"On no account," said Savinien, seriously.
Cobb watched him move away, plodding along the pavement heavily, huge and portentous. The back of his head bulged above the collar, with no show of neck between. He was comical and pathetic; he seemed too vast in mere flesh to be the sport of a thing so freakish as luck. To think that such a bulk had a weak heart in it—and that deeper still in its recesses there moved and suffered the soul of a poet!
"Queer yarn," mused Cobb.
It was on the following morning, while Cobb was dressing, that the messenger arrived—a little man in black, with a foot-rule sticking out of his coat-pocket. He looked like an elderly man-servant who had descended to trade. He had a letter for Cobb, addressed in Savinien's pyrotechnic hand, and handed it to him without speaking.
"My dear friend," it said, "I fear the worst. On my return to my rooms here, the first thing I saw was my watch, reposing on my bedside table. It appears that when I made my toilet in the morning I forgot to put it in my pocket. The thief, after all, got nothing. I am lost. In despair, Your Cesar Savinien."
"Yes?" said Cobb. "You want an answer?" For the little artisan in black was waiting.
"An answer!" The other stared. "But——then monsieur does not know?"
"What?"
"He must have been going down to post that note when he had written it," said the little man. "We found it in his hand."
"Eh?" Cobb almost recoiled in the shock of his surprise and horror.
"D'you mean to tell me that after all, he—he is——"