Now, THERE's a story for the papers. January considered the tangle of satin and buckskin, the crimson of the prelate's robe nearly black in the darkness of the passageway save where the oil lamp that burned above the gate splashed it with gory color, the grip of the man's hand on the woman's buttocks and the way her dark braids surged over his tight-clenched arm. Certainly the American papers: Cardinal Richelieu Surprised with Leatherstocking's Sister. It was a common enough sight in the season of Mardi Gras, when the February dark fell early and the muddy streets of the old French town had been rioting since five o'clock with revelers-white, black, and colored, slave and free, French and American-bedizened in every variation of evening costume or fancy dress. God knew there were women enough yanking men off the high brick banquettes into doorways and carriage gates and public houses on Rue Royale and Rue Bourbon and all over the old quarter tonight. He wondered what Titian or Rembrandt would have made of the composition; he was turning politely to go when the woman screamed.

The fear in her voice made him swing around, just within the arch of the gate. The oil lamp's light must have fallen on his face, for when she screamed a second time, she cried his name.

"Monsieur Janvier!"

A stride took him to the grappling forms. He seized His Eminence by the shoulder and tossed him clear out of the carriageway, across the brick banquette, over the dark-glittering stream of the open gutter and into the oozy slops of Rue Ste.-Ann with a single throw-for January was a very big man-making sure to cry as he did so in his most jovial tones, "Why, Rufus, you old scamp, ain't nobody told you...?"

Timing was everything. He'd learned that as a child.

Even as his victim went staggering into the jostle of carriages, he was bounding after him, catching the man's arm in a firm grip and gasping, "Oh, my God, sir, I'm terribly sorry!" He managed to yank the