Once more Louis shrugged his shoulders.

“Who can tell, monsieur?” he answered.  “I suggest nothing.  I spoke only as one might speak, hearing of this case.  One moment, monsieur.”

He darted away to welcome some newcomers, ushered them to their table, suggested their lunch, passed up and down the room, stopping here and there to bow to a patron, to examine the dishes standing ready to be served, to correct some fault of service.  It seemed to me, as I watched him, that he did a hundred things before he returned.  Yet in a very few moments he was standing once more before my table, examining with a complacent air the service of my luncheon.

“Monsieur will find the petits carots excellent,” he declared.  “My friend Henry, he tries to serve this dish, but it is not the same thing; no!  Always the vegetables must be served in the country where they are grown.  Monsieur will drink something?”

“A pint of Moselle,” I ordered.  “I dare not order whiskey and soda before you, Louis.”

He made a little grimace.

“It is as monsieur wishes,” he declared, “but it is a drink without finesse,—­a crude drink for a man of monsieur’s tastes.  It shall be the Moselle No. 197,” he added, turning to the waiter.  “Do not forget the number. 197,” he added, turning to me, “is an absolutely light wine,—­for luncheon, delicious!”

We were alone once more.  Louis bent, smiling, over my table.

“Monsieur is much interested,” he said, “in the disappearance of an acquaintance, a passing travelling companion, but he does not ask of affairs which concern him more gravely.”

“Of Tapilow!” I exclaimed quickly.

Louis nodded.

“Tapilow is in an hospital and he will live,” Louis declared slowly, “but all his life he will limp, and all his life he will carry a scar from his forehead to his mouth.”

I nodded meditatively.

“It is, perhaps,” I answered, “a more complete punishment.”

I fancied that in Louis’ green eyes there shot for a moment a gleam of something like admiration.

“Monsieur has courage,” he murmured.

“Why not?” I answered.  “We all of us have a certain amount of philosophy, you know, Louis.  It was inevitable that when that man and I met, I should try to kill him.  I had no weapon that night.  I simply took him into my hands.  But there, you know the rest.  If he had died, I might have had to pay the penalty.  It was a risk, but you see I had to take it.  The thing was inevitable.  The wrong that he had done some one who is very dear to me was too terrible, too hideous, for him to be allowed to go unpunished.”

“When he recovers,” Louis remarked thoughtfully, “monsieur will have an enemy.”

“A great man, Louis, once declared,” I reminded him, “that one’s enemies were the salt of one’s life.  One’s friends sometimes weary.  One’s enemies give always a zest to existence.”