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170 risk; give me half an hour alone and I'll guarantee to discourage this animal one way or another. You understand?"

"Perfectly," she laughed archly.

He bent and for a few moments wrote busily.

"Now he's walking slowly round the corner, never taking his eyes from you," the girl reported, shoulder to his shoulder and head distractingly near his head.

"Good. Can you see him any better?"

"Not yet. …"

"This note," he said, without stopping his pen or appearing to say anything "is for the concierge of a building where I rent stabling for a little motor-car. I'm supposed there to be a chauffeur in the employ of a crazy Englishman, who keeps me constantly travelling with him back and forth between Paris and London. That's to account for the irregularity with which I use the car. They know me, monsieur and madame of the conciergerie, as Pierre Lamier; and I think they're safe—not only trustworthy and of friendly disposition, but quite simple-minded; I don't believe they gossip much. So the chances are De Morbihan and his gang know nothing of the arrangement. But that's all speculation—a forlorn hope!"

"I understand," the girl observed. "He's still prowling up and down outside the hedge."

"We're not going to need that car tonight; but the hôtel of Madame Omber is close by; and I'll follow and join you there within an hour at most. Meantime, this note will introduce you to the concierge and his wife—I hope you won't mind—as my fiancée. I'm telling them we became engaged in England, and I've brought you to Paris