“I’ve passed pleasanter hours in your society, I admit,” said Leopold, when the train stopped. “But I can thank you for your motives, if not your maxims; and here’s my hand.”
“It would be most kind of your Majesty to telephone me from Felgarde,” the Chancellor exclaimed, as if on a sudden thought, while they shook hands, “merely to say whether you remain there; or whether you go further; or whether you return at once. I am too fatigued to travel back immediately to Schloss Breitstein, and shall rest for some hours at least, in my house at Kronburg, so a call will find me there.”
“I will do as you ask,” said the Emperor. Again he pressed the Chancellor’s hand, and it was very cold.
CHAPTER XV
THROUGH THE TELEPHONE
When Leopold arrived at Felgarde he went immediately to the hotel which he had designated as a place of meeting. But no ladies answering to the description he gave had been seen there. Either Miss Mowbray had failed to receive his message, or, having received, had chosen to ignore it.
The doubt, harrowing while it lasted, was solved on returning to the railway station, though certainty proved scarcely less tantalizing than uncertainty had been.
The telegram was still in the hands of the station-master, to whose care it had been addressed. This diligent person professed to have sent a man through the Orient Express, from end to end, calling for Miss Helen Mowbray, but calling in vain. He had no theory more plausible to offer than that the lady had not started from Kronburg; or else that she had left the train at Felgarde before her name had been cried. But certainly she would not have had time to go far, if she were a through passenger, for the Orient Express stopped but ten minutes at Felgarde.