his pointed black beard, eyebrows raised in quiet amusement. His careful evening dress was slightly rumpled under the long cape, and he held a silk hat under his arm.
“Oh, my God,” Villon said slowly and tonelessly.
“Mademoiselle,” explained the stranger, “is not oversupplied with brains.”
“Brains? Brains?” cried Miss Mertz, glaring around her at the group. “What do you mean, brains? Do you know who I am?”
“Why, naturally,” the stranger replied, smiling. “If I may be so bold as to say so, you are the meddling shrew who has nearly ruined a somewhat important piece of work, and I, mademoiselle, am Bencolin, the prefect of police of Paris.”
IV
Bencolin went over to the desk. He put down his hat, removed his opera cloak, and put that beside it; then he pulled off his white gloves—quietly, in perfect stillness. Villon had not moved.
The prefect of police faced them, his finger-tips spread out on the desk. Under the light of the hanging lamp his head was sharply outlined, with the glossy black hair graying at the temples and parted in the middle; the pouches under the quizzical black eyes, and the wrinkles around them; high hooked nose; curling moustache and short pointed beard—with Bencolin, the caricaturists had always a chance for Mephistopheles.
“I am sorry that I have had to resort to this deception,” he said. You noticed not a little of the aristocrat in the back-thrown head, the slow, graceful speech, the faint and dominant contempt with which he faced Miss Mertz. “I have been in France for several days, but few people knew it. I was not pre-
