n a few hours' leeway she had once again duped
me; and this hotel, with its deceptive air of family and respectability,
was a blind, a rendezvous, another such setting for intrigue as the St.
Ives.

Her work might be already accomplished. Perhaps she had left Paris. I
told myself with some savageness that I did not know and did not care.
From the first my presence in this luridly adventurous galley had been
incongruous; I would get back with all despatch to the Ritz and the
orderly world it typified.

I had gone perhaps twenty feet when a grating noise attracted me.
Glancing back across my shoulder, I saw that the old majordomo was
unlocking and setting wide the gate. The hum of a self-starter reached
me faintly, and a moment later there rolled slowly forth a dark-blue
touring-car of luxurious aspect, driven by a chauffeur whose coat and
cap and goggles gave him rather the appearance of a leather brownie, and
bearing in the tonneau Miss Falconer, elaborately coated and veiled.

She was turning to the right, not the left; she would not pass me. I
stood transfixed, watching from my post against the wall. As the car
crept by the old majordomo, he saluted, and she spoke to him, bending
forward for a moment to rest her fingers on his sleeve.

"Be of courage, Marcel, my friend! All will be well if _le bon Dieu_
wills it," I heard her say. Then to the chauffeur she added: "_En avant,
Georges! Vite, a_ Bleau!" The motor snorted as the car gained speed, and
they were gone.

The ancient Marcel, reentering, locked the grille behind him. I was left
alone, more astounded than before. The girl's kind speech to the old
servant, her gentle tones, her womanly gesture, had been bewildering.
Despite all the accusing features her case offered, I should have said
just then, as I watched Miss Esme Falconer, that she was nothing more or
less than a superlatively nice girl.

"Honk! Honk! Honk!"

I swung round, startled. A moment earlier the length and breadth of the
street had stretched before me, empty; yet now I saw, sprung apparently
out of nowhere, a long, lean, gray car, low-built like a racer, carrying
four masked and goggled men. Steadily gaining speed as it came, it bore
down upon me and, after grazing me with its running-board and nearly
deafening me with the powerful blast of its horn, flew on down the
street and vanished in Miss Falconer's wake.

Trying to clarify my emotions, I stared after this Juggernaut. Was
it merely