"A sudden call of business," he explained airily; "unexpected but--what you call--imperative. Besides, this bed is the same as any other. You see, I have a week of rest." "The doctor--it was he who mentioned your name to me--it was not on the sailing-list----" "No." He was looking at me sharply. "I came on board at the last moment--the need was ver' sudden, as I have said. I had not time to engage a stateroom." "That explains it. Well, the doctor told me that you were bed-fast." "Yes--since the voyage began I have not left it. I shall not arise until we reach Havre to-morrow." I watched him as he went through the familiar motion of lighting a second cigarette from the first one. In the half-light of the cabin, I had not at first perceived how ill he looked; now, I saw the dark patches under the eyes, the livid and flabby face, the shaking hand. And for the first time, with a little shock, I realized how near he had been to death. "But you, Mistair Lester," he was saying, "how does it occur that you also are going to France? I did not know you contemplated----" "No," I answered calmly, for I had seen that the question was inevitable and I even welcomed it, since it gave me opportunity to get my guns to going. "No; the last time I saw you, I didn't contemplate it, but a good deal has happened since then. Would you care to hear? Are you strong enough to talk?" Oh, how I relished tantalizing him! "I should like very exceedingly to hear," he assured me, and shifted his position a little, so that his face was in the shadow. "The beams of light through the shutter make my eyes to hurt," he added. So he mistrusted himself; so he was not finding the part an easy one, either! The thought gave me new courage, new audacity. "You may remember," I began, "that I told you once that if I ever went to work on the Holladay case, I'd try first to find the murderess. I succeeded in doing it the very first day." "Ah!" he breathed. "And after the police had failed! That was, indeed, remarkable. How did you accomplish it?" "By the merest chance--by great good fortune. I was making a search of the French quarter, house by house, when, on Houston Street, I came to a restaurant, the Cafe Jourdain. A bottle of superieur set Jourdain's tongue to wagging; I pretended I wanted a room; he dropped a word, the merest hint; and, in the end, I got the whole story. It seems there was not only one woman, there were two." "Yes?" "Yes--and a man whose name was Betuny or Bethune, or something like that. But I didn't pay much attention to him--he doesn't figure in the case. He didn't even go away with the women. The very day I set out on my search, he was picked up on the streets somewhere suffering with apoplexy and taken to a hospital, so nearly dead that it was a question whether he would recover. So he's out of it. The Jourdains told me that the women had sailed for France."