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Rh is the very man I want to discover—a man whose pencil could recall for me the face of the missing Georges. You say, Madame, that he was an intimate friend of Georges, and that he was a clever portrait-painter. Such a man would not have forgotten his friend's face."

"If you knew what Georges was like, do you suppose you could find him?" asked the Baroness, without eagerness, but with a grave intensity, which accentuated the severe lines of her countenance.

"Yes," replied Heathcote. "I believe that in four-and-twenty hours I could lay my hand on the assassin's shoulder and say, 'Thou art the man.'" "In four-and-twenty hours? There is a distance, then, between you. The man you suspect is not in Paris."

"No, he is not in Paris."

"And if, by means of M. Tillet's art, you are able to assure yourself of his identity, how will you deal with him? Would you deliver him up to justice?"

"Ah, Madame, who knows? Our great poet has said that there is a divinity which shapes our ends—not as we have planned them. If the assassin of your son is the person I believe him to be, he is already punished. He is a doomed man. Joy and hope and comfort are dead for him. The criminal court and the guillotine could be no harder ordeal than the suffering of his daily life. If he is guilty, Heaven has not been blind to his sin. The Eternal Doomsman has pronounced his sentence."

A faint flush illuminated the settled pallor of Mdme. de Maucroix's countenance, a light sparkled in her eyes.

"I knew that he would not escape," she said, in a low voice. "Heaven is just."

"If you will kindly give me M. Tillet's address, Madame, I shall be deeply obliged."

"I can only tell you an address of ten years ago. M. Tillet lived at that time in the Rue Saint-Guillaume. He was then in the flush of success, and I have heard my son say that he had a handsome apartment. Where he may live now in his decadence I know not. But his sons are known, and you will have no difficulty in getting information."

"I apprehend not, Madame. And now, if you will permit me, I would ask one more question."

"As many as you please, Monsieur."

"Have you in your possession any scrap of Georges' writing—any note, however brief?"

"No. There was no such thing found among my boy's effects. The police requested that such a letter or letters should be looked for. They, too, were anxious to procure a specimen of the suspected man's writing; but, although I looked most carefully through all my son's papers, I discovered no such