The name of the young man who had shadowed Matheson was Arthur Dean, and his position in life was that of a clerk in the Leadenhall Street office of Lars Larssen. The latter had brought him over to Paris as temporary secretary because the confidential secretary had happened to be ill and away from business at the moment when Matheson's letter arrived.

Young Dean bitterly repented his cowardice before he was five minutes distant from the narrow lane on the heights of Montmartre.

Not only had he left a fellow-countryman to possible violence and robbery, but his action would inevitably recoil on himself. To be even a temporary secretary to the great shipowner was a chance, an opportunity that most young business men of twenty-four would eagerly grasp at. He was throwing away his chance by this cowardly disobedience to orders—Lars Larssen was not the man to forgive an offence of that kind.

Dean turned on his tracks and again crossed the Place Pigalle. The lane behind was deserted. He mounted it and searched eagerly. His search was fruitless. Matheson was nowhere visible—nor the two apaches. To what had happened in that interval of ten minutes there was no clue.

The young fellow did not dare to go back to the Grand Hotel and report his failure. He wandered about aimlessly and miserably, until a flaunting poster outside an all-night cafÉ chantant caught his eye and decided him to enter and kill time until some plan for retrieving his failure might occur to him.

As he entered the swinging doors a cheery hand was laid on his shoulders. "Hullo, old man! Hail and thrice hail!"

"Jimmy!" There was a note of pleasure in the young man's voice.

"The same," confirmed Jimmy Martin. He was a tubby, clean-shaven, rosy-faced little fellow of thirty odd, with an inexhaustible fund of good spirits. Everyone called him "Jimmy." Dean had known him as a reporter on a London daily paper and a fellow-member of a local dramatic society in Streatham.

"Why are you here?" asked Dean.

"Strictly on business, my gay young spark. My present owners, the Europe Chronicle, bless their dear hearts, want to know if La Belle Ariola"—he waved his hand towards a poster which showed chiefly a toreador hat, a pair of flashing eyes, and a whirl of white draperies—"is engaged or no to the Prince of Sardinia. I find the maiden coy, not to say secretive——"

"I wish you could help me," interrupted Dean eagerly.

"If four francs seventy will do it—my worldly possessions until next pay-day——"

"No, no, this is quite different." He drew Martin outside into the street and whispered. "To-night, as I happen to know, an Englishman walking along a back street by the Place Pigalle was followed by two apaches."

"A week-end tripper, or somebody with a flourish at each end of his name?"

"Somebody worth while. Now I want to know particularly if anything happened."

Martin nodded in full understanding. "Come along to the office about ten to-morrow morning, and I'll tell you if anything's been fired in from the gendarmeries or the hospitals. What did you say the man's name was?"

Dean shook his head.

"Imitaciong oyster?" commented Martin cheerfully. "Very well, see you to-morrow. Meanwhile, be good. Flee the giddy lure. Go home to your little bed and sleep sweet." There was seriousness under his good-natured banter. "Come along and I'll see you as far as the bullyvards."

Arthur Dean went with him, but did not return to the Grand Hotel. He found a small hotel for the night, and next morning at ten o'clock he was at the office of the Europe Chronicle, an important daily paper published simultaneously in Paris, Frankfort, and Florence.

Martin came out from the news room into the adjoining ante-room with a slip of "flimsy" in his hand.

"Was your man hefty with the shillelagh?" he asked.

"He carried a big, gold-mounted stick."

"Then here's your bird." He read out from the slip of paper: "Last night, shortly after twelve, a certain Gaspard P—— was brought to the HÔpital Malesherbes suffering from a fractured skull. This morning, on recovering consciousness, he states that he was attacked without cause by a drunken Englishman, and struck over the head with a heavy stick. His state is grave."

Dean felt a warm wave of relief. He thanked the journalist cordially and was about to leave, when the telephone bell rang sharply in the adjoining news room. The sub-editor in charge took up the receiver.

"Ullo, ullo! C'est ici le Chronicle," said the sub-editor, and after listening for a moment signed imperatively to Martin to come in and shut the door.

Presently Martin came out from the news room bustling with energy and took Dean by the arm. "You specified two apaches, didn't you?" he asked, and hurried on without waiting for an answer. "One was probably the injured innocence now at the Malesherbes and cursing those sacrÉs Angliches, but the other lies low and says nuffink. That's the one that interests me. Come along in my taxi and watch me chase a story."

Stopping only to borrow fifty francs for expenses from the cashier's wicket, Martin hurried his friend into a taximeter cab and gave the brief direction: "Pont de Neuilly."

Three-quarters of an hour later they had reached the bridge at the end of the long avenue of the suburb of Neuilly and had dismissed the cab.

"Now for our imitaciong Sherlock Holmes," said Martin. "The 'phone message was that a man had found a fur coat and a gold-mounted stick under some bushes by the left bank of the Seine four hundred metres down stream. He was apparently some sort of workman, and explained that he had no wish to be mixed up with the police. On the other hand, he felt he had to do his duty by the civilization that provides him with a blue blouse, bread, and bock, so he 'phoned the news to us.... Wish everyone was as sensible," he added, viewing the matter from a professional standpoint.

Three hundred yards down, they began to look very carefully amongst the bushes that line the water's edge. It was not long before they came to the object of their search. Under an alder-bush they found it—a heavy fur-lined coat sodden with the river water, and a gold-mounted stick.

The maker's name had been cut out of the overcoat; its pockets were empty.

Martin held it up. "Did this belong to your man?" he asked, as though sure of the answer.

"No," answered Dean decisively.

The journalist whisked around in complete surprise and looked at him keenly. "Sure?"

"Positive. There was astrakhan on the collar and cuffs of the coat my man was wearing."

