ake these traps of yours to our
apartments. You lodge with me."

I was nettled that I should have spoken so freely to a stranger, and
felt ill-disposed to be pleasant, but he soon drove away any lingering
animosity.

When we had settled in our rooms, which adjoined, de Greville threw
himself across his couch and said:

"Look here, de Mouret, we have a hard task before us, and you may as
well know it. M. de Serigny tells me he has instructed you himself,
but details he would leave to me. What's your name?"

"Placide," I replied as simply as a lad of ten.

"Well, I'm Jerome. We are to stand together now, and men engaged in
business like ours have no time for extra manners."

His _bon camaraderie_ was contagious, and I gladly caught it. "Agreed,
Jerome; so be it. Go on."

"First we must locate our friend Carne Yvard, the very fiend of a
fellow, who stops at nothing. Then to catch him with the papers, take
them, cost what it will. For that work we have strong lads enough and
true. Above all we must make no mistake when we strike, for if he
scents our suspicions of him he'll whisk them off to Spain before you
could bat your eye."

I listened to him intently, yet enjoying to the utmost my prospective
triumph. He went on:

"Then there is that other fellow; we don't know who he is, the one that
came over with you. He will probably exchange dispatches with Yvard,
then off to the colonies again. There is not so much trouble about
him, for he can be captured aboard ship. It is Yvard we want, and his
dispatches."

I said very quietly, still looking into the fire:

"That much is already done."

Jerome raised up on his elbow and stared at me as if he thought me mad.

"I have taken those dispatches from your friend. Here they are."

"The devil you have," he cried out, reaching the middle of the floor at
a single bound. "How and when?"

He would not leave off until I had related the whole of my adventure
beginning with meeting the girl, and ending when I found him, at the
inn. He was as happy as a school-boy, and laughed heartily at my being
so readily made a victim of by the girl Florine.

"Such tender doves to pluck she does not often find, and I warrant you
she lets not many go so easily."

I thought it unnecessary to tell him of my encounter with Yvard, only
that I had found the packet where he dropped it.

"You lucky dog; it's well he did not see you, or you might not now be
talking to me wi