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192 And he walked back to the curb, measuring the wall with his eye.

"What are you going to do?"

He responded by doing it so swiftly that she gasped with surprise: pausing momentarily within a yard of the wall, he gathered himself together, shot lithely into the air, caught the top curbing with both hands, and …

She heard the soft thud of his feet on the earth of the enclosure; the latch grated behind her; the door opened.

"For the last time," Lanyard laughed quietly, "permit me to invite you to break the law by committing an act of trespass!"

Securing the door, he led her to a garden bench secluded amid conventional shrubbery.

"If you'll wait here," he suggested—"well, it will be best. I'll be back as soon as possible, though I may be detained some time. Still, inasmuch as I'm about to break into this hôtel, my motives, which are most commendable, may be misinterpreted, and I'd rather you'd stop here, with the street at hand. If you hear a noise like trouble, you've only to unlatch the gate. … But let's hope my purely benevolent intentions toward the French Republic won't be misconstrued!"

"I'll wait," she assured him bravely; "but won't you tell me—?"

With a gesture, he indicated the mansion back of the garden.

"I'm going to break in there to pay an early morning call and impart some interesting information to a person