They strolled down to the café and took their places at a table just inside the door. At precisely a quarter past one a little tremor of excitement suddenly unloosed their tongues. "My God!" Harvey Grimm muttered. "They must be mad!" Aaron Rodd whispered, in a hoarse undertone. "It is Henriette de Floge," Stephen Cresswell murmured complacently. "You will perceive soon the advantage of my presence." The girl approached their table smilingly. She was followed by the young officer in Belgian uniform. The three men rose to their feet. She smiled pleasantly at Aaron Rodd. "You have not yet met my brother, have you?" she asked. "Let me present Captain Leopold Brinnen--Mr. Aaron Rodd, Mr. Harvey Grimm, and----" She paused, with her eyes fixed questioningly upon the poet. The young officer had brought his heels together and bowed ceremoniously to the two men. "I am not, I hope, forgotten," the poet observed. "My name is Stephen Cresswell. I have had the pleasure of playing Badminton with you in Walter Donne's studio." She looked across at him with slightly upraised eyebrows, the faint tracings of a somewhat insolent smile at the corners of her lips. "Badminton? Is that an English game? I perceive that I have a double. I have not played it." "You are Mademoiselle de Floge?" the poet persisted. She shook her head gently. "On the contrary," she replied, "I am Henriette Brinnen. Leopold, this is Mr. Stephen Cresswell." They all took their places, the poet a little heavily. His stupefaction, even though it proceeded from a different cause, was only a little less profound than that of the other two. Mr. Harvey Grimm took up the menu once more and gave a few murmured orders to the _maître d'hôtel_. Aaron Rodd, who was on her right-hand side, leaned towards the girl. His face was almost haggard with anxiety. "Forgive me," he whispered, "but is this wise? Have you counted the cost of it?" "I do not understand," she answered, a little vaguely. "You know that we are all watched," he reminded her. "We thought it best even not to communicate with you direct." "You three are such droll men," she laughed. "There is your nice-looking friend, Mr. Stephen Cresswell, who sits there and will not take his eyes off me. He does not believe that he has never met me before. And Mr. Harvey Grimm--well, he does not seem a nervous person, does he, and just now he is almost pale. And you, too--you speak with bated breath of risks and being watched. How, then, do you carry through your great coups, my friend? Have you not learnt the first axiom of the adventurer--there is nothing which dispels suspicion so readily as candour?"