I left the house like a man over whom an enchantment has been spoken and was not pleased when Antoine blocked my path: "Pardon me, sir."
"Bother my pardon; what's troubling you now?" I demanded.
"It's nothing troubling me, sir; not particularly. If you give me time, I think I'll grow used to the poetry talk and playing at being queens. It's like children in a family I served once; an English family, most respectable. But in a widow, sir——"
"God knows we ought to be glad when grown-ups have the heart to play at being children and can get away with it as beautifully as those women do! What else is on your mind?"
"It's about Elsie, sir." I groaned at the mention of Flynn's German wife. "I'm sorry, sir; but I thought I should report it. It was a man who came to see her this afternoon. You was out for your walk, and Flynn had taken the ladies for a drive, so Elsie was alone at the garage. This person rode in on the grocer's truck from the village, which is how he got by the gate. As it happened, Pierre—he was a waiter at the Tyringham, a Swiss, who understands German—had gone into the garage for a nap; he's quite old, sir, and has his snooze every afternoon."
"He's entitled to it," I remarked; "he must be a thousand years old."
"From what he heard Pierre thought the man a spy, sir. He wanted Elsie to steal something from the house, it was a fan he wanted her to take most particular, and it was to be done soon, to-day if she could manage. It was for the love of the Fatherland that he wanted her to do it. Did you notice, sir, that Mrs. Bashford didn't have the fan to-night? Not that one she carried last night."
I had noticed that she had substituted a tiny Japanese fan for the one that Montani had inspected so eagerly. When I spoke of the change she had said the other was too precious for every-day use, and she meant to keep it locked up.
"I hate to bother you, sir, knowing you——"
The mention of the fan had brought me to an abrupt halt. I resented having the thing thrust at me in the ecstatic mood in which I had left the house, but the visit of the German-speaking stranger was serious, and Antoine knew that his story had startled me. He told me further that the man had carefully outlined to Elsie just how she could take advantage of her freedom of the house to appropriate the fan when the ladies were out and the servants off the second floor. She was to be paid for her assistance; two hundred dollars had been promised; even more had been suggested. Elsie and the stranger had left the garage and passed out of ear-shot before Elsie fully consented; but Pierre had given Antoine the impression that she would make the attempt.