“No, Johann,” Grey replied, after a moment’s consideration, “I won’t dress. Give my compliments to the Herr Captain, and say that I’m feeling a bit seedy and will dine here alone, if he will be so good as to excuse me.”
Johann bowed and was about to go, but stopped with his hand on the doorknob.
“Will Herr Arndt order his dinner now?” he queried; and Grey named the dishes.
His appetite, he all at once discovered, was excellent, and when the table had been spread and the courses followed one another in leisurely succession and with admirable service, he found himself eating with the relish that betokens good digestion. It seemed, too, when he had finished and lighted a cigarette that he could think more calmly and coherently. The windows of his room opened upon a narrow balcony, and placing a chair he stepped out and sat there meditative above the changeful tide of the boulevard which flowed unceasingly below.
He was no longer exercised over the possible effect of his cables, for he reflected that Carey Grey, so far as all Paris save one man knew, was still dead. A message or a messenger to the Hôtel Grammont would find no such person. His changed appearance, his changed name, and his changed associates were a disguise that must prove quite impenetrable. He would therefore have ample time, unhampered by either enemies or friends, to delve into the perplexing riddle that confronted him. It would be policy, he argued, to delay his return to America until he could trace his movements abroad. The difficulties that he must encounter he did not pretend to belittle. When he strove to lay out a plan of action he was balked at the very outset. To ask questions was to betray himself, and yet it must be a very long and tedious, not to say perilous, procedure to attempt to drift blindly with the current without either chart or compass to warn him of rocks and shoals.
The twilight deepened into night, and as the stars sparkled into the darkening canopy above the electric lights flashed into a brighter brilliancy along the boulevard below. Grey’s cigarette had been tossed away, and he sat listlessly watching the vari-coloured lamps of the cabs as they passed to and fro—now a green, now a red, now a yellow. He had moved his chair to the space of balcony between the windows to escape an annoying draft, and from where he sat he could neither see into his room nor be seen from it. The scratching of a match inside, however, was plainly audible. Someone evidently was lighting his candles. And then the sound of voices came to him, and he pricked his ears.
“It is indeed a catastrophe,” he heard. The speaker was Johann. The accent was unmistakable.
“You have no idea. It is worse, a thousand times worse than you know——”
Grey, with difficulty, choked back an exclamation.
“Lutz!” he muttered to himself, in astonishment. “By all that’s good! Lutz! Here in Paris, and with me.”