of trouble.

Here was a thickening plot for Paul Pry. He hugged himself. But who was
Zoug-Zoug? If he could but get at that! He asked the manager, who said
he did not know. He asked a dozen men that evening, but none knew. He
would ask Ian Belward. What a fool not to have thought of him at first.
He knew all the gossip of Paris, and was always communicative--but was
he, after all? He remembered now that the painter had a way of talking
at discretion: he had never got any really good material from him. But
he would try him in this.

So, as Gaston and Jacques travelled down the Boulevard Montparnasse,
Meyerbeer was not far behind. The journalist found Ian Belward at home,
in a cynical indolent mood.

"Wherefore Meyerbeer?" he said, as he motioned the other to a chair, and
pushed over vermouth and cigarettes.

"To ask a question."

"One question? Come, that's penance. Aren't you lying as usual?"

"No; one only. I've got the rest of it."

"Got the rest of it, eh? Nasty mess you've got, whatever it is, I'll be
bound. What a nice mob you press fellows are--wholesale scavengers!"

"That's all right. This vermouth is good enough. Well, will you answer
my question?"