I was beginning to be very hungry, but that was a detail of no importance, for I had no time to waste in eating.  I went to the railway-station and looked about until I found a porter whose face I had seen when I got out of the train.  He had, in fact, appeared under the window of my compartment, offering himself as a luggage carrier and had been close behind me when my late travelling companion walked by my side.  Questioned, he appeared not to remember; but his wits being sharpened by the gift of a franc, he reflected and recalled not only my features but the features of the little man, whom he described with sufficient accuracy.  What had become of le petit Monsieur he was not certain, but fancied he had eventually driven away in a cab accompanied by two other gentlemen.  He recollected this circumstance, because the face of the cabman was one that he knew; and it was now again in the station, for the voiture had returned.  Would he point out the cocher to me?  He would, and did, receiving a second franc for his pains.

The cab driver proved to be a dull and surly fellow, like many another cocher of Paris, but the clink of silver and the sight of it mellowed him.  I began by saying that I was in search of three friends of mine whom I was to have met when the boat train came in, but whom I had unfortunately missed.  I asked him to describe the men he had driven away from the station at that time, and though he did it clumsily, betraying an irritating lack of observation when it came to details, still such information as I could draw from him sounded encouraging.  He remembered perfectly well the place at which he had deposited his three passengers, and I decided to take the risk of following them.

When I say “risk,” I mean the risk that the man I was starting to chase might turn out not to be the man I wished to follow.  Besides, as they had been driven to Neuilly, the distance was so great that, if I went there in a cab, and found at last that I had made a mistake, I should have wasted a great deal of valuable time on the wrong tack.  If the driver had remembered the name of the street, and the number of the house at which he had paused, I would have hired a motor and flashed out to the place in a few minutes; but, despite a suggested bribe, he could say no more than that, when he had come to a certain place, one of his passengers had called, “Turn down the next street, to the left.”  He had done so, and in front of a house, almost midway along that street, he had been bidden to stop.  He had not bothered to look at the name of the street; but, though he was not very familiar with that neighbourhood, various landmarks would guide him to the right place, when he came to pass them again.

Having heard all he had to say, I reluctantly made up my mind that I could do no better than take the man as my conductor; and accordingly, with a horse already tired, I drove to Neuilly.  There, the landmarks were not deceiving, as I was half afraid they would be; and in a quiet street of the suburb, we stopped at last before a fair-sized house with lights in many windows.  Evidently it was a pension.