At noon Mr. Samuel Johnson’s black servant was solemnly waiting on his master, who always breakfasted too heartily, with a purpose.  Peyrade wished to pass for a tippling Englishman; he never went out till he was half-seas over.  He wore black cloth gaiters up to his knees, and padded to make his legs look stouter; his trousers were lined with the thickest fustian; his waistcoat was buttoned up to his cheeks; a red scratch wig hid half his forehead, and he had added nearly three inches to his height; in short, the oldest frequenter of the Cafe David could not have recognized him.  From his squarecut coat of black cloth with full skirts he might have been taken for an English millionaire.

Contenson made a show of the cold insolence of a nabob’s confidential servant; he was taciturn, abrupt, scornful, and uncommunicative, and indulged in fierce exclamations and uncouth gestures.

Peyrade was finishing his second bottle when one of the hotel waiters unceremoniously showed in a man in whom Peyrade and Contenson both at once discerned a gendarme in mufti.

“Monsieur Peyrade,” said the gendarme to the nabob, speaking in his ear, “my instructions are to take you to the Prefecture.”

Peyrade, without saying a word, rose and took down his hat.

“You will find a hackney coach at the door,” said the man as they went downstairs.  “The Prefet thought of arresting you, but he decided on sending for you to ask some explanation of your conduct through the peace-officer whom you will find in the coach.”

“Shall I ride with you?” asked the gendarme of the peace-officer when Peyrade had got in.

“No,” replied the other; “tell the coachman quietly to drive to the Prefecture.”

Peyrade and Carlos were now face to face in the coach.  Carlos had a stiletto under his hand.  The coach-driver was a man he could trust, quite capable of allowing Carlos to get out without seeing him, or being surprised, on arriving at his journey’s end, to find a dead body in his cab.  No inquiries are ever made about a spy.  The law almost always leaves such murders unpunished, it is so difficult to know the rights of the case.

Peyrade looked with his keenest eye at the magistrate sent to examine him by the Prefet of Police.  Carlos struck him as satisfactory:  a bald head, deeply wrinkled at the back, and powdered hair; a pair of very light gold spectacles, with double-green glasses over weak eyes, with red rims, evidently needing care.  These eyes seemed the trace of some squalid malady.  A cotton shirt with a flat-pleated frill, a shabby black satin waistcoat, the trousers of a man of law, black spun silk stockings, and shoes tied with ribbon; a long black overcoat, cheap gloves, black, and worn for ten days, and a gold watch-chain—­in every point the lower grade of magistrate known by a perversion of terms as a peace-officer.

“My dear Monsieur Peyrade, I regret to find such a man as you the object of surveillance, and that you should act so as to justify it.  Your disguise is not to the Prefet’s taste.  If you fancy that you can thus escape our vigilance, you are mistaken.  You traveled from England by way of Beaumont-sur-Oise, no doubt.”