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"How did you find that out?" I asked.

"I traced him by his stick," said he; "an orange-wood cane, with a globe of silver and a little map of the world on the top of it. Is that it?"

"The same," cried I.

"And he wore a hat of black felt, large beyond usual?"

"He did that."

"Then he's at the Maison d'Or; and how we're to get him out, God knows."

"Why, what's the difficulty?"

"I don't like the house," says he, shifting his eyes curiously.

"But what's the matter with it?"

"Oh, there's nothing the matter with it—except that a good many who go in never come out again. I've no fancy for that myself."

"Jim," says I, "you haven't got the heart of a rabbit. What nonsense you're talking! Take me up to the shop, and let me have a look at it."

"I was going to suggest that," says he. "It 'll be dark in an hour, and no one to tread on our heels. I know the woman who keeps the cabaret at the back of the place. It was from the top of a shed in her garden that I looked down into the lower rooms."

"Why not knock at the door at once and have done with it?" says I.

"It would be worth more than your life or mine to do that," cried he. "All the neighborhood knows it. There's not a man that would venture in."