Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/141



E were speaking in a club in Paris of the card-sharper who had just been executed, and each was relating his story: our friend Captain I alone said nothing.

"Are you going to be the only one who does not furnish his share ?" I asked him.

"Do you really wish it?"

"Certainly!"

"Very well, then. However, I warn you that my story is not in the least like yours, and that my thief is very interesting."

"So much the better! We are listening, my dear fellow."

The Captain lit a cigarette and leaned against the mantelpiece of the salon. We drew up our chairs so as to hear better, with that curious avidity of men, who are, after all, only big children. Outside, a gay May sun was shining through the half-closed shutters.

"Six years ago," said the Captain, "I was commanding a garrison at a wearisome little town in a wearisome little department. Not a distraction; never a theatre; scarcely an atrocious café concert.

"One day, my work being ended, I did not know what to do, and little by little I