“Oh, yais, monsieur, I know—billet de banc?”
“And this is the carte of a lady we wish to find in Paris, you understand?”
The man nodded his closely cropped head, smiled, and, after a long look at the carte, left the room.
“You seem to pin a good deal of faith to five-pound notes, Tom,” said Lord Barmouth.
“Yes,” said his son, shortly. “Like ’em here.”
The next day he sent for the waiter, but was informed that the man had gone out for a holiday.
“I thought so,” said Tom, enthusiastically, as soon as they were alone. “That fellow will go and see all the waiters he knows at the different hotels, and find out what we want.”
Viscount Diphoos was quite right. About ten o’clock that evening the waiter entered, and beckoned to them, mysteriously—
“Alaright,” he said, “ze leddee is trouvée. I have ze fiacre at ze door.”
Tom leaped from his chair, and was going alone, but Lord Barmouth persisted in accompanying him, and together they were driven to a quiet hotel in the Rue de l’Arcade, near the Madeleine.