The young fellow did not dare to go back to the Grand Hotel and report his failure. He wandered about aimlessly and miserably, until a flaunting poster outside an all-night café chantant caught his eye and decided him to enter and kill time until some plan for retrieving his failure might occur to him.
As he entered the swinging doors a cheery hand was laid on his shoulders. "Hullo, old man! Hail and thrice hail!"
"Jimmy!" There was a note of pleasure in the young man's voice.
"The same," confirmed Jimmy Martin. He was a tubby, clean-shaven, rosy-faced little fellow of thirty odd, with an inexhaustible fund of good spirits. Everyone called him "Jimmy." Dean had known him as a reporter on a London daily paper and a fellow-member of a local dramatic society in Streatham.
"Why are you here?" asked Dean.
"Strictly on business, my gay young spark. My present owners, the Europe Chronicle, bless their dear hearts, want to know if La Belle Ariola"—he waved his hand towards a poster which showed chiefly a toreador hat, a pair of flashing eyes, and a whirl of white draperies—"is engaged or no to the Prince of Sardinia. I find the maiden coy, not to say secretive——"
"I wish you could help me," interrupted Dean eagerly.
"If four francs seventy will do it—my worldly possessions until next pay-day——"
"No, no, this is quite different." He drew Martin outside into the street and whispered. "To-night, as I happen to know, an Englishman walking along a back street by the Place Pigalle was followed by two apaches."
"A week-end tripper, or somebody with a flourish at each end of his name?"