you succeeded in getting your rooms?
Will your Colonel move up?"

"What would his lordship say? Wouldn't like it much, I expect. Shall I
prevent it? It will be easy to say there are no rooms. I'll do just as
you please."

"You're very obliging."

"I'm willing enough to oblige, as I've always told you--at a price."

"Put a name to it; but don't forget you've had something on account.
Last night I gave you five hundred francs."

"Bah! I want a lot more than that, a thousand francs down and fifty
francs a day so long as I serve you. Do you agree to my terms?"

"My lord won't. He looks both sides of his money, and pays no fancy
prices for a pig in a poke."

"Then I'll take my pigs to another market. Suppose I let the Colonel
know what you've been at, trying to tamper with me. This hotel
wouldn't be big enough to hold him and your patron together."

"Well,"--I hesitated, not willing to appear too anxious,--"let's say,
just for argument's sake, that you got what you ask, or something near
it. I'm not in a position to promise it, no, not the half of it. But
we'll agree what you'd do for us in return?"

"Anything you chose to ask."

"Would you come over to us, belong to us body and soul? Think first of
my lord, put his interests before the Colonel's; tell us what the
Colonel's doing, his game from day to day, read his letters, and tell
us their contents; spy on his actions, watch him at every turn, his
comings and his goings; the houses he calls at, the people he meets,
every move he makes or has in view?"

"If I promise to do all that will you promise not to give me away?
You'll keep your own counsel and protect me from the Colonel? If he
got a whisper I was selling him I'd lose my place and he'd half kill
me into the bargain."

"Not a soul shall know but my lord and myself. I must consult him, or
you won't get the money."

"But there is that other chap, the one who joined us at Culoz, and who
was with you at the Commissariat, a new face to me. One of your own
party, wasn't he?"

"To be sure, Tiler; he's on the job, too, came out when I did from
London. But he's gone, left us half an hour ago."

"For good and all? Sacked, dropped out, or what?"

"Gone to follow up a game of his own. He thinks he knows better than
any one else; believes the lady has harked back, and is following her
to Amberieu, Macon, Paris, England perhaps. God knows where. It's a
wild goose chase, of course; but my lord leans to it, and