“Then how are we to make the coup?” Flockart asked, looking into the colourless eyes of his friend.

“We shall, I fear, never make it, unless——­”

“Unless what?” he asked.

“Unless the old man meets with an accident,” replied the other, in a low, distinct voice. “Blind men sometimes do, you know!”

CHAPTER XXIII

WHICH SHOWS A SHABBY FOREIGNER

Felix Krail, his cigarette held half-way to his lips, stood watching the effect of his insinuation.  He saw a faint smile playing about Flockart’s lips, and knew that it appealed to him.  Old Sir Henry Heyburn had laid a clever trap for him, a trap into which he himself believed that his daughter had fallen.  Why should not Flockart retaliate?

The shabby stranger, whose own ingenuity and double-dealing were little short of marvellous, and under whose watchful vigilance the Heyburn household had been ever since her ladyship and her friend Flockart had gone south, stood silent, but in complete satisfaction.

The well-dressed Riviera-lounger—­the man so well known at all the various gay resorts from Ventimiglia along to Cannes, and who was a member of the Fetes Committee at San Remo and at Nice—­merely exchanged glances with his friend and smiled.  Quickly, however, he changed the topic of conversation.  “And what’s occurring in Paris?”

“Ah, there we have the puzzle!” replied the man Krail, his accent being an unfamiliar one—­so unfamiliar, indeed, that those unacquainted with the truth were always placed in doubt regarding his true nationality.

“But you’ve made inquiry?” asked his friend quickly.

“Of course; but the business is kept far too close.  Every precaution is taken to prevent anything leaking out,” Krail responded.

“The clerks will speak, won’t they?” the other said.

“Mon cher ami, they know no more of the business of the mysterious firm of which the blind Baronet is the head than we do ourselves,” said Krail.

“They make enormous financial deals, that’s very certain.”

“Not deals—­but coups for themselves,” he laughed, correcting Flockart.  “Recollect what I discovered in Athens, and the extraordinary connection you found in Brussels.”

“Ah, yes.  You mean that clever crowd—­four men and two women who were working the gambling concession from the Dutch Government!” exclaimed Flockart.  “Yes, that was a complete mystery.  They sent wires in cipher to Sir Henry at Glencardine.  I managed to get a glance at one of them, and it was signed ‘Metaforos.’”

“That’s their Paris cable address,” said his companion.

“Surely you, with your network of sources of information, and your own genius for discovering secrets, ought to be able to reveal the true nature of Sir Henry’s business.  Is it an honest one?” asked Flockart.