In three minutes’ time Parkinson threw open the study door.
“The lady, sir,” he announced.
Could he have seen, Carrados would have received the impression of a plainly, almost dowdily, dressed young woman of buxom figure. She wore a light veil, but it was ineffective in concealing the unattraction of the face beneath. The features were swart and the upper lip darkened with the more than incipient moustache of the southern brunette. Worse remained, for a disfiguring rash had assailed patches of her skin. As she entered she swept the room and its occupant with a quiet but comprehensive survey.
“Please take a chair, Madame. You wished to see me?”
The ghost of a demure smile flickered about her mouth as she complied, and in that moment her face seemed less uncomely. Her eye lingered for a moment on a cabinet above the desk, and one might have noticed that her eye was very bright. Then she replied.
“You are Signor Carrados, in—in the person?”
Carrados made his smiling admission and changed his position a fraction—possibly to catch her curiously pitched voice the better.
“The great collector of the antiquities?”
“I do collect a little,” he admitted guardedly.
“You will forgive me, Signor, if my language is not altogether good. When I live at Naples with my mother we let boardings, chiefly to Inglish and Amerigans. I pick up the words, but since I marry and go to live in Calabria my Inglish has gone all red—no, no, you say, rusty. Yes, that is it; quite rusty.”