the
basest of human instincts."

"You are fantastic," said Tranter, with a gloomy smile.

"In fantasy," returned Monsieur Dupont, "are the world's greatest
truths."

He carefully deposed the ash from his cigar.

"Will you please tell me," he went on, "something more about our strange
host to-night--the man who chooses so much crookedness to live in, when
there is straightness to be had for the same price?"

"I know very little more about him than I told you last night," Tranter
replied. "He is wealthy, and very eccentric. He seems to pass his life
in a perpetual effort to be different from other people."

"He is more than eccentric," Monsieur Dupont stated. "He is mad. In a
few years he will be a dangerous lunatic. And the Good God only knows
what he may make of himself in the meantime."

"There are plenty of strange stories about him," Tranter said. "But I
have always looked on them as greatly exaggerated."

"Probably," Monsieur Dupont remarked, "they were true."

"Whatever his reputation may be, women seem very ready to put up with
his eccentricities, or pander to them, in return, no doubt, for big
inroads into his banking account. He is very free with his money where
the opposite sex is concerned."

"It is always so," said Monsieur Dupont, "with such men."

"He mixes chiefly in theatrical and bohemian circles--and often by no
means the most desirable of those. The better people look askance on
him--but he is supremely indifferent to the opinions of others, and to
all the conventions. Whatever he takes it into his head to do he does,
quite regardless of the approval or disapproval of other people. He is
certainly not a man I would introduce to any woman who possessed even
the smallest degree of physical attraction. He is supposed to be quite
unscrupulous in the attainment of his objects."

"Most of us are," said Monsieur Dupont. "But we dislike to admit it."

He looked steadily out of the window for a moment.

"I wonder," he said, turning back, "what he does with the rest of that
house."

"The rest of the house?" Tranter repeated.

"It is very large," said Monsieur Dupont. "It is large enough for twenty
men."

"In this country," Tranter smiled, "there is no law against one man
living in a house large enough for twenty, if he chooses."

"When only a small part of a house is used for ordinary purposes,"
remarked Monsieur Dupont, "the remainder is often used for extraordinary
ones."

"You know as