sions.

"Well, as I went into their office, I saw the gentleman who has been
paying his attentions to the lady we have been discussing, come out. I
have an excellent memory for faces, and when I saw him to-night entering
the Cafe des Ambassadeurs, I recognized him immediately. Thus the
mystery is explained."

He shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands apart, like a conjurer
who has just vanished a rabbit or an orange.

"Has the man of whom we are speaking done very wrong?" he inquired.

"The stones he sold in London and Amsterdam belonged to himself and his
two partners," I answered. "He has not given them their share of the
transaction. That is all."

"They had better be quick about it then, or they are not likely to get
anything. It would be a very big sum that would tempt _la belle Louise_
to be faithful for a long period. If your employers really desire to
punish him, and they are not in want of money, I should say do not let
them interfere. She will then _nibble-nibble_ at what he has got like a
mouse into a store of good things. Then presently that store will be all
gone, and then she will give him up, and he, the man, will go out and
shoot himself, and she will pick up somebody else, and will begin to
nibble-nibble just as before. As I say, there will be somebody else, and
somebody else, right up to the end of the chapter. And with every one
she will grow just an imperceptible bit older. By and by the wrinkles
will appear; I fancy there are just one or two already. Then she will
not be so fastidious about her hundred of thousand francs, and will
condescend to think of mere thousands. After that it will come to simple
hundreds. Then there will be an interval--after which a garret, a
charcoal brazier, and the Morgue. I have known so many, and it is always
the same. First, the diamonds, the champagne, the exquisite little
dinners at the best restaurants, and at last the brazier, the closed
doors and windows, and the cold stone slab. There is a moral in it, my
dear friend, but we will not look for it to-night. When do you intend to
commence business with your man?"

"At once," I answered. "He knows that I am after him and my only fear is
that he will make a bolt. I cannot understand why he is dallying in
Paris so long?"

"For the simple reason that he is confident he has put you off the
scent," was my companion's reply. "He is doing the one foolish thing the
criminal always does sooner or later; that is t