Rushford paused at the hotel door and looked out along the Digue. It was thronged with people hurrying toward the Casino, eager for the night's excitement. But the American turned in the opposite direction, and sauntered slowly along, breathing in the cool breeze from the ocean. At last he paused, and, leaning against the balustrade, stood gazing out across the moonlit water, smiling to himself at thought of Pelletan's vicissitudes.
He was roused by the sound of voices on the beach below him. He looked down mechanically, but for a moment saw no one. Then, deep in the shadow of the wall, he descried two figures walking slowly side by side. One was a man and the other a woman. They were talking in a French so rapid and idiomatic that Rushford could distinguish no word of it, except that the man addressed his companion as Julie.
There was something strangely familiar about the figure of the man, and as Rushford stared down at him, his vision seemed suddenly too clear and he perceived that it was the French detective.
"Tellier prosecutes his loves," he murmured, smiling grimly to himself, and turned back toward the hotel. There he stopped, struck by a sudden thought. "Julie," he repeated. "Julie—where have I heard that name recently? Oh, I remember—Julie is our maid at the hotel. I wonder—"
He went back abruptly to the parapet and looked over, but Tellier and his companion had disappeared.
CHAPTER X
An Introduction and a Promenade
Warm and fair dawned the morning; and having, at its leisure, duly arisen, bathed and breakfasted, the unemployed population of Weet-sur-Mer, male and female, sallied forth to throng the beach and Digue, to inhale the fresh air, to shake off so far as possible the effects of the evening's dissipations, and to exchange such toadstool growths of gossip as had sprung up over night.
To join this parade there presently came Lord Vernon, reclining languidly in his invalid chair, and muffled in many rugs; but his eyes were eagerly alert and he gazed with evident anticipation down the long promenade of the Digue. He was attended by Blake, Collins, and Sir John, all of them determined, no doubt, to prevent a second contretemps. But Sir John presently descried a learned fellow-Aesculapian and stopped for a chat with him; while Blake soon afterward succumbed to the glance and smile of a red-cheeked English beauty. Collins, however, stuck grimly to his post, being above—or below—such human weaknesses.
"There they are!" cried Vernon, suddenly, with brightening eyes.