While the girl sat silent and listless, blotted against the cushions,
rousing from her thoughts only to indicate the turns of the road, I had
time for cogitation; and I began to feel like a man who has drunk freely
of champagne. Hitherto I had been a law-abiding citizen. Now I had
kicked over the traces. Like the distinguished fraternity that includes
Raffles and Arsene Lupin, I should be "wanted" by the police, those
good-natured, deferential beings so given to saluting and grinning,
with whom, save for occasional episodes not unconnected with the speed
laws,--Dunny says libelously that my progress in an automobile resembles
a fabulous monster with a flying car for the head, a cloud of smoke and
gasoline for the body, and a cohort of incensed motor-cycle men for the
tail,--I had lived on the most cordial terms.
I was not certain whether they would accuse me of murder or espionage.
There were pegs enough, undeniably, on which to hang either charge.
Myself, I rather inclined to the latter; the case was so clear, so
detailed! My rush from Paris to Bleau,--in order, no doubt, that I
might at an unostentatious spot join forces with my confederate, Miss
Falconer, whom I had been meeting at intervals ever since we left New
York in company,--my behavior there, and the fashion in which we were
vanishing should suffice to doom me as a spy.
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