It was perhaps the greatest surprise of my life when the trim, benevolent-looking gentleman with the red ribbon in his button-hole, who was sharing my seat in the Jardins des Invalides, suddenly addressed me by name. For over a year—ever since, n fact, my escape from the English police in Scotland—I had been engaged in the strenuous task of founding and cultivating a new identity. My name now was Mr. John D. Harmon. I was a retired drygoods dealer from Providence, Rhode Island, U. S. A., and I spent most of my time at the Grand Hôtel, talking with compatriots and playing dominoes and billiards. A trip across the ocean, a few days spent in Providence, and a general knowledge of the structure of American life. had been all the actual training necessary. I had a circle of friends willing to vouch for me. whom I could have increased almost ad lib; a dossier accepted and pigeonholed by the police; a general appearance which, thanks to my manner of dressing, my horn-rimmed eyeglasses. my short beard and mustache, would have left me unrecognized even under the scrutiny of the great Sir Norman Greyes himself. For many months I had not even heard the sound of one of those names under which I had passed in England. It came upon me, therefore, as a thunderclap when my companion, to all appearance a person of the upper and official classes, whom I had noticed many mornings when strolling in the gardens, deliberately went behind the many aliases of which I had made use at different times, and addressed me by my baptismal name
“A little chilly for April, is it not, Monsieur Michael Sayers? Yet the spring marches well. You perceive that the chestnut-buds are already waxy.”
I turned a little toward him, my right hand stealing towards my pocket. He bore my scrutiny without flinching.
“By what name did you address me, monsieur?” I asked
“By your own,” was the courteous reply. “You have borne many others, have you not, monsieur? Yet between us the real one is perhaps best.”
He was of the French police, I decided, and my hand crept a little deeper into my pocket. My mind began to contemplate the chances of successful escape. There were not many people about, and the nearest Metropolitan station was close at hand.
“Permit me to offer you my card,” my companion proceeded, drawing an elegant case from his pocket and handing me a thin strip of ivory pasteboard. I read it carefully. My eyes, however, were watching for any movement on his part: “Monsieur Gaston Lefèvre—Agent de Compagnie d'Assurances—13, Rue Scribe.”
“That, monsieur,” my companion frankly confessed, “is not my name.”
“Indeed?” I muttered
“It is an identity,” he continued, “which I have fixed upon the little world in which I spend the greater part of my time, a name under which I have earned a certain reputation, a certain social standing. But it is not my own. I was christened Paul and my surname is Gont.”
“Paul Gont?” I repeated incredulously
“I am indeed he, monsieur,” was the convincing reply.
My fingers once more gripped the butt of the weapon, from which they had been momentarily withdrawn
“It was reported,” I said, watching him steadily, “that Paul Gont had joined the secret police of France.”
FLICKER of annoyance passed across my companion's face. His expression was no longer so beneficent
“If that were true, monsieur,” he rejoined, “I should by now have become their chief. I address you, believe me, as one master craftsman to another.”
“Why do you imagine that my name is Michael Sayers?” I asked cautiously.
He smiled.
“I take a keen interest,” he confided, “in the exploits of my—shall I say fellow-adventurers?—in other countries. I read with much amusement—not unmingled, believe me, sir, with admiration—of your escape from the police in Scotland; and the arrival of Mr. John D. Harmon from Providence here shortly afterward, also interested me. There is little that goes on in Paris of which I do not hear.”
“You have your own secret agents?”
“Certainly, monsieur,” he assented, “but they work for me and not for the law.”
He lit a cigarette from a handsome gold case which he passed courteously on to me. With his hands upon the carved top of his malacca cane, he gazed benignly around.
“It is indeed a spring morning,” he declared. “There is a perfume of lilac in the air. Even the hard faces of the flower-sellers are softened by the sunshine. And you observe the little nurse-girl over there, my friend, how wistfully she looks around, and how coquettish the little ribbon at her throat? Even we elders”
“I should be glad to know,” I interrupted, “why you addressed me as Michael Sayers?”