It was only ten, and as my arrangements were all made, I had time for strolling—too much to suit my mood. The murmur of an automobile preparing to take flight attracted me from a distance, for it seemed that the voice had the cadence of a car I knew. I hastened my steps, turned a corner, and there, in front of the Hôtel de France's rival, stood a fine motor, panting, quivering in eagerness to dart away.
It was a Mercédès, and if it were not Molly Winston's wedding-present Mercédès, it was that Mercédès' twin. But there was a strange mushroom in it.
I would have known Molly's mushroom among a thousand. It was small, round, compact, and of a dark cream colour. This mushroom was flatter, wider, more expansive, with an exceedingly slender stem; and in tint it was of a pale silvery grey. It grew up straight and slim in the tonneau of the car, all alone, unaccompanied by any similar growths, or any guardian goblins; and several servants of the hotel were grouped about, waiting to see it off.
I waited, too, sniffing adventure with the scent of petrol, and interested in the resemblance to that good Dragon with which I had been friends; but I was about to turn away at last when a form which had evidently been squatting behind the car on the other side, rose to its feet. It was that of Gotteland, and had he been a long-lost uncle from Australia with his pockets crammed with wills in my favour, I could not have been more delighted to see him.
As I rushed forward to claim him as my own, Molly and Jack came out of the hotel.
"Monty!" Jack cried, with a sincerity of joy which warmed my heart. As for his wife, she cried not at all, but merely gasped.
"What luck for me!" I exclaimed, shaking both Molly's hands so hard that it was fortunate (as she remarked afterwards) that she had on "only her rainy-day rings." "I did hope to hear of you at Grenoble, but scarcely dared think of actually meeting you, even there. In two minutes more I should have been on the way to catch my train."
"Here's your train, old man," said Jack, indicating the throbbing automobile.
"My one true love, Mercédès," I remarked, looking fondly at the car.
"Sh!" whispered Molly, with an odd little sound which was like a giggle strangled at birth. "She's there."