The windows at the rear of the Château de Trélatête, a quaint old-world place, near the high road from St. Germain to Paris, look out upon a wide, well-kept lawn, flanked by dark yew hedges, and backed by the winding Seine, on the opposite bank of which a sparsely timbered slope leads up to a small farm. Zigzag up this slope runs a path—probably it has so run for centuries, for at the foot of it is a ford across a small stream—which in spring is almost invisible, but in autumn is brown and rutty. Two men strolled down this path one September evening not long ago. One, a young fellow under thirty, fair-haired and pink-cheeked, was something of a fop, while the other was a tall man, about fifty-five, of military bearing, with a pair of keen eyes, sharply cut features, and hair and moustache turning grey. Attired in a rather shabby velvet coat and gaiters, he looked like a gamekeeper, but was, in fact, General Martianoff, late Governor of Mstislavl, and now Chief of the Russian Secret Police in Paris. “I really can’t make you out, Gaston,” he said, as they sighted the Château; and, shifting his gun to the other shoulder, he took occasion to glance searchingly at his companion. “How confoundedly glum you are!” The younger man laughed, but not very merrily, and there was a touch of sullenness in his tone as he answered— “How absurd! A man cannot be always grinning.” “No; but _pâté de foie gras_ is not man’s ordinary meat,” retorted the General imperturbably. “My dear Guéneau.” “Well?” said the other snappishly. “You are in a mess; that is my opinion! Now, take my advice, and make a clean breast of the matter. You have some tie or other which weighs upon your mind and of which we are ignorant.” The young man turned his face to his companion, and General Martianoff, albeit a very cool personage, was taken aback by the change which anger or some other emotion had worked in it. Even Gaston Guéneau’s voice was altered. “And what if I have?” he asked hoarsely, stopping short so suddenly that the pair confronted one another. “What if I have, m’sieur?” The chief spy twirled his moustache thoughtfully. “Well,” he said, outwardly unmoved, “you must break it—get rid of it. That is all, Guéneau.” “And if I am unable?” “Unwilling, you mean.” “No, cannot, cannot!” declared the younger man with vehemence. “But you must. You hear! you must! Otherwise it will be your ruin.” “Bah! Don’t talk like that. Come with me to the Château?” “No!” answered the General violently. And without more, without a word of farewell, he turned his back and strode away through the long grass to a point half a mile higher up the river, where a wooden bridge gave access to the station of Le Pecq, whence he returned to Paris. I had followed the pair, and overheard their conversation.