He indicated the table with a nod. "Assuredly," said Cazeby. "Do as if you were at home. I shall be but a moment with the supper." When he returned from the kitchen, bearing a smoking dish of bacon and eggs, butter, rye bread, and Swiss cheese, Bibi-la-Raie was standing in rapt contemplation before an etching of the "Last Judgment." "What a genius, this animal of a Michel Ange!" he said. "Rather deft at times," replied Cazeby, arranging the dishes on the larger table. "Je te crois!" said Bibi, enthusiastically. "Without him--what? Evidently, it was not Léon Treize who built Saint Pierre!" The eggs had been peculiarly obstinate, as it happened, and a growing irritability had taken possession of Anthony. As they ate in silence, the full force of his tragic position returned to him. Even the unwontedness of his chance encounter with Bibi-la-Raie had not wholly dispelled the cloud that had been gradually settling around him since he emerged from the Automobile Club, and, as they finished the little repast, he turned suddenly upon his guest, in a burst of irritation. "Who are you?" he said. "And what does all this mean? Was I mistaken, when you first spoke to me, in thinking you a mere voyou? Surely not! You meant to rob me. You speak the argot of the fortifications. Yet here I find you discoursing on Michel Angelo as though you were the conservateur of the Uffizzi! What am I to think?" Bibi-la-Raie lit another cigarette, blew forth the smoke in a thin, gray wisp, and thrust his thumbs into the arm-holes of his velveteen waistcoat. "And _you_," he said, slowly, abandoning the familiar address he had been using, "who are _you_? No, you were not mistaken in thinking I meant to rob you. Such is my profession. But does a gentleman reply, in ordinary, to the summons of a thief by paying that thief a drink? Does he invite him to his apartment and cook a supper for him? What am _I_ to think?" There was a brief pause, and then he faced his host squarely. "Are you absolutely resolved to put an end to it all to-night?" he demanded. Cazeby made a small sign of bewilderment. "Ah, mon vieux," continued the other. "That, you know, is of no use with me. You ask me who I am. For one thing, I am one who has lived too long in touch with desperate men not to know the look in the eyes when the end has come. You think you are going to blow out your brains to-night." "Your wits are wandering; that's all," said Cazeby, compassionately. "Oh, far from it!" said Bibi-la-Raie, with a short laugh. "But one does not fondle one's revolver in the daytime without a good reason, nor does one leave it _on top_ of letters postmarked this morning unless one has been fondling it--quoi?" Cazeby was at the marqueterie desk in two strides, tugging at the upper right hand drawer. It was locked. He turned about slowly, and, half seating himself on the edge of the desk, surveyed his guest coolly. "The revolver is in your pocket," he said.