"Hullo, friend Clermont," exclaimed Lenoir, "what brings you from Paris!"
"Why, it was too hot for me there."
There was a pause.
"And you, too," continued the detective. "I have heard your name mentioned very much of late. How did that affair happen?"
Pierre Lenoir told his friend, whom of course he did not know as a detective, but merely as an associate with coiners and such like people, how he had been tricked by Markby.
"But I'll have his life, though."
"Doubtless. It will be a bad day for him when he falls into your hands."
Lenoir growled a fierce oath.
"He has escaped me for the present, but if I wait for years, I will have my revenge. Pierre Lenoir never forgives."
Unheedful of the coiner's anger, the detective stroked his moustache, and continued—