e?"

Froissart nodded approval. "I think that you can pass as a French
officer or a French-speaking Belgian. Is it not so?"

"You should be able to certify that better than I can myself," replied
the officer modestly. "As a boy I was brought up at Dinard in
Normandy. I served two years in the French Army as a volunteer, a
gunner. Then I went to St. Cyr, but England, the home of my father,
claimed me, and I was given a commission in the Artillery. That was
two years ago. I volunteered for the Flying Corps, served in it at the
outbreak of war, but was invalided after that confounded accident
which spoilt my nerve. I fell two hundred feet into the sea, and
passed thirty hours in the bitter water before a destroyer picked me
up. Thirty hours, my friend. My nerve went, and I was besides crippled
by rheumatism of the heart. Then I was for a few weeks liaison officer
on the Yser at the point where the English and Belgian lines met. The
wet, the cold, were too great for me, and again I was invalided. I was
a temporary captain without a job until you met me and asked for me to
be attached to you for secret service. Yes, M. Froissart, I can pass
as a French or a Belgian officer. It needs but the uniform."

"Good," cried Froissart. "You are English of the English, and French
of the French. You have served under the Tricolor and under the Union
Jack. You are an embodiment of L'Entente Cordiale. You almost
reconcile me to that detestable Dawson, but not quite. He is of the
provincial English, what you call a Nonconformist--bah! He is clever,
but bourgeois. He grates upon me; for I, his subordinate in this
service, am _aristocrat_, a Count of _l'ancien regime, catholique,
presque royaliste_. His blood is that of muddy peasants, yet he is my
chief! Peste, I spit upon the sacred name of Dawson!"

"You don't seem to be a very loyal subordinate," observed the officer,
smiling.

"Me, not loyal!" cried Froissart astonished. "I surely am of all men
most loyal to l'Entente. Have I not proved my loyalty? I have left my
beautiful France and come here to this foggy London to aid this
flat-footed _homme de bout_, Dawson, in his researches. Yet he tells
me nothing. He disguises himself before me, and laughs, laughs, when I
fail to recognize his filthy, obscene countenance. But I am loyal, of
a true loyalty unapproachable."

"I believe you, though you have a queer way of showing it. What is now
the game that you want to play off on the old