to see them
safely as far as Nant. And once there he would be definitely in the
toils. He would have to stop in the town overnight; and in the morning
he would be able neither in common decency to slip away without calling
to enquire after the welfare of d'Aubrac and the tranquillity of the
ladies, nor in discretion to take himself out of the way of the civil
investigation which would inevitably follow the report of what had
happened in Montpelier.

No: having despatched a bandit to an end well-earned, it now devolved
upon Andre Duchemin to satisfy Society and the State that he had done
so only with the most amiable motives, on due provocation, to save his
own life and possibly the lives of others.

He had premonitions of endless delays while provincial authorities
wondered, doubted, criticised, procrastinated, investigated, reported,
and--repeated.

And then there was every chance that the story, thanks to the
prominence of the persons involved, for one made no doubt that the
names of Sevenie and Montalais and d'Aubrac ranked high in that part of
the world--the story would get into the newspapers of the larger towns
in the department. And what then of the comfortable pseudonymity of
Andre Duchemin? Posed in an inescapable glare of publicity, how long
might he hope to escape recognition by some acquaintance, friend or
enemy? Heaven knew he had enough of both sorts scattered widely over
the face of Europe!

It seemed hard, indeed....

But it was--of course! he assured himself grimly--all a matter of
fatality with him. Never for him the slippered ease of middle age, the
pursuit of bourgeois virtues, of which he had so fondly dreamed in
Meyrueis. Adventures were his portion, as surely as humdrum and
eventless days were many another's. Wars might come and wars might go:
but his mere presence in its neighbourhood would prove enough to turn
the Palace of Peace itself into Action Front.

Or so it seemed to him, in the bitterness of his spirit.

Nor would he for an instant grant that his lot was not without its own,
peculiar compensations.

At La Roque, a tiny hamlet huddled in the shadow of Montpellier and
living almost exclusively upon the tourists that pass that way, it was
as Duchemin had foreseen, remembering the American uniform and the face
smudged with soot--that favourite device of the French criminal of the
lower class fearing recognition. For there it appeared that, whereas
the motor car was waiting safe