"It is on the way to leave me at my rooms, if you will be so kind," she suggested, laying her hand upon his arm.
"Mademoiselle will excuse me," he answered, turning away. "Good afternoon."
Mademoiselle also took a carriage, and drove to a large house at the top of the Champs Élysées. She was at once admitted, and passed with the air of one familiar with the place into a small room at the back of the house, where a man was sitting at a table writing. He looked up as she entered.
"Well?"
She threw herself into a chair.
"I have been following the Englishman, Pelham, all day," she said in German. "He has seen Miss Poynton. I have talked with him since at a café, but he would tell me nothing. He has evidently been warned."
The man grumbled as he resumed his writing.
"That fact alone should be enough for us," he remarked. "If there is anything to conceal we can guess what it is. These amateurs who are in league with the secret service are the devil! I would as soon resign. What with them and the regular secret service, Paris is an impossible city for us. Where we would watch we are watched ourselves. The streets and cafés bristle with spies! I do not wonder that you find success so difficult, Mademoiselle!"
"I haven't done so badly!" she protested.
"No, for you have not been set easy tasks. Can you tell me, though, where that young Englishman disappeared to when he left the Café Montmartre before your very eyes? Can you tell me whether the secret service got hold of his story, how much the French Government believed of it, whether they have communicated with the English Government, and how much they know? Beyond these things, it is not your province to see, or mine, Mademoiselle, and it is not for us to guess at or inquire into the meaning of things. Tell me, is it worth while to have this man Pelham put out of the way for a time?"