He gave it up. "Well, I must be off. The express for Nice passes
at four o'clock. I will be away about three weeks and then you
shall see me again. Unless I strike a run of bad luck and get
cleaned out, in which case you shall see me before then."
He turned to Mills suddenly.
"Will your cousin come south this year, to that beautiful villa of
his at Cannes?"
Mills hardly deigned to answer that he didn't know anything about
his cousin's movements.
"A grand seigneur combined with a great connoisseur," opined the
other heavily. His mouth had gone slack and he looked a perfect
and grotesque imbecile under his wig-like crop of white hair.
Positively I thought he would begin to slobber. But he attacked
Blunt next.
"Are you on your way down, too? A little flutter. . . It seems to
me you haven't been seen in your usual Paris haunts of late. Where
have you been all this time?"
"Don't you know where I have been?" said Mr. Blunt with great
precision.
"No, I only ferret out things that may be of some use to me," was
the unexpected reply, uttered with an air of perfect vacancy and
swallowed by Mr. Blunt in blank silence.
At last he made ready to rise from the table.
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