“I'm afraid,” he said, “that I must ask you to give me your name.”
Westerham smiled a little to himself to think how futile was such a precaution on the man's part. He was at liberty to give him what name he chose; he could give him the first name that came into his head.
“I think,” he laughed, “that for safety's sake you had better call me Charles Grey, though how on earth you are to ascertain whether that is my real name or not I confess I cannot see.”
The fat detective sucked in his lips and wrote the name laboriously in his book.
“After all,” he said, with some asperity, “people who give wrong names and addresses seldom come to any good.”
“I suppose not,” said Westerham, and walked a little moodily towards the train. He paid the guard handsomely enough to warrant the man's not forgetting to call him at Rouen. But still Westerham felt that he had so much at stake that he could leave nothing to chance, and so he sat upright, wakeful and watchful, while the train rushed through the apple trees of Normandy to the old cathedral city.
When he arrived there it was raining hard, and he was conscious that he was again an object of suspicion as he stood on the steps of the station looking about him in search of a fiacre.
No vehicle was in sight, and Westerham set himself to tramp up the hill to the Hôtel de la Cloche, at which he had stayed long years before, and of which he still entertained a lively recollection of its cleanness and its quaintness.
The hotel slept, and Westerham heard the bell pealing through the silent house as he stood shivering and waiting on the doorstep.
Presently he heard the sound of bolts being withdrawn and a shock-headed night porter thrust his face out into the damp morning air.