He told himself that, after all, there was no immediate hurry, for he was quite sure the man would be compelled to keep to his bed for a day or two.  He did not know much about epilepsy, but he knew that its paroxysms were followed by great exhaustion, and he felt sure that Stewart was far too weak in body to recuperate quickly from any severe call upon his strength.  He remembered how light that burden had been in his arms the night before, and then an uncontrollable shiver of disgust went over him as he remembered the sight of the horribly twisted and contorted face, felt again the shaking, thumping head as it beat against his shoulder.  He wondered how much Stewart knew, how much he would be able to remember of the events of the evening before, and he was at a loss there because of his unfamiliarity with epileptic seizures.  Of one thing, however, he was almost certain, and that was that the man could scarcely have been conscious of who were beside him when the fit was over.  If he had come at all to his proper senses before the ensuing slumber of exhaustion, it must have been after Mlle. Nilssen and himself had gone away.

Upon that he fell to wondering about the spy and the gentleman from Marseilles—­he was a little sorry that Hartley could not have seen the gentleman from Marseilles—­but he reflected that the two were, without doubt, acting upon old orders, and that the latter had probably been stalking him for some days before he found him at home.

He looked at his watch and it was half-past twelve.  There was nothing to be done, he considered, but wait—­get through the day somehow; and so, presently, he went out to lunch.  He went up the rue Vavin to the Boulevard Montparnasse and down that broad thoroughfare to Lavenue’s, on the busy Place de Rennes, where the cooking is the best in all this quarter, and can, indeed, hold up its head without shame in the face of those other more widely famous restaurants across the river, frequented by the smart world and by the travelling gourmet.

He went through to the inner room, which is built like a raised loggia round two sides of a little garden, and which is always cool and fresh in summer.  He ordered a rather elaborate lunch, and thought that he sat a very long time at it, but when he looked again at his watch only an hour and a half had gone by.  It was a quarter-past two.  Ste. Marie was depressed.  There remained almost all of the afternoon to be got through, and Heaven alone could say how much of the evening, before he could have his consultation with Richard Hartley.  He tried to think of some way of passing the time, but although he was not usually at a loss he found his mind empty of ideas.  None of his common occupations recommended themselves to him.  He knew that whatever he tried to do he would interrupt it with pulling out his watch every half-hour or so and cursing the time because it lagged so slowly.  He went out to the terrace for coffee, very low in his mind.