So he settled to keep an eye on monsieur le comte, and promised himself an interesting evening.

But as time passed it became evident that there had been a hitch somewhere; de Lorgnes was only human, he couldn’t rendezvous all by himself alone, and nobody turned up to help him out.  He was fretting when Lanyard first saw him; before his dinner was half served his nerve was giving way.  Continually his distracted gaze sought the door only to turn back in disappointment to his plate.  Everlastingly he consulted his watch.  His appetite failed, the hand that too often carried a glass to his lips shook so that drops of wine spattered the cloth like blood; he could not even keep a cigarette alive, but burned more matches than tobacco.  A heavy sweat bedewed his forehead; the ruddy colour of that plump countenance grew sadly faded, the good-natured features drawn and pinched with worry.  By nine o’clock the man was hag-ridden by fear of the unknown, by terror of learning what fault had developed in the calculations of his confreres.

Efforts to fix his mind on an evening newspaper failed miserably.  And this was not for lack of interest in the news it published to the citizens of Lyons.  For Lanyard had a copy of the same sheet, and knew that Eve had loyally kept her promise; a brief despatch from Millau told of the simultaneous disappearance of one Andre Duchemin and the jewels of Madame de Montalais, and added that the police were already active in the case.

At length, unable longer to endure the growing tension of anxiety and keep up a pretence of eating, de Lorgnes called for his addition and fled the restaurant.  Lanyard finished his own meal in haste, and arrived in the foyer of the hotel in time to see de Lorgnes settle his account at the bureau and hear him instruct a porter to have his luggage ready for the one-twelve rapide for Paris.  In the meantime, anybody who might enquire for Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes should be directed to seek him in the cafe.

Thither Lanyard dutifully repaired; and wasted the rest of that evening, which he had thought would prove so amusing, watching Dupont and company watch de Lorgnes, to whom Dupont’s barely dissembled interest plainly meant nothing at all, but whose mental anguish grew to be all but unbearable.  Nor did the quantities of veeskysoda consumed by the unhappy nobleman help him bear it, though undoubtedly he assured himself it did.  By midnight he was more than half-fuddled and wholly in despair.  Half an hour later he finished his eighth veeskysoda and wove an unsteady but most dignified way back to the foyer of the hotel.

Immediately Dupont and his fellow, both markedly the worse for wear, paid and left the cafe.

Lanyard returned to his room to get a new-bought travelling bag, and started for the train afoot, a neat brown paper parcel under one arm.  On the way he made occasion to cross the Saone by one of its dozen bridges, and paused in the middle of the span to meditate upon the witchery of the night.  When he moved on the brown paper parcel was bearing merrily downstream the mortal remains of Andre Duchemin, that is to say his discarded clothing.