"Well ... you can't, and there's an end of it, Derry," I said, quietly but flatly. "So I understood you to say." "It's what I came specially to tell you." "I gathered that too. By the way, if you want to send your car away there's a Casino bus going in at ten o'clock. No need to waste money." "We may not have finished our talk by then." "Then we can finish it in the bus. I'd thought of going in myself." "To hang about that house?" "You and the gendarmerie can stop that easily enough." We were back at the same point--that we, between whom a quarrel was impossible, must apparently nevertheless quarrel. "Look here," I said at last, "can't you see my position?" "I can. It's a rotten one." "If I saw the faintest glimmer of hope----" "Espérance," he muttered. "----even from their point of view. Aird isn't a fool. He heard Jennie speak in French to you, evidently the very first time she had spoken to you--regular monkeys'-parade business from his point of view--and he draws his own conclusions. And Mrs Aird isn't a fool either. She won't be in London two days before she's found out all about your mother." "I see all that." "Your mother didn't marry an Arnaud." "Quite right. She'll know that too." "And Aird's athlete enough to know you're no more poitrinaire than he is." "I once saw him score a ripping try on the Rectory Ground. I was about twenty." "You haven't a paper to your name." "Not one." "You can't even get back to England." "Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to say that." "And you're no better off if you do." "That remains to be seen too." "Then Mrs Aird's a writer herself. She knows every word Derwent Rose ever wrote." "Oh, I had a reader here and there," he replied nonchalantly. "And she wants to meet you--not Arnaud, but Derwent Rose. I'm to take you round there." I felt his smile. "That would be the deuce of a hole for you to be in, George. You'd simply have to say you couldn't find me." "But Derwent Rose is supposed to be alive somewhere. Nobody's heard of his death." "One man extra, one man missing, so it's as-you-were. Anyway nobody'll worry much about that. I never had a tenth of your readers." "And you're bound to be caught out here sooner or later on the question of domicile." "Not if I see them first," he replied grimly. "Derry, you're my despair." "Oh, don't despair, George. Never despair. It will be all right. What about sending that car away? No good wasting good francs. You see, we've finished our talk." "We haven't begun it yet." "Then for goodness sake let's begin and get it over." "Very well. Get ready.... I stood by you at the tramway office this afternoon. I saw what was given you there. I know what you have tucked away somewhere about you at this moment."