heart he valued the sonnet far above the statue. In this strange way
we are made.

I did not conceal from Dawson my interest in Madame Gilbert, and he
rather rudely expressed strong disapproval. He suggested that for a
married man I was much too free in my ways. "That woman is full of
brains," said he, "but she is the artfullest hussy ever made. She will
turn any man around her pretty fingers if he gives way to her. She has
made a nice fool of you and of that ass Froissart. She even tried her
little games with me--with me indeed. But I wa