“He will see me,” replied Mademoiselle Vallé. “If you give him this card he will see me.”
She was a plainly dressed woman, but she had a manner which removed her entirely from the class of those who merely came to importune. There was absolute certainty in the eyes she fixed with steadiness on the man’s face. He took her card, though he hesitated.
“If he does not see me,” she added, “he will be very much displeased.”
“Will you come in, ma’am, and take a seat for a moment?” he ventured. “I will inquire.”
The great hall was one of London’s most celebrated. A magnificent staircase swept up from it to landings whose walls were hung with tapestries the world knew. In a gilded chair, like a throne, Mademoiselle Vallé sat and waited.
But she did not wait long. The serious-looking man without livery returned almost immediately. He led Mademoiselle into a room like a sort of study or apartment given up to business matters. Mademoiselle Vallé had never seen Lord Coombe’s ceremonial evening effect more flawless. Tall, thin and finely straight, he waited in the centre of the room. He was evidently on the point of going out, and the light-textured satin-lined overcoat he had already thrown on revealed, through a suggestion of being winged, that he wore in his lapel a delicately fresh, cream-coloured carnation.
A respectable, middle-class looking man with a steady, blunt-featured face, had been talking to him and stepped quietly aside as Mademoiselle entered. There seemed to be no question of his leaving the room.
Coombe met his visitor half way:
“Something has alarmed you very much?” he said.
“Robin went out with Fräulein Hirsch this afternoon,” she said quickly. “They went to Kensington Gardens. They have not come back—and it is nine o’clock. They are always at home by six.”