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282 ture. The mob knows your story; it knows that you got caught while working the Cuttynge house, and that for some miraculous reason you got off scot free. It's been hinted that you belong to the police, and it's also been hinted that I am too well disposed to you. Do you understand? Now one good job on your part would remove that impression and restore confidence in myself and enable me to put Chu-Chu where he belongs."

"But, my dear Count—" I began, almost stammering; for now I saw what Ivan was after. He interrupted me.

"Listen, Monsieur Clamart: It is true that you passed your word to Mrs. Cuttynge never to steal again; but I understand that she believes you to have broken your faith, and that the circumstances are such that she can never be undeceived. What you wish most of all is that she should continue to believe you guilty and her husband, the real thief, innocent? Is that not so?"

"Yes," I stuttered; "but"

"Let me finish." Ivan leaned toward me across the desk and projected the whole weight of his powerful magnetism. "Mrs. Cuttynge, I take it, is the only person whose faith in you you value, and hers is irrevocably lost. She believes you have dropped back into the underworld—back to your old trade; but if you were to re-emerge you could resume your former position in your half-brother's motor business, and his wife would gradually regain her faith in you, and at the end of a certain time it would be absolutely restored. Now what keeps you from going back? Chu-Chu le Tondeur? I