CHAPTER I
It was shortly after midnight in the great Hôtel des Tuileries at Paris.
Beyond the façade of the hotel the gardens of the Tuileries were sleeping in the warm night. To the left the Louvre etched itself in solid black against the sky, and all up and down the Rue de Rivoli carriages and automobiles were still moving.
But in the great thoroughfare the tide of vehicles and foot passengers was perceptibly thinning. Paris is a midnight city, it is true, and at this hour the heights of Montmartre were thronged with pleasure-seekers, dancing and supping till the pale dawn should come with its message of purity and reproach.
But down in the Rue de Rivoli even the great hotels were beginning to prepare for sleep.
One enters the Hôtel des Tuileries, as every one knows, through the revolving doors, passes into the entresol, and then into the huge glass-domed lounge with its comfortable fauteuils, its big settee, its little tables covered with beaten copper, and its great palms, which seem as if they had been cunningly enamelled jade-green by some jeweller.
The lounge was now almost empty of people, though the shaded electric light threw a topaz-coloured radiance over everything.
In one corner—just where the big marble stair-case springs upwards to the gilded gallery—two men in evening dress were sitting together.
They were obviously English, tall, thin, bronzed men, as obviously in the service. As a matter of fact, one was Colonel Adams, attached to the Viceroy's staff in India, the other a civilian's secretary—Henry Passhe.
They were both smoking briar pipes—delighted that the lateness of the hour allowed them to do so in the lounge; and before each man was a long glass full of crushed ice and some effervescing water innocent of whisky.