It was pathetic to think of Danjuro prowling through life to avenge his patron, wasting his magnificent powers upon a hopeless quest. Pathetic, yes--so ran my thoughts--but one can't think of Danjuro as an ordinary human being. He was simply a single idea, clothed in flesh, a marvellous machine designed for one operation only, a specialist so perfect that he became a monomaniac. Poor Van Adams, to protect and serve him had been Danjuro's whole life. Every faculty of mind and body had been devoted to that one end. And yet he must have loved the American to have served him so? And if he could love he was human! I wrestled with the problem till dawn, and got no nearer a solution. I knew that, despite our companionship in peril and the extraordinary adventures we had gone through together, if Van Adams had lived and for any reason had told Danjuro to put me out of the way, the little man would have executed the job with neatness, dispatch, and an entire absence of compunction. I decided that Danjuro, as a subject of psychological analysis, was quite beyond me, and did my best to forget the incident. With an effort I managed to do so, and got a few hours' sleep before Thumbwood called me. I said nothing to him of having seen Danjuro, for he also is unwilling to talk much of the days of terror--perhaps because his wife, Wilson, that was, and is still, Connie's handmaid--so strenuously objects to it. About half-past eleven I left the hotel and strolled to the foot of the funicular railway which hauls one up from the narrow ledge of land on which Monte Carlo stands to the heights of La Turbie. I designed to lunch at the excellent hotel at the top in the clear mountain air, and then to walk along the Upper Corniche towards Roquebrune, Eze, and the mountains above Mentone. There is much to explore in these high regions--ruins of Roman and medieval forts, built as a defence against the raiding Moors of the Mediterranean, and here and there delightful villas among pine-woods and olive groves, far from the haunts of men. It was a house of this description, a mountain hermitage, that I wished to find and take for six months. I knew that they were occasionally to be let, but somewhat difficult to come across upon the books of the agents. In Monte Carlo I had been assured that personal exploration was the best and quickest way. I lunched at La Turbie on a magnificent _bouillabaisse_ and _riz-de-veau_, and after an interval set out upon my walk. It was a magnificent afternoon, the air golden clear. Far away out to sea Corsica lay like a dim cloud. The mountain side fell in terrace after terrace of olives to groups of painted houses looking like toys. Away to the right were the red roofs and gleaming white buildings of the Monte Carlo palaces, and the promontory of the Tête du Chien was perfectly outlined in the azure of the sea.