“You know him?” he asked, pointing to the name.
“Very slightly.”
He nodded and picked up the note, holding it carefully by one corner between his filthy thumb and finger.
I unlocked the door as quietly as I had locked it, and a moment later he opened it noisily and backed out, growling guttural and surly thanks; backed right up against the servant, who, as we both guessed, was waiting just outside. Even I was surprised at the altercation that followed. A Russian droshky driver has a bigger command of bad language than any other cabby in the world, and the Grand Duke Loris had evidently studied his part from life. He was letter perfect in it!
I strode to the door and flung it open.
“Here, stop that!” I shouted. “Be off with you, Ivan; you impudent rascal!”
He leered at me and shambled off, but I could hear the coarse voice growling ribaldries all the way down the staircase.
It was a masterpiece of impersonation!
I waited a while, till I judged it safe to start on the first stage of my expedition. I meant to take a circuitous route to the café, in case I was still being watched. I would run no unnecessary risks, not for my own sake, but I guessed that the success of our enterprise—whatever it was—would depend on the exercise of infinite caution, at the beginning, anyhow. I felt strangely elated, happier than I had done for many a long day; although I knew that the worst, or almost the worst, had come to pass, and that Anne was here, in the power of her enemies. But we were going to save her,—we would save her. “A forlorn hope” even Loris Solovieff had called it. Nothing of the kind. Could anything that such a man as he attempted be a forlorn hope; and together, working loyally side by side, what could we not dare, and accomplish? Nothing seemed impossible to-night.