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 window. The draft had been in his hand when I knocked at the door; he had simply laid it down when he came to answer me.

Five minutes before closing time that night, we drew our money from the Bank of Vienna. A quarter of an hour later we were in Lobmeyr's shop. I don't think I ever heard a man apologize so much or look so astonished.

"This will teach you," said Sir Nicolas, "to be less hasty in your conclusions, sir. You have done us a very great injury, which I hope you will at once repair."

"Most certainly, I will," exclaimed Lobmeyr, as he turned his notes over and over, and examined them for the tenth time. "I will send to the police at once. But what was I to think? I telegraphed to Rome for the references of the Comte de Laon, and they said that he was not here at all, but in Normandy."

"And can't you understand," cried Sir Nicolas, "that a man may very well give it out that he's in Normandy and yet be in Vienna? Oh, you're a person of small discernment, Herr Lobmeyer! I shall have to call upon the police myself. And that reminds me, we left one of your agents in a bad way up at the Singer Strasse. You can just send up a man to release him, and give him a thousand florins for the inconvenience. Indeed, we had to tie him up to the bed before he would let us have our own money."