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up and brushed past me to a man in the hall who had a colored porter behind him, carrying what looked like a case of booze. The major blustered loudly that “those goods were to go to my billet.” The man was nice as pie, saying the billet was where he was headed, but first —and he rubbed his fingers in the way that means money. The major took out a note, which the man held in his teeth while fishing into a weasel to make change. I was edging to the door and could see it was a hundred-dollar note, but paid no special attention until the man stuffed it into the weasel after handing the change to the major. And that’s when I suddenly saw what “courtesy” meant. One end of the note was torn, a triangular jab about half an inch deep.
    As the man went downstairs with his porter I followed, bellowing my thanks to the major for all his kindness to me. On the street I got the man’s name, Lucan, and his business address on Baronne Street—after buying the bill off him for five twenties and a one. I told him: “I like a big bill in my poke; it impresses my friends.” He was pleased as punch with his profit, and as I rolled down to the City Hotel, I knew I had something.

Chapter 5
    I WAS SO EXCITED I TOLD myself to forget the ransack job; I had enough already, what with this hundred-dollar bill that Jenkins must have got from Burke and the stationery as soon as I traced it, to put up quite a fight. However, I picked up my keys on the way, and when I went up to 301, which was just a regular hotel room with bureau, chair, table, bed, gaslight, and bath, tried both in the door. They both worked perfectly, the skeleton even better than the other. Then I went on to 346, around an angle in the hall, and knocked. Letting me in was a human gorilla, a swarthy thing with hair growing out of its nostrils, thick brows, and a forehead one inch high. It was squat and bandy-legged, and on the back of one hand was an anchor. It had on a clawhammer suit, with patent paper collar of the kind European servants wear, and called in kind of a croak: “M’sieu Boorke!” Burke came out and shook hands, and called it Pierre. “Me gippo,” he said to me, and then: “Pierre, c ’ est M’sieu Craysap .” The thing grunted, bowed kind of stiff, and flicked off one ear the salute that sailors give. Then he went out through a side door of the room.
    “I didn’t know you spoke French,” I said.
    “ ’Tis one of me bonds with Adolphe,” he told me. “Aye, I lived in Paris three years after Nicaragua—until Mexico beckoned, in fact.” He shot me a glance as though to see if Nicaragua meant anything to me, and then when I didn’t react, went on: “I joined the filibuster, and helped organize Accessory Transit—for Walker, early on. He abused me confidence no end, but I managed to sell out to one of Vanderbilt’s men, at a bit iv a profit. That’s when I went to Paris, to take me bearings a bit.”
    “Walker was something, wasn’t he?”
    “A homunculus, but a genius of his kind.”
    “He must have been—to steal a whole country, with just a handful of crazy boys he picked up in San Francisco, and then after he invaded, to start a railroad and make it pay. As Accessory Transit certainly would have, if Vanderbilt hadn’t got in it, starting a feud.”
    “Aye. Aye. And Aye.”
    Pierre came back, in reefer and sailor hat with a red pompon on it of the kind worn in the French Navy, said something about déjeuner , and went out. Burke said: “The perfect retainer. I picked’m up in Matamoros, when his ship sailed without’m. He washes me clothes, minds the door, acts as me bodyguard, and in all ways is me factotum—or gippo, as we say in Limerick. He’d do anything, anything I tell’m, and it doesn’t displease me he speaks not a word of English. One of us is always here, but you’ll have to write your messages.”
    He waved at a desk, a big walnut thing with green baize top, drawers at both sides, and paper, inks, and pens