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Later, like some worried creature of the night, panting, dishevelled, his rough clothing stained and muddied, he slunk across an open space, a mile or so from his point of disappearance, dropped cautiously down into the dry bed of the moat, climbed as stealthily a slippery glacis of the fortifications, darted across the inner boulevard, and began to describe a wide arc toward his destination, the hotel Omber.
"He's still prowling up and down outside the hedge." "We're not going to need that car tonight; but the hotel 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 fiancee.
Did Bannon entertain some secret, personal animus against Michael Lanyard himself as distinguished from the Lone Wolf? In this temper he arrived, past one in the morning, under the walls of the hotel Omber, and prudently selected a new point of attack.
"They were only her finest pieces, her personal jewels, that Madame Omber took with her to England," he explained; "she's mad about them ... never separated from them.... Perhaps the finest collection in the world, for size and purity of water.... She had the heart to leave these all this!"
"Madame Omber?" enquired the commissaire, saluting that lady with immense dignity. "One trusts that this intrusion may be pardoned, the circumstances remembered. In an affair of this nature, involving this repository of so historic treasures " "That is quite well understood, monsieur le commissaire," madame replied distantly. "And this monsieur is, no doubt, your aide?"
The stress of his anxiety was both undisguised and undisguisable. Nor did Madame Omber overlook it. "What's the trouble, eh? Is it that already you hear the cell door clang in your ears?"
He turned to Madame Omber: "Accept, if you please, madame, my sincere regrets ... but this charge happens to be one of which I am altogether innocent."
The hotel particulier of that wealthy and amiable eccentric, Madame Helene Omber, was a souvenir of those days when Passy had been suburban.
He must and would find another way; but his decision was frightfully hampered by lack of ready money; the few odd francs in his pocket were no store for the war-chest demanded by this emergency. True, he had the Omber jewels; but they were not negotiable not at least in Paris. And the Huysman plans? He pondered briefly the possibilities of the Huysman plans.
At this confirmation of his darkest fears, the adventurer abandoned hope of aid from Madame Omber and began quietly to reckon his chances of escape through his own efforts. But he was quite unarmed, and the odds were heavy: four against one, all four no doubt under arms, and two at least the sergents men of sound military training.
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