Greta put a hand through Nan's arm and drew her near the gangway. Something must have been said for the girl turned her back with decision upon her late admirer. But her face was more than disturbed; it was shamed, frightened. A cut in public is a terrible thing to the innocent mind.
Napier stood close behind the pair, waiting for the excuse he felt that Mrs. Guedalla would make for not going down with the crowd to confront her husband. But the lady was too entirely mistress of herself for that. Perhaps she counted on Mr. Guedalla's knowledge of the wisdom of not interfering with his wife. Straight down the gangplank she walked, Nan behind her, recovering herself enough to make little signals toward a group—two ladies, a young man, and three children with flags—waving and smiling at Nan Ellis, first from the end of the crowded pier, then running along at the side, and now waiting finally at the bottom of the gangway to fall upon the girl with their welcome.
Napier had no difficulty in deciding which of them was her mother in face of the fact that Mrs. Ellis looked more like an elder sister. Yes, that must be a nice woman; but stupid, he decided, noting the cordiality, after the first motion of surprise, with which Mrs. Ellis received the lady in the baffling veil. She kissed Greta through the lace. Bah! With Nan's address in his pocket, he could afford to leave her and her party in the hands of a customs officer, opening trunks on the pier.
Indeed, he had little choice, he found himself appropriated by an English friend and an American steel magnate—carried away into a world about which all that he had heard had very little prepared him.
His private as well as patriotic interest in the possibilities unfolded did not prevent him from putting himself in touch with the British Intelligence Department before he dined that first night on American soil.
The chief agent in New York was, or had been, as Napier knew, the British partner in an American shipping house. That he had married an American heiress, Napier also knew. He was the more surprised to find Mr. Roderick Taylor installed en garçon at an hotel.
"My w-wife," said the long, fair young man with the strictly pomaded hair, "is in P-Paris with her sister, who is or-organizing American Hospital Relief. In any case,"—his smile seemed to accept Napier as one to be treated frankly—"all sorts of coming and going is less marked in a c-caravansary like this." The luxurious sitting room bore at that moment, though it was not yet six o'clock, signs of the indicated traffic. A bridge table not long abandoned, to judge by the glasses and cigar ends, stood there.
He had run across Stein, coming out from luncheon, said Mr. Taylor. Old Viennese friend of his, Stein. Had him up along with O'Leary, the Sinn Feiner, and a German-American dark horse, Bieber. "We are all dining at Bieber's to-morrow," Mr. Taylor smiled as one who preserves a native modesty in full view of triumph. It wasn't the smile he showed to his experimental bridge parties. "Greta von S-S—" the slight, very slight stammer gave a touch of unreadiness which perhaps prevented the extreme competency of Mr. Roderick Taylor from being too marked. Napier noticed later than the stammer was hardly discernible when the engaging young man was off duty.
"Yes, von Schwarzenberg." He helped Taylor over the barbed-wire of Teutonic syllables.
"Know her?" Taylor could go on glibly enough. "Rather!" And what, he asked, made Mr. Napier think the woman who had crossed with him as Mademoiselle La Farge was—