Of course, whoever had left the message had mistaken me for a confederate.  I could not know any of the new arrivals; it was equally impossible that they could know me.  None the less, with a slight, unaccustomed thrill of excitement, I resolved to accept the invitation as if in absolute good faith.  It was a first-class chance to get inside those rooms, to use my eyes, to sound this affair a little, to learn whether these men were the girl’s pursuers.  As army officers they could scarcely be her accomplices.  Would they forestall me by arresting her, by taking her back to Paris?  It was astonishing how distasteful I found the idea of that.

I told madame that I thought I knew, now, who the gentlemen were.  I climbed the west staircase with determination and knocked on the door of the first room that had a light.  A voice from within, vaguely familiar, bade me enter, I did so immediately and closed the door.

Through an inner entrance I saw three men grouped about a table in the next room, all smoking cigarettes, all clad in horizon blue.  They glanced up at me for a moment, and then, politely, they looked away.  But a fourth man, who had stood beside them, came striding out to meet me, and I confronted Mr. John Van Blarcom face to face.

Officers fresh from the trenches have told me that one can lose through sheer accustomedness all horror at the grim sights of warfare, all consciousness of ear-splitting noises, all interest in gas and shrapnel and bursting shells.  In the same way one can lose all capacity for astonishment, I suppose.  I don’t think I manifested much surprise at this unexpected meeting; and I heard myself remarking quite coolly that there had been a mistake, that I had been told downstairs that a friend of mine was here.

“That’s right, Mr. Bayne,” cut in Van Blarcom shortly.  “I’ve been a friend of yours clear through, and I’m acting as one now.  Just a minute, sir, please!”

He had shut the door between ourselves and the officers, and now he was drawing the shutters close.  Coming back into the room, he seated himself, and motioned me toward a chair, which I didn’t take.  His authoritative manner was, I must say, not unimpressive.  And he knew how to arrange a rather crude stage-setting; the room, with all air and sound excluded, seemed tense and breathless; the one dim candle on the table lent a certain solemnity to the scene.

“Look here, Mr. Bayne,” he began bluffly, “last time you spoke to me you told me to—­Well, we’ll let bygones by bygones; I guess you remember what you said.  You don’t like me, and I’m not wasting any love on you; as far as you’re personally concerned, I’d just as soon see you hang!  But I’ve got to think of the United States.  I’m in the service, and it doesn’t do her any good to have her citizens get in bad with France.”

Standing there, gazing at him with an air of bored inquiry, behind my mask of indifference I racked my brain.  What did he want of me?  What did he want of Miss Falconer?  What was he doing in this military galley?  Hopeless queries, without the key to the puzzle!