"Come on with us and you'll soon know. No, really, come along, I may want you. I'm going before the beak and may want a witness as to character."
"Right oh! There are some more of us here from the old shop—Jack Tyrrell, Bobus Smith—all Mars and Neptune men. They'll speak for a pal at a pinch. Where shall we come?"
"To the town hall, the mairie," replied the Colonel, after a brief reference to his escort. "I've got a particular appointment there with Monsieur le Commissaire, and the Right Honourable the Earl of Blackadder."
"Oh! that noble sportsman? What's wrong with him? What's he been doing to you or you to him?"
"I punched his head, that's all."
"No doubt he deserved it; anyhow, Charlie Forrester will be pleased. By-by, you'll see me again, and all the chaps I can pick up at the Cercle and the hotels near."
Then our procession passed on, the Colonel and gendarmes leading, Tiler and I with l'Echelle close behind.
We found my lord awaiting us. He had driven on ahead in a fiacre and was standing alone at the entrance to the police office, which is situated on the ground floor of the Hôtel de Ville, a pretty old-fashioned building of gray stone just facing the Etablissement Thermale, the home of the far-famed baths from which Aix-les-Bains takes its name.
"In here?" asked my lord; and with a brief wave of his hand he would have passed in first, but the officers of the law put him rather rudely aside and claimed precedence for their prisoner.
But when M. le Commissaire, who was there, seated at a table opposite his greffier, rose and bowed stiffly, inquiring our business, my lord pushed forward into the front and began very warmly, in passable French: