Warner turned his head and said quietly to Halkett:
"I take two of them to be South Germans or Austrians. The other might be Alsatian. Do any of these possible nationalities worry you?"
"Exactly," said Halkett coolly.
"In other words, any trouble you may expect is likely to come from Germans?"
"That's about it."
Warner lighted a cigarette.
"Shall we try a quiet getaway?" he asked.
"No; I'll look out for myself. Clear out, Warner, there's a good fellow----"
"Don't ask me to do a thing that you wouldn't do," retorted Warner sharply. "Come on; I'm going to drive you to Sais."
Halkett flushed.
"I shan't forget how decent you've been," he said. They summoned the waiter, paid the reckoning, rose, and walked leisurely toward the door.
At the _caissiere's_ desk they turned aside to say good-night to Philippa.
The girl looked up from her accounts, pencil poised, gazing at Warner.
"_Au revoir_, Philippa," he said, smilingly.
The girl's serious features relaxed; she nodded to him gayly, turned, still smiling, to include Halkett. And instantly a swift change altered her face; she half rose from her chair, arm outstretched.
"What is that man doing behind you!" she cried out--too late to avert what she saw coming. For the man close behind Halkett had dexterously passed a silk handkerchief across his throat from behind and had jerked him backward; and, like lightning, two other men appeared on either side of him, tore his coat wide, and thrust their hands into his breast pockets.
Warner pivoted on his heel and swung hard on the man with the silk handkerchief, driving him head-on into the table behind, which fell with a crash of glassware. Halkett, off his balance, fell on top of the table, dragging with him one of the men whose hand had become entangled in his breast pocket.
The people who had been seated at the table were hurled right and left among the neighboring tables; a howl of anger and protest burst from the crowd; there came a shout of "_Cochon_!"--a rush to see what had happened; people mounted on chairs, waiters arrived, running. Out of the melee Halkett wriggled and rose, coughing, his features still crimson from partial strangulation. Warner caught his arm in a grip of iron and whisked him out of the door. The next instant they were engulfed in the crowds thronging the market square.
Warner, thoroughly aroused and excited, still maintained his grip on Halkett's arm.
"Did you ever see anything like it?" he said in a low voice. "It came like a bolt from the sky. That was the _Coup du Pere Francois_. Did they get anything from you?"
Halkett spoke with difficulty, pressing his throat with his fingers and trying to smile.
"What they got," he said, "was meant for them to get--time-tables and a ticket to Paris. I don't intend to travel that way----" A fit of coughing shook him. "----For a moment I thought they'd actually broken my neck. What did you do to that fellow with his noose?"
"He fell on the table behind you. Everybody was piled up with the crockery. You wriggled out like a lizard." He turned cautiously and looked back over his shoulder. "Do you think we have been followed?"
"I can't see that we are."
They entered the rue d'Auros and turned into the Hotel Boule d'Argent. Warner sent a chasseur to the stables for his horse and dogcart; Halkett hastened to collect his luggage.
In a few minutes the horse and cart came rattling out of the mews; luggage, canvases, and the sack of colors were placed in the boot; Warner mounted, taking reins and whip; Halkett sprang up beside him, and the groom freed the horse's head.
Into the almost deserted Boulevard d'Athos they went at a lively clip, circled the lovely church of Sainte Cassilda at the head of it, and trotted out into the broad highroad which swings cast to the river Recollette, and follows that pretty little stream almost due south to the hills and cliffs and woods and meadows of Sais.
The sun hung low above the fields, reddening the roadside bushes and painting the tall ranks of poplars with vivid streaks of gold and rose.
Just outside the remains of the old town wall they passed through a suburban hamlet. That, except for a farm or two more, included the last houses this side of Sais.
For a little while neither of the young men spoke; Halkett's cough had ceased, but now and then he fidgeted with his collar as though to ease it from the bruised throat. Warner drove, looking straight between his horse's ears, as though intently preoccupied with his navigation.
After a while Halkett said:
"The envelope is safe, I take it:"
"Oh, yes. They never noticed me until I hit one of them."
