ion.

His reputation for tact and delicacy is tremendous; and yet those who
have found themselves opposed to him have never been long in
realising that there was a most redoubtable mailed fist under the
velvet glove. Altogether a remarkable man, whose memoirs would make
absorbing reading, could he be persuaded to write them--which is
quite beyond the bounds of possibility. I had never met him either
professionally or personally, and it was with some eagerness that I
told the office-boy to show him in at once.

Sereno Hornblower did not look the part. His reputation led one to
expect a sort of cross between Uriah Heep and Sherlock Holmes, but
there was nothing secretive or insinuating about his appearance. He
was a bluff and hearty man of middle age, rather heavy-set,
fresh-faced and clean-shaven, and with very bright blue eyes--evidently
a man with a good digestion and a comfortable conscience. Had I met him
on Broadway, I should have taken him for a ripe and finished
comedian. There was about him an air which somehow reminded me of
Joseph Jefferson--perhaps it was his bright blue eyes. It may have
been this very appearance of bluff sincerity and honest downrightness
which accounted for his success.

We shook hands, and he sat down and plunged at once, without an
instant's hesitation, into the business which had brought him.
Looking back at it, understanding as I do now the delicate nature of
that business, I admire more and more that bluff readiness; though
the more I think of it, the more I am convinced that he had thought
out definitely beforehand precisely what he was going to say. The man
who can carry through a carefully premeditated scene with an air of
complete unpremeditation has an immense advantage.

"Mr. Lester," he began, "I understand that you are the administrator
of the estate of the late Philip Vantine?"

"Our firm is," I corrected.

"But you, personally, have been attending to his business?"

"Yes."

"He was a collector of old furniture, I believe?"

"Yes."

"And on his last trip to Europe, from which he returned only a few
days ago, he purchased of Armand & Son, of Paris, a Boule cabinet?"

I could not repress a start of astonishment.

"Are you acting for Armand & Son?" I queried.

"Not at all. I am acting for a lady whom, for the present, we will
call Madame X."

The thought flashed through my mind that Madame X. and the mysterious
Frenchwoman might be one and the same person. Then