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 remained in Paris for some weeks after the affair of the golden egg before there was any thing happened to us worth writing about. When the luck changed, if you call it luck, it did so sudden, and the strange adventure of which I now propose to speak was upon us all in a minute. I date it from the moment when I heard that Michel Grey, Sir Nicolas' American friend, was missing, and that not a soul in Paris could throw any light upon the circumstances of his disappearance. The man had vanished like a phantom, leaving no word, no message, no letter. The city had taken him from our sight. Whether he were alive or dead, in France or out of France, a willing absconder. or the victim of the assassin, neither friend nor enemy could tell. He had gone like the night, and had left us to face the problem as we might.

That it was a problem for us, and that we could not begin and end with his going, I never had a doubt. He had been seen about with Sir Nicolas for the best part of a month; my master's game with his sister, Dora Grey, was known to all the town about;