But when they at length reached their destination and Slyne stopped the car quietly before the imposing pile that forms the Hôtel de Paris, Captain Dove's jaw dropped and his mouth opened mechanically.
A resplendent porter came hurrying forward and bowed most humbly to the magnificent Slyne.
"Take this lady and her maid straight up to the suite next mine," ordered Slyne as Sallie alighted, while Captain Dove listened, all ears. "And ask Mr. Jobling to join me in my sitting-room. He's still here, I suppose?"
He gave vent to a heartfelt sigh of relief as the man, already preceding his charges indoors, paused to answer in the affirmative.
"I needn't book a room for you," he told Captain Dove, with calculated indifference. "But Sallie must have somewhere to leave Ambrizette.
"Hey! you. Call my chauffeur to take the car round to the garage."
Captain Dove followed him toward the bureau, attracting not a few glances of mingled surprise and amusement from the elaborate idlers in its neighbourhood. Slyne was furious.
"I can't have him tagging about after me in that ghastly get-up!" he told himself on the way to the elevator; and cuffed the elevator-boy's ears at the sound of a mirthful sneeze with which that unfortunate youth had become afflicted. "Though how the deuce I'm to help myself I don't know."
In the corridor at which they got out he caught sight of Mr. Jobling approaching, and hurried Captain Dove into the sitting-room of his suite.
"Give me five minutes to change my clothes," he requested of the old man. "And don't get straying about, or you'll lose yourself."