"It makes the chase more interesting. But I am annoyed with myself over the miscalculation. . . . I could have sworn he was a coward in grain. I marked all the _stigmata_. . . . And behold he can show fight!--at any rate in presence of the other sex. . . . Can something have happened to him, think you, since our talk at Versailles? Is it possible that I am _educating_ the man? "On top of this complicating discovery I made a simplifying one. "You know that I have a knack with animals, in the way of handling their passions. I've never tried it on humans: for I've never laid down any basis of knowledge, and I've always detested empiricism. That study, as you remember, was to come. "Well, I'll write further about it some day. . . . But I believe I have _something like_ this power over Farrell. . . . I put out a feeler or two--to change metaphors, I waved a hand gently over the lyre, scarcely touching the strings; and it certainly struck me that they responded. You will understand that a _table-d'hote_ was no place for pushing the experiment. And there were one or two men in the smoking-room when we sought it. "Farrell found himself; talked, after a while, quite well and easily. In the smoking-room he told me a good deal about his early life: all _bourgeois_ stuff, of course, but recounted in the manner that belongs to it, and quite worth listening to. "He never wilted once, until I got up to go and drank what remained of my whisky-and-seltzer 'to our next merry meeting.' He followed me out to the hotel doorway to say Good night. We did not shake hands. "There are indications that he will travel back north to-night. He has left for Pau, to play golf. At Dax this evening--mark my words--a solitary traveller may be observed furtively stealing on board the night express for Paris. He will be observed: but he won't be a solitary traveller. "Your lawyer's letter--as I started by remarking--has arrived opportunely. If Farrell, as I suspect, intends to go through to London, I may reach you almost as soon as this letter, and shall add a piece of my mind for a postscript.--Yours," "J. F." I slept the night at Biarritz and started back early next morning for London. I found Jimmy recumbent in what he called his Young Oxford Student's Reading Chair, alone with the racing news in the evening papers. "Hallo!" he greeted me. "I rather expected you just now. Let's go and dine somewhere." "Has Jack turned up here?" I asked.