"I admit the allegation, M'sieur Jacox," was her rather saucy response in French. "But I had no idea you would again recognise me."
"Ah, mademoiselle, beauty such as yours is not universal, and is always to be remembered," I said, with an expression of mock reproval.
"Now, why do you flatter me—you?" she asked, "especially after what passed at Caux."
"Surely I may be permitted to admire you, Suzette? Especially as I am now aware of the truth."
She started, and stared at me for a moment, a neat little figure in black. Then she gave her shoulders a slight shrug, pouting like a spoiled child.
There were none to overhear us. It was out of the season in Paris, and on that afternoon, the 15th of August, 1908, to be exact, we had driven by "auto" into the Bois, and were taking our "five o'clock" under the trees at Pré Catalan, that well-known restaurant in the centre of the beautiful pleasure wood of the Parisians.
I had serious business with Suzette Darbour.
After our success in preventing the plans of the improved Dreadnoughts falling into German hands, I had, at Ray's suggestion, left Charing Cross in search of the dainty little divinity before me, the neat-waisted girl with the big dark eyes, the tiny mouth, and the cheeks that still bore the bloom of youth upon them—the girl who, at the Hôtel d'Angleterre, in Copenhagen, had been known as Vera Yermoloff, of Riga, and who had afterwards lived in the gay little watering-place of Caux under the same name, and had so entirely deceived me—the girl whom I now knew to be the catspaw of others—in a word, a decoy!
Yet how sweet, how modest her manner, how demure she looked as she sat there before me at the little table beneath the trees, sipping her tea and lifting her smiling eyes to mine. Even though I had told her plainly that I was aware of the truth, she remained quite unconcerned. She had no fear of me apparently. For her, exposure and the police had no terrors. She seemed rather amused than otherwise.
I lit a cigarette, and by so doing obtained time for reflection.