“I? Mon Dieu, non!” La Montagne’s eyes were twice their usual size. “I did not recognize the man—but now you speak of it”—he checked himself and continued his nervous walk about the apartment. Suddenly he stopped and turned to his silent companion. “Let us go and talk with the chauffeur,” he suggested briskly.
Maynard looked at his watch. “Perhaps we will find him at his garage,” he said. “He should be back by this time, especially as the manager of the garage told Palmer he had taken a party to Camp Meade and back.”
“I was the party.” La Montagne paused to lock his desk and bolt the windows, then he picked up his cap. “En avant, mon ami!” he exclaimed, his anger a thing of the past. “We will prove Burnham a liar, we two, and Evelyn shall be my bride before many days.”
“Evelyn!” Maynard clapped his hand into his pocket as her name recalled her message. “Evelyn gave me a letter for you.”
“Give it here.” In his eagerness La Montagne almost snatched the letter from Maynard and left the closing of the door of his apartment to him as he moved down the corridor reading the letter. Maynard was about to follow when his glance happened to fall on the outer wall of La Montagne’s apartment and he saw a flattened bullet slightly projecting from it. Taking out his penknife he pried the bullet out of the lath and plaster and slipping it inside his pocket, he joined La Montagne at the elevator shaft.
“I know something of firearms,” he said, lowering his voice although they had the corridor to themselves. “Your automatic is loaded with reduced charges.”
“And why not?” La Montagne raised his eyebrows. “It will still kill a man!”
“René,” Maynard’s manner grew stern. “Your conduct bears but one interpretation—you go armed because you fear an attack.”
La Montague’s smile was enigmatic. “Life is held very cheap in war-time,” he remarked, and stepped forward as the crowded elevator stopped at their floor. “Enter.”
It was not until they were inside the closed taxi and the car speeding on its way to the Potomac garage that La Montagne addressed his equally silent companion.