"Monsieur shall have it without doubt, Mademoiselle," the man answered.
She pulled down her veil and left the place hurriedly. When she reached the boulevard she slackened her pace, and drew a little breath of relief.
"Ten thousand francs!" she murmured to herself. "If I took that with me they would receive me at home. I might start all over again. It is worth a little risk. Heavens, how nervous I am!"
She entered a café and drank à petit verre. As she set her glass down a man looked at her over the top of his newspaper. She tried to smile, but her heart was beating, and she was sick with fear.
"What a fool I am!" she muttered. "It is a stranger, too. If he were one of Gustav's lot I should know him."
She returned his smile, and he came and sat down beside her. They had another liqueur. Later they left the place together.
Duncombe returned to his hotel tired out after a disappointing day spent in making fruitless inquiries in various parts of Paris. He had learnt nothing. He seemed as far off the truth as ever. He opened the note which the porter handed him listlessly enough. Afterwards, however, it was different. This is what he read:—
"I can tell you about the young English lady if you will promise upon your honor that you will not betray me. I dare not come here again. I dare not even speak to you while the others are about. Go to the Café Sylvain to-night and order dinner in a private room. I will come at half-past seven.—Flossie."
Duncombe drew a little sigh of relief. At last then he was to know something. He was very English, a bad amateur detective, and very weary of his task. Nothing but his intense interest in the girl herself—an interest which seemed to have upset the whole tenor of his life—would have kept him here plodding so relentlessly away at a task which seemed daily to present more difficulties and complications. Yet so absorbed had he become that the ordinary duties and pleasures which made up the routine of his life scarcely ever entered into his mind. There had been men coming down to shoot, whom in an ordinary way he would not have dreamed of putting off—a cricket match which had been postponed until his return, and which he had completely forgotten. Paris had nothing in the shape of amusement to offer him in place of these things, yet in his own mind these things were as if they had not been. Every interest and energy of his life was concentrated upon the one simple object of his search.