tten the
appointment at two o'clock with the American millionaire and the fortune
that depended on it. He would be angry at being kept waiting. Aristide
had met Americans before. His swift brain invented an elaborate excuse.

He leaped from the cab and entered the vestibule of the hotel.

"Can I see M. Congleton?" he asked at the bureau.

"An American gentleman? He has gone, monsieur. He left by the
three-thirty train. Are you M. Pujol? There is a letter for you."

With a sinking heart he opened it and read:--

DEAR SIR,--I was in this hotel at two o'clock, according to
arrangement. As my last train to Japan leaves at three-thirty, I
regret I cannot await your convenience. The site of the hotel is
satisfactory. Your business methods are not. I am sorry, therefore,
not to be able to entertain the matter further.--Faithfully,

WILLIAM B. CONGLETON.

He stared at the words for a few paralyzed moments. Then he stuffed the
letter into his pocket and broke into a laugh.

"_Zut!_" said he, using the inelegant expletive whereby a Frenchman most
adequately expresses his scorn of circumstance. "_Zut!_ If I have lost a
fortune, I have gained two devoted friends, so I am the winner on the
day's work."

Whereupon he returned gaily to the bosom of the Bocardon family and
remained there, its Cousin Quicksilver and its entirely happy and
idolized hero, until the indignation of the eminent M. Say summoned him
to Paris.

And that is how Aristide Pujol could live thenceforward on nothing at
all at Nimes, whenever it suited him to visit that historic town.

III

THE ADVENTURE OF THE KIND MR. SMITH

Aristide Pujol started life on his own account as a _chasseur_ in a Nice
cafe--one of those luckless children tightly encased in bottle-green
cloth by means of brass buttons, who earn a sketchy livelihood by
enduring with cherubic smiles the continuous maledictions of the
establishment. There he soothed his hours of servitude by dreams of
vast ambitions. He would become the manager of a great hotel--not a
contemptible hostelry where commercial travellers and seedy Germans were
indifferently bedded, but one of those white palaces where milords
(English) and millionaires (American) paid a thousand francs a night
for a bedroom and five louis for a glass of beer. Now, in order to
derive such profit from the Anglo-Saxon a knowledge of English was
indispensable. He resolved to learn the language. H