ent
danger was to forget the past hour in the garage, which I had to forget
or begin gibbering. Once committed to the adventure and away from the
scene of the murder, I found a positive relief in facing the madness of
the affair.

While the girl sat silent and listless, blotted against the cushions,
rousing from her thoughts only to indicate the turns of the road, I had
time for cogitation; and I began to feel like a man who has drunk freely
of champagne. Hitherto I had been a law-abiding citizen. Now I had
kicked over the traces. Like the distinguished fraternity that includes
Raffles and Arsene Lupin, I should be "wanted" by the police, those
good-natured, deferential beings so given to saluting and grinning,
with whom, save for occasional episodes not unconnected with the speed
laws,--Dunny says libelously that my progress in an automobile resembles
a fabulous monster with a flying car for the head, a cloud of smoke and
gasoline for the body, and a cohort of incensed motor-cycle men for the
tail,--I had lived on the most cordial terms.

I was not certain whether they would accuse me of murder or espionage.
There were pegs enough, undeniably, on which to hang either charge.
Myself, I rather inclined to the latter; the case was so clear, so
detailed! My rush from Paris to Bleau,--in order, no doubt, that I
might at an unostentatious spot join forces with my confederate, Miss
Falconer, whom I had been meeting at intervals ever since we left New
York in company,--my behavior there, and the fashion in which we were
vanishing should suffice to doom me as a spy.

When the French began tracing my movements, when they joined my present
activities to the fact that only by the skin of my teeth had I escaped a
charge of bringing German papers into Italy, there would be the devil
to pay. I acknowledged it; then--really, this brand-new, unfounded,
cast-iron trust of mine in Miss Falconer was changing me beyond
recognition--I recalled the old recipe for the preparation of Welsh
rabbit, and light-heartedly challenged the authorities to "catch me
first." I had a disguise; if I bore any superior earmarks my leather
coat obliterated them; and I could drive; even Dario Resta could not
have sniffed at my technic. Better still, my French, learned even before
my English, would not betray me. As nurse and as _mecanicien_, we stood
a fair chance in our masquerade.

I might have to pay my shot, but I was enjoying it. This was a good
worl