'You are in the kindergarten stage of your profession,' she observed. 'Now watch. You see those two men seated on the bench a little way further down?'
'Well?'
She rose from her seat, shook out her skirt and sat down again. The two men, also, had risen and were advancing towards them. She held up her hand—they seemed somehow to drift away.
'I repeat,' she went on, 'that you would not leave this garden alive. But, my friend, we will not quarrel over a worthless scrap of paper, for that is precisely what you have carefully buttoned up in your pocket-book. I have failed to find the formula. That is a dummy. Keep it, if you will. There isn't a single intelligible sign upon it.'
He drew it from his pocket and glanced at it. Even with his slight knowledge of chemistry he was compelled to admit that her words were truth.
'Keep it or give it me back, as you like,' she continued. 'It has no value. The fact remains that in his brief journey from the service room at the Milan Grill-room to his rooms in the Milan Mansions, Jules managed to conceal somewhere or other the paper which he has taken from Hurn. If he passed it on to some one else, it is by this time in Germany, but we have reason to know that he did not. The paper is still in concealment. It is still to be found.'
'And the means?' he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders lightly.
'Alas!' she exclaimed, 'how can I tell you now? How can I even engage your help? You have disclosed your hand.'
He sat gazing gloomily out at the river.