“Yes,” moodily.
The Frenchman read. Courtlandt watched him anxiously. There was not even a flicker of surprise in the official eye. Calmly he ripped off the sheet and tore it into bits, distributing the pieces into the various waste-baskets yawning about his long flat desk. Next, still avoiding the younger man’s eye, he arranged his papers neatly and locked them up in a huge safe which only the artillery of the German army could have forced. He then called for his hat and stick. He beckoned to Courtlandt to follow. Not a word was said until the car was humming on the road to Vincennes.
“Well?” said Courtlandt, finally. It was not possible for him to hold back the question any longer.
“My dear friend, I am taking you out to the villa for the night.”
“But I have nothing....”
“And I have everything, even foresight. If you were arrested to-night it would cause you some inconvenience. I am fifty-six, some twenty years your senior. Under this hat of mine I carry a thousand secrets, and every one of these thousand must go to the grave with me, yours along with them. I have met you a dozen times since those Algerian days, and never have you failed to afford me some amusement or excitement. You are the most interesting and entertaining young man I know. Try one of these cigars.”
Precisely at the time Courtlandt stepped into the automobile outside the war-office, a scene, peculiar in character, but inconspicuous in that it did not attract attention, was enacted in the Gare de l’Est. Two sober-visaged men stood respectfully aside to permit a tall young man in a Bavarian hat to enter a compartment of the second-class. What could be seen of the young man’s face was full of smothered wrath and disappointment. How he hated himself, for his weakness, for his cowardice! He was not all bad. Knowing that he was being watched and followed, he could not go to Versailles and compromise her, uselessly. And devil take the sleek demon of a woman who had prompted him to commit so base an act!
“You will at least,” he said, “deliver that message which I have intrusted to your care.”
“It shall reach Versailles to-night, your Highness.”
The young man reread the telegram which one of the two men had given him a moment since. It was a command which even he, wilful and disobedient as he was, dared not ignore. He ripped it into shreds and flung them out of the window. He did not apologize to the man into whose face the pieces flew. That gentleman reddened perceptibly, but he held his tongue. The blare of a horn announced the time of departure. The train moved. The two men on the platform saluted, but the young man ignored the salutation. Not until the rear car disappeared in the hazy distance did the watchers stir. Then they left the station and got into the tonneau of a touring-car, which shot away and did not stop until it drew up before that imposing embassy upon which the French will always look with more or less suspicion.