He handed us a twisted note. Charles opened and read it. "Invaluable man!" he cried. "Just hear what he says, Sey: 'Having secured Colonel Clay, I am off now again on the track of Mme. Picardet. She was lodging in the same house. She has just driven away; I know to what place; and I am after her to arrest her. In blind haste, MEDHURST.' That's smartness, IF you like. Though, poor little woman, I think he might have left her." "Does a Mme. Picardet stop here?" I inquired of the landlord, thinking it possible she might have assumed again the same old alias. He nodded assent. "Oui, oui, oui," he answered. "She has just driven off, and monsieur your friend has gone posting after her." "Splendid man!" Charles cried. "Marvillier was quite right. He is the prince of detectives!" We hailed a couple of fiacres, and drove off, in two detachments, to the juge d'instruction. There Colonel Clay continued to brazen it out, and asserted that he was an officer in the Indian Army, home on six months' leave, and spending some weeks in Paris. He even declared he was known at the Embassy, where he had a cousin an attache; and he asked that this gentleman should be sent for at once from our Ambassador's to identify him. The juge d'instruction insisted that this must be done; and Charles waited in very bad humour for the foolish formality. It really seemed as if, after all, when we had actually caught and arrested our man, he was going by some cunning device to escape us. After a delay of more than an hour, during which Colonel Clay fretted and fumed quite as much as we did, the attache arrived. To our horror and astonishment, he proceeded to salute the prisoner most affectionately. "Halloa, Algy!" he cried, grasping his hand; "what's up? What do these ruffians want with you?" It began to dawn upon us, then, what Medhurst had meant by "suspecting everybody": the real Colonel Clay was no common adventurer, but a gentleman of birth and high connections! The Colonel glared at us. "This fellow declares he's Sir Charles Vandrift," he said sulkily. "Though, in fact, there are two of them. And he accuses me of forgery, fraud, and theft, Bertie." The attache stared hard at us. "This _is_ Sir Charles Vandrift," he replied, after a moment. "I remember hearing him make a speech once at a City dinner. And what charge have you to prefer, Sir Charles, against my cousin?" "Your cousin?" Charles cried. "This is Colonel Clay, the notorious sharper!" The attache smiled a gentlemanly and superior smile. "This is Colonel Clay," he answered, "of the Bengal Staff Corps." It began to strike us there was something wrong somewhere. "But he has cheated me, all the same," Charles said--"at Nice two years ago, and many times since; and this very day he has tricked me out of two thousand pounds in French bank-notes, which he has now about him!"