“I don’t know who put them there,” I denied hastily, “except that he was a pale little runt of a German, pretending to be a thief, who will wish he had died young if I ever see him again.”

An inspector had just passed my traps through with bored indifference.  I turned a huffy back on Van Blarcom and went to stand in line before a door which harbored, I was told, a special commission for the examination of passports and the admission of travelers into France.

Reaching the inner room in due course, I saluted three uniformed men who sat round an unimposing wooden table, exhibited the vise that Jack Herriott had secured for me at Genoa, and was welcomed to the land.  Then I stepped forth on the platform, retrieved my porter and my baggage, and placed myself near the door to wait until the girl should come.

I must have been a grim sort of sentinel as I stood there watching.  I knew what I had to do, but I detested it with all my heart.  There was one thing to be said for this Miss Falconer—­she had courage.  She was pressing on to French soil without lingering a day in Italy, though she must be aware that by so swift a move she was risking suspicion, discovery, death.

As moment after moment dragged past, I grew uneasy.  Would she come out at all?  Could she win past those trained, keen-eyed men?  The more I thought of it, the more desperate seemed the game she was playing.  This little Alpine town, high among the peaks, surrounded by pines and snow, had been a setting for tragedies since the war began.  These territorials with their muskets were not mere supers, either.  But no!  She was emerging; she was starting toward the rapide.  There, no doubt, a reserved compartment was awaiting her, and once inside its shelter, she would not appear again.

I drew a deep breath in which resolve and distaste were mingled.  She had crossed the frontier, but she was not in Paris yet.  I couldn’t shirk the thing twice, knowing as I did her charm, her beauty, her air of proud, spirited graciousness—­all the tools that equipped her.  I couldn’t, if I was ever again to hold my head before a Frenchman, let her pass on, so daring and dangerous and resourceful, to do her work in France.

As she approached, I stepped in front of her, lifting my hat.

“This is a great surprise, Miss Falconer,” said I.

CHAPTER X

DINNER FOR TWO

I was prepared for fear, for distress, for pleading as I confronted Miss Falconer; the one thing I hadn’t expected was that she should seem pleased at the meeting, but she did.  She flushed a little, smiled brightly, and held out her gloved hand to me.

“Why, Mr. Bayne!  I am so glad!” she exclaimed in frankly cordial tones.

The crass coolness of her tactics, with its implied rating of my intelligence, was the very bracer I needed for a most unpleasant task.  I accepted her hand, bowed over it formally, and released it.  Then I spoke with the most impersonal courtesy in the world.