"You understand, your orders are nothing to the lady. She does not choose to be driven home by you!"
The man protested:
"But my master——"
Sherbrand demanded:
"Who is your master?" Then a sudden light dawned upon him, and he turned and knocked sharply at the cabin-door. At which the liveried attendant, as a man who finds hesitancy a double-edged weapon, wheeled in military fashion and retreated, casting a surly glance over his shoulder, and quickening his heavy footsteps to a jog-trot as the General's active person appeared at Sherbrand's side.
"That man, Sir Roland!" Sherbrand's slight gesture indicated the thickset figure now getting hurriedly into the yellow Darracq. He added, as the car swirled round the corner of the restaurant and vanished in the direction of the entrance-gates, "Ought I to have grabbed the brute, and hung on to him? He was certainly with a party of foreign-looking people, who interviewed von Herrnung just before he got away. You saw them?"
"I certainly saw them. And I agree with you that their unexpected appearance has had to do with their countryman's sudden departure," said the Chief. "But to grab an orderly of the German Embassy would be—only less risky than grabbing a Kaiser's messenger, on suspicion of his carrying stolen War Secrets in his official bag."
"A Kaiser's messenger!" Sherbrand's mouth shaped a soundless whistle, "Why, now I remember, he had a dispatch-case or valise with him. Wouldn't hear of leaving it behind!"
"I—daresay not," the Chief's dry smile commented.
Sherbrand went on: