I'd only seen three times in my life, and who was pretty sure to be in some sort of disguise. But there was one thing that I thought would help me out. Chu-Chu knew that Léontine Petrovski had taken a fancy to me, and he would never believe that any such woman as Léontine would have to call twice to a man. Her looks and the wonderful alluringness of her were the talk of Paris, and when Léontine walked into a swell restaurant even the musicians got mixed in their notes. Chu-Chu would be pretty sure that I would be hanging about Léontine, and it was somewhere in her neighbourhood that he would try to pick up my trail; and it was while he was trying to nose it out that I counted on crossing his.
It was a funny situation, each of us shadowing Léontine's house, trying to get wind of the other. But the more I turned it over in my mind the more convinced I grew that the quickest way to find my man would be to keep a constant watch on the little house in Passy. There was also the chance of falling on Chu-Chu possibly going to see Léontine on professional business.
All this being so, I took a room in a little hotel just off the Rue de Passy, telling the patronne that I was perfecting my English in one of the many schools in the neighbourhood. There was a little café almost opposite Léontine's house, and I found that by sitting back in a particular corner I could look out under the low awning in front and keep a constant watch without being observed from the street. So there I went every day at noon, for it would have attracted attention if I had spent the entire day there, and after a very good little lunch I would get
