The kidnapper sat down with the utmost coolness and began to count over the notes. They were all of large denomination, and the operation consumed but a few moments. As soon as he had finished, the man placed the bundle of notes carefully in an inside pocket and rose. "The amount is correct, Monsieur," he said. "Permit me to bid you a very good evening." Without further delay, he bowed, took up his hat, and left the room.
At the door he glanced quickly at his watch, then strode off up the street at a rapid pace, toward the Arc de Triomphe.
For some eight or ten minutes he walked, at the expiration of which time he arrived at the Place de l'Étoile, and at once crossed to the pavement surrounding the great triumphal arch.
Up and down the twelve great avenues which radiate from the Place of the Star flashed innumerable automobiles, coming and going like huge jeweled fireflies.
The kidnapper paused at a point on the very outer edge of the circular pavement which surrounds the arch, and waited, expectant, his eyes fixed upon the broad sweep of the Champs Élysées.
For some moments he stood thus, rigid, motionless. Suddenly a big black racing car swept from the line of traffic and approached the curb. The man on the sidewalk raised his hand, and made a momentary gesture. The car quivered to the side of the street, pausing but the fraction of a second as the tall figure of the kidnapper stepped in. Another moment, and it had swept around the great arch and was flying down the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne.
Close behind it came a second car, which, like the first, contained but a single occupant in addition to the chauffeur. With scarcely fifty feet between them, the two machines swept down the broad street toward the intersection with the Avenue Malakoff.
In a few moments, both had reached it. But here their ways parted. The first car, turning in a quick and dangerous quadrant, swept into the Avenue Malakoff and sped southward like the wind. The second car continued on toward the Porte Dauphine. As it passed the intersection with the Avenue Malakoff, the chauffeur, unobserved by his passenger, directed a cylindrical black object toward the southern sky and held it there, motionless, until his car had disappeared in the shadow of the trees to the west.
Just inside the Avenue Malakoff lay a third car, its powerful engine shaking it from end to end with its rapid pulsations. Two men sat in the tonneau. One of them was occupied in watching a distant window in the rear of a house on the Avenue Kleber with a pair of field glasses. The other kept his gaze fixed upon the road before him.
Suddenly the man with the field glasses turned, and pointed toward the car which was just passing from sight along the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. "Quick!" he muttered. "After him!"