Her troubled eyes rested on me, half bewildered.

“Why, I’d forgotten all that,” she murmured.  “I do trust you, Mr. Bayne.  Of course I must have misunderstood you to some way last evening, and I’m afraid I was disagreeable.”

“Naturally.  You had to be.  Now, if that’s all right and I’m forgiven, may I ask a question?  About those men who arrived last night and apparently killed your chauffeur—­can you guess who they are?”

“Yes,” she faltered, looking down at the pebbled walk.  “They must have been sent by the Government or the army or the police.  If the French knew what I was doing, they wouldn’t understand my motives.  I’ve been afraid from the first that they would learn.”

Another of my precious theories was going up in smoke.  Not seeing why a set of bonafide officers should gratuitously murder a chauffeur, I had been wondering whether the quartet might not be impostors, tricked out in uniforms to which they had no claim.  Still, of course, I couldn’t judge.  If she would only confide in me!  I was fairly aching to help her; yet how could I, in this blindfold way?

“I don’t wish to be impertinent,” I ventured at length, meekly, “and I give you my word I’m not trying to find out anything you don’t want me to.  Only, assuming I’ve got some sense,—­in case you care to be so amiable,—­I’d like to put it at your service.  Do you think you could give me just a vague outline of your plans?”

She looked at me in a piteous, uncertain manner.  I braced myself for a “No.”  Then, suddenly, she seemed to decide to trust me—­in sheer desperate loneliness, I dare say.

“I am going,” she whispered, “to a village in the war zone—­where there is a chateau.  There are things in it—­some papers; at least I believe there are.  It is just a chance, just a forlorn hope; but it means all the world to certain people.  I have to act in secret till I have succeeded, and then every one in France, every one on earth may know all that I have done!”

If I had not burned my bridges, this announcement might have worried me; it was too vague, and what little I grasped tallied startlingly with Van Blarcom’s rigmarole.  However, having bowed allegiance, I didn’t blink an eyelid.

“Yes,” I said encouragingly.  “Is it very far?”

Her eyes went past me anxiously, watching the inn and its blank windows, as she fumbled in her coat and brought forth a motor map.

“Take it,” she breathed, thrusting it toward me.  “Look at it.  Do you see?  The route in red!”

As I realized the astounding thing I choked down an exclamation.  There, beneath my finger, lay the village of Bleau, a tiny dot; and from it, straight into the war zone, the traced line ran through Le Moreau and Croix-le-Valois and St. Remilly; ran to—­what was the name?  I spelled it out:  P-r-e-z-e-l-a-y.

Though it was early in the game to be a wet blanket, I found myself gasping.