But there I paused. I lacked the necessary conviction. After all I was
the average citizen, with the average incredulity of the far-fetched,
the melodramatic, the absurd. To connect the head waiter's panic at my
departure with the episode in my room, to declare that the floor clerks
had been called from their posts for a set purpose, and the halls
deliberately cleared for the thief, were flights of fancy that were
beyond me. The more fool I!

By the time I saw the last of the adventure I began that night--it was
all written in the nth power, and introduced in more or less important
roles the most charming girl in the world, the most spectacular hero of
France, the cleverest secret-service agent in the pay of the fatherland,
and I sometimes ruefully suspected, the biggest imbecile of the United
States in the person of myself--I knew better than to call any idea
impossible simply because it might sound wild. But at the moment my
education was in its initial stages, and turning with a shrug from three
scowling faces, I led my friendly bluecoat a little aside.

"I've no more time to-night to spend thief-catching, Officer," I told
him. I had just recalled my dinner, now utterly ruined, and Dunny,
probably at this instant cracking walnuts as fiercely as if each one
were the kaiser's head. "But I'm an amateur in these affairs, and you
are a master. Before I go, as man to man, what the dickens do you make
of this?"

Flattered, he looked profound.

"I'm thinking, sorr," he gave judgment, "ye had the rights of it. Seein'
as how th' thafe is German, ye'll not set eyes on him more--for divil