‘Bien, madame!’ The driver whipped up his horse, and the animal shot forward with a terrific clatter over the cobbles. It appeared that this driver was quite accustomed to following other carriages.
‘Now I am fairly in for it!’ said Nella to herself. She laughed unsteadily, but her heart was beating with an extraordinary thump.
For some time the pursued vehicle kept well in front. It crossed the town nearly from end to end, and plunged into a maze of small streets far on the south side of the Kursaal. Then gradually Nella’s equipage began to overtake it. The first carriage stopped with a jerk before a tall dark house, and Miss Spencer emerged. Nella called to her driver to stop, but he, determined to be in at the death, was engaged in whipping his horse, and he completely ignored her commands. He drew up triumphantly at the tall dark house just at the moment when Miss Spencer disappeared into it. The other carriage drove away. Nella, uncertain what to do, stepped down from her carriage and gave the driver some money. At the same moment a man reopened the door of the house, which had closed on Miss Spencer.
‘I want to see Miss Spencer,’ said Nella impulsively. She couldn’t think of anything else to say.
‘Miss Spencer?’
‘Yes; she’s just arrived.’
‘It’s O.K., I suppose,’ said the man.
‘I guess so,’ said Nella, and she walked past him into the house. She was astonished at her own audacity.
Miss Spencer was just going into a room off the narrow hall. Nella followed her into the apartment, which was shabbily furnished in the Belgian lodging-house style.
‘Well, Miss Spencer,’ she greeted the former Baroness Zerlinski, ‘I guess you didn’t expect to see me. You left our hotel very suddenly this afternoon, and you left it very suddenly a few days ago; and so I’ve just called to make a few inquiries.’