In the centre of the great walled space reared an ancient circular structure of brick. It was like a huge bee-hive. His conductor led Harry to a compartment on the lower tier and unlocked an iron door. "This is yours, 239," he said. Harry entered. He heard the door clang behind him and the footsteps retire down the stone corridor. The light from a barred window struck full into his eyes and for a moment he did not see that another figure, in the same dingy stripes, sat on the edge of the narrow bunk, looking at him out of small, red-rimmed eyes. The occupant rose slowly, thrusting a grimy hand through a shock of sand-coloured hair, and stared hard at the newcomer. Then he uttered a howl of evil mirth and recognition. "Smoke of the devil!" he shouted. "If it ain't the youngster me and Towler had behind the portiary! Ho-ho! I saw by the papers they'd nabbed you. And to think the geezer swore it was you that plugged him! They didn't get me--not that time! I'd be out still if I hadn't tried to lift a reticule on a street-car. It was my record that did it for me then. Well, we're pals now, old horse, and we'll celebrate it right!" He thrust his arm beneath the rough blanket, brought out a flask, and uncorked it with his teeth. "It's the real stuff," he said. "Towler slips it to me--good old pal! He's got one of the guards 'fixed'! Here--drink hearty!" With a hoarse laugh he thrust it into Harry's face. Harry's eyes had been fixed on his with a curious intensity. In that startling moment, as the fumes of the liquor penetrated his nostrils, a lurid sequence had flashed to him. This man he had once betrayed by a base surrender to appetite; now in antic irony, it was this man's crime that had betrayed him, Harry Sevier, to the same dilemma and a like shameful penalty. And here was dangled before him the hideous badge and symbol of his downfall! He seized the wrist of the outstretched hand with a grasp like steel, and the flask smashed against the bars of the window. Then he hurled the other from him across the narrow cell. His cell-mate clung to the bunk across which he had fallen, and stared at Harry with a look of slow malevolence. He licked his lips. "I'll fix you for that!" he said. CHAPTER XXVIII THE MAN IN THE WHEELED CHAIR Echo sat under the Botticelli blue of a perfect afternoon on the terrace of the Hotel Splendid in Nice. Through the hot, bright air, set in the purple creases of the hazeless hills, she could see tinted villas drowsing in golden gardens aflame with flowers, and below under the dizzying sunlight beyond the long esplanade, tiny swells spilled over the pearly beech like molten sapphire.