At Richmond he darted out of the station and jumped into a fly.
“Thames Lawn. Drive as fast as you can,” he said.
The driver, instead of starting, turned, after the manner of his kind, to debate.
“Thames Lawn!” he repeated, reflectively. “Don’t know it, sir. Who lives there?”
“I—I don’t know the name of the people who have it now,” said George.
He was on the point of jumping out of the fly to make inquiries in the station, when another driver joined in the discussion.
“Thames Lawn!” cried he, “why it’s the place where they foreign swells live that gives the big parties. Prince and Princess Wesenstein. That’s the place. Where you drove the young gent that give you half a sovereign.”
“Oh—ah—yes,” said the other, and touching his hat to his fare with a nod to signify that it was all right, he gathered up the reins and started.
A foreign prince and princess who gave big parties! To even an intelligent Englishman the idea suggested by these words was more consistent with his suspicions of some grave villainy than the mention of an English lady and gentleman would have been. Yet the munificent and showy hospitality implied in the brief description did not agree with his fears of an ambush. A drive through the narrow High Street, filled with the overflowing, lively crowd of a bright summer evening, brought him in a few minutes to the lodge-gates of Thames Lawn. George left his fly waiting outside, and made inquiries at the lodge. The Prince and Princess were at home, the lodge-keeper said, but there was no gentleman of the name of Rahas staying with them that he knew of. There were often gentlemen with foreign names staying there, as his highness himself was a foreign gentleman.
“Has he a very dark complexion?” asked George, with a new doubt in his mind.