“Yes, but I don’t believe it,” was my very frank reply. He had certainly explained that, but his manner was not earnest. I could see that he was only trifling with me, trifling in an easy, good-natured way.
“Bien!” he said; “and if I followed you, Monsieur Biddulph, I assert that it is with no sinister intent.”
“How do I know that?” I queried. “You are a stranger.”
“I admit that. But you are not a stranger to me, my dear monsieur.”
“Well, let us come to the point,” I said. “What do you want with me?”
“Nothing,” he laughed. “Was it not you yourself who addressed me?”
“But you followed me!” I cried. “You can’t deny that.”
“Monsieur may hold of me whatever opinion he pleases,” was Delanne’s polite reply. “I repeat my regrets, and I ask pardon.”
He spoke English remarkably well. But I recollected that the international thief—the man who is a cosmopolitan, and who commits theft in one country to-night, and is across the frontier in the morning—is always a perfect linguist. Harriman was. Though American, with all his nasal intonation and quaint Americanisms, he spoke half-a-dozen Continental languages quite fluently.