"Well?"
"Well, Colonel, I do not much like that, but what I like still less is, that, a few days ago, I had occasion to see Vagualame ... and this agent far from bringing me details of Nichoune's death, at first go off wanted to deny that he had been at Châlons! I could swear he was going to declare he had not been there, when a reply of my own—a blunder, I confess it—I did not take time to think—informed him that I knew of his visit to Nichoune."
Colonel Hofferman weighed the gravity of de Loubersac's words; he strode along, head bent, hands clasped behind his back, gazing with unseeing eyes at the pebbles on the path. At last he spoke.
"Tell me how you knew for certain that Nichoune had received a visit from Vagualame!"
"For some time past, Colonel, Vagualame has been under the eye of the officer charged with the supervision of our spies, de Loreuil. Under the guise of Aunt Palmyra he discovered that Nichoune had been murdered. This was the morning after her interview with Vagualame. The discovery, I may tell you, did not take de Loreuil altogether by surprise. He had observed Vagualame's attitude towards the girl, and had considered it queer—suspiciously so."
"This is serious, but it is not sufficiently definite," pronounced Colonel Hofferman.... "Let us admit that Vagualame has played a double game, has been at once traitor and spy. That being so, he may have murdered Nichoune; but as to incriminating this agent whom we have known a long time... well... you have merely a vague indication to go upon... the kind of reticence, or what you thought was reticence, he wished to maintain regarding his journey to Châlons."
"Yes," admitted de Loubersac, "if that were all I had to go upon, it would amount to little."
"You know something else?"
"I know that I arranged to meet this agent yesterday in the Garden, as our custom is, that I waited there, that he never turned up."
Colonel Hofferman took de Loubersac's arm as they walked slowly back to the reception-rooms.