“Yes, sir; his business is urgent, he says, and private. He sent in his card, sir.”
Here he handed over the card in question, a small, unobtrusive bit of pasteboard, laid in solitary grandeur on a very large silver salver.
David Jost took it up, and scanned it with some curiosity. “‘Pasquin Leroy’! H’m! Don’t know the name at all. ‘Urgent business; bear private credentials from the Marquis de Lutera’!” He paused again, considering,—then turned to the waiting attendant. “Show him in.”.
“Yes, sir!”
Another moment and Pasquin Leroy entered,—but it was an altogether different Pasquin Leroy to the one that had recently enrolled himself as an associate of Sergius Thord’s Revolutionary Committee. That particular Pasquin had seemed somewhat of a dreamer and a visionary, with a peculiar and striking resemblance to the King; this Pasquin Leroy had all the alertness and sharpness common to a practised journalist, press-reporter or commercial traveller. Moreover, his countenance, adorned with a black mustache, and small pointed beard, wore a cold and concentrated air of business—and he confronted the Jew millionaire without the slightest embarrassment or apology for having broken in upon his seclusion at so unseasonable an hour. He used a pince-nez, and was constantly putting it to his eyes, as though troubled with short-sightedness.
“I presume your matter cannot wait, sir,” said Jost, surveying him coolly, without rising from his seat,—“but if it can—”
“It cannot!” returned Leroy, bluntly.
Jost stared.
“So! You come from the Marquis de Lutera?”
“I do.”