“Mary, my dear, how did you manage it? I didn’t expect you till the late train.”
“I was in London, you see, and they telephoned on your telegram. I’m staying with Aunt Doria, and I cut her theatre party. She thinks I’m at the Shandwick’s dance, so I needn’t go home till morning.... Good evening, General Hannay. You got over the Hill Difficulty.”
“The next stage is the Valley of Humiliation,” I answered.
“So it would appear,” she said gravely, and sat very quietly on the edge of Sir Walter’s chair with her small, cool hand upon his.
I had been picturing her in my recollection as very young and glimmering, a dancing, exquisite child. But now I revised that picture. The crystal freshness of morning was still there, but I saw how deep the waters were. It was the clean fineness and strength of her that entranced me. I didn’t even think of her as pretty, any more than a man thinks of the good looks of the friend he worships.
We waited, hardly speaking a word, till Macgillivray came. The first sight of his face told his story.
“Gone?” asked Blenkiron sharply. The man’s lethargic calm seemed to have wholly deserted him.
“Gone,” repeated the newcomer. “We have just tracked him down. Oh, he managed it cleverly. Never a sign of disturbance in any of his lairs. His dinner ordered at Biggleswick and several people invited to stay with him for the weekend—one a member of the Government. Two meetings at which he was to speak arranged for next week. Early this afternoon he flew over to France as a passenger in one of the new planes. He had been mixed up with the Air Board people for months—of course as another man with another face. Miss Lamington discovered that just too late. The bus went out of its course and came down in Normandy. By this time our man’s in Paris or beyond it.”
Sir Walter took off his big tortoiseshell spectacles and laid them carefully on the table.
“Roll up the map of Europe,” he said. “This is our Austerlitz. Mary, my dear, I am feeling very old.”