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90 "You're most amiable, Monsieur le Comte!" Lanyard observed thoughtfully, while the attendant produced his hat and coat. "So now, if you're ready, I won't delay you longer."

In another moment they were outside the club-house, its doors shut behind them, while before them, at the curb, waited that same handsome black limousine which had brought the adventurer from L'Abbaye.

Two swift glances, right and left, showed him an empty street, bare of hint of danger.

"One moment, monsieur!" he said, detaining the Count with a touch on his sleeve. "It's only right that I should advise you … I'm armed."

"Then you're less foolhardy than one feared. If such things interest you, I don't mind admitting I carry a life-preserver of my own. But what of that? Is one eager to go shooting at this time of night, for the sheer fun of explaining to sergents de ville that one has been attacked by Apaches? … Providing always one lives to explain!"

"It's as bad as that, eh?"

"Enough to make me loath to linger at your side in a lighted doorway!"

Lanyard laughed in his own discomfiture. "Monsieur le Comte," said he, "there's a dash in you of what your American pal, Mysterious Smith, would call sporting blood, that commands my unstinted admiration. I thank you for your offered courtesy, and beg leave to accept."

De Morbihan replied with a grunt of none too civil intonation, instructed the chauffeur "To Troyon's," and followed Lanyard into the car.