While removing the disguise, Nick noticed the carbuncle ring on his finger, and he immediately took it off and slipped it into the pocket of another suit he was then about putting on.
“I’ll have nothing about me that she may have seen this morning,” he said to himself. “There’s a deal of crafty keenness in those bright eyes of hers, and I’ll make sure that she discovers nothing to identify me with her visitor by the name of Sibley. If she succeeds in doing that, the witch, there will be something more than natural in it—or some sort of rascally cunning at work under the surface. I’ll wager that she will have no impression of two men entering her room this time, nor that I was there this morning.”
Fashionably clad, with his strong, attractive face inviting observation, Nick appeared for the second time at the rooms of Madame Victoria, just about an hour after leaving them.
The girl in the waiting-room did not recognize him, and Nick took even the precaution to vary his voice several degrees from that he had previously used.
“Is Madame Victoria disengaged?” he inquired.
“She is, sir, just at present,” said the girl.
“My card,” said Nick tersely. “I would like a business interview with her.”
“One moment, sir.”
The girl vanished into the inner room, then returned without the card.