ou never answered, and which I have since had
many thousand better reasons for putting to myself."

He turned suddenly white. "Good God!" he cried, "are you the man in the
telephone?"

I nodded.

"Well, well!" said he. "It would take a good deal of magnanimity to
forgive you that. What nights I have passed! That little whisper has
whistled in my ear ever since, like the wind in a keyhole. Who could it
be? What could it mean? I suppose I have had more real, solid misery out
of that...." He paused, and looked troubled. "Though I had more to
bother me, or ought to have," he added, and slowly emptied his glass.

"It seems we were born to drive each other crazy with conundrums," said
I. "I have often thought my head would split."

Carthew burst into his foolish laugh. "And yet neither you nor I had the
worst of the puzzle," he cried. "There were others deeper in."

"And who were they?" I asked.

"The underwriters," said he.

"Why, to be sure!" cried I. "I never thought of that. What could they
make of it?"

"Nothing," replied Carthew. "It couldn't be explained. They were a crowd
of small dealers at Lloyd's who took it up in syndicate; one of them has
a carriage now; and people say he is a deuce of a deep fellow, and has
the makings of a great financier. Another furnished a small villa on the
profits. But they're all hopelessly muddled; and when they meet each
other they don't know where to look, like the Augurs."

Dinner was no sooner at an end than he carried me across the road to
Masson's old studio. It was strangely changed. On the walls were
tapestry, a few good etchings, and some amazing pictures--a Rousseau, a
Corot, a really superb old Crome, a Whistler, and a piece which my host
claimed (and I believe) to be a Titian. The room was furnished with
comfortable English smoking-room chairs, some American rockers, and an
elaborate business table; spirits and soda-water (with the mark of
Schweppe, no less) stood ready on a butler's tray, and in one corner,
behind a half-drawn curtain, I spied a camp-bed and a capacious tub.
Such a room in Barbizon astonished the beholder, like the glories of the
cave of Monte Cristo.

"Now," said he, "we are quiet. Sit down, if you don't mind, and tell me
your story all through."

I did as he asked, beginning with the day when Jim showed me the passage
in the _Daily Occidental_, and winding up with the stamp album and the
Chailly post-mark. It was a long business; and Carthew