They were not noisy. Except when the young Clanfields, or one or two strangers were of the party, it was remarkable how quiet they all were. Audrey even thought sometimes, when only the habitués were present, that the silence in which they all staked and won or lost was uncanny.
There was another man whom she generally saw in the rooms, the heavy, solemn-looking Jim Johnson, Madame de Vicenza’s steward or secretary, Audrey did not exactly know which—who had accompanied her and Durley Diggs to the police court to arrange bail for Gerard.
Audrey noticed how modest this man was, how shy and awkward, how he always avoided the ordeal of greeting her or of bidding her good-bye.
He, too, was generally present, and Audrey thought that he was perhaps instructed by the duchess to frequent the place as much as possible in her absence, to see that no damage was done to the premises while they were sublet.
On this occasion Audrey, glancing round the card-room, saw Johnson’s face in profile, and was at once struck by a fact which she was surprised that she had not previously noticed, the extraordinary resemblance between him and the Dr. Fendall whom Mademoiselle Laure had called in on the eventful evening when the white lady appeared at the showrooms and disappeared from them so strangely.
The more she looked, the more certain she felt that the two men must be brothers. There was the same heavy protruding jaw, the same light blue eyes, the same slightly aquiline nose; both were of about the same height, were round-shouldered, and stooped a good deal.
The only noticeable points of difference, indeed, were the fact that while Johnson was clean-shaved, Dr. Fendall wore a greyish moustache, and that whereas the secretary used no glasses, the doctor wore gold-rimmed spectacles.
The longer Audrey looked, the more struck was she by this resemblance, and Johnson himself soon became aware of her curious gaze, grew uneasy under it, glanced at her apprehensively again and again, and finally, at the first opportunity, sprang up from the table at which he was playing and made a dash for the door at the opposite end of the room from that at which Audrey stood.
But she was determined to question him; and retreating hastily through the drawing-room she slipped out quietly into the hall, and came, as she had expected to do, face to face with Johnson, who was in the act of finding his hat from a pile on the hall table.
“Mr. Johnson,” said she, “I want to ask you something.”