The girl had finished her dinner and was taking her coffee when a woman with a basket of flowers approached the table. Desmond had remarked the flower-seller during the evening, a rather sinister-looking person in black with neat lace apron and cuffs, plying her wares at the bar and among the diners. She stopped in front of the girl and her two companions and, resting her basket on her hip, took from it a little nosegay and laid it silently upon the girl’s plate. The girl smiled and pinned the flowers to the lapel of her fur coat. “Did you see the flowers?” said the Chief. “Of course,” replied Desmond. “I mean, did you notice what flowers they were?” Desmond glanced across the room. “They seem to be a white carnation with some sort of blue flowers—cornflowers, probably—set round it!” “I see!” mused the other. “Then I think we can be moving, Okewood!” “And leave the charming and mysterious Madeleine here?” queried Desmond. “No,” replied the older man, signing to a waiter, “she’s going too!” Hardly were the words out of his mouth when the girl rose up from her table by the door, gathering her heavy coat about her. It was quite obvious that the young men were seeking to detain her. But laughingly she put them off. “Not to-night!” they heard her say as a sudden lull came in the music. “I shall see you here again!” Then, without looking to left or right, she hurried from the room. CHAPTER XV THE DECOY “My dear Okewood,” opened the Chief when, half an hour later, he faced Desmond across the fireside in his library, “you find me grappling with what is probably the most perplexing problem I have ever tackled. For the past four weeks, since your very ugly adventure with our old friend Clubfoot in the affair of the Constantinople courier, I have kept you and your brother deliberately away from the Service . . . against your own wish, I know . . . frankly because you are too valuable to be sacrificed to Dr. Grundt’s personal spite!” At the mention of the name of his old enemy, Desmond Okewood sat up eagerly in his chair. “Is Clubfoot up to his tricks again?” he asked quickly. The Chief shrugged his shoulders. “I used to have the reputation of being a man who knew his own mind,” he replied. Desmond looked at the beaklike nose and the massive jaw appraisingly. The Chief was worshipped in the Service for his quickness of decision.