elaborate combination, swung open the door. Taking from a compartment a
bundle of papers carefully rolled, he unfastened the tape, spread them
on a table and examined them, one after the other. They made a
voluminous heap; here and there on the white pages in bold regular
script appeared the name of a woman; her life lay before him, the
various stages of an odd and erratic career. At a cabaret at Montmartre;
at a casino in the Paris Bohemian quarter; in London--at a variety hall
of amusement. And afterward!--wastrel, nomad! Throughout the writing, in
many of the documents, another name, too, a titled name, a man's, often
came and went, flitted elusively from leaf to leaf.

The reader looked at this name, wrote a page or two, and inserted them.
But his task seemed to afford him little satisfaction; his face wore an
expression not remote from discouragement; none knew better than he the
actual value, for his purpose, of the material before him. The chaff,
froth, bubble of the case!--almost contemptuously he regarded it. Had he
sought the unattainable? Certainly he had left no stone unturned, no
stone, and yet the head and front of what he sought had ever escaped
him--should he ever grasp it?--with these new secret activities menacing
him?--harassing the future?

He drew himself up suddenly, as if to shake off momentary doubt or
depression. Replacing his documents in the safe and locking it, he
walked into a room adjoining; in a bare, square place on the wall hung
foils and broadswords, and the only furnishings were the conventional
appointments of a home gymnasium.

Here, having doffed his street clothes and assumed the scant costume of
the athlete, for an hour or more he exercised vigorously, every muscle
responding to its task with an untiring ease that told of a perfect