restaurant--as on the night before, by way of illustration--strangers
who wore all the hall-marks of police detectives from England--catechised
one about a person whose description was the portrait of Bourke, and
promised a hundred-franc note for information concerning the habits and
whereabouts of that person, if seen.

Marcel added, while Bourke gasped for breath, that the gentleman in
question had spoken to him alone, in the absence of other waiters, and
had been fobbed off with a lie.

But why--Bourke wanted to know--had Marcel lied to save him, when the
truth would have earned him a hundred francs?

"Because," Marcel explained coolly, "I, too, am a thief. Monsieur will
perceive it was a matter of professional honour."

Now the Irish have their faults, but ingratitude is not of their number.

Bourke, packing hastily to leave Paris, France and Europe by the
fastest feasible route, still found time to question Marcel briefly;
and what he learned from the boy about his antecedents so worked with
gratitude upon the sentimental nature of the Celt, that when on the
third day following the Cunarder Carpathia left Naples for New York,
she carried not only a gentleman whose brilliant black hair and glowing
pink complexion rendered him a bit too conspicuous among her
first-cabin passengers for his own comfort, but also in the second
cabin his valet--a boy of sixteen who looked eighteen.

The gentleman's name on the passenger-list didn't, of course, in the
least resemble Bourke. His valet's was given as Michael Lanyard.