My brain was in a whirl. I was quite incapable of speech.
"Her real name," he continued coolly, "God only knows. For the moment she calls herself Mrs. Smith-Lessing. She is a Franco-American, a political adventuress of the worst type, living by her wits. She is ugly enough to be Satan's mistress, and she's forty-five if she's a day, yet she has but to hold up her finger, and men tumble the gifts of their life into her lap, gold and honour, conscience and duty. At present I think it highly probable that you are her next selected victim."
For several minutes Ray proceeded with his dinner. I did my best to follow his example, but my appetite was gone. I could scarcely persuade myself that the whole affair was not a dream—that the men who sat all round us in little groups, the dark liveried servants passing noiselessly backwards and forwards, were not figures in some shadowy nightmare, and that I should not wake in a moment to find myself curled up in a railway carriage on my way home. But there was no mistaking the visible presence of Colonel Mostyn Ray. Strong, stalwart, he sat within a few feet of me, calmly eating his dinner as though my agony were a thing of little account. He, at least, was real.
"This woman," he continued, presently, "either is, or would like to be, mixed up with the treachery that is somewhere close upon us. Sooner or later she will approach you. You are warned."
"Yes," I repeated vaguely, "I am warned."
"I have finished," Colonel Ray remarked. "Go on with your dinner and think. I will answer any question presently."
There were only two I put to him, and that was when my hansom had been called and I was on the point of leaving.
"Is he—my father—alive now?" I asked.
"I have reason to believe," Ray answered, "that he may be dead."
"How is it," I asked, "that you are so well acquainted with these things? Were you at any time my father's friend?"