note from underneath the wine card into my pocket. She made the
slightest of signs, but I understood. I was not to read it until I was
alone.

"Go outside," Louis whispered to me. "Read your letter and get rid of
it."

I obeyed him. 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!