To me it seemed that some quiet, retired country village would be most suitable.  In any town M. Zola would incur great risk of being identified.  Moreover his appearance was conspicuous, his white billycock, his glasses, his light grey suit, his rosette of the Legion of Honour, his many characteristic gestures all attracted attention.  If anything was to be done he must begin by Anglicising his appearance.  But whatever I might urge I found him stubborn on that point; and, as for departure from London, he preferred to postpone this until I should have seen my friend the solicitor.

‘Everything is as good as lost!’ cried M. Desmoulin.  ’How foolish, too, of Clemenceau to have sent you to a swell hotel in a fashionable neighbourhood!  I am certain there are other French people staying at the Grosvenor—­I heard somebody talking French there this morning.’

This again might lead to unpleasantness, and I could see that the master was gradually growing anxious.  By this time, however, we had reached St. James’s Park, and there, as we seated ourselves on some chairs beside the ornamental water, I led the conversation into another channel by producing an evening newspaper, and reading therefrom successive narratives of how M. Zola had sailed for Norway, how he had taken train at the Eastern Terminus in Paris, and how he had been bicycling through the Oberland on his way to some mysterious Helvetian retreat.  Then we laughed—­ah! those journalists!—­and fears were at an end.

The ducks paddled past us, the drooping foliage of the island trees stirred in the warm breeze.  On a bench near at hand a couple of vagrants sat dozing, with their toes protruding through their wretched footgear.  Then a soldier, smart and pert, strolled up, a flower between his lips and a good-looking girl beside him.  Away in front of us were the top windows and the roofs of St. Anne’s Mansions.  Farther, on the left, the clock tower of Westminster glinted in the sun-rays.

‘Fine ducks!’ said M. Zola.

‘A pretty corner,’ added Desmoulin, waving his hand towards some branches that drooped to the water’s edge.  And suddenly I remembered and told them of another French exile, the epicurean St. Evremond, whose needs were relieved by Charles II. appointing him governor of yonder Duck Island at a salary of three hundred pounds a year.

‘Well, I have little money in my pocket,’ quoth Zola, ’but I don’t think I shall come to that.  I hope that my pen alone will always yield me the little I require.’

But Big Ben struck the hour.  It was six o’clock.  So we separated, Messrs. Zola and Desmoulin to retire to the dungeon at the Grosvenor, and I to go in search of my friend the solicitor at his private house at Wimbledon.

III

Dangersignals

That evening, I called upon my friend—­Mr.