ot know to this day whether anyone watched me or not, nor do I care.
I live in the present: when once the past is done with, it ceases to
exist for me. It is quite possible, nay, entirely probable, that no
one tracked me farther than Liverpool Street Station the night before,
yet it was for lack of such precaution that my assistant Brisson
received the Italian's dagger under his shoulder blade fifteen years
before. The present moment is ever the critical time; the future is
merely for intelligent forethought. It was to prepare for the future
that I was now in a cab on the way to my lord's residence. It was not
the French anarchists I feared during the contest in which I was about
to become engaged, but the Paris police. I knew French officialdom too
well not to understand the futility of going to the authorities there
and proclaiming my object. If I ventured to approach the chief of
police with the information that I, in London, had discovered what it
was his business in Paris to know, my reception would be far from
cordial, even though, or rather because, I announced myself as Eugene
Valmont. The exploits of Eugene had become part of the legends of
Paris, and these legends were extremely distasteful to those men in
power. My doings have frequently been made the subject of feuilletons
in the columns of the Paris Press, and were, of course, exaggerated by
the imagination of the writers, yet, nevertheless, I admit I did some
good strokes of detection during my service with the French
Government. It is but natural, then, that the present authorities
should listen with some impatience when the name of Eugene Valmont is
mentioned. I recognise this as quite in the order of things to be
expected, and am honest enough to confess that in my own time I often
hearkened to narratives regarding the performances of Lecocq with a
doubting shrug of the shoulders.

Now, if the French police knew anything of this anarchist plot, which
was quite within the bounds of possibility, and if I were in
surreptitious communication with the anarchists, more especially with
the man who was to fling the bomb, there was every chance I might find
myself in the grip of French justice. I must, then, provide myself
with credentials to show that I was acting, not against the peace and
quiet of my country, but on the side of law and order. I therefore
wished to get from the nobleman a commission in writing, similar to
that command which he had placed upon