The Stratagem and Other Stories

de Rivoli. By this means he cannoned into a worthy Frenchman (who refused to take him seriously) and so was shocked into himself. He pulled out his watch. Only an hour and a half to catch his train. Just as he was beginning to enjoy him- self, too. What a shame! He couldn't even send a tele- gram without letting somebody know where he was— and at home they supposed him to be visiting a business acquaintance in Shropshire. I'll have a mementum, thought he, if I die for it. I’ll—I don’t care. I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb— I'll go the whole hog. I know there's shops about here. So, turning, in his excitement and determination, he saw when you invoke the devil he is usually half-way to you—a shop window full of photographs of the pictures and sculptures of the Louvre. He looked up and down the street—the sight of a top hat might have saved him even at the eleventh hour. But no! nothing that looked in the least like an Englishman, even to his overheated fear of discovery. He peered and dodged about for a little like a man stalking dangerous game, and then, with sudden stealth, his back to the door, pushed down the lever and slid into the shop. “Avvy-voo photography?” he said hurriedly, with averted face. “Certainly, sir,” replied the shopkeeper in perfect English. “What does Monsieur require? Photographs of Paris, of Fontainebleau, of the Louvre, of Versailles?” But English would not serve the turn of Theodore Bugg. He nearly bolted from the shop. An English voice—it was almost Discovery! “Kerker shows,” he muttered doggedly enough, though his head hung lower than ever. “Kelker shows tray sho. Voo savvy?—tray tray sho—par propre!” The shopman, not yet old enough to master his dis- gust at the familiar incident, brought forward several books of photographs.