For the first time in my life,” Deyes declared, accepting the cigarette and the easy-chair, “I have appreciated Paris. I have gone there as a tourist. I have drunk strange drinks at the Café de la Paix. I have sat upon the boulevards and ogled the obvious lady.”
“And my little guide?” she asked.
“Has disappeared!” he answered.
“Since when?”
“A month ago! It is reported that he came to England.”
Wilhelmina sat still for several moments. To a casual observer she might have seemed unmoved. Deyes, however, was watching her closely, and he understood.
“I am sorry,” he said, “to have so little to tell you. But that is the beginning and the end of it. The man had gone away.”
“That is precisely what I desired to ascertain,” she said. “It seemed to me possible that the man had come to England. I wished to know for certain whether it was true or not.”
“I think,” Deyes said, withdrawing his cigarette and looking at it thoughtfully, “that it is true.”