The young man turned down the Avenue Malakoff, after he had left Berselius’s house, in the direction of the Avenue des Champs ElysÉes.

In twenty-four hours a complete change had taken place in his life. His line of travel had taken a new and most unexpected course; it was as though a train on the North German had, suddenly, by some mysterious arrangement of points and tracks, found itself on the Paris-Lyons and Mediterranean Railway.

Yesterday afternoon the prospect before him, though vague enough, was American. A practice in some big central American town. It would be a hard fight, for money was scanty, and in medicine, especially in the States, advertisement counts for very much.

All that was changed now, and the hard, definite prospect that had elbowed itself out of vagueness stood before him: Africa, its palms and poisonous forests, the Congo—Berselius.

Something else besides these things also stood before him very definitely and almost casting them into shade. Maxine.

Up to this, a woman had never stood before him as a possible part of his future, if we except Mary Eliza Summers, the eleven-year-old daughter of old Abe Summers, who kept the store in Dodgeville, Vermont, years ago—that is to say, when Paul Quincy Adams was twelve, an orchard-robbing hooligan, whose chief worry in life was that, though he could thrash his eldest brother left-handed, he was condemned by the law of entail to wear his old pants.

When a man falls in love with a woman—really in love—though the attainment of his desire be all but impossible, he has reached the goal of life; no tide can take him higher toward the Absolute. He has reached life’s zenith, and never will he rise higher, even though he live to wield a sceptre or rule armies.

Adams reached the Place de la Concorde on foot, walking and taking his way mechanically, and utterly unconscious of the passers-by.

He was studying in minute detail Maxine Berselius, the pose of her head outlined against the tapestry, the curves of her lips that could speak so well without speaking, the little shell-like ears, the brown-gold coils of her hair, her hands, her dress.

He was standing undetermined as to his route, and whether he would cross over to the Rue St. HonorÉ or turn toward the Seine, when someone gripped his arm from behind, and, turning, he found himself face to face with Dr. Stenhouse, an English physician who had set up in Paris, practising in the Boulevard Haussmann and flourishing exceedingly.

“Well, this is luck,” said Stenhouse. “I lost your address, or I would have written, asking you to come and see us. I remembered it was over on the other side of the water somewhere, but where exactly I could not remember. What are you doing with yourself?”

“Nothing, just at present.”

“Well, see here. I’m going to the Rue du Mont Thabor to see a patient; walk along with me—it’s quite close, just behind the Rue St. HonorÉ.”

They crossed the Place de la Concorde.

“You have finished your post-graduate work, I expect,” said Stenhouse. “Are you going to practise in the States?”

“Ultimately, I may,” replied Adams. “I have always intended doing so; but I have to feel my way very cautiously, for the money market is not in a particularly flourishing state with me.”

“Good heavens!” said Stenhouse, “when is it with a medical man, especially when he is just starting? I’ve been through that. See here, why don’t you start in Paris?”

“Paris?”

“Yes, this is the place to make money. You say you are thinking of starting in some American city; well, let me tell you, there are very few American cities so full of rich Americans as Paris.”

“Well,” said Adams, “the idea is not a bad one, but just for the present I am fixed. I am going on a big-game shooting expedition to the Congo.”

“As doctor?”

“Yes, and the salary is not bad—two thousand francs a month and everything found, to say nothing of the fun.”

“And the malaria?”

“Oh, one has to run risks.”

“Whom are you going with?”

“A man called Berselius.”

“Not Captain Berselius?” asked Stenhouse, stopping dead.

“Yes, Captain Berselius, of No. 14 Avenue Malakoff. I have just returned from having dÉjeuner with him.”

Stenhouse whistled. They were in the Rue du Mont Thabor by this, in front of a small cafÉ.

“Well,” said Adams, “what’s wrong?”

“Everything,” replied the other. “This is the house where my patient lives. Wait for me, for a moment, like a good fellow. I shan’t detain you long, and then we can finish our talk, for I have something to tell you.”

He darted into the cafÉ and Adams waited, watching the passers-by and somewhat perturbed in mind. Stenhouse’s manner impressed him uncomfortably, for, if Captain Berselius had been the devil, the Englishman could not have put more disfavour into his tone. And he (Adams) had made a compact with Captain Berselius.

The Rue du Mont Thabor is a somewhat gloomy little street, and it fitted Adams’s mood as he waited, watching the passers-by and the small affairs of the little shops.

At the end of five minutes Stenhouse returned.

“Well?” said Adams.

