And he left the house.
* * * * *
An inconceivable thing had happened. Don Luis was free. Half an hour's conversation had given him the power of acting and of fighting the decisive battle.
He went off at a run. At the Trocadéro he jumped into a taxi.
"Go to Issy-les-Moulineaux!" he cried. "Full speed! Forty francs!"
The cab flew through Passy, crossed the Seine and reached the
Issy-les-Moulineaux aviation ground in ten minutes.
None of the aeroplanes was out, for there was a stiff breeze blowing. Don
Luis ran to the sheds. The owners' names were written over the doors.
"Davanne," he muttered. "That's the man I want."
The door of the shed was open. A short, stoutish man, with a long red face, was smoking a cigarette and watching some mechanics working at a monoplane. The little man was Davanne himself, the famous airman.
Don Luis took him aside and, knowing from the papers the sort of man that he was, opened the conversation so as to surprise him from the start: