Although he had been so successful in tracing out M. Platzoff, and in
working the case up to its present point in a remarkably short space of
time, he acknowledged to himself that he was completely baffled when he
came to consider what his next step ought to be. He could not, indeed,
see his way to a single step beyond his present standpoint. Much as he
seemed to have gained at a single leap, was he in reality one
hair's-breadth nearer the secret object of his quest than on that day
when the name of the Great Hara Diamond first made music in his ears? He
doubted it greatly.

When he first decided on coming down to Bon Repos, he trusted that the
chapter of accidents and the good fortune which had so far attended him
would somehow put it in his power to scrape an acquaintance with M.
Platzoff himself, and such an acquaintance once made, it would be his
own fault if, in one way or another, he did not make it subservient to
the ambitious end he had in view.

But in M. Platzoff he found a recluse: a man who made no fresh
acquaintanceships; who held the whole tourist tribe in horror, and who
even kept himself aloof from such of the neighbouring families as might
be considered his equals in social position. It was quite evident to Mr.
Deedes that he might reside close to Bon Repos for twenty years, and at
the end of that time not have succeeded in addressing half-a-dozen words
to its owner.

Then again he had succeeded little better with regard to Cleon than with
regard to Cleon's master. All his advances, made with a mixture of
affability and _bonhommie_ which Mr. Deedes flattered himself was
irresistible with most people, were productive of little or no effect
upon the mulatto. He received them, not with suspicion, for he had