Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/244

 "Go to the devil!" cried O'Rourke defiantly, without looking again at the man. He turned to Chambret.

"A pretty mess we seem to have made of this business," said the Frenchman, interpreting his glance.

"Ye may well say that. What brought ye here, mon ami?"

Chambret shrugged his shoulders. "The patrol," he explained briefly. "My car broke down, and they caught up with me. What could I do?"

"True for ye there. And d'ye happen to know what's the program now?"

Chambret glanced toward madame, and shut his lips tightly. There was a moment of strained silence, which Monsieur le Prince took upon himself to break, with a sarcastical drawl addressing the woman.

"Permit me, dear sister," he said, "to offer humble apologies for my manner a moment gone; the confusion of identities, you understand—ah! And, more, dear sister, I have a favor to request of you."

She looked him coldly in the eye. "Well?" she said, paling with her disgust for the man.

"That you leave us alone for a few moments. We have business to transact with your friends. It will take but a minute, I assure you, and is a matter confidential—"

"I will not go!" she cried, grasping his meaning. "I will not go, to let you murder—"

"Ah!" he deprecated smiling. "Madame is pleased to be imaginative."

"I know you!" she told him. "I know you will stop at nothing. And I tell you I will not go!"

"And yet you will," he said with an air of finality.

"It would be best, madame—permit me to advise," O'Rourke put in deferentially. "Let me assure ye that in