"I'm so grateful," said Halkett, "that it's quite useless for me to try to say so----"
"Listen! I'm enjoying it. I'm grateful to _you_, Halkett, for giving me the opportunity. I needed touching up." He laughed in sheer exhilaration. "We stodgy professional people ought to be stirred out of our ruts, A little mix-up like that with a prospect of others is exactly what I needed."
Halkett smiled rather dryly.
"Oh," he said. "If it strikes you that way, I shall feel much relieved."
"Relieve yourself of all embarrassment," returned Warner gayly. "If our acquaintance entails further scraps with those gentlemen, I shall be merely the more grateful to you."
They both laughed; Warner swung his long whip like a fly rod and caught the loop cleverly on his whip-stock.
Halkett, still laughing, said:
"You don't look as though you enjoyed a cabaret fight. You look far too respectable."
"Oh, I am respectable, I suppose. But I'm not very aged yet, and my student days are still rather near."
The road curved out now along the Recollette where it still flowed a placid stream between green meadows and through charming bits of woodland. In the glass of the flood the sunset sky was mirrored; swallows cut the still, golden surface; slowly spreading circles of rising fish starred it at intervals.
"So you don't go armed?" remarked Warner thoughtfully.
"No."
The American pointed with the butt of his whip to the dashboard where the blue-black butts of two automatics appeared from slung holsters.
"Why the artillery?" inquired Halkett.
"I drive my neighbor, Madame de Moidrey, sometimes; and in summer it is often dark before we return. It's a lovely country; also, the quarrymen at the cement works are a rough lot. So I let my pretty neighbor take no chances with me."
"Quite right," nodded Halkett. "When quarrymen get drunk it's no joke. What quarry is it?"
"The Esser Company. It's a German cement concern, I believe."
"German?"
"I believe so."
"Where is this quarry?"
"In the hills back of the Recollette. They run barges to Ausone. Just below their canal the Recollette becomes unnavigable, and the shallows and rapids continue for several miles below Sais. That is the reason, I suppose, that the country around Sais remains primitive and undeveloped, lacking as it does railroad and water transportation."
"I wonder," said Halkett thoughtfully, "whether I might see the quarry and cement works. It must be interesting."
Warner shrugged:
"If that sort of thing interests you, I'll take you over. It's a messy place full of stone crushers and derricks and broken rock and pits full of green water. Still, if you want to see it----"
"Thanks, I should like to."
Warner glanced at him; a slight grin touched his lips.
"You seem to be interested in a great many kinds of business," he said, "--literature, military science, cement works, cabaret life----"
Halkett laughed outright; but the next moment he turned like a flash in his seat, and Warner also cast a quick glance behind him.
"A car coming!" he said, driving to the right. "What's the matter, Halkett? You don't think it's after us?"
"I think it is."
"What?"
"I know damned well it is!" said Halkett between his teeth. "Shall I jump and swim for it? Pull in a moment, Warner----"
"Wait! Do you see that gate in the hedge? Get out and open it. Quick, Halkett! I know what to do----"
Halkett leaped, dragged open the gate; Warner swung his horse and drove through and out into a swampy meadow set with wild flowers and bushes and slender saplings.
The wheels of the cart cut through the spongy sod and sank almost to the hubs, but Warner used his whip and Halkett, taking the horse by the head, ran forward beside the swaying cart. Right across their path flowed a deep, narrow stream, partly invisible between reeds and tufts of swamp weed; Warner turned the vehicle with difficulty, urged his nervous horse across a cattle bridge which had been fashioned out of a few loose planks, and drove up on firmer ground among tall ferns and willow bushes.
"Pull up those planks!" he shouted back to Halkett, guiding his horse with difficulty; and Halkett ran back, lifted the mossy, half rotted planks, and threw them up among the bushes.
A grey touring car which had halted on the highway outside the hedge had now turned after them through the gate; and already the driver was having a bad time of it in the swampy meadow.
As Halkett lifted the last plank that spanned the brook, one of three men in the tonneau of the car stood up and fired a revolver at him; and another of the men, seated beside him, also fired deliberately, resting his elbow on the side of the stalled car to steady his aim, and supporting the revolver with his left hand under the barrel.