Suddenly Stewart understood. These were agents of the secret service, waiting to report to their chief or to be assigned to some difficult and dangerous task. One by one they were summoned, disappeared through the door, and did not return.
At last it was to Stewart the messenger came.
“This way, sir,” he said.
Stewart followed him out into the hall, through a door guarded by two sentries, and into a little room beyond a deep ante-chamber, where a white-haired man sat before a great table covered with papers. The messenger stood aside for Stewart to pass, then went swiftly out and closed the door.
The man at the table examined his visitor with a long and penetrating glance, his face cold, impassive, expressionless.
“You are not one of ours,” he said, at last, in English.
“No, I am an American.”
“So I perceived. And yet you have a message?”
“Yes.”
“How came you by it?”