“I have had no luncheon yet,” replied Stenhouse. “I have been so rushed. Come with me to a little place I know in the Rue St. HonorÉ, where I can get a cup of tea and a bun. We will talk then.”

“Now,” said Stenhouse, when he was seated at a little marble-topped table with the cup of tea and the bun before him. “You say you have engaged yourself to go to the Congo with Captain Berselius.”

“Yes. What do you know about him?”

“That’s just the difficulty. I can only say this, and it’s between ourselves, the man’s name is a byword for a brute and a devil.”

“That’s cheerful,” said Adams.

“Mind you,” said Stenhouse, “he is in the very best society. I have met him at a reception at the ElysÉe. He goes everywhere. He belongs to the best clubs; he’s a persona grata at more courts than one, and an intimate friend of King Leopold of Belgium. His immense wealth, or part of it, comes from the rubber industry—motor tires and so forth. And he’s mad after big game. That’s his pleasure—killing. He’s a killer. That is the best description of the man. The lust of blood is in him, and the astounding thing, to my mind, is that he is not a murderer. He has killed two men in duels, and they say that it is a sight to see him fighting. Mind you, when I say ‘murderer,’ I do not mean to imply that he is a man who would murder for money. Give the devil his due. I mean that he is quite beyond reason when aroused, and if you were to hit Captain Berselius in the face he would kill you as certain as I’ll get indigestion from that bun I have just swallowed. The last doctor he took with him to Africa died at Marseilles from the hardships he went through—not at the hands of Berselius, for that would have aroused inquiry, but simply from the hardships of the expedition; but he gave frightful accounts to the hospital authorities of the way this Berselius had treated the natives. He drove that expedition right away from Libreville, in the French Congo, to God knows where. He had it under martial law the whole time, clubbing and thrashing the niggers at the least offence, and shooting with his own hand two of them who tried to desert.”

“You must remember,” said Adams, taking up the cudgels for Berselius and almost surprised himself at so doing, “that an expedition like that, if it is not held together by a firm hand, goes to pieces, and the result is disaster for everyone. And you know what niggers are.”

“There you are,” laughed Stenhouse. “The man has obsessed you already, and you’ll come back, if you go, like Bauchardy, the man who died in the hospital at Marseilles, cursing Berselius, yet so magnetized by the power of the chap that you would be ready to follow him again if he said ‘Come,’ and you had the legs to stand on. That is how Bauchardy was.”

“The man, undoubtedly, has a great individuality,” said Adams. “Passing him in the street one might take him for a very ordinary person. Meeting him for the first time, he looks all good nature; that smile——”

“Always,” said Stenhouse. “Beware of a man with a perpetual smile on his face.”

“Yes, I know that, but this smile of Berselius’s is not worn as a cloak. It seems quite natural to the man, yet somehow bad, as if it came from a profound and natural cynicism directed against all things—including all things good.”

“You have put it,” said Stenhouse, “in four words.”

“But, in spite of everything,” said Adams, “I believe the man to have great good qualities: some instinct tells me so.”

“My dear sir,” said Stenhouse, “did you ever meet a bad man worth twopence at his trade who had not good qualities? The bad man who is half good—so to speak—is a much more dangerous villain than the barrier bully without heart or soul. When hell makes a super-excellent devil, the devil puts goodness in just as a baker puts soda in his bread to make it rise. Look at Verlaine.”

“Well,” said Adams, “I have promised Berselius, and I will have to go. Besides, there are other considerations.”

He was thinking of Maxine, and a smile lit up his face.

“You seem happy enough about it,” said Stenhouse, rising to go. “Well, ‘he who will to Cupar maun to Cupar.’ When do you start?”

“I don’t know yet, but I shall hear to-night.”

They passed out into the Rue St. HonorÉ, where they parted.

“Good luck,” said Stenhouse, getting into a fiacre.

“Good-bye,” replied Adams, waving his hand.

Being in that quarter of the town, and having nothing especial to do, he determined to go to Schaunard’s in the Rue de la Paix, and see about his guns.

Schaunard personally superintends his own shop, which is the first gun-shop on the Continent of Europe. Emperors visit him in person and he receives them as an equal, though far superior to them in the science of sport. An old man now, with a long white beard, he remembers the fowling-pieces and rifles which he supplied to the Emperor Maximilian before that unfortunate gentleman started on his fatal expedition in search of a throne. He is a mathematician as well as a maker of guns; his telescopic sights and wind gauges are second to none in the world, and his shop front in the Rue de la Paix exposes no wares—it has just a wire blind, on which are blazoned the arms of Russia, England, and Spain.

