Page:Rowland--The closing net.djvu/203

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UNDER COVER
185

me, investigating every detail of my face and costume.

Presently from across the street I heard a motor slowing down, and glanced across to see a taxi pulling up in front of Léontine's house. A slender, well-dressed man, with black hair and a thin black moustache, stepped quickly out, rang the bell of the garden door, and was let in a moment later by Léontine's maître d'hôtel. But I scarcely noticed him, for something had caught my eyes and drawn them to the driver of the taxi.

This chauffeur was apparently a man past middle age, and seemed altogether of the new type that has now become so common to this class. He looked to be of medium size and weight, was costumed in the usual uniform, and wore a closely-cropped moustache of iron-grey. His face was rather high-featured, the nose aquiline, and the eyes dark and overhung by bushy, grizzled eyebrows.

There was absolutely nothing about the fellow to hold my attention, but for some reason I was unable to take my eyes off him. He reminded me of somebody quite impossible for me to place, and as I stared through the window at him I had that disagreeable sensation of being utterly baffled in memory. Almost as if he felt the force of the mental effort I was making, he shot a quick look in my direction, but the awning was low, and I was sitting back in the shadow, and all that he could see was the crowded tables on the terrace. Yet something in that sudden glance of his had set my heart to thumping in a way that was mighty disagreeable.

But it was no use. I couldn't for the life of me