Many threads of the affair still remained to be unraveled. I didn't know
what the duke was doing here, what he had been about for a month past,
how the girl, far off in America, had guessed his whereabouts and his
need; nor did I care. His mere existence was enough--that and Esme's
love for him. All my interest in my Chinese puzzle had come to a
wretched end.
"Confound him!" I thought savagely. "We could have spared him perfectly.
What business has he turning up at the eleventh hour? He didn't cross
the ocean with her. He didn't suspect her unforgivably. He didn't help
her, and disguise himself as a chauffeur for her, and wing Schwartzmann,
and bruise up the other chaps and send them rolling in a heap. This is
my adventure. He must have had a hundred. Why couldn't he stick to his
high-flying and dazzling and let me alone?"
The murmur of voices drifted from the lord's bedchamber. I could guess
what they had to say to each other, Miss Falconer and her duke. The
Firefly of France! Even I, a benighted foreigner, knew the things that
title stood for: heroism, in a land where every soldier was a hero;
praise and medals and glory; thirty conquered aeroplanes--a record over
which his ancestors, those old marshals and constables lying effigied on
their tombs of marble with their feet resting on carved lions, must nod
their heads with pride.
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