"You know him--is it not so?" the man insisted, with a kind of smothered determination. "Know him? Yes"--with extreme distaste. "It's young Marshall." "Mr. Marshall's son?" "Yes," Belden thrust some papers towards him. "Take these as you go." The man put out his hand. "I know him, I myself, also," he said, looking Belden full in the face with a steady eye. "Ich selbst." He struck his breast and ventured on the liberty of a smile--a smile slow and sinister, one that called for an understanding and challenged co-operation. One might have fancied such a conjunction effected when, an evening or two later, Truesdale received a "note" from Gladys McKenna. As he sifted apart its numerous sheets he tried to recall whether he had replied to her last; he could not remember having done so. "But sometimes they _will_ write," he said, discontentedly, "and nothing can stop them." Her pages led him a rough and rugged chase. She wrote a large, hasty hand, with an unstinted expenditure of ink. "I declare," he said, running several sheets over in succession, "she gets blinder and blinder the further along she goes. And now"--turning back to the beginning--"let's see what it's all about." The letter assumed from the outset a mysterious and melodramatic tone. "Perhaps, finally, she really has something to say," commented Truesdale. But she went on, circling round her theme, dipping down to it now and again, and then soaring up and away from it altogether. "Well," asked Truesdale presently, with a slight show of impatience, "what is it?--something she doesn't fully understand, or something she does understand but can't bring herself to write about? She 'listened,' she says; to very small purpose, say I." He felt one moment that she was more or less in the dark; the next, that she was making passes at some forbidden theme; the third, that she was asking a more ardent recognition of her loyalty and devotion. "She speaks of her 'position,' too. It's 'awkward,' it seems, and 'embarrassing,' and 'dangerous.' It needn't be, though. She made it for herself, and she can unmake it whenever she chooses. Well, I'll try all this again, when I've got more time; it will keep. What is this, though, it says at the end? H'm; I am to remember that if I have enemies I also have fast friends, ever yours sincerely--oh, _that's_ all right." He crammed the sheets into his bureau-drawer, drew on his gloves, selected a stick to his taste, gave himself a last look in the glass, and sauntered out to dinner. He had discovered a French restaurant within a kilometre of the house, where he could dine _à prix fixe_ in a _cabinet particulier_ for five francs, including a _demi-bouteille_ of _ordinaire_.