“Perhaps more, even, than you, Duchesse,” he replied. “I should like to be your friend. You need one—you know that.”
She rose abruptly to her feet.
“For to-night it is enough,” she declared, wrapping her fur cloak around her. “You may talk to me to-morrow, Baron. I must think. If you desire really to be my friend, there is, perhaps, one service which I may require of you. But to-night, no!”
Peter stood aside and allowed her to step past him. He was perfectly content with the progress he had made. Her farewell salute was by no means ungracious. As soon as she was out of sight, he returned to the couch where she had been sitting. She had taken away the marconigrams, but she had left upon the floor several copies of the New York Herald. He took them up and read them carefully through. The last one he found particularly interesting, so much so that he folded it up, placed it in his coat pocket, and went off to look for Sogrange, whom he found at last in the saloon, watching a noisy game of “Up Jenkins!” Peter sank upon the cushioned seat by his side.
“You were right,” he remarked. “Bernadine has been busy.”
Sogrange smiled.
“I trust,” he said, “that the Duchesse is not proving faithless?”
“So far,” Peter replied, “I have kept my end up. Tomorrow will be the test. Bernadine had filled her with caution. She thinks that I know everything—whatever everything may be. Unless I can discover a little more than I do now, to-morrow is going to be an exceedingly awkward day for me.”
“There is every prospect of your acquiring a great deal of valuable information before then,” Sogrange declared. “Sit tight, my friend. Something is going to happen.”
On the threshold of the saloon, ushered in by one of the stewards, a tall, powerful-looking man, with a square, well-trimmed black beard, was standing looking around as though in search of some one. The steward pointed out, with an unmistakable movement of his head, Peter and Sogrange. The man approached and took the next table.