He has forfeited the rest of his time, and must be reported." With this, he ordered Ivor to leave the room, in a tone which sounded to me so brutal that I should have liked him to be shot, and the whole French police force exterminated.

To hear a little underbred policeman dare to speak like that to my big, brave, handsome Englishman, and to know that it would be childish and undignified of Ivor to resist--oh, I could have killed the creature with my own hands--I think! As for Ivor, he said not another word, except "good-bye," smiling half sadly, half with a twinkle of grim humour.

Then he went out, with his head high: and just at the door he threw me back one look.

It said as plainly as if he had spoken: "Remember, I know you won't fail me." I did indeed remember, and I prayed that I should have pluck and courage not to fail.

But it was a very hard thing that he had asked me to do, and he had said well in saying that he would not ask it of me if it did not mean more than his life.
The words he had whispered so hastily and unexpectedly in Spanish, were these: "Go to the room of the murder alone, and on the window balcony find in a box under flower-pots a folded document.