Duncombe did not wish to depart. The hotel at which Phyllis Poynton's trunks were still awaiting her return was the hotel at which he wished to stay.
"Look here, Monsieur Huber," he said. "I give you my word of honor that I have broken no law, nor engaged in any criminal action whatever since I came to Paris. This game of having me watched is simply a piece of bluff. I have done nothing except make inquiries in different quarters respecting those two young English people who are still missing. In doing this I seem to have run up against what is nothing more nor less than a disgraceful conspiracy. Every hand is against me. Instead of helping me to discover them, the police seem only anxious to cover up the tracks of those young people."
"We hotel-keepers," he said, "are very much in the hands of the police. We cannot judge between them and the people whom they treat as suspected persons. I know very well, Sir George, that you are a person of respectability and character, but if the police choose to think otherwise I must adapt my views to theirs. I am sorry, but we must really ask you to leave."
"Very good!" he said. "I will go and take rooms elsewhere."
He left the hotel, and walked towards the Ritz. At the corner of the Place Vendôme an automobile was pulled up with a jerk within a few feet of him. A tired-looking boy leaned over wearily towards him from the front seat.
"Sir George," he said, "can you give me five minutes?"
"With pleasure!" he answered. "I was going into the Ritz. Come and have something."
"To Maxim's, if you don't mind," the Vicomte said. "It will take us only a moment."
Sir George stepped in. The Vicomte, in whose fingers the wheel seemed scarcely to rest, so light and apparently careless was his touch, touched a lever by his side, released the clutch, and swung the great car round the corner at a speed which made Duncombe grasp the sides. At a pace which seemed to him most ridiculous, they dashed into the Rue de Rivoli, and with another sharp turn pulled up before Maxim's. The Vicomte rose with a yawn as though he had just awoke from a refreshing dream. His servant slipped off his fur coat, and he descended to the pavement faultlessly dressed and quite unruffled. The commissionaire preceded them, hat in hand, to the door. A couple of waiters ushered them to the table which the Vicomte intimated by a gesture.