"He came to-day, then?" she asked.
"Yesterday," corrected Mr. Bugbee; "at noon, he landed from my steam-yacht, in the very heart of London. So much for the international police."
"Do they know?" said Mrs. Oswald Carey. "Does Sir John Dacre know?"
"Sir John Dacre helped the King into his carriage when he landed. He knows that he is here, and expects to meet him at Aldershot to-morrow."
While pretending to move and speak as if quite at ease, Mr. Bugbee was obviously nervous and unsettled. Mrs. Carey observed this, but without appearing to do so.
"Where is your husband?" Mr. Bugbee asked quietly, with his face turned from Mrs. Carey, whose side view he had before him in a low mirror. He saw her move in her chair, and slowly look him all over, and then glance down as if considering her answer.
"He is on the Continent—at Nice, I think."
She had dined with him that day, but did not know that from the dinner Oswald Carey had come straight to Mr. Bugbee's house to keep an appointment with the wily "King's Banker," who wished to know how the Beauty had spent the day, and whom she had seen.
"What a liar she is!" muttered old Bugbee, but he smiled at himself in the mirror, as if approving his superior astuteness.
"Then there is no danger of his making a noise about your absence from home to-night. Some husbands would be alarmed, and might apply to the police."