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 pa.s.s 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 the sudden appearance of the thing, its look, so lean and snake-like and somber-colored, and the m.u.f.fled air of its occupants that had struck me as sinister when it went flashing by? I wasn't sure, but I had formed the impression that these men were following Miss Falconer. A patently foolish idea! And yet, and yet--

My experiences at the St. Ives and on the _Re d'Italia_ had contributed to my education. I could no longer deny that melodrama, however unwelcome, did sometimes intrude itself into the most unlikely lives.

The girl was bound somewhere on a secret purpose. Could these four men be her accomplices? Were they going too?

"_A_ Bleau!"

Those had been her words to the chauffeur; for Bleau, then, she was bound. But where did such a place exist? I had never heard of it; and yet I possessed, I flattered myself, through the medium of motor-touring, a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the map of France.

The affair was becoming a veritable nightmare. It seemed incredible that a few minutes earlier I had resolved to wash my hands of it all. If the girl had a disloyal mission, it was my plain duty to intercept her.

I could not denounce her to the police. I didn't a.n.a.lyze the why and wherefore of my inability to take this step; I simply knew and accepted it. If I interfered with what she was doing, I must interfere quietly, alone.

Ordinarily I have as much imagination as a turnip, but now I indulged in a sudden and surprising flight of fancy. Might it be, I found myself wondering, that the men in the gray care were not Miss Falconer's accomplices, but her pursuers? In that case, high as was her courage, keen as were her wits,--I found myself thinking of them with a sort of pride,--she was laboring under a handicap of which she could not dream.

Again, where had that long, lean, pursuing streak sprung from? Could it have lurked somewhere in the neighborhood, spying on the hotel that Miss Falconer had just left, waiting for her to emerge? I was aware of my absurdity, but I couldn't put an end to it; with each instant that went by my uneasiness seemed to grow. So I yielded, not without qualms as to whether the quarter would take me for a gibbering idiot. Grimly and doggedly I stalked the length of the rue St.-Dominique, and the stately houses on both sides seemed to scorn me, their shutters to eye me pityingly, as I peered to right and left for the possible cache of the car.

And within four hundred feet I found it. Against all reason and probability, there it was. At my left there opened unostentatiously one of those short, dark, neglected blind alleys so common in the older part of Paris, with the houses meeting over it and forming an arched roof.

Running back twenty feet or so, it ended in a blank wall of stone; and, amid the dust and debris that covered its rough paving, I distinctly made out the tracks of tires, with between them, freshly spilt, a tiny, gleaming pool of oil.

At this psychological moment a taxicab came meandering up the street. It was unoccupied, but its red flag was turned down. The driver shook his head vigorously as I signaled him.

"I go to my _dejeuner_, Monsieur!" he explained.

"On the contrary," said I fiercely, "you go to the tourist bureau of Monsieur Cook in the Place de l'Opera, at the greatest speed the _sergents de ville_ allow!"

I must have mesmerized him, for he took me there obediently, casting hunted glances back at me from time to time when the traffic momentarily halted us, as if fearing to find that I was leveling a pistol at his head.

It being noon, the office of the tourist bureau was almost deserted, a single, bored-looking, young French clerk keeping vigil behind the travelers' counter. With the sociable instinct of his nation he brightened up at my appearance.

"I want," I announced, "to ask about trains to Bleau."

For a moment he looked blank; then he smiled in understanding.

"Monsieur is without doubt an artist," he declared.

I was not, decidedly; but the words had been an affirmation and not a question. It seemed clear that for some cryptic reason I ought to have been an artist. Accordingly, I thought it best to bow.

He seemed childishly pleased with his ac.u.men.

"Monsieur will understand," he explained, "that before the war we sold tickets to many artists, who, like monsieur, desired to paint the old mill on the stream near Bleau. It has appeared at the Salon many times, that mill! Also, we have furnished tickets to archaeologists who desired to see the ruins of the antique chapel, a veritable gem! But monsieur has not an archaeologist's aspect. Therefore, monsieur is an artist."

"Perfectly," I agreed.

"As to the trains," he continued contentedly, "there is but one a day.

It departs at two and a half hours, upon the Le Moreau route. Monsieur will be wise to secure, before leaving Paris, a safe-conduct from the _prefecture_; for the village is, as one might say, on the edge of the zone of war. With such a permit monsieur will find his visit charming; regrettable incidents will not occur; undesirable conjectures about monsieur's ident.i.ty will not be roused. I should strongly advise that monsieur provide himself with such a credential, though it is not, perhaps, absolutely _de rigueur_."

