hear any more complaints of inefficiency or want of good will on your part until those scoundrels have been laid by the "heel."

M. de Saint-Tropèze paused after his peroration.  With an almost imperceptible nod of his handsome head he indicated both to his visitor and to his subordinate that the audience was at an end.  But M. le préfet, though he knew himself to be dismissed, appeared reluctant to go.  There was something which M. le Procureur had forgotten, and the worthy préfet was trying to gather up courage to jog his memory.  He had a mightily wholesome respect for his chief, had M. Vimars, for the Procureur was not only a man of vast erudition and of the bluest blood, but one who was held in high consideration by His Majesty's government in Paris, ay, and, so 'twas said, by His Majesty himself.

So M. Vimars hummed and hawed and gave one or two discreet little coughs, whilst M. le Procureur with obvious impatience was drumming his well-manicured nails against the arm of his chair.  At last he said testily:

"You have something you wish to say to me, my good Monsieur Vimars?"

"Yes, Monsieur le Procureur," hazarded the préfet in reply, "that is--there is the matter of the burglary--and--and the murder last night--that is----"M. le Procureur frowned: "Those are local matters," he said loftily, "which concern the commissary of police, my good Vimars, and are beneath the notice of Monsieur le Ministre's secret agent."
The préfet, conscious of a reprimand, blushed to the very roots of his scanty hair. He rose with some haste and the obvious desire to conceal his discomfiture in a precipitate retreat, when the Man in Grey interposed in his quiet, even monotone:
"Nothing is beneath the notice of a secret agent, Monsieur le Procureur," he said; "and everything which is within the province of the commissary of police concerns the representative of the Minister."
M. Vimars literally gasped at this presumption. How anyone dared thus to run counter to M. le Procureur's orders simply passed his comprehension. He looked with positive horror on the meagre, insignificant personage who even now was meeting M. le Procureur's haughty, supercilious glance without any sign of contrition or of shame.
M. de Saint-Tropèze had raised his aristocratic eyebrows, and tried to wither the audacious malapert with his scornful glance, but the little Man in Grey appeared quite unconscious of the enormity of his offence; he stood by--as was his wont--quietly and silently, his eyes fixed inquiringly on the préfet, who was indeed hoping that the floor would open conveniently and 

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