ALIAS

THE LONE WOLF




I

WALKING PAPERS


Through the suave, warm radiance of that afternoon of Spring in England
a gentleman of modest and commonly amiable deportment bore a rueful
countenance down Piccadilly and into Halfmoon street, where presently
he introduced it to one whom he found awaiting him in his lodgings,
much at ease in his easiest chair, making free with his whiskey and
tobacco, and reading a slender brown volume selected from his shelves.

This dégagé person was patently an Englishman, though there were traces
of Oriental ancestry in his cast. The other, he of the doleful habit,
was as unmistakably of Gallic pattern, though he dressed and carried
himself in a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon fashion, and even seemed a trace
intrigued when greeted by a name distinctively French.

For the Englishman, rousing from his appropriated ease, dropped his
book to the floor beside the chair, uprose and extended a cordial hand,
exclaiming: "H'are ye, Monsieur Duchemin?"