would be sure to be at this great house
or that, at this ball or that banquet. There was no difficulty in
discovering that he would be sure to go to the opera, or the theatre,
or to drive to Schonbrunn with his imperial master. Marco and The Rat
heard casual speech of him again and again, and from one part of the
city to the other they followed and waited for him. But it was like
chasing a will-o'-the-wisp. He was evidently too brilliant and
important a person to be allowed to move about alone. There were
always people with him who seemed absorbed in his languid cynical
talk. Marco thought that he never seemed to care much for his
companions, though they on their part always seemed highly entertained
by what he was saying. It was noticeable that they laughed a great
deal, though he himself scarcely even smiled.

"He's one of those chaps with the trick of saying witty things as if he
didn't see the fun in them himself," The Rat summed him up. "Chaps
like that are always cleverer than the other kind."

"He's too high in favor and too rich not to be followed about," they
heard a man in a shop say one day, "but he gets tired of it.
Sometimes, when he's too bored to stand it any longer, he gives it out
that he's gone into the mountains somewhere, and all the time he's shut
up alone with his pictures in his own palace."

That very night The Rat came in to their attic looking pale and
disappointed. He had been out to buy some food after a long and
arduous day in which they had covered much ground, had seen their man
three times, and each time under circumstances which made him more
inaccessible than ever. They had come back to their poor quarters both
tired and ravenously hungry.

The Rat threw his purchase on to the table and himself into a chair.

"He's gone to Budapest," he said. "NOW how shall we find him?"

Marco was rather pale also, and for a moment he looked paler. The day
had been a hard one, and in their haste to reach places at a long
distance from each other they had forgotten their need of food.

They sat silent for a few moments because there seemed to be nothing to
say. "We are too tired and hungry to be able to think well," Marco
said at last. "Let us eat our supper and then go to sleep. Until
we've had a rest, we must 'let go.'"

"Yes. There's no good in talking when you're tired," The Rat answered
a trifle gloomily. "You don't reason straight. We must 'let go.'"

Their meal was sim