cigar ascending to the ceiling. Recollections of his child had struck a sympathetic chord in his memory. There were incidents in his life that he would fain have forgotten. One of them was now recalled.

Quickly, however, the shadow passed, and his brow cleared. He became the same easy-going, humorous man he always had been, possessing a merry bonhomie and a fund of stories regarding his own amusing experiences in various out-of-the-way corners of the world.

At last the Doctor, with eighty pounds in his pocket, rose and wished his friend adieu.

Then he walked to a brasserie in the Avenue de l’Opera, where he dined well, concluding his meal with coffee and a liqueur, and at nine o’clock he left the Gare du Nord for Calais and London.

The reason of his sudden flight from Paris was the fear of having contravened the law by not calling in a French medical man when he knew that the case of the mysterious Blanc was hopeless. Detention would mean trouble and much expense. Therefore he deemed it best to get across to England at the earliest possible moment.

At six o’clock next morning he found himself in a small hotel called the Norfolk in Surrey Street, Strand, where he had on one or two occasions stayed. The waiter having brought up his breakfast, he locked the door and, going to the table, he took from his pocket the packet of charred paper and broken tinder which he had abstracted from the stove in Paris.

With infinite care he opened the handkerchief and spread it out. The tinder had broken into tiny fragments and some had been reduced to black powder, while the half-charred paper split as he attempted to open it.

He had switched on the light, for the London dawn had not yet spread. Then, seating himself at the table, he proceeded to examine and decipher the remains of the papers which the dying man believed he had entirely destroyed.

For some time he could make nothing of the lines of written words, which had neither beginning nor end.

Suddenly, however, he held his breath. He sat erect, statuesque, his dark eyes staring at the paper.

Then he re-read the written lines eagerly.

“Great Heavens! How strange!” he cried. “How utterly astounding! That man who refused his name had learned the greatest and most important secret this modern 

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