"It's Mr. Treves, isn't it?"
"Yes," John answered.
Having satisfied himself that he was in touch with the gloomy-looking waiter at the Newport Hotel, he put a discreet inquiry. He had parted with certain Treasury notes to the benefit of the gloomy waiter. The waiter, thereafter feeling himself a small but important wheel in a piece of vast machinery, made himself busy and active in John's service.
"Is anybody at home, Gibb?"
"She's not been out all day, sir, and went to bed immediately after dinner. She told her maid that she had a lot to do to-morrow, and asked to be called at eight."
These details were, for the moment, enough to satisfy John.
"You know where to ring me up, Gibb, if anything exceptional occurs."
John, having concluded his duties for that day, pedalled slowly back to the fort. The night was overcast, the air close, and as he led his bicycle up the long white road to the gates, he could hear the waves softly falling at the foot of the cliffs in the bay below him. No other sound broke the stillness, and when the outer sentinel suddenly barred his path and a challenge rang out on the close air, John was startled out of a mood of dreams.
He passed the second and the third sentries, a wicket in the great gate of the fort opened and admitted him, and, having reported himself to the Colonel, he went straight to his room. For the better part of that night his mind occupied itself with the momentous doings of the morrow. The cloud that had gathered itself about that end of the island was about to break. What would happen to himself and others on the morrow he could not forecast. But one thing he knew—the long, hidden contest between Voules and Dacent Smith would reach its culmination. Each man, with his pawns, had manoeuvred, moved, finessed and counter-moved. The subtlety of Dacent Smith had been pitted against the precision and military skill of von Kuhne. What was to be the end? John did not know, and at that moment his mind was only secondarily occupied with the point; he was thinking, not of to-morrow, but of yesterday, of his interview with Elaine, of his abrupt separation from her, of his apparent brutality and harshness.
He wondered at himself, that he, a capable, alert and non-sentimental young man, an individual who had withstood the seductive blandishments of Mrs. Beecher Monmouth, he wondered to find himself deeply and passionately in love with a girl whose knowledge of artifice was of the slightest. Elaine's genuine trust in him, her belief in his integrity, her delight in the improvement in his character, all helped to enchain John's deepest affections.