il against her teeth.
"What does it know? What does it do when it knows anything?"

"I agree with mademoiselle entirely."

"Ah!" she mused bitterly--"if only we knew the name of that sale
cochon!"

"We do."

"We--monsieur?"

"I, at least, know one of the many names doubtless employed by the
assassin."

"And you hesitate to tell me!"

"Why should I? No, but an effort of memory..." Lanyard measured a
silence, seeming lost in thought, in reality timing the blow and
preparing to note its effect. Then, snapping his fingers as one who
says: I have it!--"Albert Dupont," he announced abruptly.

Unquestionably the name meant nothing to the woman. She curled a lip:
"But that is any name!" Then thoughtfully: "You heard his companion of
the cafe call him that?"

"No, mademoiselle. But I recognised the animal as Albert Dupont when he
boarded the train at Combe-Rendonde that morning and, unnoticed by him,
travelled with him all the way to Lyons."

"You recognised him?"

"I believe it well."

"When had you known him?"

"First when I fought with him at Montpellier-le-Vieux, later when he
sought to do me in on the outskirts of Nant. He was the fugitive
chauffeur of the Chateau de Montalais."

"But--name of a sacred name!--what had that one to do with de Lorgnes?"

"If you will tell me that, there will be no more mystery in this sad
affair."

The woman brooded heavily for a moment. "But if it had been you he was
after, I might understand..." He caught the sidelong glimmer of her eye
upon him, dark with an unuttered question.

But the waltz was at an end, Athenais and Le Brun were threading their
way through the intervening tables.

The interruption could not have been better timed; Lanyard was keen to
get away. He had learned all that he could reasonably have hoped to
learn from Liane Delorme in one night. He knew that she and de Lorgnes
had been mutually interested in the business that took the latter to
Lyons. He had the testimony of his own perceptions to prove that news
of the murder had come as a great shock to her. On that same testimony
he was prepared to swear that, whatever the part, if any, she had
played in the robbery, she knew nothing of "Albert Dupont," at least by
that name, and nothing of his activities as chauffeur at the Chateau de
Montalais.

Yet one thing more Lanyard knew: that Liane suspected him of knowing
more than he had told her. But he wasn't sorry she should think that;
it gave him