dressed Americans--men, I
mean--don't often wear their clothes properly; they look as if they felt
so awfully well-dressed. I don't think you will."

"Now you've told me about it, I'll try not to."

"I think you'll want a good man, though, to keep you up to the mark. You
might get slack, don't you know?"

"No, no; I can't have a valet, and I won't," said Septimus Rainer firmly.

"Ah, we shall have to see what Dorothy says about that," said Tinker with
a smile of doubtful meaning.

"That's playing it rather low down on me, isn't it?" said Septimus Rainer
reproachfully. "It's--it's coercion."

"Oh, if you have to wear clothes, you may as well do it thoroughly. You
see, it's been put into my hands, and I must go through with it," said
Tinker apologetically.

The millionaire gazed at him ruefully.

"And now," Tinker went on, regarding him with another cold, calculating
air, that of a proprietor, "I think I'll take you to a hair-dresser, and
have your hair and beard dealt with."

"Crop away! crop away!" said the millionaire.

Tinker took him to a hair-dresser, and told the man exactly how he wanted
the hair and beard cut. "He'd make you a French American, too, if I let
him," he said to Septimus Rainer.

When the hair-dresser had done, the millionaire looked at himself in the
glass with approval, and said, "Well, I do look spick and span, though
gritty; yes--sir."

"You'll look better when you have your clothes," said Tinker. "And, now,
I think you must want a drink."

"That is so, sonny. This is dry work, this getting clothes."

Tinker took him to a cafe, adorned with an American bar. Septimus Rainer
lighted a cigar and refreshed himself with the whiskey sour of his native
land; Tinker ate ices. Over these agreeable occupations they talked; and
the millionaire derived considerable entertainment and no little
instruction from his young companion's views of life on the Mediterranean
littoral, illustrated from the passing pleasure-seekers.

[Illustration: Over these agreeable occupations they talked.]

When they got into the railway carriage on their return, he lighted
another cigar, and lay back in the seat with the content of a man who had
done a hard day's work. But presently he roused himself and said, "I've
been thinking about those kidnapping scum. They were going to ransom
Dorothy for three hundred thousand dollars, you said."

"Yes, a million and a half francs," said Tinker.

"Well, sonn