the sort of thing?" he asked.

"Precisely! A facsimile."

"I thought so. Well, our Colonel, I find, bought a packet of such
cards, intended for admission to a religious function, at a shop
in the Quai Massena. He cut out the centre, and, see here--" The
Commissary turned it over, and showed a piece of paper pasted neatly
over the back; this he tore off, and there, concealed behind it, lay
a folded cheque, with only the place where the signature should be
written showing through on the face which the Seer had presented
to us. "I call that a neat trick," the Commissary remarked, with
professional enjoyment of a really good deception.

"But he burnt the envelope before my eyes," Sir Charles exclaimed.

"Pooh!" the Commissary answered. "What would he be worth as a
conjurer, anyway, if he couldn't substitute one envelope for another
between the table and the fireplace without your noticing it? And
Colonel Clay, you must remember, is a prince among conjurers."

"Well, it's a comfort to know we've identified our man, and the
woman who was with him," Sir Charles said, with a slight sigh of
relief. "The next thing will be, of course, you'll follow them up
on these clues in England and arrest them?"

The Commissary shrugged his shoulders. "Arrest them!" he exclaimed,
much amused. "Ah, monsieur, but you are sanguine! No officer of
justice has ever succeeded in arresting le Colonel Caoutchouc, as
we call him in French. He is as slippery as an eel, that man. He