“Take note, my good Ratichon,” he said, “that our partnership is dissolved as from to-morrow, the twentieth day of September.”

“As from this moment, you infernal scoundrel!” I cried.

But he did not pause to listen, and slammed the door in my face.

For two or three minutes I remained quite still, whilst I heard the shuffling footsteps slowly descending the corridor.  Then I followed him, quietly, surreptitiously, as a fox will follow its prey.  He never turned round once, but obviously he knew that he was being followed.

I will not weary you, my dear Sir, with the details of the dance which he led me in and about Paris during the whole of that memorable day.  Never a morsel passed my lips from breakfast to long after sundown.  He tried every trick known to the profession to throw me off the scent.  But I stuck to him like a leech.  When he sauntered I sauntered; when he ran I ran; when he glued his nose to the window of an eating house I halted under a doorway close by; when he went to sleep on a bench in the Luxembourg Gardens I watched over him as a mother over a babe.

Towards evening—­it was an hour after sunset and the street-lamps were just being lighted—­he must have thought that he had at last got rid of me; for, after looking carefully behind him, he suddenly started to walk much faster and with an amount of determination which he had lacked hitherto.  I marvelled if he was not making for the Rue Daunou, where was situated the squalid tavern of ill-fame which he was wont to frequent.  I was not mistaken.

I tracked the traitor to the corner of the street, and saw him disappear beneath the doorway of the Taverne des Trois Tigres.  I resolved to follow.  I had money in my pocket—­about twenty-five sous—­and I was mightily thirsty.  I started to run down the street, when suddenly Theodore came rushing back out of the tavern, hatless and breathless, and before I succeeded in dodging him he fell into my arms.

“My money!” he said hoarsely.  “I must have my money at once!  You thief!  You . . .”

Once again my presence of mind stood me in good stead.

“Pull yourself together, Theodore,” I said with much dignity, “and do not make a scene in the open street.”

But Theodore was not at all prepared to pull himself together.  He was livid with rage.

“I had five francs in my pocket last night!” he cried.  “You have stolen them, you abominable rascal!”

“And you stole from me a bracelet worth three thousand francs to the firm,” I retorted.  “Give me that bracelet and you shall have your money back.”

“I can’t,” he blurted out desperately.

“How do you mean, you can’t?” I exclaimed, whilst a horrible fear like an icy claw suddenly gripped at my heart.  “You haven’t lost it, have you?”

“Worse!” he cried, and fell up against me in semi-unconsciousness.

I shook him violently.  I bellowed in his ear, and suddenly, after that one moment of apparent unconsciousness, he became, not only wide awake, but as strong as a lion and as furious as a bull.  We closed in on one another.  He hammered at me with his fists, calling me every kind of injurious name he could think of, and I had need of all my strength to ward off his attacks.