"And this stick?"

"It looks much the same kind, but then there are thousands of sticks like this in use."

The stout little journalist looked pathetically disappointed. For the moment he had no thought beyond the professional aspect of the matter—the unearthing of a "good story"—and the human significance of what he had found was entirely out of mind. He turned over the coat and stick in obvious perplexity, as though they ought somehow to contain the key to the puzzle if only he could see it. Then he examined the traces of footsteps on the damp earth by the water-side. There was another set of footprints beside their own—no doubt the footprints of the man who had first found the objects and 'phoned to the Chronicle.

"What are you going to do next?" asked the young clerk.

"Take them to the police?"

Martin looked up and down the river bank. That part of the Seine is usually deserted except for nursemaids and children and an occasional workman. At the moment there was apparently no one in sight.

"You don't know the Paris police—that's evident," returned the journalist. "They would throw fits on the floor if I were so much as to carry off a coat-button. No, we must hide the coat and stick in the bushes again, and tell them to-morrow."

"Why to-morrow?"

"Twenty-four hours' start is due to my owners, bless their sensational little hearts. If nothing further comes to light, then the press steps aside and allows the law to take its course. Meanwhile to the Morgue and the Malesherbes. We'll pick up a cab on the Avenue de Neuilly. Newspaper life, my young friend, is one dam taxi after another."

The Morgue is, of course, no longer the public peep-show that it used to be, but Martin's card procured him instant admission. On the inclined marble slabs, down which ice water gently trickles, were two ghastly white figures of women which had been waiting identification for some days. The object of their search was not at the Morgue.

They proceeded across Paris to the HÔpital Malesherbes, but at the Place de l'Opera Dean asked to be put down. The journalist promised to 'phone to the Grand Hotel if anything of interest came to light, and Arthur Dean went to make his report to Lars Larssen. It was already past mid-day, and without doubt the shipowner would be impatient to hear news.

Only stopping at a telephone call office for a few minutes, Dean hurried to his employer's suite of rooms.

"Well?" asked Lars Larssen.

"To begin at the beginning, sir, I waited last night in the Rue Laffitte until Mr Matheson came out of his office. It was not long before he appeared, and then——"

The shipowner interrupted curtly. "I want the heart of the matter."

Dean gulped and answered: "I believe Mr Matheson has been murdered."

"Believe! Do you know?"

"Of course I don't know for certain, sir; but this morning I assisted at the finding of his coat and stick on the banks of the Seine."

"Sure they were his?"

"Yes, quite sure. I was with a journalist friend of mine, but I didn't let him know that I recognized the coat and stick. I thought perhaps you would like me to tell you before the matter was made public."

"Good! Now give me the full story."

Arthur Dean summoned up his nerve to tell the connected tale he had thought out during the long cab rides that morning. It was essential that he should disguise his cowardice and his failure to carry out orders of the night before. With that exception, his account was a truthful and detailed story of all that had happened. He concluded with:—

"I 'phoned up Mr Matheson's office—without telling my name—and asked if he was in or had been to the office this morning. They said no. I got his hotel address from them and 'phoned the hotel. They also could tell me nothing about Mr Matheson."

Lars Larssen paced the room in silence for some time. Finally he shot out a question.

"Your salary is?"

"£100 a year, sir."

"Engaged, or likely to be?"

The young man blushed deeply as he replied: "I hope to be shortly."

"You can't marry on two pound a week."

"I am hoping to get promotion in the office, and then——"

"Do you understand how to get promotion?"

"Of course, sir. I intend to work hard and study the details of the business outside my own department, and learn Spanish as well as French——"

Lars Larssen flicked thumb and finger together contemptuously. "The men I pay real money to are not that kind of men."

Arthur Dean looked in surprise.

"Now see here," pursued the shipowner, fixing his eyes deep into the young man's, "why did you lie to me just now?"

Dean went deathly white, and began to falter a denial.

"Don't lie any further! Something happened last night that you haven't told me of. I know, because you brought in no report last night. Out with it!"

Under that merciless look the young clerk made a clean breast of the matter. His voice shook as he realized that it probably meant instant dismissal for him. Here was the end of all his hopes.

Lars Larssen made no comment until the last details had been faltered out. Then he said abruptly: "I propose to raise you £300 a year."

Dean stared at him in silent amazement.

"£300 a year is good salary for a young man. If I pay it, I want it earned. Now understand this: what I want in my men is absolute loyalty, absolute obedience to orders, and absolute truthfulness to me. Lie to others if you like—that's no concern of mine—but not to me. Further, understand what orders mean. If I tell you to do a thing, I am wholly responsible for its outcome. The responsibility is not yours—it's mine. Got that?"

"It's very generous of you to give me such a chance, sir. It's much more than I have the right to expect. You can count on my loyalty and obedience to the utmost—of course, provided that——"

"The men I want to raise in my employ, and the men I have raised, leave fine scruples to me. That's my end. Your end is to carry out orders. If you're going to set store on niceties of truthfulness when business interests demand otherwise, you'll remain a two-pound-a-week clerk all your life."

Dean's weakness of moral fibre had been shrewdly weighed up by Larssen. The young man was plastic clay to be moulded by a firm grasp. £300 a year opened out to him a vista of roseate possibilities. £300 a year was his price.

The colour came and went in his face as he thought out the meaning of what his employer had just said. At length he answered: "I owe you many thanks, sir. What do you want me to do?"

"Understand this: £300 a year is your starting salary. If I find you after trial to be the man I think you are, you can look forward to bigger money.... Now my point lies here; Mr Matheson was engaged with me in a large-scale enterprise. Alive, he would have been useful to me. I intend to keep him alive!"