elieve it?"

I asked myself the same question before I answered.

"Yes, I do," I said, finally.

Vantine walked up and down the room again, his eyes on the floor, his
brows contracted.

"Lester," he said, at last, "I have a queer feeling that the business
which brought this man here in some way concerned the Boule cabinet I
was telling you about. Perhaps it belonged to him."

"Hardly," I protested, recalling his shabby appearance.

"At any rate, I remember, as I was looking at his card, that some
such thought occurred to me. It was for that reason I told Parks to
ask him to wait."

"It's possible, of course," I admitted. "But that wouldn't explain
his excitement. And that reminds me," I added, "I haven't sent off
that cable."

"Any time to-night will do. It will be delivered in the morning. But
you haven't seen the cabinet yet. Come down and look at it."

He led the way down the stair. Parks met us in the lower hall.

"There's a delegation of reporters outside, sir," he said. "They say
they've got to see you."

Vantine made a movement of impatience.

"Tell them," he said, "that I positively refuse to see them or to
allow my servants to see them. Let them get their information from
the police."

"Very well, sir," said Parks, and turned away grinning.

Vantine passed on through the ante-room in which we had found the
body of the unfortunate Frenchman, and into the room beyond. Five or
six pieces of furniture, evidently just unpacked, stood there, but,
ignorant as I am of such things, he did not have to point out to me
the Boule cabinet. It dominated the room, much as Madame de
Montespan, no doubt, dominated the court at Versailles.

I looked at it for some moments, for it was certainly a beautiful
piece of work, with a wealth of inlay and incrustation little short
of marvellous. But I may as well say here that I never really
appreciated it. The florid style of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Louis is not at all to my taste; and I am too little of a connoisseur
to admire a beauty which has no personal appeal for me. So I am
afraid that Vantine found me a little cold.

Certainly there was nothing cold about the way he regarded it. His
eyes gleamed with a strange fire as he looked at it; he ran his
fingers over the inlay with a touch almost reverent; he pulled out
for me the little drawers with much the same air that another friend
of mine takes down his Kilmarnock Burns from his bookshelves; he
pointed ou