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224 ing at the banquet, for I could hear intermittent yappings, and once a sharp ki-yi!

At the foot of the big stone steps I paused and looked about for somebody to hail, wishing that I had rung at the gate; but I had never counted on finding the place deserted, and had thought that once inside the better my chance of success would be.

For this was my plan—and you can see, my friend, that if the first was a sporting proposition, this second, which I had fallen back on rather than have Rosalie mixed up in the business, was almost dangerous. I meant to go to the maître d'hôtel and explain to him that I was a reporter, and ask for the names of Monsieur le Baron's guests. A five-franc piece would get me all the information I might seem to need. I would then explain that I had come from Paris in a taxicab, which had broken down on the road within about a kilometre; that I had walked the remainder of the distance. And I would ask him if he thought that one of the waiting taxis might not set me over to Versailles, which was only about three kilometres away. The maître d'hôtel, I fancied, would tell me that I might go and ask them, and this I would do, feeling sure that Chu-Chu would immediately recognise me and volunteer, trusting to his disguise. Once in the cab and on the way, he would probably pick out the first unpeopled part of the road to turn sharply on his seat and shoot into me. And my particular business was to beat him to it.

It was a nice little plan, and there seemed no particular reason why it shouldn't work. Chu-Chu