He walked calmly to the hotel entrance and into the street. It was odd. Perhaps I was one of the few people there who didn’t really care that the President had been shot. That’s why I noticed him. Why had he not intervened? If he was a bodyguard, why was he leaving?

I wasn’t yet doctor enough to offer to tend Doumer’s wounds. He had a team of surgeons to care for him but none of them would make him any more alive. So, in pursuit of my own curiosity, I followed the short-haired man. He casually crossed the street and melted into the crowd even though the road had been cleared of traffic, and it would have been easier to walk there. I stayed with him. When he got to the first corner he turned, knelt, and pretended to be tying a shoelace. Even if he’d seen me I doubted he would have considered that I might be following him. You tend to notice only what you expect to be there.

He cut into a narrow lane with art and craft stalls on either side and picked up his speed. He stopped briefly at a stand with a display of ornamental mirrors, and there he made his second check for prospective followers. I’d put on a woolen hat I kept in my pocket and was almost beside him as he scanned the crowd through the mirror. If he’d looked to his right we would have met eye-to-eye. But he did not. Once he was through the maze of vendors he turned on to the boulevard at Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and I could see his shoulders relax. Now that we had distance between us I felt more comfortable. He sauntered along the northern pavement and I kept to the south side. We passed the saddlers and trunk stores, and he paused calmly to admire the fashions displayed in the windows of the high-class stores. Everything was going fine until he passed the foolish stone balloon monument and descended into the Metro at Ternes.

This was a problem, not just because of my claustrophobia, but because I had paid my last franc for the books at the hotel. I had nothing left for the Metro. But I was determined to stay with my man until I could work out what the hell had happened at the hotel.