"Assez bien," Slyne answered in an even voice. "I have followed my quarry home and am awaiting developments."
"You will be in London for a little, then?"
"For the next week or ten days, I expect," Slyne lied with perfect aplomb.
"We shall meet again, in that case," declared the detective, glancing at Sallie; and, "Au plaisir de vous revoir, monsieur," Slyne returned deferentially.
"To Grosvenor Square now—and hurry along," he directed the driver in a voice his enemy could not fail to hear. And the taxicab swung into Drury Lane, on its way west.
For a few minutes he sat silent, with bent head, biting at his moustache. Then he looked round at Sallie.
"That fellow takes me for another man," he told her querulously. "He's been dogging me ever since he first saw me at Monte Carlo. You've no idea, Sallie, what a dangerous risk I had to run there—for your sake."
"You haven't told me much about—anything, Jasper," she reminded him. And he proceeded to describe in lurid detail the fate which would undoubtedly have befallen him had M. Dubois been able then to fasten on him responsibility for the misdeeds of that criminal whom he so unfortunately resembled.
Sallie listened in silence. She had been wondering whether M. Dubois could be in any way concerned with her affairs. She gathered that he was interested only in Slyne. The latter's story of grave risk run for her sake fell somewhat flat, since it seemed to rest on the mere possibility of his having been mistaken for somebody else. She could scarcely believe that his fear of M. Dubois had no other foundation. She even ventured to suggest that he could easily have proved the detective in the wrong.
"He wouldn't have paid the slightest attention to anything I could say," Slyne assured her tartly. "He wouldn't have asked any questions or listened to any statement of mine. You don't know anything about the outrages that are committed every day by fellows like that on men like myself who have no fixed residence, Sallie; and no powerful friends to whom to appeal against such infernal injustice. I can't tell you how thankful I'll be, on your account as well as my own, when we're married and safely settled down, with a home of our own to feel safe in!