A watchful waiter pulled the table away, and I walked out into the anteroom.

Here, with a freshly lit cigarette in my mouth, I unclenched my fingers, and looked at the few words written very faintly, in long, delicate characters, across the torn sheet of paper: Monsieur is in bad company.

It would be well for him to lunch to-morrow at the Cafe de Paris, and to ask for Leon.
That was all.

I tore it into small pieces and returned to my seat, altogether puzzled.

It seemed to me that Louis watched me with an incomprehensible anxiety as I resumed my place by his side.
"If monsieur is ready," he suggested, "perhaps we had better go." I rose to my feet reluctantly.
"As you will, Louis," I said.
But the time for our departure had not yet come!.