“I beg you will not address yourself to me.  I don’t know you, I don’t wish to know you,” I replied, with all the dignity I could assume.  “I decline to hold any conversation with you,” and I moved away.

But several of his rowdy friends closed around me and held me there, compelled to listen to his gibes as he rattled on.

“How is his lordship?  Well, I hope.  None the worse for that little contretemps this morning.  May I ask you to convey to him my deep regrets for what occurred, and my sincere wishes for his recovery?  If there is anything I can do for his lordship, any information I can give him, he knows, I trust, that he can command me.  Does he propose to make a lengthened stay here?”

“His lordship—­” I tried vainly to interrupt him.

“Let me urge him most strongly to go through the course.  The warm baths are truly delightful and most efficacious in calming the temper and restoring the nerve-power.  He should take the Aix treatment, he should indeed.  I am doing so, tell him; it may encourage him.”

“Colonel, this is quite insufferable,” I cried, goaded almost to madness.  “I shall stand no more of it.  Leave me in peace, I’ll have no more truck with you.”

“And yet it would be wiser.  I am the only person who can be of any use to you.  You will have to come to me yet.  Better make friends.”

“We can do without you, thank you,” I said stiffly.  “His lordship would not be beholden to you, I feel sure.  He can choose his own agents.”

“And in his own sneaking, underhand way,” the Colonel answered quickly, and with such a meaning look that I was half-afraid he suspected that we were tampering with his man.  “But two can play at that game, as you may find some day.”

When I met l’Echelle that same evening as arranged, at the Cafe Amadeo in the Place Carnot, I questioned him closely as to whether his master had any suspicion of him, but he answered me stoutly it was quite impossible.

“He knows I see you, that of course, but he firmly believes it is in his own service.  He is just as anxious to know what you are doing as you are to observe him.  By the way, have you heard anything of your other man?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Oh, don’t trouble; only if I could pass him on a bit of news either way it might lead him to show his hand.  If Tiler is getting ’hot’—­you know the old game—­he might like to go after him.  If Tiler is thrown out the Colonel will want to give help in the other direction.”

“That’s sound sense, I admit.  But all I can tell you is we had a telegram from him an hour or two ago which doesn’t look as if he was doing much good.  It was sent from Lyons, a roundabout way of getting to Paris from here, and now he’s going south!  Of all the born idiots!”

“Poor devil!  That’s how he’s made.  It’s not everyone who’s a born detective, friend Falfani.  It’s lucky my lord has you at his elbow.”