“I’ve come a long way round, Ewart, in order to enter France unobserved. I’ve been travelling hard these last three days. Blythe is with Mademoiselle, I suppose?” he asked, as we went along.
I responded in the affirmative.
“Tell me all that’s happened. Go on, I’m listening—everything. Tell me exactly, for a lot depends upon how matters now stand,” he said, buttoning the collar of his heavy overcoat more tightly around his neck, for the icy blast cut one like a knife at the rate we were travelling.
I settled down to the wheel, and related everything that had transpired from the moment he had left.
Fully an hour I occupied in telling him the whole story, and never once did he open his mouth. I saw by the reflection of the light upon the snowy road that his eyes were half closed behind his goggles, and more than once feared that he had gone to sleep.
Suddenly, however, he said—
“And who is the long-nosed stranger?”
“I don’t know.”
“But it’s your place to know,” he snapped. “We can’t have fellows prying into our affairs without knowing who they are. Haven’t you tried to discover?”