When the French began tracing my movements, when they joined my present activities to the fact that only by the skin of my teeth had I escaped a charge of bringing German papers into Italy, there would be the devil to pay.  I acknowledged it; then—­really, this brand-new, unfounded, cast-iron trust of mine in Miss Falconer was changing me beyond recognition—­I recalled the old recipe for the preparation of Welsh rabbit, and light-heartedly challenged the authorities to “catch me first.”  I had a disguise; if I bore any superior earmarks my leather coat obliterated them; and I could drive; even Dario Resta could not have sniffed at my technic.  Better still, my French, learned even before my English, would not betray me.  As nurse and as mecanicien, we stood a fair chance in our masquerade.

I might have to pay my shot, but I was enjoying it.  This was a good world through which we were speeding; life was in the high gear to-day.  The car purred beneath us like a splendid, harnessed tiger; the spring air was fresh and fragrant, the country charming, with here a forest, there a valley, farther off the tiled, colored roofs of some little town.  Our road, like a white ribbon, wound itself out endlessly between stone walls or brown fields.  In my content I forgot food and such prosaic details till I noticed that the girl looked pale.

“I say,” I exclaimed remorsefully:  “we’ve been omitting rolls and coffee!  I’m going to get you some at the first town we pass.”

“We are coming to a town now, to Le Moreau.”  She was looking anxious.

“Yes?  I’m afraid I don’t place it exactly.  Ought I to?”

“It is the first town in the war zone.  And—­and our road passes through it.”

“Oh!” I was enlightened.  “Then they will probably ask to see our papers at the octroi?”

“Yes.”

The car was eating up the smooth white road; I could see the little octroi building at the town boundary-line, and a group of gendarmes in readiness close by.  It was a critical moment.  Miss Falconer, I recalled, had said she could get through to Carrefonds; but glittering generalities were not likely to convince these sentries; one needed safe-conducts, passes, identity cards, and such concrete aids.  She couldn’t give a reasonable account of herself, I felt quite certain; and even if she did, how was she to account for me?

As I brought the car to a standstill, my conscience clamored, and my costume seemed to shriek incongruity from every seam.  In this dilemma I trusted to sheer blind luck—­a rather thrilling business.  As a gray-headed sergeant stepped forward to welcome us, I looked him unfalteringly in the eye, though I wondered if he would not say: 

“Monsieur, kindly remove that childish travesty with which you are trying to impose on justice.  We know all about you.  Your name is Devereux Bayne.  You are a German agent and intriguer; you have smuggled papers; you have murdered a man and concealed his body.  Unless you can give a satisfactory explanation of all your actions since leaving New York, your last hour has arrived!”