"I thank you, Sir John, but I have other work to do. I am a rich man, but that only interests me, inasmuch as it is a means to an end. When that end is reached ..." He made a curious gesture with his arm, which I did not understand. "May I ask what your work is?" He looked at me with surprise. "Vargus is still alive," he said simply. "He will be caught soon. The police of the world are looking for him, if he is alive." "I think it will be a long pursuit, Sir John. He has got off with the treasure, and I know one or two things about him which are not generally known. I do not think that Mr. Vargus will fall into the hands of the police." "Then you ...?" "It is my work. I owe the spirit of my patron this man's blood, and I shall pay the debt. Were he to hide in the depths of the sea, sooner or later I shall find him. There is no power strong enough in life to keep us two apart." He had dropped his voice. The words hissed like a knife upon a strop. "I wish you good luck," I said at length, and was about to say more, to express my gratitude again, when he cut me short. "I am leaving for Paris in half an hour," he said, "and must bid you farewell, Sir John. Convey my humble compliments to Miss Shepherd," and with a low bow and a frigid handshake he was gone. Six weeks afterwards, on the day before my wedding, I received a magnificent Japanese vase of the old Satsuma enamel, but the card enclosed bore no address. I did not see this extraordinary being again for nearly two years. Of that meeting I shall write in the following short epilogue. EPILOGUE In the winter of 19-- I was at Monte Carlo for three weeks, taking a short holiday alone, and also looking out for a villa at Roquebrune or Mentone for my wife, who was to come out with the baby as soon as the house had been secured. Now and again I went into the "Rooms" and staked a louis or two upon an even chance or a _transversale_ at roulette; but, speaking generally, the Casino bored me. The cosmopolitan crowd of smart people--like champagne corks floating on a cesspool--the professional gamblers, with their veil of decorous indifference concealing a fierce greed for money which they have not earned--a sprinkling of wood-ash over a glowing fire--presented little interest, and I much preferred long walks and drives in the earthly paradise of Les Alpes Maritimes.