“Isn't it your rule to have all callers announced before they're shown in on your guests?”
“Most decidedly.”
“Then how did it happen that an old lady, a rather curious old lady, with short hair and a white handkerchief over her head like a shawl, was allowed to' find her way into my room?”
“If you'll give me the particulars, I'll have the staff on duty questioned.”
As he turned away, he threw back across his shoulder: “I shan't be going to bed yet. If you discover anything you might report it.”
Half an hour later he was summoned to the telephone. “About your visitor, sir; no one saw her.” Far into the early hours of the morning he sat cogitating. What steps ought he to take to protect himself? He could place his case in the hands of the police, but if he did, he might stir up a hornet's nest. Most certainly he would be compelled to postpone his business on the Continent and to prolong his stay in England. But more disastrous than personal inconvenience, in going to the police he might be the means of putting Santa's enemies on her track. They would expect him to make a clean breast of everything; he would find difficulty in inventing convincing motives to explain the shiftiness of his conduct since landing.
If he could speak to Santa, he would know how to act. If she were really implicated in the Rogovich affair, his best way of helping her would be to clear out of England. But if she could assure him of her innocence, he was prepared to stay and back her to the limit of his capacity. Across the jet-black sky the silver moon drifted like a water-lily—a parable of Santa, moving immaculately among rumors of darkest misdoings. Whatever she had done had not quenched her purity. If she had done the worst of which she was accused, her perverted mother-love still clothed her with the tatters of a tragic goodness.
He jerked himself irritably back to reality. How could a woman who had spread death with her beauty still retain her purity? He had been warned that she trapped men by appealing not to their baseness, but to their chivalry. What wild-eyed feat of chivalry was this that he was performing? It was best to dispense with casuistry. The accumulated slanders to which he had listened had spurred his curiosity. They had changed a modishly attractive woman into a romantic figure—a figure which, if it were not noble, at least possessed the virtue of lonely courage.
He would allow himself four days in England. If he had not heard from her by then, he would go about his business. Having to this extent set a limit to his difficulties, he took himself off to bed.