By this time both the boys were grown up. Pietro's greatest joy was wandering over the world like a gypsy or a tramp, or anything but a "tourist." When his father's health failed he was summoned back from a glorious adventure in Russia, and expected to "settle down." He couldn't bear to disappoint the old man, and did his best to live up to expectations; but he was like a young lion caught in the Libyan Desert and shut in a gilded cage. The people his father wanted him to entertain bored him to tears. He saw that they valued Justin and Pietro Stanislaws for what could be got out of them: invitations, dinners, financial "tips," tours _en automobile_; and there was no reward for which Peter cared. "Our houses were practically hotels," he said to me, "and our hearts were utilized as snake hospitals. I might as well have been a chauffeur for all the choice of guests or destination I had when I drove my father's friends in our cars. I never did anything I wanted to do, and I never got any gratitude for doing what they wanted me to do. I might as well have been a goldfish, swimming round and round in the same globe, month after month, year after year. It wasn't my job! Nature hadn't made me for a fat, tame life. But young Marcel wasn't as much use as an understudy for a dutiful son as I'd once hoped. So I made up my mind to stick it while father lived and wanted me." I don't know just how long Peter was in the "treadmill"--as he called it: two years, perhaps, then came Justin Stanislaws' sudden death. The old man was found by his valet one morning, lying dead on the marble floor of his gorgeous bedroom, with a wound at the back of his head, and a handkerchief marked "M.M." clutched in his hand. The wall safe where he kept his most precious treasures--photographs of his dead wife, her letters, and the favourite jewels which she had left for "Pietro's bride"--was open, the key was still in the lock, and the steel box containing the jewels had disappeared. Young Marcel Moncourt had also disappeared; and this was serious, because he had come to visit his father and had vainly begged for the loan of five thousand dollars from Justin Stanislaws.