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“A fine night, sir,” I said to break the ice–“for the season of the year,” I added by way of a saving clause, to tone down the absoluteness of the assertion.

He looked at me abstractedly, merely reechoing my own words, “A fine night, sir, for the season of the year.”

“Why look ye so sad now, who were erst so jolly?” I bluntly asked, determined to force him into conversation.

“Ay, indeed, why so sad now?” he replied, looking me full in the face; then, suddenly clasping my arm with a spasmodic grip, he continued hurriedly, “I think I had best confide our secret to you. You seem a man of thought. I witnessed and admired the patient attention with which you listened to your friend’s abstruse talk in the railway-car. Maybe you can find the solution of a mystery which defies the ponderings of our poor brains–mine and my two friends.”

Then he proceeded to pour into my attentive ear this gruesome tale of mystery:

“We three–that is, myself, yon tall bearded Briton,” pointing to the glass door of the refreshment-room, “whose name is Jack Hobson, and young Emmanuel Topp, junior partner in a great beer firm, whom you may behold now at his fifth bowl of tea and his seventh muffin–are teetotallers—-“

“Teetotallers!” I could not help exclaiming. “Lord bless me! that is certainly about the last thing I should have taken you for, either of you.”

“Well,” he replied with some slight confusion, “at least, we were total teetotallers, though I admit we can now only claim the character of partial abstainers. The fact is, when, about a fortnight ago, we were discussing the plan of our projected visit to the great Paris Exhibition, Topp suggested that while in France we should do as the French do, to which Jack Hobson assented, remarking that the French knew nothing about tea, and that a Frenchman’s tea would be sure to prove an Englishman’s poison. So we resolved to suspend the pledge during our visit to France.

“It was on the second day after our arrival in Paris. We were dining in a private cabinet at Desire Beaurain’s, one of the leading restaurants on the fashionable side of the Montmartre–Italiens Boulevard. Our dinner was what an Irishman might call a most ‘illigant’ affair. We had sipped several bottles of Sauterne, and tasted a few of Tavel, and we were just topping the entertainment with a solitary bottle of champagne, when I became suddenly aware of the presence of another party in the room–a fourth man–who sat him down at our table, and helped himself liberally to our liquor. From what I ascertained afterward from Jack Hobson and Emmanuel Topp, the intruder’s presence became revealed to them also, either about the same time or a little later. What was he like? I cannot tell. His figure and face remained indistinct throughout–phantom-like. His features seemed endowed with a stronge weird mobility that would defyingly elude the fixing grasp of our eager eyes. Now, and to my two companions, he would look marvellously like me; then, to me, he would stalk and rave about in the likeness of Jack Hobson; again, he would seem the counterfeit of Emmanuel Topp; then he would look like all the three of us put together; then like neither of us, nor like anybody else. Oh, sir, it was a woful thing to be haunted by this phantom apparition. Yet the strangest part of the affair was that neither of us seemed to feel a whit surprised at the dread presence; that we quietly and uncomplainingly let him drink our wine, and actually give orders for more; that we never objected, in fact, to any of his sayings and doings. What seemed also strange was that the waiter, while yet receiving and executing his orders, was evidently pretending to ignore his presence. But then, as I dare say you know as well as I do, French waiters are such actors!