"Isn't he clever, after all?"
"Far too clever. I'd rather you had gone to any other detective in
Paris--or to none."
"Why, what's wrong with him?" Ivor began to be distressed.
"Only that he's a personal friend of my worst enemy--the man I spoke of
to you this evening--Count Godensky. I've heard so from Godensky
himself, who mentioned the acquaintance once when Girard had just
succeeded in a case everybody was talking about."
"By Jove, what a beastly coincidence!" exclaimed Ivor, horribly
disappointed at having done exactly the wrong thing, when he had tried
so hard to do the right one. "Yet how could I have dreamed of it?"
"You couldn't," I admitted, hopelessly. "Nothing is your fault. All
that's happened would have happened just the same, no matter what
messenger the Foreign Secretary had sent to me. It's fate. And it's my
punishment."
"Still, even if Godensky and Girard are friends," Ivor tried to console
me, "it isn't likely that the Count has talked to the detective about
you and the affair of the treaty."
"He may have gone to him for help in finding out things he couldn't find
out himself."
"Hardly, I should say, until there'd been time for him to fear failure.
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