Dear Bertrand,
I write at once to tell you that you have nothing to fear from dear Sir Frank. He spoke of you most highly to my father, said you had a distinguished career before you, and that he would not take £3,000 a year for your practice in a few years’ time.
Yours,
Violet.
CHAPTER XVIII
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
Sir Frank Tarleton had not given me all his reasons for not taking me with him to Paris. One of them, as he told me afterwards, was that I had made an enemy of Sarah Neobard, or, to put it the other way, I had made her regard me as an enemy. My chief believed that my presence would prevent him from obtaining any information from her or her mother. They would think he had come on a hostile errand, and they would obstinately hold their tongues, for fear lest anything they said might be used by me against her.
Tarleton’s intention was to appear in the character of a friend of Sarah’s, who did not share my suspicions and only wanted to be able to clear her from them. He was quite frank with me about the way in which he had spoken of me in my absence, and about everything else in which I was interested.
He put up at his favourite hotel, the Saint Lazare, on his arrival, one that suited him because it was near the centre of everything without being overrun by English and Americans. He liked to be among French people when he was in France. After the “little breakfast,” that first delicious taste of French coffee and French bread which atones for the stuffiness of the French railway carriage, he made his way round to the Rue Jerusalem, where he was received with high distinction by the head of the French police to whom his name and official standing were well known.
The Chief presented to him Brigadier Samson, the detective who had the two fugitives under supervision, and he undertook, at the doctor’s request, that a formidable-looking gendarme in the showy uniform of the French police should be stationed opposite the Hotel Saint Catherine, in full sight from the windows, till further notice.
Another small piece of business was transacted. Tarleton laid before the Chief the photograph he had obtained from Inspector Charles, and invited him to find out if it corresponded with anything in his register of finger-prints.
The hour now being reached at which the ladies might be expected to show themselves, the visitor next went on to their hotel in the Rue Tivoli. In the hall he found the English detective who had followed them from London, and who had taken a room on the same floor, in the unsuspicious character of a tourist who found himself in Paris for the first time and was unwilling to venture far from his hotel.