The day was fine; a slight violet haze lingered in the hollows; the air, fresh but not chill, was deliciously pure. Fandor walked along the high road at a smart pace. He turned over in his mind certain warnings given him by Vinson.
"When an individual knows he is going to a rendezvous he makes a point of talking to every person he meets whom he thinks likely to be the individual he is to have dealings with."
But Fandor did not see a soul to speak to. The highway was deserted, and the fields lay empty and desolate as far as an eye could reach. Not a toiling peasant was to be seen.
He had been walking for over an hour, quite determined to carry this adventure through to the end, when, from the top of a hill he caught sight of a motor-car drawn up on one of the lower slopes of the road.
"They may, or may not, be the individuals I am out to meet," he thought: "but I am glad enough to meet some human beings.... I shall stroll near their car, which seems out of action: it will help pass the time."
He went up to the motor-car. There were two people in it; a man clad in an immensely valuable fur coat, and a young priest, so muffled up in rugs and wraps and cloaks that only his two eyes could be seen.
Just as he got up to them, he heard the priest say in a tart voice to the man in the fur coat, now standing in the road:
"Whatever is the matter? What has gone wrong with your car now?"
The priest's smart companion exclaimed in a tone of comic despair:
"It is not the right front tire this time: it is the back tire, the left one, that is punctured!"