muff a small roll of papers.

The advancing person was a seedy-looking individual, stooping,
seemingly bent under the weight of a bulky accordion. He looked about
sixty; his long white beard, untrimmed and badly neglected, disguised
the lower half of his face, while his luxuriant moustache, and his
long hair, arranged artist fashion, largely hid the upper part of his
countenance.

A beggar? Not at all! This personage would most certainly have spurned
such an epithet with a gesture of offended disdain. Live by charity?
Not he! Was not his accordion there to show that he possessed a
regular means of livelihood? He claimed to be a musician.

He was well known throughout one quarter of Paris, was this poor old
man who chanced to be passing along that path in the Bois de Boulogne.
He was a perfect specimen of the unsettled type of human being,
savagely enamoured of liberty, going from court to court playing with
wearied arms the ballads of the moment, indifferent to their melodies,
to their rhythms, to their beauties, to their ugliness.... No one knew
his real name. They called him _Vagualame_; for his plaintive notes
inspired sad thoughts and an indefinable trouble of the nerves in
those unlucky enough to listen to him for a time. This nickname stuck
to him.

He was quite a Parisian type, this Vagualame: one of those faces at
once odd and classic, such as one comes across in numbers on the
pavements, known to all the world, without anyone knowing exactly who
they are, how they live, where they go, or whence they come....

* * * * *

The old man had, on his side, caught sight of Bobinette. He hastened
towards her as fast as his legs permitted; and as soon as he was near
enough to speak to her without raising his voice, he questioned her:

"Well?" It was the interrogation of a master to a subordinate.

"Well?" he repeated. His tone was anxious.

Bobinette calmed the old man's apprehensions with a nod. "It's done,"
said she.

Holding out to him the roll of paper, she added: "I could only get
them at the last minute; but I've got them, and I don't fancy he
suspects anything."

As Bobinette uttered these last words, the old accordion player
chuckled sneeringly:

"So that's what you think? As a matter of fact, it is evident that he
suspects nothing now!"

The way in which the old man pronounced the word "now" puzzled the
girl.

"What do you mean?"

"Captain Brocq is dead."

"