eir initial value.
Carlos, by disappearing for a few days, would put malice off the scent.
Human prudence had foreseen everything; no error was possible. The false
Spaniard was to start on the morrow of the day when Peyrade met Madame
du Val-Noble. But that very night, at two in the morning, Asie came in
a cab to the Quai Malaquais, and found the stoker of the machine smoking
in his room, and reconsidering all the points of the situation here
stated in a few words, like an author going over a page in his book to
discover any faults to be corrected. Such a man would not allow himself
a second time such an oversight as that of the porter in the Rue
Taitbout.

"Paccard," whispered Asie in her master's ear, "recognized Contenson
yesterday, at half-past two, in the Champs-Elysees, disguised as a
mulatto servant to an Englishman, who for the last three days has been
seen walking in the Champs-Elysees, watching Esther. Paccard knew the
hound by his eyes, as I did when he dressed up as a market-porter.
Paccard drove the girl home, taking a round so as not to lose sight of
the wretch. Contenson is at the Hotel Mirabeau; but he exchanged so many
signs of intelligence with the Englishman, that Paccard says the other
cannot possibly be an Englishman."

"We have a gadfly behind us," said Carlos. "I will not leave till the
day after to-morrow. That Contenson is certainly the man who sent the
porter after us from the Rue Taitbout; we must ascertain whether this
sham Englishman is our foe."

At noon Mr. Samuel Johnson's black servant was solemnly waiting on his
master, who always breakfasted too heartily, with a purpose. Peyrade
wished to pass for a tippling Englishman; he never went out till he was
half-seas over. He wore black cloth gaiters up to his knees, and padded
to make his legs look stouter; his trousers were lined with the thickest
fustian; his waistcoat was buttoned up to his cheeks; a red scratch
wig hid half his forehead, and he had added nearly three inches to his
height; in short, the oldest frequenter of the Cafe David could not have
recognized him. From his squarecut coat of black cloth with full skirts
he might have been taken for an English millionaire.

Contenson made a show of the cold insolence of a nabob's confidential
servant; he was taciturn, abrupt, scornful, and uncommunicative, and
indulged in fierce exclamations and uncouth gestures.

Peyrade was finishing his second bottle when one of the hotel waiter