M. le Comte was at home; for Ivan sported a title. The man returned at once and asked me to follow him. We went up a flight of stairs and I was shown into a very handsome and practical-looking office, where Ivan himself, in a velvet costume d'intérieur was seated at a fine mahogany desk.
"How do you do, Mr. Clamart?" said he, rising. Ivan spoke perfect English. He was a fine-looking fellow, with an intelligent, aristocratic face, tall and slender in build, and with beautiful hands.
I replied to his greeting and took the chair which he offered me.
"I cannot tell you how delighted I was to learn of your release," said he. "The whole situation was most dramatic; such a chain of circumstance as one might expect to find in a book or a play, but seldom finds in real life, even in a profession so full of startling incident as my own. Fancy being confronted by your own half-brother while working a strange house, and calmly receiving his bullet rather than to fire upon your own flesh and blood."
"It might interest you to know," said I, "that I have taken bullets before rather than fire on a person who was not of my own flesh and blood."
"Indeed?" said Ivan, raising his fine brows.
"Monsieur," said I, leaning forward and fastening his brilliant eyes with mine, "I have been a successful thief for a good many years. The profession interested me not only from its money profit and excitement but also from the purely artistic point of view. I enjoyed exercising my wit and skill against the difficult problems presented, and have always been fascinated by the interest of the stalk. A big, dark,
