"I remember quite well," Jesson admitted quietly. "I knew Sidwell. He was a clever person in his way, but he relied too much upon disguises. I fancy that I hear the voices of the ladies coming. I shall just have time to tell you rather a curious coincidence."
The two men waited eagerly. Jesson touched with his forefinger the sheet of paper which he had been studying.
"Sidwell," he concluded, "could not have been so far off the mark. The man with whom he was spending the evening in that café was a mechanic from Kroten."
CHAPTER IX
Naida, early one afternoon, a few days after the dinner at Belgrave Square, raised herself on one elbow from the sofa on which she was resting, glanced at the roses and the card which the maid had presented for her inspection, and waved them impatiently away.
"The gentleman waits," the woman reminded her.
Naida glanced out of the window across a dull and apparently uninviting prospect of roofs and chimneys, to where in the background a faint line of silver and a wheeling flock of sea gulls became dimly visible through the branches of the distant trees. The window itself was flung wide open, but the slowly moving air had little of freshness in it. Sparrows twittered around the window-sill, and a little patch of green shone out from the Embankment Gardens. The radiance of spring here found few opportunities.
"The gentleman waits," the serving woman repeated stolidly, speaking in her native Russian.