"L'Abbaye Theleme."_

A date was added, the date of that very day...

Deliberately, having conned this communication, Lanyard produced his
cigarette-case, selected a cigarette, found his briquet, struck a
light, twisted the note of twenty pounds into a rude spill, set it
afire, lighted his cigarette there from and, rising, conveyed the
burning paper to a cold and empty fire-place wherein he permitted it to
burn to a crisp black ash.

When this was done, his smile broke through his clouding scowl.

"Well, my friend!" he apostrophized the author of that document which
now could never prove incriminating--"at all events, I have you to thank
for a new sensation. It has long been my ambition to feel warranted in
lighting a cigarette with a twenty-pound note, if the whim should ever
seize me!"

His smile faded slowly; the frown replaced it: something far more
valuable to him than a hundred dollars had just gone up in smoke ...



VII

L'ABBAYE

His secret uncovered, that essential incognito of his punctured, his
vanity touched to the quick--all that laboriously constructed edifice