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About half-past six Lanyard left the dressing-room assigned him in the barracks at Port Aviation and, waddling quaintly in the heavy wind-resisting garments supplied him at the instance of Ducroy, made his way between two hangars toward the practice field.
Ducroy insisted with an accent of exasperation. "Why do you stand glaring at me like that eh? Come, monsieur: what ails you? I have arranged everything, I say. Where is mademoiselle?" Lanyard made a broken gesture. "Gone!" he muttered forlornly.
And then, with a movement so leisurely and careless that his purpose was accomplished before the other in his preoccupation was aware of it, the adventurer leaned forward and swept up the prints from the counterpane in front of Monsieur Ducroy. "Here!" the Frenchman exclaimed. "Why do you do that?" "Monsieur no longer questions their authenticity?" "I grant you that."
Lanyard bent forward again, took a match from the stand on the bedside table, and struck it. Very calmly he advanced the flame toward the cigarette containing the roll of inflammable films. "Monsieur!" Ducroy cried in horror. "What are you doing?" Lanyard favoured him with a look of surprise. "I am about to destroy these films and prints." "You must never do that!" "Why not?
I have never wittingly harmed you, monsieur, and if I have done so without my knowledge, rest assured you have but to petition me through the proper channels and I will be only too glad to make amends!" "Still you do not listen!" the other insisted. "Come, Monsieur Ducroy calm yourself. I have not robbed you, because I have no wish to rob you. I have not harmed you, for I have no wish to harm you.
He looked up wildly, to discover Ducroy standing over him, his stout person chastely swathed in a quilted dressing-gown and trousers, his expression one of stupefaction. "Well, monsieur well?" the Minister of War demanded irritably. "What I repeat what are you doing there?" Lanyard essayed response, choked up, and gulped. He rose and stood swaying, showing a stricken face. "Eh?"
"Then I return to myself these prints, pending negotiations for their transfer to France." "How did you come by them?" demanded Monsieur Ducroy, after a moment's thought. "Need monsieur ask? Is France so ill-served by her spies that you do not already know of the misfortune one Captain Ekstrom recently suffered in London?" Ducroy shook his head. Lanyard received this indication with impatience.
Here are the plans." "You trust them to me?" Ducroy asked in astonishment. "But naturally: that makes it an affair of your honour," Lanyard explained suavely. With a gesture of graceful capitulation the Frenchman accepted the little roll of film. "Permit me," he said, "to acknowledge the honour of monsieur's confidence!"
Established behind his splendid mahogany desk in his office at the Ministere de la Guerre, or moving majestically abroad attired in frock coat and glossy topper, or lending the dignity of his presence to some formal ceremony in that beautiful uniform which appertained unto his office, Monsieur Hector Ducroy cut an imposing figure. Abed ... it was sadly otherwise.
Lanyard bowed low: "One knows with whom one deals, monsieur!... And now, if you will be good enough to excuse me...." He turned to the door. "But eh where are you going?" Ducroy demanded. "Mademoiselle," Lanyard said, pausing on the threshold "that is, the young lady who is to accompany me is waiting anxiously in the garden, out yonder.
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