thing
about him, too; but what? Ah, to be sure, he was the Firefly of France,
the hero of the Flying Corps, the young nobleman of whose suspected
treason I had read in that extra on the ship. In that damned extra, I
amended, with natural feeling. For it was like Rome; everything seemed
to lead its way.

CHAPTER XIII

AT THE THREE KINGS

"What's the best hotel in the place?" I inquired somewhat dubiously. The
man in the blouse, who had performed the three functions of opening my
compartment-door, carrying my bag to the gate, and relieving me of my
ticket, achieved a thoroughly Gallic shrug.

"Monsieur," said he, "what shall I tell you? The best hotel, the worst
hotel--these are one. There is only the Hotel des Trois Rois in the town
of Bleau. Let monsieur proceed by the street of the Three Kings and he
will reach it. Formerly there was an omnibus, but now the horses are
taken. And if they remained, who could drive them with all the men at
the war?"

Carrying my bag and feeling none too amiable, I set off along the
indicated route. In Paris, rushing from the rue St.-Dominique to Cook's
office, from that office to the hotel, from the hotel to the _gare_, I
had been a sort of whirling dervish with no time for sober thought.
My trip of four hours on a slow, stuffy, crowded train had, however,
afforded me ample leisure; and I had spent the time in grimly envisaging
the possibilities that, I decided, were most likely to befall.

First and foremost disagreeable; that the men in the gray automobile
were helping Miss Falconer in some nefarious business. In this case, it
would be up to me to fight the gentlemen single-handed, rescue the girl,
and escort her back to Paris, all without scandal. Easier said than
done!

Second possibility: that Miss falconer, pausing at Bleau only en route,
might already have departed, and that I would be left with my journey
for my pains.

Third: that the gray car had no connection with her; that she had some
entirely blameless errand. I hoped so, I was sure. If this proved true,
I was bound to stand branded as a meddling, officious idiot, one who, in
defiance of the most elementary social rules, persisted in trailing her
against her will. Vastly pleasant, indeed!

Fuming, I shifted my bag from one hand to the other and walked faster.
Night was falling, but it was not yet really dark, and I formed a
clear enough notion of the village as I traversed it. It was one of the
hundreds of i