Deciding that to rest in the waiting-room was injudicious, I went out and crossed to the little café opposite, where the tables on the pavement were shaded by a row of laurels in tubs, in the usual French style. I wished to piece together the precious letter in my pocket without being observed. I entered the place and sat down. A consumptive waiter and a fat woman presiding over the bottles on the small counter were the only occupants, and after ordering a "limonade," I drew forth scrap after scrap of the torn letter and spread it out upon the table.
It was written in French, in a feminine hand, but it was some time before I could piece the fragments together so as to read the whole. At last I succeeded, and discovered it to be dated from the "Grand Hotel" at Brussels. It ran as follows:
"My dear Laumont,—See Julie the instant she returns from Moscow, and warn her. Someone has turned traitor. Tell her to be extremely careful, and to lie low for the present. If she does not, she will place us all in jeopardy. Advise her to go to London. She would be safe there. So would you. Bury yourselves.—Hastily, your friend, "SIDONIE."
Laumont! Who, I wondered, was Laumont?
Was it possible that the woman referred to as Julie was actually the person who had so fascinated Ernest? If so, the warning was a strange one; and she had disregarded it by tearing up the letter and casting it into Branca's face.
"Bury yourselves." The injunction was expressive, to say the least of it. Some person unknown had turned traitor, and had told the truth regarding some matter which had apparently been a secret. The letter was a mysterious one, from every point of view.
A dozen times I read it through, then carefully collected the scraps and replaced them in my pocket.
The person to whom the letter was addressed was, without doubt, an accomplice of the woman Julie, while their correspondent, who was named Sidonie, and who stayed at the "Grand Hotel" in Brussels, was anxious that both should escape to London. The woman Julie had been in Moscow. Was it possible that this woman who had attracted Ernest had during my absence in the Mediterranean been in Russia? Perhaps she had.
Yet I had no ground whatever for believing the woman whom I had seen at Monte Carlo, and had so recently followed from Paris, to be named Julie. My suspicions might, for aught I knew, be entirely groundless.
From where I sat I could watch all persons entering the station, but my heart sank within me when at length it was time for me to cross to take the train for Paris, for my search along the platform was a fruitless one.