The chauffeur was pacified with money, of which Audrey had a sufficiency.
And all the time Audrey kept saying to herself:
“I’m not going to Paris to please Musa, so don’t let him think it! I’m only going so as to put the detective off and keep Jane Foley out of his clutches, because if I stay in London he’ll be bound to find everything out.”
While Musa kept watch for the detective at the door of the telegraph office Audrey telegraphed, as laconically as possible, to Frinton concerning clothes and the violin, and then they descended to subterranean marble chambers in order to get rid of dust, and they came up to earth again, each out of a separate cellar, renewed. And, lastly, Audrey slipped into the Strand and bought a pair of gloves, and thereafter felt herself to be completely equipped against the world’s gaze.
CHAPTER XXX
ARIADNE
A few days later an automobile—not Audrey’s but a large limousine—bumped, with slow and soft dignity, across the railway lines which diversify the quays of Boulogne harbour and, having hooted in a peculiar manner, came to a stop opposite nothing in particular.
“Here we are,” said Mr. Gilman, reaching to open the door. “You can see her masthead light.”
It was getting dark. Behind, over the station, a very faint flush lightened the west, and in front, across the water, and reflected in the water, the thousand lamps of the town rose in tiers to the lofty church which stood out a dark mass against the summer sky. On the quays the forms of men moved vaguely among crates and packages, and on the water, tugs and boats flitted about, puffing, or with the plash of oars, or with no sound whatever. And from the distance arrived the reverberation of electric trams running their courses in the maze of the town.