In the lengthening shadows, the Spring of St. Leon appeared less and less as a place for midnight trysts, either for love or war. And though listening to Pierre’s dissertation, my thoughts were of Bayonne, this ‘pet’ city of mine which is still girdled by walls and moats and earthworks; whose ground is steeped with blood spilled in centuries of warfare, and undermined with casements, and passages, and dungeons. Some of the passages had been built by Vauban when he fortified the town; but there were many others, of much greater antiquity; vaults wherein Roman legionaries had worshiped Mithra, Saracen emirs practice necromancy, and medieval alchemists sought the immutable Azoth, and dabbled in thaumaturgy.

“A curious thing I noted,” continued d’Artois, “was that a small silver peacock adorned the pommel of his épée … strange how one notes such details before a duel.

Silver peacock … why, we had seen a similar sword at Château de la Tour de Maracq the other day! I wondered …

And out of that network of passages, what might not have emerged from a mining casemate to strike Pierre from the rear and save the day for Santiago, or Santiago’s double, or the devil, or what it was that d’Artois had met?

Something had loosened the ordinarily well-shackled d’Artois tongue. I marveled and encouraged its wagging. And then he stopped short, pointing toward the Spring of St. Leon.

“By the—!” he exclaimed, quaintly distorting a selection from the American doughboy’s lexicon, which he strove most valiantly to master. “What is she doing there?”

A girl stood at the spring; a slim girl whose white arms and shoulders and iridescent gown gleamed boldly against the shadows of the grove and the dark cupola of the spring.

“La Belle Allzaneau,” explained Pierre, for I lacked that old man’s keen vision.

As he spoke, she rounded the cupola of St. Leon, its low gray mass hiding her from sight.

“But how can you recognize anyone at that distance and in this light, Pierre?”

“Her general outline, the gown she wears … which by the way is a trifle inappropriate for the locality … I have often seen her at the Casino at Biarritz.”

That evening, as Jannicot brought our coffee, d’Artois, after theorizing for a while about the duel at St. Leon, abruptly switched to the mummy, poor neglected lady whom he seemed to have entirely forgotten.

“Your imagination, mon cher, is entirely dead,” he declared. “And in this quest of the mummy case (for we have the lady herself located) one needs much imagination. Alors, to you shall fall the duty of private soldier; that of sentry-go by night. Jannicot shall walk post during the day.”

“What?”

“Yes. Sentry-go. You watch by night.”

“Why pick on me?”

“You are too conspicuous in this small town. Jannicot, watching a cow staked on the city wall, would never be noted, for he will look like any other yokel similarly occupied. Whereas you …”