Ah !  Your  tea  arrives,  I  see.  I  trust  that  you  find  it  in
order.  Permit  me  to  drink  your  health  in  another  cup  of
coffee."

He  paid  the  waiter,  and  in  a  few  moments  they  were
once  more  alone.
"I  was  speaking,"  Leblun  continued,  "of  a  reconstruc-


248  PASSERS-BY

tion.  All  that  Is  so  simple.  We  see,  flying  from  that  scene
of  violence  in  the  Place  Noire  a  few  years  ago,  three  per-
sons and  a  monkey.  We  see  a  man,  the  man  whose
identity  we  wish  to  solve,  clad  in  the  garb  of  a  workman,
pushing  a  street-piano.  Hastening  along  by  his  side,  we
see  the  hunchback,  to  whom  that  musical  instrument  be-
longs. On  the  other  side  of  it  walks  a  child  —  girl  perhaps  I
should  call  her  —  who  only  a  few  weeks  before  had  thrown
in  her  lot  with  that  dwarf,  and  was  singing  in  the  streets
for  her  living.  On  the  top  of  the  piano,  reclining  in  a
basket,  and  rudely  shaken,  I  fear,  by  the  speed  at  which
that  barrow  is  being  pushed,  reposes  the  monkey  Chicot.
They  turn  the  corner  of  the  Place  Noire,  they  are  seen
somewhere  in  the  Rue  Pigalle,  there  is  a  rumor  that  they
pass  through  the  Rue  de  Faubourg  Montmartre.  After
that,  silence.  Space  swallows  them  up.  They  are  gone."

Leblun  ceased  with  a  little  sigh.  Hannaway  produced
his  cigarette  case.
"You  smoke,  I  see,"  he  remarked.  "Permit  me."  He
lit  a  cigarette,  and  leaned  back  in  his  chair.
