LITMIR.BIZ

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each of the First Empire pieces of furniture seemed burnt into her brain: and the human faces of the dull gold sphinxes which jutted from each of the corners of the long, low settee seemed to grin at her maliciously.

      She felt unutterably forlorn and wretched. If only she could do something! She told herself, with a sensation of recoil and revolt, that she could never face another day of suspense and waiting spent as had been the whole of yesterday afternoon and evening.

      Going up to the brass-rimmed round table, she took up a book which was lying there. It was a guide to Paris, arranged on the alphabetical principle. Idly she began turning over the leaves, and then suddenly Nancy Dampier's cheeks, which had become so pale as to arouse Senator Burton's commiseration, became deeply flushed. She turned over the leaves of the guide-book with feverish haste, anxious to find what it was that she now sought there before the return of Gerald Burton.

      At last she came to the page marked M.

      Yes, there was what she at once longed and dreaded to find! And she had just read the last line of the paragraph when Gerald Burton came back into the room.

      Looking at him fixedly, she said quietly and in what he felt to be an unnaturally still voice, "Mr. Burton? There is a place in Paris called the Morgue. Do you not think that I ought to go there, to-day? It says in this guide-book that people who are killed in the streets of Paris are taken straight to the Morgue."

      The young American nodded gravely. The Commissary of Police had mentioned the Morgue, had in fact suggested that those who were seeking John Dampier would do well to go there within a day or two.

      Nancy went on:--"Could I go this morning? I would far rather go by myself, I mean without saying anything about it to either your father or to your sister."

      He answered quickly, but so gently, so kindly, that the tears sprang to her eyes, "Yes, I quite understand that. But of course you must allow me to go with you."

      And she answered, again in that quiet, unnaturally still voice, "Thank you. I shall be grateful if you will." Then after a moment, "Couldn't we start soon--I mean now?"

      "Why yes, certainly--if you wish it."

      Without saying anything further, she went to put on her hat.

      Gerald Burton's notions as to the Morgue were in a sense at once confused and clear. He had known of the place ever since he could read. He was aware that it was a building where all those who die a violent death are at once taken: he imagined it further to be a place where morbid curiosity drew daily many tourists. In fact in an old guide-book of which his father was fond he remembered that there ran a sentence:--

      The Morgue is certainly one of the most curious and extraordinary sights of Paris, but only those who are in the enjoyment of good nerves are advised to visit it.

      As he waited for Mrs. Dampier the young man's face became very, very grave. Till now he had not envisaged the possibility that John Dampier, this unknown man across the current of whose life he, Gerald Burton, had been thrust in so strange and untoward a manner, might be dead.

      Sudden death--that dread possibility which is never far from any one of us--never haunts the mind of normal youth.

      But now there came to Gerald Burton a sudden overwhelming understanding of the transience not only of human life, but what means so much more to most sentient human beings, the transience of such measure of happiness as we poor mortals are allowed to enjoy.

      His imagination conjured up Nancy Dampier as he had first seen her standing in Virginie Poulain's little room. She had been a vision of lovely girlhood, and yes, far more than that--though he had not known it then--of radiant content.

      And now?

      His unspoken question was answered by Mrs. Dampier's return into the room. He looked at her searchingly. Yes, she was lovely--her beauty rather heightened than diminished, as is so often the case with a very young woman, by the ordeal she was going through, but all the glow and radiance were gone from her face.

      "I ought to have told you before," he said impulsively, "that--that among the men who were taken to the Morgue yesterday morning there was no one who in the least answered to the description you have given me of Mr. Dampier--so much the Commissary of Police was able to inform me most positively."

      And Nancy drew a long convulsive breath of relief.

      They went down to the courtyard, and across to the porte cochère. While they did so Gerald Burton was unpleasantly conscious that they were being watched; watched from behind the door which led into the garden, for there stood Jules, a broom as almost always in his hand: watched from the kitchen window, where Madame Poulain stood with arms akimbo: watched from behind the glass pane of the little office which was only occupied when Monsieur Poulain was engaged in the pleasant task of making out his profitable weekly bills.

      But not one of the three watchers came forward and offered to do them even the usual, trifling service of hailing a cab.

      The two passed out into the narrow street and walked till they came to the square where stood, at this still early hour of the morning, long rows of open carriages.

      "I think we'd better drive?" said Gerald Burton questioningly.

      And his companion answered quickly, "Oh yes! I should like to get there as quickly as possible." And then her pale face flushed a little. "Mr. Burton, will you kindly pay for me?"

      She put her purse, an absurd, delicately tinted little beaded purse which had been one of her wedding presents, into his hand.

      Gerald took it without demur. Had he been escorting an American girl, he would have insisted on being paymaster, but some sure instinct had already taught him how to treat Nancy Dampier--he realised she preferred not adding a material to the many immaterial obligations she now owed the Burton family.

      A quarter of an hour's quick driving brought them within sight of the low, menacing-looking building which is so curiously, in a sense so beautifully, situated on the left bank of the Seine, to the right of Notre Dame.

      "Mrs. Dampier? I beg you not to get out of the carriage till I come and fetch you," said Gerald earnestly, "there is no necessity for you to come into the Morgue unless--" he hesitated.

      "I know what you mean," she said quietly. "Unless you see someone there who might be Jack. Yes, Mr. Burton, I'll stay quietly in the carriage till you come and fetch me. It's very good of you to have thought of it."

      But when they drew up before the great closed door two or three of the incorrigible beggars who spend their days in the neighbourhood of the greater Paris churches, came eagerly forward.

      Here were a fine couple, a good-looking Englishman and his bride. True, they were about to be cheated out of their bit of fun, but they might be good for a small dole--so thought the shrewder of those idlers who seemed, as the carriage drew up, to spring out of the ground.

      One of them strolled up to Gerald. "M'sieur cannot go into the Morgue unless he has a permit," he said with a whine.

      Gerald shook the man off, and rang at the closed door. It seemed a long time before it was opened by a man dressed like a Paris workman, that is in a bright blue blouse and long baggy white trousers.

      "I want to view any bodies which were brought in yesterday. I fear I am a little early?"

      He slipped a five franc piece into the man's hand. But the silver key which unlocks so many closed doors in Paris only bought this time a civil answer.

      "Impossible, monsieur! I should lose my place. I could not do it for a thousand francs." And then in answer to the American's few words of surprise and discomfiture,--"Yes, it's quite true that we were open to the public till three years ago. But it's easier to get into the Elysée than it is to get into the Morgue, nowadays." He waited a moment, then he murmured under his breath, "Of course if monsieur cares to say that he is looking for someone who has disappeared, and if he will provide a description, the more commonplace the better, then--well, monsieur may be able to obtain a permit! At any rate monsieur has only to go along to the office where permits are issued to find that

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