"Speak for yourself, I am still thirsty," growled Balmer. "You can go if you like, but I intend to have my coffee and season it with a few glasses of cognac."
"Then you can settle the bill, and I will send you my share of it as soon as I learn the amount. I am going. Who loves me, follows me!" said Blanche, rising from table.
Adhémar and George followed her example. "I shall pass Dargental's door on leaving here, and I will hand his doorkeeper that pneumatic telegram," remarked Adhémar, placing the missive in his pocket beside the pocket-book thrown into the cab.
Balmer declining to move, the three others now went downstairs together. Blanche then sprang into a cab which stood outside the restaurant and drove off, saying, "Come and see me one of these days. I should like to hear the end of this affair."
"What do you think of it all?" said Caumont to Adhémar, as soon as the actress had gone.
"I think," replied Puymirol, "that the countess is an adventuress, Blanche a viper, and Dargental a fool."
"Why, not long ago, you proclaimed him to be shrewdness personified!"
"I must confess that that opinion seems erroneous. But let us go to Dargental's place; we shall, perhaps, find the solution of the enigma there. It isn't far off."
The house in which Dargental lived stood on the Boulevard Haussmann. They soon reached the door, and the house-porter, on being questioned by Adhémar, replied that he believed that M. Dargental was at home. At all events, he had not seen him pass out. Dargental's rooms were situated on the second floor, to which the two friends duly climbed. Puymirol rang, but no one answered the summons, and the bell was pulled three times more, but without any better success. The two friends were, indeed, about to go off disappointed, when a servant in livery, carrying a package under his arm, appeared upon the landing. This servant was Dargental's valet, and he knew Puymirol and Caumont by sight. "I fear that the marquis has gone out," he remarked. On hearing this title, which Dargental had never borne before, the two friends exchanged a smile. "He was to lunch out to-day," continued the valet, "and he was already dressed when he sent me off on an errand at about eleven o'clock."
"It was with us that he meant to lunch, and we haven't seen anything of him," said Caumont.