But, inside, the place is a joy to a rightly constituted man. Behind glass cases the long processions of guns and rifles, smooth, sleek, nut-brown and deadly, are a sight for the eyes of a sportsman.

The duelling pistol is still a factor in Continental life, and the cases containing them at Schaunard’s are worth lingering over, for the modern duelling pistol is a thing of beauty, very different from the murderous hair-trigger machines of Count Considine—though just as deadly.

To Schaunard, pottering amongst his wares, appeared Adams.

The swing-door closed, shutting out the sound of the Rue de la Paix, and the old gun-merchant came forward through the silence of his shop to meet his visitor.

Adams explained his business. He had come to buy some rifles for a big-game expedition. Captain Berselius had recommended him.

“Ah! Captain Berselius?” said Schaunard, and an interested look came into his face. “True, he is a customer of mine. As a matter of fact, his guns for his new expedition are already boxed and directed for Marseilles. Ah, yes—you require a complete outfit, I suppose?”

“Yes,” said Adams. “I am going with him.”

“Going with Captain Berselius as a friend?”

“No, as a doctor.”

“True, he generally takes a doctor with him,” said Schaunard, running his fingers through his beard. “Have you had much experience amidst big game, and can you make out your own list of requirements, or shall I help you with my advice?”

“I should be very glad of your advice. No, I have not had much experience in big-game shooting. I have shot bears, that’s all——”

“Armand!” cried Schaunard, and a pale-faced young man came forward from the back part of the shop.

“Open me this case.”

Armand opened a case, and the deft hand of the old man took down a double-barrelled cordite rifle, light-looking and of exquisite workmanship.

“These are the guns we shoot elephants with nowadays,” said Schaunard, handling the weapon lovingly. “A child could carry it, and there is nothing living it will not kill.” He laughed softly to himself, and then directed Armand to bring forward an elephant gun of the old pattern. In an instant the young man returned, staggering under the weight of the immense rifle, shod with a heel of india-rubber an inch thick.

Adams laughed, took the thing up with one hand, and raised it to his shoulder as though it had been a featherweight.

“Ah!” said he, “here’s a gun worth shooting with.”

Schaunard looked on with admiration at the giant handling the gigantic gun.

“Oh, for you,” said he, “it’s all very well. Ma foi, but you suit one another, you both are of another day.”

“God bless you,” said Adams, “you can pick me up by the bushel in the States. I’m small. Say, how much is this thing?”

“That!” cried Schaunard. “Why, what on earth could you want with such an obsolete weapon as that?”

“Tell me—does this thing hit harder, gun for gun—not weight for weight, mind you—but gun for gun—than that double-barrel you are holding in your hands?”

“Oh, yes,” said Schaunard, “it hits harder, just as a cannon would hit harder, but——”

“I’ll have her,” said Adams. “I’ve taken a fancy to her. See here, Captain Berselius is paying for my guns; they are his, part of the expedition—I want this as my own, and I’ll pay you for her out of my own pocket. How much is she?”

Schaunard, whose fifty years of trading had explained to him the fact that when an American takes a whim into his head it is best for all parties to let him have his own way, ran his fingers through his beard.

“The thing has no price,” said he. “It is a curiosity. But if you must have it—well, I will let you have it for two hundred francs.”

“Done,” said Adams. “Have you any cartridges?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Schaunard. “Heaps. That is to say, I have the old cartridges, and I can have a couple of hundred of them emptied and re-filled and percussioned. Ah, well, monsieur, you must have your own way. Armand, take the gun; have it attended to and packed. And now that monsieur has his play-toy,” finished the old man, with one of his silent little laughs, “let us come to business.”

They did, and nearly an hour was spent whilst the American chose a double hammerless-ejector cordite rifle and a .256 sporting Mannlicher, for Schaunard was a man who, when he took an interest in a customer, could be very interesting.

When business was concluded Schaunard gave his customer various tips as to the treatment of guns. “And now,” said he, opening the door as Adams was taking his departure, “I will give you one more piece of advice about this expedition. It is a piece of private advice, and I will trust you not to tell the Captain that I gave it to you.”

“Yes. What is the advice?”

“Don’t go.”

Adams laughed as he turned on his heel, and Schaunard laughed as he closed the door.

A passer-by might have imagined that the two men had just exchanged a good joke.

Before Adams had taken three steps, the door of the shop re-opened, and Schaunard’s voice called again.

“Monsieur.”

“Yes?” said Adams, turning.

“You need not pay me for the gun till you come back.”

“Right,” said Adams, laughing. “I will call in and pay you for it when I come back. Au revoir.”

“Adieu.”