“Thank you!”
“Tut!” said Don Luis, playfully. “No thanks! Just a good hand-shake, that’s all. And I’m a man you can shake hands with, captain, believe me. I may have a few peccadilloes on my conscience, but on the other hand I have committed a certain number of good actions which should win me the esteem of decent folk . . . beginning with my own. And so . . .”
He interrupted himself again, seemed to reflect and, taking Patrice by a button of his jacket, said:
“Don’t move. We are being watched.”
“By whom?”
“Some one on the quay, right at the end of the garden. The wall is not high. There’s a grating on the top of it. They’re looking through the bars and trying to see us.”
“How do you know? You have your back turned to the quay; and then there are the trees.”
“Listen.”
“I don’t hear anything out of the way.”
“Yes, the sound of an engine . . . the engine of a stopping car. Now what would a car want to stop here for, on the quay, opposite a wall with no house near it?”