“Will you gentlemen dine in the public restaurant?” asked Captain Bright, stepping up to Edestone.
“No,” Rebener took it upon himself to answer. “We are going to have a little partie carrée in my apartment.”
“In that case,” said the Captain, “I regret that I shall have to station men on that floor.”
Rebener frowned as if he were about to voice a protest, but at that moment the proprietor called him over to consult with him in regard to the menu.
For a moment or two they discussed it calmly enough; then as the proprietor began to gesticulate and wax vehement, Rebener spoke over his shoulder to his guest.
“Excuse me, Jack,” he said, “but M. Bombiadi insists that I hold a council of war with him over the selection of the wines. He declines to accept the responsibility with such a distinguished personage as you seem to have become.” Then lowering his voice, he added with a wink: “He is evidently impressed with that military escort of yours, for all that he pretended not to notice it. I won’t be away a minute.”
He was hurried by the proprietor through the office and into one of the small duplex apartments on the main floor. Passing through the pantry and dining-room of the apartment out into the little private hall with its street door on Piccadilly, and up a short flight of marble steps with an iron railing, he was ushered into a handsomely furnished little parlour.
There, standing in front of the mantelpiece was a man who did not look like an Englishman, but more like a German Jew. He was perfectly bald and had a black beard which was rather long and trimmed to a point. His nose was unmistakable, and taken with his thick, red lips showed pretty well what he was and whence he came. Talking to him very earnestly was another man, who was much smaller, and who was also German to the finger-tips.
Pausing on the threshold, M. Bombiadi with the servile and cringing tone always assumed by those frock-coated criminals, European hotel proprietors, asked humbly: “May we come in, Your Royal Highness?”
But Rebener, with the air of a man who was not accustomed to, or else declined to consider, such formalities, unhesitatingly brushed the proprietor aside, and walked up to the two men.