"Good old habits stick," said the Chief, and Sherbrand answered:
"Fortunately, they do. Let me say again how much and how gratefully I have to thank you for the teaching that has helped me to find myself!" His clear light glance reverted to Saxham. "The Doctor too, for giving me this chance of meeting you. Please tell him the story if you think it would interest him. I hope with all my heart, sir, that you will soon come here again!"
"I had already taken the permission for granted," the Chief said, as Sherbrand saluted and went forward to meet "the fellow with red hair." "There is big business in that gyroscopic stabiliser of his," he added to Saxham, "and our friends at the French War Ministry have tumbled to it as one might naturally expect. So much the worse for our bungling bigwigs at Whitehall, who've let a good thing slip, for the millionth time, out of their claws. But taking for granted the value of the patent, and recognising the likelihood of the French bid stimulating Teutonic competition——"
The gentle, modulated voice broke off. Von Herrnung had stepped out upon the green and was striding towards the lightly-moving, less stiffly-carried figure of Sherbrand, the approximation of the two somehow suggesting a salute of gladiators previous to the fight. Now the big, grey-clad German was arrested in the middle of his stride by the sudden kling-a-ling of a motor-gong, a sharp crystal vibration that stiffened him to attention, and pricked his ears for a repetition of the sound.
It did not immediately come. He raised the left hand that held the leather satchel, and swung it from front to rear, so that it was for a moment clear of the outline of his body, as who should signal: "I have it safe!" Quick, watchful eyes noted this. Took in also the ornate bulk of the dark blue F.I.A.T. touring-car, as with the characteristic, noiseless smoothness of its make, it glided between the ranks of parked and waiting automobiles, and stopped in the open, perhaps some forty yards away.
A fat yellow hand, with a twinkling solitaire upon it, waved. A brown hand, with a massive gold curb-chain watch-bracelet on the wrist of it, beckoned imperiously. Something had been forgotten, something was still to say. Von Herrnung wheeled, and went back in his traces as obediently as the pointer that has been called to heel. He did not uncover, perhaps he had been told not to. He saluted, and stood stiffly, listening to a harsh German voice that yapped at him. All his arrogance and swagger seemed to have been juggled out of him by the gestures of the brown hand with the flashing wrist-bracelet, emerging from the white cuff with jewelled sleeve-links and the snowy sleeve with its broad bands of glittering golden braid.
"S'th!"
The slight sound pulled Saxham's head round. He had not been looking at the occupants of the blue F.I.A.T. His eyes were intent on the tall white figure of the woman standing beside his boy. Her black lace sunshade was closed. She held the tall-sticked thing at arm's-length, leaning upon it, and the westering light smote a myriad of multi-coloured sparkles out of the tinsel spangles of the hat with the single black cock's plume. The queer headgear crowning her barbaric hair, and her full white oval face with its wide, low, arched black brows and long eyes, made her seem strange, alluring, as some tall-stemmed, exotic flower, sprung at the incantation of an Oriental conjuror, from a green stretch of English turf.
In the same instant von Herrnung touched his hat, stepped back from the blue car, wheeled and walked away toward the waiting figure of Sherbrand, the sallow man in the Homburg hat gave an order, the chauffeur touched the electric starter, and the F.I.A.T. turned and smoothly bowled away. But in the instant of its turning, the bearded man in the white naval uniform rose in his place, and obtruding half his short, bulky body across the lean person of his sallow neighbour, scrutinised the face and figure of Patrine Saxham with a cool, appraising deliberateness that tortured the wincing flesh it enveloped like the cut of a carriage-whip.
They were full, bright, and rather handsome grey-blue eyes shadowed by the white cap-peak, and they had the indefinable expression of authority and power. Their glance said—and the face with the perfectly-trimmed beard and the upturned moustache wore a curious smile that bore out the glance's meaning: