"Me, not loyal!" cried Froissart astonished. "I surely am of all men most loyal to l'Entente. Have I not proved my loyalty? I have left my beautiful France and come here to this foggy London to aid this flat-footed _homme de bout_, Dawson, in his researches. Yet he tells me nothing. He disguises himself before me, and laughs, laughs, when I fail to recognize his filthy, obscene countenance. But I am loyal, of a true loyalty unapproachable." "I believe you, though you have a queer way of showing it. What is now the game that you want to play off on the old man as a proof of your unapproachable loyalty?" "He is clever, my faith, clever as the Devil. He discerns the German plans before they are made. He has their agents within a wire net which closes whenever he wishes. He has swept London clean of the foul brood which festered here before the war. I have great, limitless confidence in this Dawson whom I detest, but to whom I am of all his assistants the most loyal. He now suspects that contained within the Flying Corps of us, the Belgians, and the English are observers in the pay of Germany. It is an idea most splendid. For if it is true, what greater opportunity could be given to any spies! To fly over our lines, to learn of everything, and then to convey the news to the enemy by way of the air! If he had told me of this most perspicuous of theories, I would have aided him with all the wealth of my genius. But no, he tells to me nothing. He comes and goes, he spins his web like a great fat female spider, but he tells me nothing. It is my belief that he despises me because I am French, _aristocrat_, and _catholique_. But I will show him; I will, as you call it, score most bitterly off him; I will do in my way successfully what he vainly seeks to do in his way. _Conspuez_ Dawson!" "This is quite like the old times of the Dreyfus case," said the Englishman. "Dreyfus! But I will speak not of that. It is buried. We French are one people now, one and indivisible. Though of traitors, the villain Dreyfus was of the most horrible. Let us speak of _cet homme très sale_, Dawson. I do not know his plans. They will be shrewd, but without imagination, without flair. He will watch, with his eyes of a cat, the French and Belgian flying officers who come to London, but he will not discover their secrets. For he does not understand, this cold English Dawson, that secrets which endanger the neck are told only to women." "Yet I have heard that he has a team of women--his harem, as it is called. I have never seen one of them." "Bah! Englishwomen, of the large feet and the so protruding teeth! Who would tell of his precious secrets to them!" "Oh, come, M. Froissart. We have as many pretty women in London as you have in Paris." "It is possible, my friend. All things, the most improbable, are possible. But they conceal themselves most assiduously. I have not seen them, these so pretty Englishwomen."