In the letter case was a letter from myself on some small matter of business.
I pointed this out, and signed my name a second time on the yellow and crinkled paper for the further satisfaction of the lawyer.

Then we passed into an inner room and stood in the presence of the dead man.
The recognition was, as the Prefet had said, a painful formality.
Alphonse Giraud and I swore to the clothing--indeed, the linen was marked plainly enough--and we left the undertaker to his work.
Giraud looked at me with a dry smile when we stood in the fresh air again.
"You and I, Howard," he said, "seem to have got on the seamy side of life lately." And during the journey I saw him shiver once or twice at the recollection of what we had seen.

His carriage was awaiting us at the railway station.

Alphonse had been brought up in a school where horses and servants are treated as machines.

The man who stood at the horse's head was, however, anything but mechanical, for he ran up to us as soon as we emerged from the crowded exit.
[Illustration: "A BERLIN--A BERLIN."] "Monseiur le Baron!" he cried excitedly, with a dull light in his eyes that made a man of him, and no servant.