“Put a name to it; but don’t forget you’ve had something on account.  Last night I gave you five hundred francs.”

“Bah!  I want a lot more than that, a thousand francs down and fifty francs a day so long as I serve you.  Do you agree to my terms?”

“My lord won’t.  He looks both sides of his money, and pays no fancy prices for a pig in a poke.”

“Then I’ll take my pigs to another market.  Suppose I let the Colonel know what you’ve been at, trying to tamper with me.  This hotel wouldn’t be big enough to hold him and your patron together.”

“Well,”—­I hesitated, not willing to appear too anxious,—­“let’s say, just for argument’s sake, that you got what you ask, or something near it.  I’m not in a position to promise it, no, not the half of it.  But we’ll agree what you’d do for us in return?”

“Anything you chose to ask.”

“Would you come over to us, belong to us body and soul?  Think first of my lord, put his interests before the Colonel’s; tell us what the Colonel’s doing, his game from day to day, read his letters, and tell us their contents; spy on his actions, watch him at every turn, his comings and his goings; the houses he calls at, the people he meets, every move he makes or has in view?”

“If I promise to do all that will you promise not to give me away?  You’ll keep your own counsel and protect me from the Colonel?  If he got a whisper I was selling him I’d lose my place and he’d half kill me into the bargain.”

“Not a soul shall know but my lord and myself.  I must consult him, or you won’t get the money.”

“But there is that other chap, the one who joined us at Culoz, and who was with you at the Commissariat, a new face to me.  One of your own party, wasn’t he?”

“To be sure, Tiler; he’s on the job, too, came out when I did from London.  But he’s gone, left us half an hour ago.”

“For good and all?  Sacked, dropped out, or what?”

“Gone to follow up a game of his own.  He thinks he knows better than any one else; believes the lady has harked back, and is following her to Amberieu, Macon, Paris, England perhaps.  God knows where.  It’s a wild goose chase, of course; but my lord leans to it, and so it is to be tried.”

“You don’t agree?”

“How can I when I’m satisfied he’s wrong?  She was seen in the express for Modane, making for the Mont Cenis tunnel.  Of course that’s the true direction.  She was aiming for Italy from the first; the other sister, the divorced lady, is there; we’ve always known that.  Go back to England!  Bah! absolute rot.  I’d stick to my opinion against fifty fools like Tiler.”

“It’s a bargain, then; I can count upon the cash?  How soon shall you know?  I’d like to begin at once; there’s something I would tell you here, and now, that would interest you very much.  But money down is my rule.”

“Let me run up and ask his lordship.  I won’t keep you five minutes.”