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Rh premises. Besides, I gathered from your talk that you had need of him, and I did not want to run against your interests."

His eyes bored into me like gimlets. "You are getting very considerate of my interests all at once, Monsieur Clamart. You were less thoughtful the other day at Baron von Hertzfeld's. That little interference of yours cost me a good many thousand francs; a sum of which I stand in considerable need just at this moment."

"I am very sorry, Count," I answered; "but how was I to know? When we last met you told me that you were finished with Chu-Chu, and that I might do what I liked to him for all you cared. I supposed, of course, he was working on his own hook."

Ivan leaned back in his chair twisting the waxed end of his thin, black moustache, his pale, handsome face clouded. For several moments he did not speak, but his luminous eyes shot up at me from time to time from under the long, black lashes.

"Why have you come to see me to-night?" he asked suddenly.

"Because," I answered, "it occurred to me that perhaps I might be running counter to your interests, after all, in hunting Chu-Chu, and I wanted to make sure that it was all right. A man may carry on a feud with another man, but there's no use trying to fight a whole organisation."

"But what made you think that I might be employing Chu-Chu when, as you just said, you believed that I had done with him? Whom have you been talking to? Léontine?"