The heavy mahogany door leading to the corridor outside was flung open, and a short, thick-set, bearded Frenchman came briskly into the room. There was nothing particularly remarkable about him. He might have been an ordinary commercial traveller, save for a pair of singularly alert eyes, which glanced rapidly hither and thither and took in the whole room in one comprehensive sweep. This was done with lightning-like rapidity, and then the fellow's face assumed an expression of great surprise—a little bit overdone and too forced to seem real.
"A thousand pardons!" he said, with a bow. "The wrong room! My mistake! I am very sorry. Accept my apologies."
With that he once more glanced round the room and left it, though with not quite the alacrity of his entrance, closing the door quietly behind him.
But into the quiet room something strangely disturbing had come.
It was no longer a confidential maid gossiping with the casual waiter of a smart hotel. The air, which had before been charged with little suspicions, toy fencings, as it were, between people of no great importance, was now informed with something more pressing, more imminent, more real.
Pauline herself positively staggered back from the fireplace towards the table, and nearer to the waiter. Her brown face became grey, she seemed for a moment to lose control of herself, while the ferret eyes of the waiter watched her with an excited glitter in them.
"That man!" ... The exclamation came from Pauline almost like a cry. "That man!"
Jacques was all bent to attention. He hurried up to the woman. "Yes, yes?" he said.
"Do you know who he is?" Pauline asked. "Have you seen him before, M. Jacques?"
The man watched her keenly. "I don't know, mademoiselle," he answered in a guarded voice.