"And a perfectly good alibi. But I have your word that you are in nowise
concerned? Pardon the question, but between us it is really necessary if I
am to be of service to you."
"On my word as a gentleman."
"That is sufficient."
"In fact, I do not believe that she has been abducted at all. Will you let
me use your pad and pen for a minute?"
The other pushed over the required articles. Courtlandt scrawled a few
words and passed back the pad.
"For me to read?"
"Yes," moodily.
The Frenchman read. Courtlandt watched him anxiously. There was not even a
flicker of surprise in the official eye. Calmly he ripped off the sheet
and tore it into bits, distributing the pieces into the various
waste-baskets yawning about his long flat desk. Next, still avoiding the
younger man's eye, he arranged his papers neatly and locked them up in a
huge safe which only the artillery of the German army could have forced.
He then called for his hat and stick. He beckoned to Courtlandt to follow.
Not a word was said until the car was humming on the road to Vincennes.
"Well?" said Courtlandt, finally. It was not possible for him to hold back
the question any longer.
"My dear friend, I am taking you out to the villa for the night."
"But I have nothing...."
"And I have everything, even foresight. If you were arrested to-night it
would cause you some inconvenience. I am fifty-six, some twenty years your
senior. Under this hat of mine I carry a thousand secrets, and every one
of these thousand must go to the grave with me, yours along with them. I
have met you a dozen times since those Algerian days, and never have you
failed to afford me some amusement or excitement. You are the most
interesting and entertaining young man I know. Try one of these cigars."
Precisely at the time Courtlandt stepped into the automobile outside the
war-office, a scene, peculiar in character, but inconspicuous in that it
did not attract attention, was enacted in the Gare de l'Est. Two
sober-visaged men stood respectfully aside to permit a tall young man in a
Bavarian hat to enter a compartment of the second-class. What could be
seen of the young man's face was full of smothered wrath and
disappointment. How he hated himself, for his weakness, for his cowardice!
He was not all bad. Knowing that he was being watched and followed, he
could not go to Versailles and compromise her, uselessly. And devil take
the sleek demon of a woman who had prompted him to commit so base an act!
"You will at least," he said, "deliver that message which I have intrusted
to your care."
"It shall reach Versailles to-night, your Highness."