She yielded and tumbled in. Karslake followed and slammed the door. The car shot away and rounded into the cross street before the bobby could collect himself enough to look at its license plate. He made after it, but when he had reached the corner it had turned another and was lost.
At the second turning Karslake looked round from the window with a reassuring laugh, and settled back beside Sofia.
“So that ends that!”
She stared wide-eyed through the shadows. She knew him now, she was not in the least afraid, but she was confused beyond measure.
“Why—why—” she faltered—“what—who are you and where are you taking me?”
“Oh, I beg your pardon!” said the young man, contritely. “I forgot. One ought to introduce one’s self before rescuing ladies in distress—but there really wasn’t time, you know. If you’ll overlook the informality, my name’s Karslake, Roger Karslake, Princess Sofia, and I’m taking you to your father.”
V
HOUSE OF THE WOLF
This startling announcement Sofia received without comment and with a composure quite as surprising. The life which had made her what she was, a young woman singularly unillusioned, well-poised, and well-informed, had brought out in her nature a strong vein of scepticism. She was not easily to be impressed. The more remarkable the circumstance in question, the less inclined was she to exclaim about it, the stronger was her propensity to look shrewdly into the matter and find out for herself just what it was that made it seem so odd.
She didn’t repose much faith in those striking synchronizations which apparently unrelated influences sometimes effect with related events, and which we are accustomed to term coincidences. She distrusted their specious seeming of spontaneity, she suspected a deep design behind them all.
For example: Up to the moment of her flight from the Café des Exiles there had been, as Sofia saw it, nothing extraordinary or inexplicable in the chapter of happenings which had made her acquainted, as abruptly as tardily, with certain facts concerning her parentage.