She was turning to the right, not the left; she would not pass me.  I stood transfixed, watching from my post against the wall.  As the car crept by the old majordomo, he saluted, and she spoke to him, bending forward for a moment to rest her fingers on his sleeve.

“Be of courage, Marcel, my friend!  All will be well if le bon Dieu wills it,” I heard her say.  Then to the chauffeur she added:  “En avant, Georges!  Vite, a Bleau!” The motor snorted as the car gained speed, and they were gone.

The ancient Marcel, reentering, locked the grille behind him.  I was left alone, more astounded than before.  The girl’s kind speech to the old servant, her gentle tones, her womanly gesture, had been bewildering.  Despite all the accusing features her case offered, I should have said just then, as I watched Miss Esme Falconer, that she was nothing more or less than a superlatively nice girl.

“Honk!  Honk!  Honk!”

I swung round, startled.  A moment earlier the length and breadth of the street had stretched before me, empty; yet now I saw, sprung apparently out of nowhere, a long, lean, gray car, low-built like a racer, carrying four masked and goggled men.  Steadily gaining speed as it came, it bore down upon me and, after grazing me with its running-board and nearly deafening me with the powerful blast of its horn, flew on down the street and vanished in Miss Falconer’s wake.

Trying to clarify my emotions, I stared after this Juggernaut.  Was it merely the sudden appearance of the thing, its look, so lean and snake-like and somber-colored, and the muffled air of its occupants that had struck me as sinister when it went flashing by?  I wasn’t sure, but I had formed the impression that these men were following Miss Falconer.  A patently foolish idea!  And yet, and yet—­

My experiences at the St. Ives and on the Re d’Italia had contributed to my education.  I could no longer deny that melodrama, however unwelcome, did sometimes intrude itself into the most unlikely lives.  The girl was bound somewhere on a secret purpose.  Could these four men be her accomplices?  Were they going too?

“A Bleau!”

Those had been her words to the chauffeur; for Bleau, then, she was bound.  But where did such a place exist?  I had never heard of it; and yet I possessed, I flattered myself, through the medium of motor-touring, a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the map of France.

The affair was becoming a veritable nightmare.  It seemed incredible that a few minutes earlier I had resolved to wash my hands of it all.  If the girl had a disloyal mission, it was my plain duty to intercept her.  I could not denounce her to the police.  I didn’t analyze the why and wherefore of my inability to take this step; I simply knew and accepted it.  If I interfered with what she was doing, I must interfere quietly, alone.

Ordinarily I have as much imagination as a turnip, but now I indulged in a sudden and surprising flight of fancy.  Might it be, I found myself wondering, that the men in the gray care were not Miss Falconer’s accomplices, but her pursuers?  In that case, high as was her courage, keen as were her wits,—­I found myself thinking of them with a sort of pride,—­she was laboring under a handicap of which she could not dream.