Back in my room at the Ritz, I consulted my watch. It was a quarter of two; certainly time had marched apace. Should I, like a sensible man, descend to the restaurant and enjoy a sample of the justly famous cuisine of the hotel? Or should I throw all reason overboard and post off on--what was it Dunny had called my mission--a wild-goose chase?

I glanced at myself in the mirror and shook a disapproving head. "You're no knight-errant," I told my impa.s.sive image. "You're too correct, too indifferent-looking altogether. Better not get beyond your depth!" I decided for luncheon, followed by a leisurely knotting of the threads of my Parisian acquaintance. Then, as if some malign hypnotist had projected it before me, I saw again a vision of that flashing, lean, gray car.

"I'm hanged if I don't have a shot at this thing!"

The words seemed to pop out of my mouth entirely of their own accord.

By no conscious agency of my own, I found myself madly hurling collars, handkerchiefs, toilet articles, whatever I seemed likeliest to need in a brief journey, into a bag. Lastly I realized that I was standing, hat in hand, overcoat across my arm, considering my revolver, and wondering whether taking it with me would be too stagy and absurd.

"No more so than all the rest of it," I decided, shrugging. Dropping the thing into my pocket, I made for the _ascenseur_.

"I shan't be back to-night," I informed the hall porter woodenly. "Or perhaps to-morrow night. But, of course, I'm keeping my room."

With his wish for a charming trip to speed me, I left the Ritz, and luckily no vision was vouchsafed me of the condition in which I should return: Two crutches, a bandaged head, an utterly disreputable aspect; my bedraggled state equaled--and this I would maintain with swords and pistols if necessary--that of any poilu of them all.

As I drove toward the station, various headlines stared at me from the kiosks. "Franz von Blenheim Rumored on Way to France," ran one of them.

Hang Franz. I had had enough of him to last the rest of my life. "Duke of Raincy-la-Tour Still Missing," proclaimed another. I knew something about him, too; but what? Ah, to be sure, he was the Firefly of France, the hero of the Flying Corps, the young n.o.bleman of whose suspected treason I had read in that extra on the ship. In that d.a.m.ned extra, I amended, with natural feeling. For it was like Rome; everything seemed to lead its way.

CHAPTER XIII

AT THE THREE KINGS

"What's the best hotel in the place?" I inquired somewhat dubiously. The man in the blouse, who had performed the three functions of opening my compartment-door, carrying my bag to the gate, and relieving me of my ticket, achieved a thoroughly Gallic shrug.

"Monsieur," said he, "what shall I tell you? The best hotel, the worst hotel--these are one. There is only the Hotel des Trois Rois in the town of Bleau. Let monsieur proceed by the street of the Three Kings and he will reach it. Formerly there was an omnibus, but now the horses are taken. And if they remained, who could drive them with all the men at the war?"

Carrying my bag and feeling none too amiable, I set off along the indicated route. In Paris, rushing from the rue St.-Dominique to Cook's office, from that office to the hotel, from the hotel to the _gare_, I had been a sort of whirling dervish with no time for sober thought.

My trip of four hours on a slow, stuffy, crowded train had, however, afforded me ample leisure; and I had spent the time in grimly envisaging the possibilities that, I decided, were most likely to befall.

First and foremost disagreeable; that the men in the gray automobile were helping Miss Falconer in some nefarious business. In this case, it would be up to me to fight the gentlemen single-handed, rescue the girl, and escort her back to Paris, all without scandal. Easier said than done!

Second possibility: that Miss falconer, pausing at Bleau only en route, might already have departed, and that I would be left with my journey for my pains.

Third: that the gray car had no connection with her; that she had some entirely blameless errand. I hoped so, I was sure. If this proved true, I was bound to stand branded as a meddling, officious idiot, one who, in defiance of the most elementary social rules, persisted in trailing her against her will. Vastly pleasant, indeed!

Fuming, I shifted my bag from one hand to the other and walked faster.

Night was falling, but it was not yet really dark, and I formed a clear enough notion of the village as I traversed it. It was one of the hundreds of its kind which make an artists' paradise of France. Entirely unmodernized, it was the more picturesque for that. If I tripped sometimes on the roughly paved street I could console myself with the knowledge that these cobbles, like the odd, jutting houses rising on both sides of them, were at least three hundred years old. Green woods, clear against a background of rosy sunset, ran up to the very borders of the town. I pa.s.sed a little, gray old church. I crossed a quaint bridge built over a winding stream lined with dwellings and broken by mossy washing-stones. It was all very peaceful, very simple, and very rustic.

Without second sight I could not possibly have visioned the grim little drama for which it was to serve as setting.