"I am glad to think that we remain friends.
"I am, dear Charlotte,
"Your affectionate husband,
"EDWARD."
Povey posted this letter at the office in Oxford Street, afterwards taking a cab to Victoria. Here he reclaimed his personal luggage, and had it conveyed into the Grosvenor, in which excellent hotel he engaged a modest apartment.
The taxi-cab which Edward had seen leave the courtyard of the station, and which contained Anna Paluda, bowled merrily up Victoria Street, across Trafalgar Square, and so on to Gower Street, turning off into a narrow and somewhat dingy thoroughfare which ran behind the Museum.
At Number 9, Dorrington Street, the cab drew up and Anna alighted. The driver had not particularly noticed the fare who had engaged him or he would have seen a vast difference in the woman who now tendered him a shilling and a half-crown, to the one who had entered his cab at Victoria.
The white hair which was so strong and noticeable a feature in the personality of Anna Paluda was now entirely covered up by a well-made wig of black-brown, drawn down over the ears, and a pair of slightly-smoked spectacles hid the piercing black eyes.
But a heavy veil made this alteration in the appearance of the lady very slight to the casual observer, and the chauffeur noticed nothing as, touching his cap, he restarted his car, leaving Anna standing on the pavement, her jewel case and handbag in her hands, looking up at Number 9.
It was a cheerless enough sight, dingy in the extreme, and the woman wondered that the fastidious Gabriel Dasso should have chosen such a habitation. But it was an admirable hiding-place, and doubtless the ex-dictator had only intended that it should be a temporary one. Who would think of looking for the dilettante fugitive among these sordid surroundings?
A few stone steps flanked by broken iron railings led up to a faded and blistered street-door that once had been green. The brass numeral under the knocker was hanging by one screw, and had fallen round so that it might as well have been six as nine. As Anna ascended the steps she caught a glimpse of a dirty area in which the street-lamp showed a littered profusion of bottles and jars. On a spike of one of the railings hung a tarnished and battered milk-can.
There was a semi-circular fanlight over the door through the grimy panes of which a gas-jet, innocent of globe, gave a dull glow. A light also showed beneath the blinds of the windows flanking the door-step. In the room within some one was thumping out a dismal melody on a cracked pianoforte.