Page:A Gentleman's Gentleman.djvu/158

 and one of the lowest dens in Paris—they'd kept him drunk with the drug, in the hope that he'd add more money to what they'd robbed him of. On the day Jim and I set out for the cabaret, Grey had sent a messenger down to the Hôtel de Lille to get some of his traps and things. Sir Nicolas came across this messenger, and bribed the whole tale out of him. After that, he didn't want to lose a minute tracing the man, and he went straight off to Montmartre, leaving word at the police-station of what he'd done. The police had long been watching the shop, and when they heard that an Englishman was going there, they sent gendarmes after him—and lucky, too, or this story would not have been written.

How Sir Nicolas was so foolish as to stand between us and the chance of a reward, I only learned when he came to consciousness, nine days after we took him off the dead man's body in the cellar.

"And didn't I begin to be afraid of the whole thing?" said he. "Sure, the police were watching me night and day just as if I was a murderer. Reward or no reward, I was glad to have done with it."

And that was the truth, though old Jonathan Grey, after he'd heard what the police had to say, paid over every shilling of the money he'd promised, and gave me a hundred more for myself. But he was out of Paris while my master lay unconscious, and though Dora Grey cried enough for three, her studies in painting closed on the spot.