Monty hesitated, as he always did when Oberzohn offered him refreshment. You could never be sure with Oberzohn.
“I’ll have a whisky,” he said at last, “a full bottle—one that hasn’t been opened. I’ll open it myself.”
The doctor chuckled unevenly.
“You do not trust?” he said. “I think you are wise. For who is there in this world of whom a man can say, ‘He is my friend. To the very end of my life I will have confidence in him’?”
Monty did not feel that the question called for an answer.
He took the whisky bottle to the light, examined the cork and drove in the corkscrew.
“The soda water—that also might be poisoned,” said Dr. Oberzohn pleasantly.
At any other time he would not have made that observation. That he said it at all, betrayed a subtle but ominous change in their relationships. If Monty noticed this, he did not say a word, but filled his glass and sat down on the sofa to drink. And all the time the doctor was watching him interestedly.
“Yes, Gurther is back. He failed, but you must excuse failure in a good man. The perfect agent has yet to be found, and the perfect principal also. The American, Washington, had left Paris when I last heard of him. He is to be congratulated. If I myself lived in Paris I should always be leaving. It is a frivolous city.”
Monty lit a cigar, and decided to arrive at the object of his visit by stages. For he had come to perform two important duties. He accounted as a duty a call upon Joan. No less was it a duty, and something of a relief also, to make his plan known to his partner.