Again, where had that long, lean, pursuing streak sprung from?  Could it have lurked somewhere in the neighborhood, spying on the hotel that Miss Falconer had just left, waiting for her to emerge?  I was aware of my absurdity, but I couldn’t put an end to it; with each instant that went by my uneasiness seemed to grow.  So I yielded, not without qualms as to whether the quarter would take me for a gibbering idiot.  Grimly and doggedly I stalked the length of the rue St.-Dominique, and the stately houses on both sides seemed to scorn me, their shutters to eye me pityingly, as I peered to right and left for the possible cache of the car.

And within four hundred feet I found it.  Against all reason and probability, there it was.  At my left there opened unostentatiously one of those short, dark, neglected blind alleys so common in the older part of Paris, with the houses meeting over it and forming an arched roof.  Running back twenty feet or so, it ended in a blank wall of stone; and, amid the dust and debris that covered its rough paving, I distinctly made out the tracks of tires, with between them, freshly spilt, a tiny, gleaming pool of oil.

At this psychological moment a taxicab came meandering up the street.  It was unoccupied, but its red flag was turned down.  The driver shook his head vigorously as I signaled him.

“I go to my dejeuner, Monsieur!” he explained.

“On the contrary,” said I fiercely, “you go to the tourist bureau of Monsieur Cook in the Place de l’Opera, at the greatest speed the sergents de ville allow!”

I must have mesmerized him, for he took me there obediently, casting hunted glances back at me from time to time when the traffic momentarily halted us, as if fearing to find that I was leveling a pistol at his head.

It being noon, the office of the tourist bureau was almost deserted, a single, bored-looking, young French clerk keeping vigil behind the travelers’ counter.  With the sociable instinct of his nation he brightened up at my appearance.

“I want,” I announced, “to ask about trains to Bleau.”

For a moment he looked blank; then he smiled in understanding.

“Monsieur is without doubt an artist,” he declared.

I was not, decidedly; but the words had been an affirmation and not a question.  It seemed clear that for some cryptic reason I ought to have been an artist.  Accordingly, I thought it best to bow.

He seemed childishly pleased with his acumen.

“Monsieur will understand,” he explained, “that before the war we sold tickets to many artists, who, like monsieur, desired to paint the old mill on the stream near Bleau.  It has appeared at the Salon many times, that mill!  Also, we have furnished tickets to archaeologists who desired to see the ruins of the antique chapel, a veritable gem!  But monsieur has not an archaeologist’s aspect.  Therefore, monsieur is an artist.”