This, then, was the reason why Chance always came to me when he appeared at the hotel. My handkerchief, which the gendarme still kept, was the cue which guided him, and I ought to have been flattered, but I was not, for I always felt as if there was something sinister behind the officer’s attentions which I could not fathom. It was Mary who replied, in her breezy way:
“Chance is splendid; he goes with us everywhere, and just now we are looking at the house where Nicol Patoff used to live, and where, perhaps, he lives now.”
I tried to catch her eyes, and stop her, but she was turned partly from me, and went on: “Do you know who lives here?”
“Not Patoff,” the gendarme said, with the same expression I had seen on his face when I spoke of Nicol on the boat. Then he added, quickly: “Do you, too, know Nicol Patoff?”
“Oh, no,” Mary replied. “I was a little girl when he taught in Ridgefield. Miss Harding was his favorite pupil, and that is why she speaks Russian so well. I have heard he was a splendid-looking man, with an air of mystery about him. Some thought him a nihilist. Do you know him, and was he a nihilist?”
I gave a gasp as I waited for the answer, which was spoken very deliberately: “He was a nihilist, and has given me a great deal of trouble.”
“Are you trying to find him?” was Mary’s next remark. “Why don’t you put Chance on his track?”
I was very fond of the girl, but I could have throttled her to hear her speaking thus of Nicol Patoff, and suggesting that Chance be put to find him.
“Mary!” I exclaimed. “Are you crazy, to suggest so diabolical an act? Nicol Patoff was a gentleman! What has he done to you that you should wish to throw him into the hands of his foes, and have him condemned, unheard, and sentenced either to the fortress or to Siberia, where every foot of the soil has been wet with the tears of exiles, some guilty, of course, but more innocent!”
“Madame is very eloquent in her defense of Nicol Patoff, and her tirade against our government,” the gendarme said, and I answered: