“Is the prince in?” he asked. “Is he busy?” he added, when the servant had stood back with a gesture inviting him to enter. But the man only shrugged his shoulders with a smile. The prince, it appeared, was never busy. Deulin found him, in fact, in an arm-chair in his study, reading a German newspaper.
The prince looked at him over the folded sheet. They had known each other since boyhood, and could read perhaps more in each other's wrinkled and drawn faces than the eyes of a younger generation were able to perceive. The prince pointed to the vacant arm-chair at the other side of the fireplace. Deulin took the chair with that leisureliness of movement and demeanor of which Lady Orlay, and Cartoner, and others who were intimate with him, knew the inner meaning. His eyes were oddly bright.
They waited until the servant had closed the door behind him, and even then they did not speak at once, but sat looking at each other in the glow of the wood-fire. Then Deulin shrugged his shoulders, and made, with both hands outspread, a gesture indicative of infinite pity.
“Do you know?” said the prince, grimly.
“I knew at eight o'clock this morning. Cartoner advised me of it by a cipher telegram.”
“Cartoner?” said the prince, interrogatively.
“Cartoner is in Petersburg. He went there presumably to attend this—pleasing denouement.”
The prince gave a short laugh.
“How well,” he said, folding his newspaper, and laying it aside reflectively—“how well that man knows his business. But why did he telegraph to you?”
“We sometimes do each other a good turn,” explained Deulin, rather curtly. “It must have happened yesterday afternoon. One can only hope that—it was soon over.”