"There seems to have been a leakage," he said presently, and then, looking up, "Whom do you suspect?" "I suspect! God in Heaven, what has suspicion to do with me?" "I should have thought you were in the way of it--that is, if you take it seriously this side." The old man wormed with impatience. "The _Soir_ has it; there will not be a paper in Paris without it to-morrow. Do you not see that it is, in effect, the letter I wrote to you on Tuesday last?" "Who's to blame for that? I told you at the beginning not to write." "Is it to be imagined that you cannot receive letters?" Faber leaned over the table, and began to speak with some warmth. "See here," he said, "you're a Minister of Artillery in Paris. You receive, I suppose, some three or four hundred letters a day? Can you be responsible for them all?" "But this was sent to you privately at your hotel." "A foolish kind of letter at the best--I remember every word of it. You admit in so many words that our deal is for forty thousand francs, and stipulate that Captain Clearnay must have ten. Why couldn't you come round to me and say so?" "I was three times at the hotel that day; you were absent on each occasion. It was urgent that Clearnay should be dealt with if the contract was to go through." "Exactly what this newspaper man says. He calls it a second Ollivier case, I see. Well, I shouldn't wonder if it made as much noise." D'Arny tortured himself into new attitudes. "Good God!" he cried. "Don't you see my position?" "Perfectly. I saw it from the beginning. You'll have to leave Paris awhile." "Then the contract is lost?" "I never thought it would go through, General. I wasn't such a d----d fool." "But at least a word from you will save my name. You can deny the letter." "I could deny it." "Are you wishing to tell me that there is any doubt?" "No doubt at all. Unfortunately, it was read, by mistake, in the Hotel Ritz the night it reached me. You should see Morris, of the _New York Mitre_. He might do something for you." The man rose, white as a sheet and broken. He may or may not have understood the nature of the trap into which he had fallen, but it was clear to him that John Faber could or would do little for him. He went out into the street to be offered a copy of _La Guêpe_, and to hear the newsboy cry the latest news of this surpassing jobbery. A less consummate artist than Faber would have spoken of the Rue de Fleurus, and of what happened there forty years ago. Hubert d'Arny had not the remotest notion that the man who had ruined him was the son of that American citizen who had been shot by his orders at the crisis of the great debacle. III Paris licked its lips over the scandal, and then stood aghast. The tragedy surpassed all expectation, and yet all admitted that there was no other course.