"Our neighbour's enterprise usually appears to be a waste of time, does it not?" he said, with the large tolerance of a man owning to many failings.
Alphonse shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands with a gesture of helplessness, further accentuated by the bandage on his wrist.
"I do not so much want to catch the thief as to possess myself of the money," he said.
Devar laughed in the pleasantest manner imaginable.
"And of course," he said, indicating the Frenchman's maimed hand, which was usually in evidence, "you are unable to undertake the search yourself?"
"Then you intend ultimately to join in the chase--you are a great sportsman, I hear?"
The graceful compliment was not lost upon Alphonse, who beamed upon his interlocutor.
"In a small way--in a small way," he answered. "Yes, when they strike a really good scent I shall follow, wounds or no wounds."
At this Mr. Devar expressed some concern, and made himself additionally agreeable. He refused still to be seated, saying that he had but come to ascertain the dinner hour on the following Thursday. Nevertheless, he prolonged his stay and made himself vastly fascinating.
"Le doute empoisonne tout et ne tue rien."
As I walked through the park towards Isabella's house on the evening of the dinner-party, Devar's hansom cab dashed past me and stopped a few yards farther on. The man must have had sharp eyes to recognise me in a London haze on a November evening. Devar leapt from his cab and came towards me.
"Shall I walk with you or will you drive with me?" he said.
Placed between two evil alternatives, I suggested that it would be better for his health to walk with me--hoping, although it was a dry night, that his shiny boots were too precious or tight for such exercise. Mr. Devar, however, made a sign to the groom to follow, and slipped his hand engagingly within my arm.
"Glad of the chance of a walk," he said. "Wish I was a free man like you, Howard, London would not often see me!"
"What would?" I asked, for I like to know where vermin harbours.
"Ah!"--he paused, and, as I thought, glanced at me. "The wide world. Should like, for instance, a roving commission such as yours--to look for a scoundrel with a lot of money-bags, who may be in London or Timbuctoo."