lyn stood for a few moments in his empty sitting-room. Terrible as
had been the companioned hours of the day, he now feared to be alone. It
was too early to go to bed--and he looked back with horror to the
wakeful hours which had been his the night before. So standing there he
told himself that an hour's walk--he had not walked at all that
day--would quiet his nerves, prepare him for the next day's ordeal.

As he made his way down the broad shallow stairs, his mind seemed to
regain its elasticity. He realised that it must be his business to keep
fit. A greater ordeal than anything which had yet befallen him lay
there--in front of him. Soon, perhaps to-morrow, the Prefecture of
Police would connect the finding of a woman's dead body in the train
which had left Paris for Orange the night before, with Mrs. Pargeter's
disappearance.

It would be then that he would need all his strength and self-control.
He remembered with a thrill of anger the curious measuring glance the
head of the Paris detective force had cast on him that morning. He
wondered uneasily how far he had betrayed himself.

Passing through the porte cochere, he noticed that the concierge was
talking to a neat, stout little Frenchman with whose appearance he felt
himself familiar. Vanderlyn looked straight at the man; yes, this was
undoubtedly one of the two watchers who had been standing outside the
door of the Coq d'Or.

Then he was being followed, tracked? The Paris police evidently already
connected him in some way with the disappearance of Mrs. Pargeter?

Instead of crossing the road to the deserted pavement which bounds the
gardens of the Tuileries, the American turned to the left, and became
merged in the slowly moving stream of men and women under the arcades of
the Rue de Rivoli. As he walked along he became conscious, and that
without once turning round, that his pursuer was close behind; when he
walked slowly, the other, as far as possible, did the same, and when he
hurried on, he could hear the tap-tap dogging his footsteps through the
crowd.

At last, finding himself opposite the Hotel Continental, Vanderlyn
stopped and deliberately read over the bill of fare attached to the door
of the restaurant. As he did so, the light of a large reverbere beat
down on his face; from the human current sweeping slowly on behind him a
man quietly detached himself, and, standing for a moment by the side of
the American diplomatist, looked up into his face wi