"What have you to say to me?" retorted Puymirol, without abandoning his threatening attitude.
"Permit me first to take a seat at your table. If I continue to talk to you standing, I shall attract the attention of all the people present. They are already beginning to watch us, and they will think I am trying to pick a quarrel with you, whereas my intentions are really of the most peaceable kind. Besides, what I have to say to you is strictly confidential."
"Very well, take a seat and explain yourself, but be brief. First of all, who are you?"
"My name would have no significance to you," said the stranger, sitting down. "I don't know yours, nor do I wish to know it."
"But how can you have any business with me if you don't know my name? You are fooling me, and I am going--"
"Pray, grant me a hearing. I was at the door of the restaurant when you came in, and I asked the door-porter if you had not come here one day, under circumstances which he was bound to remember. He replied in the affirmative, so I followed you in, wondering how I should manage to enter into conversation with you. Pray, believe that I should not have watched for your coming here during a whole fortnight, if mere idle curiosity had prompted my desire to make your acquaintance."
"You dare to admit that you have been playing the spy on me for a fortnight?"
"I was not playing the spy, I merely told the doorkeeper that I would give him two louis if he would point out to me a gentleman who came here one morning in a cab to lunch with a party in a private room. He was anxious to secure the promised reward, of course, but you did not make your appearance until to-night."
"Well, confine yourself to facts. What do you want with me?"
"Before explaining myself more fully, I wish to satisfy myself that I am not making a mistake. So allow me, sir, to ask you one question, only one. Did you not, on Wednesday, the 9th of April, pass through the Place du Carrousel in a cab which turned into the Rue de Rivoli?"
"I have passed through the Place du Carrousel hundreds of times in my life," said Adhémar, "but I am not at all sure that I passed through it on the day you mention. I have no reason to recollect such an insignificant occurrence."
