I had almost forgotten to expect:

"Royce & Lester, New York.

"Regret mistake in shipment exceedingly. Our representative will
call to explain.

"Armand et Fils."

So there was an end of the romance Godfrey had woven, and which I had
been almost ready to believe--the romance of design, of a carefully
laid plot, and all that. It had been merely accident, after all. And
I smiled a little sarcastically at myself for my credulity. No doubt
my own romance of a secret drawer and a poisoned mechanism would
prove equally fabulous. In my over-wrought state of the night before,
it had seemed reasonable enough; but here, in the cold light of day,
it seemed preposterous. How Grady and Goldberger would have laughed
at it!

I put the whole thing impatiently away from me, and turned to other
work; but I found I could not conquer a certain deep-seated
nervousness; so at last I locked my desk, told the boy I would not be
back, and took a cab for a long drive through the park. The fresh
air, the smell of the trees, the sight of the children playing along
the paths, did me good, and I was able to greet Godfrey with a smile
when he called for me at seven o'clock.

"I've engaged a table at a little place around the corner," he said.
"It is managed by a friend of mine, and I think you'll like it."

I did. Indeed, the dinner was so good that it demanded undivided
attention, and not until the coffee was on the table and the cigars
lighted did we speak of the business which had brought us together.

"Anything new?" I asked, as we pushed back our chairs.

"No, nothing of any importance. The man at the morgue has not been
identified. In the first place, the Paris police have never taken his
Bertillon measurements."

"Then he's not a criminal?"

"He has never been arrested," Godfrey qualified. "More peculiar is
the fact that he hasn't been recognised here. Two million people,
probably, saw his photograph in the papers this morning. Some of
them thought they knew him and went around to the morgue to see his
body, but nothing came of it. The police have no report of any such
man missing."

"That _is_ peculiar, isn't it!" I commented.

"It's very peculiar. It means one of two things--either the fellow's
friends are keeping dark purposely, or he didn't have any friends,
here in New York, at least. But even then, one would think that
whoever rented him a room would wonder what had become of him, and
would make so