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The players, who were seated at a table, with mugs of beer beside them, glanced up quickly from their game as he came in, and one of them, a heavy-framed, beetle-browed German, called out to him, speaking French: "How now, Bouche-de-Miel, what is the matter? You are out of breath and as pale as if you had been shadowed by an Agent de la Sureté!"
It was too cold to sit in the car with comfort, so a lieutenant of gendarmerie, the chief of the local Sûrété, invited me to make myself comfortable in his little office. After a time the conversation languished, and, for want of something better to say, I inquired how far it was to Ostend.
"I have telephoned to Lemerre, the Chef de la Surete at Geneva," said Hanaud, as the car sped out of Aix along the road to Annecy. "He will have the house watched. We shall be in time. They will do nothing until dark." But though he spoke confidently there was a note of anxiety in his voice, and he sat forward in the car, as though he were already straining his eyes to see Geneva.
Both of them had spent many years in the service of the Paris Surete under the great Goron before being appointed to the responsible positions in the detective service of Monaco. "Then you knew the lady?"
The accusations left a profound effect upon the French people despite the Communists' assertions that they never countenance terrorism. The Sûreté Nationale, the French Scotland Yard, opened an intensive investigation which was spurred on by the deaths of the unfortunate gendarmes.
Monsieur le Ministre de la Surete de Noyon bit his lip. "Never mind writing that down," he directed the lawyer. Then, returning to the charge: "You had a great deal of trouble with Lieutenant A.?" I laughed outright at this complimentary nomenclature. "Yes, we certainly did."
There was a buzzing, as of an angry sea, in his ears. The next second, until the woman spoke, seemed like a cycle of years. "Quite safe, citizen," she said placidly. "Everything is quite safe. We were so thankful for those men of the Surete. We had been afraid before, as I told the citizen Representative, and my man and I could not rest for anxiety.
For the first time in his life, Burwell regretted that he had not studied French at college. After various vain attempts to either solve or forget the torturing riddle, he saw no other course than to lay the problem before a detective agency. He accordingly put his case in the hands of an agent de la sûreté who was recommended as a competent and trustworthy man.
"From what subscriber did that call come?" I demanded. Alas! another check awaited me. It had originated in a public call office, and "Scorpion" was untraceable by this means! Despair is not permitted by the traditions of the Service de Surete. Therefore I returned to my flat and recorded the facts of the matter thus far established.
They reached Geneva as the dusk was falling, and drove straight to the restaurant by the side of the lake and mounted to the balcony on the first floor. A small, stout man sat at a table alone in a corner of the balcony. He rose and held out his hands. "My friend, M. Lemerre, the Chef de la Surete of Geneva," said Hanaud, presenting the little man to his companion.
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