The wounded thug was cursing vilely as he tried to staunch the flow of blood from his shoulder. The other two picked themselves up, and the knife thrower, a sinuous dark young fellow with crisp curly hair, cried wildly, 'Vite! Vite! Ar retezle!'
Without so much as a glance in Gregory's direction all three thrust themselves through the door and pounded down the stairs in pursuit of their late victim.
Gregory turned to the girl. She seemed to have recovered her self-possession completely and was watching him with a curious intensity beneath which, he just suspected, lay a faint amusement. He raised his eyebrows and smiled.
'I can excuse many things in the young,' he said softly, 'but not bad manners. Now, it would have been quite impossible for me to leave Mademoiselle so suddenly and without even one little word of farewell or a deep sigh of regret… In fact,' he added seriously as if the thought had just come to him, 'I should find it difficult to leave Mademoiselle at all!'
'You follow me from the Casino. I recognise you,' she stated softly, ignoring his remarks.
'Lucky for you I did,' Gregory replied promptly.
She was French as he had supposed but obviously English came quite easily to her. It was the first time that he had had the leisure to study her at close quarters and the quick smile which twitched his thin lips showed that he was in no way disappointed.
A long coat of mink with a heavy double collar now hid her graceful figure, but above it rose her heart shaped face with its broad low brow and little pointed chin. He admired again the dark pencilled eyebrows which curved back like the two ends of a cupid's bow, the points rising almost to her temples, and the sleek black hair, parted on the side and flattened on the crown but spreading into a mass of tight jet curls behind her small pink ears and on the nape of her neck. Then he noted the perfection of her skin. It was fresh and healthy as that of a child, and such light makeup as she wore was obviously only a concession to fashion.
As her large dark eyes held his with an unflickering gaze he was suddenly aware that she was no young girl but a very dangerous woman. The type which makes all other women bristle with jealousy and suspicion from the moment they enter a room, and for whom men have killed each other, and themselves, throughout the ages.
For the first time for years a real thrill ran through Gregory's body and even in that moment the thought came to him how wise he had been not to fritter away his emotions on lesser game while there were still women like this in the world.
'We must get out of here,' he said quietly but there was an imperiousness in his voice which had been lacking before, for the noise of the chase had hardly died away below when he caught the sound of hurrying feet from somewhere in the rear of the house. Next moment a door at the back of the room behind a small bar was thrust open and a thickset bald-headed man in his shirtsleeves burst in upon them.
As the newcomer's small dark eyes lit upon the overturned furniture he began shouting in voluble French.
'What is this! You make a scene in my respectable house! You break the furniture. I see blood! There is murder done! I will call the police!'
'Shut up!' snapped Gregory. 'You were in it yourself I expect. Any more from you and I'll give you a taste of this.' He waved the end of the broken bottle, which he still held, aggressively.
The man gnawed his walrus moustache in apparent indecision while he eyed Gregory stupidly for a moment, then he suddenly dived back behind the rampart of his bar and ran from the room as quickly as he had come.
Gregory wasted no time in argument. If the landlord of the place was not in with the thugs he was now making a beeline for the telephone and the police would be arriving at any moment. Gregory knew just how inconvenient a French police inquiry could prove, even to innocent persons. They might hold him for days as a material witness against the thugs. To be mixed up in anything of that sort was the last thing he desired. But the lesson of Drake and the game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe was one which had always appealed to him. Time enough now to impress the lady first and run from the French police afterwards. So instead of hustling her out he dropped the bottle, held open the door and, removing his hat with a graceful bow, said courteously:
'Mademoiselle, the time has come for you and me to find pleasanter surroundings. I have a cab below.'
'I thank you, Monsieur,' she replied evenly, and the suggestion of a smile which played about her red lips as she walked from the room showed that she was not unappreciative of his poise and gallantry.
As Gregory made his bow, his eye had fallen on a flat, black notecase lying a few feet away from the corner where the tussle had taken place. He stooped swiftly, picked it up, and thrust it in his pocket. Then he strode after the girl and shepherded her swiftly down the stairs.
The street was still empty except for his waiting taxi a hundred yards away. The voices of the few night birds now raised in excited argument within the cafe drowned the sound of their footsteps as he took the girl's arm in a confident grip and with long, but apparently unhurried strides, led her to the cab.
'The Metropole, Deauville,' he told the driver, and the man nodded with a quick grin as they climbed in.
The airman and the thugs had probably taken the other direction, Gregory assumed, since the taxi man said nothing of the chase. Anyhow, the fellow could grin until he burst, for he, Gregory, had got the girl, and what a girl. She seemed to radiate warmth by merely sitting beside him as they bumped over the pave of the old streets back to the harbour, and a faint delicious odour, not so much a definite perfume as the scent of daily coiffured hair, freshly washed silks and a scrupulously tended person the hallmarks of a superbly soignee woman filled the darkness of the taxi. The problem was how to keep her?
'What would you like me to call you?' Gregory asked her suddenly.
'My name is Sabine.3
'Delightful and the other half?
'Monsieur is curious, but I do not consider it necessary that I tell. We part soon and it is not-er convenable that we meet again.'
'Parfaitement.' Gregory bowed to her decision but with mental reservations. 'Sabine it is then but you seem to forget that the police are probably taking down our descriptions at the moment. Unless we can keep clear of them we shall both spend the rest of the night in the lockup?'
'You think that pas de blague ?'
'I certainly do. That's why I told this chap to go to the Metropole and here we are.'
He paid off the taxi with a lavish tip and followed her into the hotel.
'I leave you only for the moment,' she said as they reached the entresalle and he watched her walk in the direction of the ladies' cloakroom.
But Gregory was not to be caught like that. She might give him the slip if he went into the lounge and sat down at a table so, instead, he took up a position where he could keep the door under observation and occupied himself by examining the notecase which he had collected from the floor of the upstairs cafe.
A quick survey of its contents caused him to smile with pleasure. Then he slipped the case back into his pocket and, lighting a cigarette, stood waiting for Sabine.