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and watched me work. “Ah,” he said when I was finished. He took the paper and disappeared with it.
    On his return, he asked, “What about the other man?”
    I shook my head. I had only a vague image of a square face, dark hair, heavy shoulders.
    “And the girl? The one you call Madame Renard?”
    I thought for a minute, trying to decide if she would be safer known or unknown to the police.
    “They’ll kill her, you understand,” Chardin said. “When she’s no longer of use to them.”
    I saw his point, though I wasn’t entirely convinced that a Marseille street girl would be any safer in the warm embrace of the law. “Right. But I need you not to stand over me. And something to drink.”
    Chardin went to the door and presently I received a large glass of the local red wine. When the door was locked again, I took a clean sheet of paper and concentrated on the hallway of the Villa Mimosa with the bare walls and tile floor, and on Madame with her wide, cat’s face, her small ears, and full lips. I erased once, twice, three times, and the paper took on the nasty grayish sheen of overwork before a little alteration to the brows, a change to the inside corner of one eye, a little shadow under the other and voilà : There she was. Though I am not fond of realism, per se, it has its moments, and this was one of them.
    I got up from the bum-torturing wooden chair and went to the narrow barred window. Perhaps it was the contrast between the blue Mediterranean and the mildewed rooms of the station that depressed Inspector Chardin, who returned as I was studying the buff and sienna roofs of the town. He went right to the table and picked up the sheet. I heard him swear under his breath. “Are you sure?”
    I turned around. His face had contracted with anxiety, and I wondered what I had gotten myself into. “It is as good a likeness as I can manage. It’s a true impression of her.”
    He looked at the drawing again, shook his head, and disappeared into the hallway. When he returned, we rehashed everything I had told him, particularly about my Madame Renard, who had gone from being a no-account Marseille tart to a person of real interest.
    “Did you think she was frightened?” he asked at one point.
    I thought this over. “When I gave her the packet, I thought she was nervous. But when she came back to see me out, she seemed relieved. I did momentarily get the feeling she would like me to stay, but though she offered me a drink, she did not press me.”
    Chardin tapped the table with one long, restless finger. “This has been very helpful,” he said.
    I stood up like a bona fide good citizen, hoping that my passport would be returned and I would be free to go.
    Chardin shook his head. “Helpful, but your story is still without corroboration. You are the only one who claims to have seen these people. You are the only one who can identify them. We must ask you to stay in the Var until further notice.”
    When I began to protest, he added, “With such excellent information, it will surely not be too long, Monsieur.” He suggested a small and inexpensive hotel in the old part of the town, then went to the door and called for an officer to bring my cases. I was going from en vacances to semipermanent resident.

Chapter Four
    Ah, to be en vacances— without money. The Hotel Phoenix was certainly cheap and the little café next door did a reasonable sandwich au jambon , but it did not take me more than a few days to see that I was going to have to find some means of support. Remembering the glossy young things along the plage , I suspected that I was now too old for my former occupation of discreet “gentleman’s gentleman.” With the last of the money Arnold wired me, I’d visited the casino, a bad, exciting night that emptied my pockets, and I found no business that needed my other skill, telephone operator.
    I was considering various desperate measures when I remembered the “portrait artists” along the front.