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 He dismissed the subject abruptly, with a gesture of finality.

"Ye were saying," he asked, "that ye had been seeking me? For why? Can the O'Rourke be serving a friend in any way?"

"You are unemployed?"

"True for ye, Chambret. Ye have said it."

"Will you accept—"

"Mon ami," O'Rourke stated explicitly, "I'll do anything—anything in the whole world that's clean and honorable, saving it's handling a pen. That I will not do for any living man; upon me worrd, sor, niver!"

Chambret chuckled his appreciation of this declaration. "I suspected as much," he said. "But—this is no clerical work, I promise you."

"Then, I'm your man. Proceed."

"Let us presume a hypothetical case."

O'Rourke bent forward, the better to lose no word of the Frenchman's.

"Be all means," he encouraged him.

"But," Chambret paused to stipulate, "it is a thing understood between us, as friends, that should I make use of the actual name of a person or place, it will be considered as purely part of the hypothesis?"

"Most assuredly!"

"Good, monsieur. I proceed. Let us suppose, then, that there is, within one thousand miles of our Paris, a grand duchy called Lützelburg—"

"The name sounds familiar," interrupted O'Rourke, with suspicion.

"Purely a supposititious duchy," corrected Chambret gravely.

"Sure, yes,"—as solemnly.