'I am hungry, my friend!' she exclaimed. 'Let us go. And yet, remember this. Temporary servants are bad things for people who follow our profession.'
They left the room. Niko was standing with the front door wide open, his master's hat and gloves in his hand.
'I will be here at seven o'clock in the morning, sir,' he promised, 'and bring news of Perkins.'
Lavendale nodded. The door was closed softly behind them. At the bottom of the stairs he glanced up.
'Wish I could get rid of the ridiculous idea I have about that fellow,' he remarked.
'Is there anything in your rooms of particular--I will not say value, I will say interest?' she inquired.
'I suppose I have the usual amount of valuables,' he admitted, 'but Perkins is a very careful servant, and I am sure he would never have sent any one who wasn't reliable. As regards my papers and that sort of thing, they are all locked up in a safe with a combination lock.'
She did not pursue the subject and it faded quickly from Lavendale's mind. They dined in a quiet corner at the Milan and they talked of many things, chiefly the war.
'Do you realize,' he asked her, towards the end of their meal, 'that you are still a complete mystery to me?'
'You know what I mean, of course,' he went on. 'Three weeks ago we joined hands for a moment. We were--may I not use the word?--associates. We were not, perhaps, completely successful in our enterprise, but at least we prevented that marvellous secret from ever reaching an enemy's hands. Then you disappeared. I heard nothing from you until your voice startled me down the telephone to-night--you want to dine with me. Well, I am your slave and here I am, but tell me, where have you been all this time?'
She raised her eyebrows but her air of offence was obviously assumed. She lit a cigarette and watched the smoke for a minute. He was absorbed in the study of her hands--her unusually firm yet delicate fingers, ringless save for one large, quaintly-cut emerald.
'In my life,' she said, 'I have no confidants.'
'That seems a pity,' he replied. 'We might be useful to one another.'
'I am not so sure,' she answered thoughtfully. 'For instance, although we speak together in English, my soul is French. I am for France and France only. England is our very dear ally. England is a splendid and an honourable nation, but it is France's future welfare in which I am concerned, and not England's. You, on the other hand, are Saxon. England and America, after all, are very close together.'