"The Cheval d’Or!" echoed the manager. "If you’re at the Cheval d’Or, what the deuce have you come lunching here for?" "To meet some friends," said the Grey One brazenly. "They’re staying in the hotel." The manager was perturbed. "What friends?" he asked. "Two ladies," the Grey One replied. Within the next minute the two ladies’ names would have been asked for, and, no doubt, the hard-pressed brute would have given mine. I pulled the door open wide, and stepped into the hall. "I can’t help hearing," I said. "You talk so loud. What ladies do you mean?" He jumped. Then he stood stark, as if he had been struck by lightning. "Perhaps Madame knows something of this affair," the manager began in French. "Only a little," I replied in English. "All I know is that this---- By the way, hadn’t you better ask his name and address?" "My name," he said wretchedly, "is Lamb--John Lamb. I’m head clerk at Phipps Brothers, the timber-merchants, Amelia Road, Shepherd’s Bush. You’ll have heard of Phipps Brothers?" he added imploringly. "All I know of Mr. John Lamb," I went on, "is this. He stared at us all the way from Newhaven. He spied about, reading the names on our labels. He pushed himself on us at the Customs. He followed us to the Cheval d’Or, and practically drove us out of the rooms we had taken. He has dogged us through half the streets in Dieppe this morning. Lastly, he has given us the honour of his company at lunch." The manager was about to work up, for my benefit, a polite adequacy of fiery indignation. But Mr. John Lamb forestalled him. Plucking up courage, he retorted impudently: "Well, and what if it’s true? We aren’t in England, are we? Everybody knows they’re more free-and-easy in France." The manager was loaded and primed for an explosion. But I got in another word. "Didn’t I give you a broad enough hint at the Customs?" I asked. "Yes," he said coarsely. "You did. But what about the other young lady? Let her come out here, fair and square, and say if she didn’t egg me on. ’Tisn’t my fault for thinking I was in for a soft thing. _You_’re not to blame, of course. _You_’ve snubbed me right enough all along, no error. To tell the truth, Ma’am, I thought you were sick because it was the other young lady I was struck with, and not _you_." What possessed him to add this insult to injury, when he was actually in the lion’s mouth, only himself knows. It wasn’t courage; for he had suddenly gone paler and shakier than before. Probably he was clinging in desperation to a last mad hope that he had indeed made a conquest of "the other young lady," and that she would rush out in my wake to intercede for him, and to set him free.