came down into the hall just as I had entered it from the street, and greeted me and pressed my arm paternally. 

 “But this will not do at all,” he said. “This will not do at all,” and summoned the hôtelier from his little dark room off the passage. 

 “I am sorry, Monsieur,” he said, when the bowing goodman appeared, “to find such scant respect paid to my recommendation. If this is the treatment accorded to my patronage, I must convey it elsewhere.” 

 The proprietor was quite amazed, shocked, confounded. What had he done to merit this severe castigation from M. Le Sage? If M. le Baron would but condescend to particularise his offence, the resources of his establishment were at M. le Baron’s command to remedy it. 

 “That is easily specified,” was M. le Baron’s answer. “I sing the modest praises of your hotel to my friend, Mr. Bickerdike; on the strength of these my friend decides to give you a trial. What is the result? You put him into number 19, where the aspect is gloomy, where the paper peels off the wall; where to my certain suspicion there are bugs.” 

 I laughed, not quite liking this appropriation, but the landlord was profuse in his apologies. Not for a moment had he guessed that I was a friend of M. le Baron Le Sage; I had not informed him of the fact; it was a mere question of expediency: Number 19 happened to be the only room vacant at the moment; but since—in short, I was transferred straightway to a very good appartement in the front, where were ample space and comfort, and a powder-closet to poke my head into if I wished, and invoke the ghosts of the dead lords of Montesquieu, whose Hôtel this had once been. 

 Now I should have been grateful for M. le Baron’s friendly offices, and I hope I was, but with a dash of reservation. I did not know what to make of him, in fact, and the uncertainty kept me on my guard. Nor was I the more reassured upon his commiserating me presently on the fact of my friend, Mr. Kennett, not having yet turned up. So he had found out my friend’s name? That might be possible through an inquiry at the Ritz, where Kennett was expected. But why was he interested in inquiring at all? Then, as to my own name; he might have ascertained that, of course, of my present landlord—a pardonable curiosity, only somehow coloured by his unauthorised examination of my room. What had he wanted in there in the first instance? On the other hand, he was evidently held, for whatever reason, in high respect by the proprietor; and if the reason 

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