"The hour of noon."
Delcassé turned to the day on his desk calendar, and wrote a large "12" upon it.
"Adieu, then, Marbeau," he said, and held out his hand. "My prayers go with you!"
Fronting on the Zurichstrasse, some half mile from the arsenal at Strasbourg, stands a great tobacco manufactory, covering two blocks and employing a thousand people. These men and women and children live for the most part in the crooked little streets of the neighbourhood, for the hours of work are long, and to walk back and forth from a distance not to be thought of. When a family has managed to scrape together a little capital, more often than not the head of it opens a tiny shop, while the younger members keep on working at the factory until the business has established itself. Then the family takes a step upward in social grade.
In a little room back of such a shop in the Hennenstrasse, on the morning of a day late in October, three men sat down to breakfast. It was a silent meal, for each of the three was preoccupied. They were roughly dressed in the blouses and coarse trousers of labourers, and their faces were covered with a week's stubble of beard. One was white-haired, old, and seemingly very feeble; but the other two were in the prime of life. At last the meal was finished, and the two younger men pushed back their chairs and looked at each other; then they looked at their companion, who, with vacant eyes, was staring at the opposite wall so intently that the other two involuntarily glanced around at it.
"It is time for you to go, Lieutenant," said one of the men, in a low voice. "Tell me again what you have to do, so that I may be sure there is no mistake."
"What I have to do is this, General," said the other: "from here, I go to the house we know of, taking a circuitous route, loitering on the way, and making certain that I am not followed. If I find myself followed, I will pass this shop, dropping my handkerchief in front of it and then turning back to pick it up. If I am not followed, I enter the other house, mount to the roof and make sure that everything is in order. At ten minutes to twelve, I hoist into place the two arms to which our wires are secured, stretching them tight by means of the winch which we have provided, and then I at once start the clockwork. I then descend, make my way to the tram-station, and take a third-class ticket to Colmar, where I will await you at Valentin's cabaret. If you do not arrive by sundown, I am to go on to Paris to make my report."
"That is right. You have your passport?"
"Yes."