“Beppo Polda.”
“Count Beppo Polda?” repeated the Frenchman. “I must try and find out something about this young gentleman, for I propose to do myself the honour of calling again on the Countess one day soon.”
By this time they were drinking their coffee, and while the two men each enjoyed a liqueur, M. Popeau made Lily drink a second cup of coffee.
When she had finished he said: “Now, my dear young lady, we had better go and look up my friend Bouton. He will not like being disturbed on a Sunday, but I feel you will be more comfortable when you have seen him. I want you to forget this sad affair—to wipe it out of your mind completely.”
He made a gesture in the air as if he was rubbing something out.
Lily felt as if she could never, never forget what had happened that morning. But she did not say so. She was asking herself, with some perplexity, where she had heard the name Bouton, and then, all at once, she remembered! It was the name which had produced such an extraordinary change in the taxicab-driver on the day of her arrival at Monte Carlo.
CHAPTER VIII
As they walked along the broad road which leads steeply down from Monte Carlo to the quaintly named Condamine, M. Popeau began talking almost as much to himself as to his young companion.
“The man we’re going to see,” he said, “is an autocrat, Miss Fairfield—one of the last real autocrats left in Europe. He has absolute power in this little country—I mean in Monaco. From his ruling there is no appeal. I remember he once caused an Englishman to be what would now be called deported. A fearful fuss was made about it! The man—his name was Johnson—was a nasty, cantankerous fellow, and it seemed that he had some relation in your Foreign Office. The affair dragged on for months—frightful threats were uttered. The British Ambassador in Paris was brought in—in fact it is not too much to say that had Monaco been a real country, with a fleet and an army, war might have resulted. But friend Bouton stuck to his guns, as the British so cleverly and truly say, and poor Johnson never came back!”
They were now turning into a very quiet, shadowed street composed of small but prosperous-looking houses.