She handed me her card, which I accepted, bowing. There were some tedious formalities necessary at the local poste de police and it was after midnight when I reached my room and took the card from my pocket. “Lady Sarah Wimpole,” I read beneath a simple crest, a swan volant holding a snake in its beak and the device “Nunc pro tunc.”
Our paths had crossed. Matters were coming on apace.
Chapter II
Our First Interview
Chapter II
“Dr. Traprock?”
She held the card which had preceded me. Saluting in the continental manner, I bent over her extended hand, noting the strong, square nails with their perfect crescent moons at the base.
“Lady Wimpole.”
She motioned me to a complicated wicker chair of Malaysian make which brought back vividly my years in Mindanao.
“You were splendid the other night,” she said. Her voice surprised me. It was harsh, like the note of a grackle or the cry of a sea-bird, full of strange breaks, guttural depths and moving dissonances.
As we talked I took in the details of our surroundings. We were seated in the morning-room of the Villa Bianca, an exquisitely appointed mansion of lemon-yellow stucco embowered in a riot of roses, bougainvilléa and flowering bugloss-vines. From beyond the walls of the formal entrance garden the noises of the town reached us faintly. The Monocan populace were celebrating the fête of St. Yf whose favor is supposed to bring good luck at the gaming tables.