“In the meantime,” I said sharply, as he paused for breath, “there is a keen-faced young man who took a room in the inn this morning and who has come to spy upon you, I believe.”

“What is it you say?”

He came to a sudden stop.

I had not meant to deliver my information quite so abruptly, but there was no help for it now, and I repeated the statement, giving him a terse account of my two encounters with the rattish youth, and adding: 

“He seemed to be certain that ‘Oliver Saffren’ is an assumed name, and he made a threatening reference to the laws of France.”

The effect upon Keredec was a very distinct pallor.  He faced me silently until I had finished, then in a voice grown suddenly husky, asked: 

“Do you think he came back to the inn?  Is he here now?”

“I do not know.”

“We must learn; I must know that, at once.”  And he went to the door.

“Let me go instead,” I suggested.

“It can’t make little difference if he see me,” said the professor, swallowing with difficulty and displaying, as he turned to me, a look of such profound anxiety that I was as sorry for him now as I had been irritated a few minutes earlier by his galliard air-castles.  “I do not know this man, nor does he know me, but I have fear”—­his beard moved as though his chin were trembling—­“I have fear that I know his employers.  Still, it may be better if you go.  Bring somebody here that we can ask.”

“Shall I find Amedee?”

“No, no, no!  That babbler?  Find Madame Brossard.”

I stepped out to the gallery, to discover Madame Brossard emerging from a door on the opposite side of the courtyard; Amedee, Glouglou, and a couple of carters deploying before her with some light trunks and bags, which they were carrying into the passage she had just quitted.  I summoned her quietly; she came briskly up the steps and into the room, and I closed the door.

“Madame Brossard,” said the professor, “you have a new client to-day.”

“That monsieur who arrived this morning,” I suggested.

“He was an American,” said the hostess, knitting her dark brows—­“but I do not think that he was exactly a monsieur.”

“Bravo!” I murmured.  “That sketches a likeness.  It is this ‘Percy’ without a doubt.”

“That is it,” she returned.  “Monsieur Poissy is the name he gave.”

“Is he at the inn now?”

“No, monsieur, but two friends for whom he engaged apartments have just arrived.”

“Who are they?” asked Keredec quickly.

“It is a lady and a monsieur from Paris.  But not married:  they have taken separate apartments and she has a domestic with her, a negress, Algerian.”

“What are their names?”

“It is not ten minutes that they are installed.  They have not given me their names.”

“What is the lady’s appearance?”

“Monsieur the Professor,” replied the hostess demurely, “she is not beautiful.”