"Good day!" cried she.

Vagualame pretended to wake up with a start.

"Ha, ha! Good day, Nichoune! Tell me, you have not seen Belfort? Eh?"

"How do you know that?" demanded Nichoune, on the defensive. She looked surprised.

"I have just met him.... He told me that he had not come across you at the usual meeting-place."

Nichoune lowered her head.

"I thought I was being followed ... so, as you can understand, I did not go."

Vagualame nodded approval.

"Good! Quite right! After all, it is not otherwise of importance. You must give me back my envelope now!"

"You want it?"

"Why, of course!"

Nichoune hesitated a second.

"Just fancy, Vagualame, I took the precaution to hide it between my two mattresses! Wait!... Here it is!"

Nichoune held out his letter.

"Thank you, my dear!"

Vagualame looked as if the returning of the doc.u.ment was a matter of the most perfect indifference to him. He gazed hard at Nichoune--stared so fixedly at her that she demanded:

"Whatever possesses you to stare at me like that?"

"I am thinking how pretty you are!"

"Well, I never! You are becoming quite complimentary!"

"It's no flattery. I think you are very pretty, Nichoune, but your hands! They are not pretty!"

The singer laughed and held out her little hands.

"What is there about them you have to find fault with?"

"They are red.... It astonishes me that a woman like you does not know how to make them white!... Don't you know what to do to them?"

"No! What must I do?"

"Why," retorted the old musician, "the very first thing you have to do is as simple as A B C! All you have to do is to tie up your hands every night with a ribbon, and so keep them raised above your head!"...

"How? I don't understand!"

"It's like this! You stick a nail into the wall ... and then you manage things so that you keep your hands up-raised the whole night through.... You will see then ... your hands will be as white as lilies in the morning.... White as lilies!"

Nichoune was extremely interested.

"Is that true? I shall try it this very night! White, like lilies, you say?... And you have to sleep with your hands stuck up in the air!...

I shall try it--shall begin to-night."

A few minutes later Vagualame left Nichoune, after promising that he would not give her any more spy work to do, and declaring that she should never again be mixed up in any dangerous business. As he went along the streets of Chalons, the dreadful old man chuckled and sn.i.g.g.e.red.

"Hands in the air, my beauty!... Just try that, this very night! With that little heart mischief of yours! Ha! ha! We shall not be kept waiting for the consequences of that performance! It will serve as an example to all and sundry when they wish to write to the magistrate!"

Vagualame's face took on a wicked look.

"I shall have to be as careful as can be when I hide myself in that little fool's room to-night! At all costs I must get hold of that compromising letter before anyone in the hotel hears of the death! Not a soul must catch a glimpse of me--that's certain!"

Those who pa.s.sed Vagualame simply thought he was an old beggar, an old accordion player....

IX

WITH THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE

"Come in!" cried Hofferman, who was writing hard.

An orderly stepped gingerly into the room.

"An usher, Colonel, with a message, begging you to be so good as to step downstairs at once to see the Under-Secretary of State."

Hofferman looked up.

"Are you sure the message is for me?"

"Yes, Colonel."

"Very well. I am coming immediately."

The orderly vanished. Hofferman remained in thought for a minute or so, rose abruptly, half opened the door of the adjoining room, and addressed Commandant Dumoulin:

"The Under-Secretary of State wishes to see me. I am going down now."

The colonel pa.s.sed rapidly along the interminable corridors separating him from the building in which the Under-Secretary's offices were situated.

"What can he want to see me about?" Colonel Hofferman asked himself as he entered the Under-Secretary's room.