ustion, and he felt sure that
Stewart was far too weak in body to recuperate quickly from any severe
call upon his strength. He remembered how light that burden had been in
his arms the night before, and then an uncontrollable shiver of disgust
went over him as he remembered the sight of the horribly twisted and
contorted face, felt again the shaking, thumping head as it beat against
his shoulder. He wondered how much Stewart knew, how much he would be
able to remember of the events of the evening before, and he was at a
loss there because of his unfamiliarity with epileptic seizures. Of one
thing, however, he was almost certain, and that was that the man could
scarcely have been conscious of who were beside him when the fit was
over. If he had come at all to his proper senses before the ensuing
slumber of exhaustion, it must have been after Mlle. Nilssen and himself
had gone away.

Upon that he fell to wondering about the spy and the gentleman from
Marseilles--he was a little sorry that Hartley could not have seen the
gentleman from Marseilles--but he reflected that the two were, without
doubt, acting upon old orders, and that the latter had probably been
stalking him for some days before he found him at home.

He looked at his watch and it was half-past twelve. There was nothing to
be done, he considered, but wait--get through the day somehow; and so,
presently, he went out to lunch. He went up the rue Vavin to the
Boulevard Montparnasse and down that broad thoroughfare to Lavenue's, on
the busy Place de Rennes, where the cooking is the best in all this
quarter, and can, indeed, hold up its head without shame in the face of
those other more widely famous restaurants across the river, frequented
by the smart world and by the travelling gourmet.

He went through to the inner room, which is built like a raised loggia
round two sides of a little garden, and which is always cool and fresh
in summer. He ordered a rather elaborate lunch, and thought that he sat
a very long time at it, but when he looked again at his watch only an
hour and a half had gone by. It was a quarter-past two. Ste. Marie was
depressed. There remained almost all of the afternoon to be got through,
and Heaven alone could say how much of the evening, before he could have
his consultation with Richard Hartley. He tried to think of some way of
passing the time, but although he was not usually at a loss he found his
mind empty of ideas. None of his commo