f money is too large to
pass through a pigeon-hole.

"Veil?"

A whiskered, spectacled face, framed in the central pigeon-hole, with
eyes magnified by the spectacles, regarded him sharply.

"Oh!" He recalled himself to his concerns with a jerk, and fumbled in
his pockets. "I had a letter," he explained.

"Vere is de letter?"

He found it, after an exciting search, and passed it over. The
whiskered face developed a hand to receive it.

"I don't know what it's about," explained Lucas.

"Perhaps your people have made a mistake in the name, or something."

"Our beoble," said the face in the pigeon-hole, with malignant
emphasis, "do nod make mistagues!"

There was an interval while the letter was read, and Lucas stood and
fidgeted, with a sense that he was intrusive and petty and undesired.
"Yes," said the owner of the spectacles, at length. "You vait. I vill
enguire."

He left his pigeon-hole unshuttered, and to Lucas, while he waited,
it seemed that several men came to it and glanced at him
forbiddingly. None spoke; they just looked as though in righteous
indignation at his presence, with seventy-five cents in his pocket,
in that high temple of finance. Then the whiskered and spectacled
face fitted itself again into the aperture.

"So you are Mr. Robert H. Lugas, are you?" it inquired. "Den vere vas
you in de year 1886?"

"Where was I?" repeated Lucas vaguely. "Let me see! 1886--yes! I was
in Russia then--in Tambov."

"Yes." The other's regard was keen. "An' now tell me aboud de man dat
lived obbosite to you in Tambov?"

"Do you mean the silversmith?" said Lucas. The other nodded. "Oh,
him! He was a Jew. They expelled him."

"And his vife?"

"His wife! They expelled her too," he answered. "I never heard of her
again."

"Vot vas de last you heard of her?"

"Oh, that!"

Lucas was staring at him vacantly. It did not occur to him that, by
not answering promptly, he might give ground for doubt and suspicion.
The question had re-illuminated in his mind--perhaps for the first
time since the event which it touched--that night of twenty years
before. He flavored again the heady and effervescent vintage of
strong action, of crowded happenings and poignant emotions.

"Veil?" demanded the other.

"There was a police officer," began Lucas obediently; "his name was
Semianoff;" and in bald, halting words he told the story. He told it
absently, languidly, for no words within his reach could convey the
thing a