"When your hair is done, will you please go into the sitting room on my corridor? Philippa has something to show you."
The Countess looked at him curiously as he took his leave.
"Please hurry with my hair," she said to her maid.
CHAPTER XXXVI
As Warner returned to his own room, two thoughts persisted and dominated all others: Philippa's parents were known to Wildresse; Wildresse must be found.
Somehow or other he had already taken it for granted that Philippa's father or mother, or perhaps both parents, had been engaged in some capacity in the service of this family called De Châtillon. There was no particular reason for him to believe this; her parents might have been the friends of these people. But the idea of some business association between the two families seemed to obsess him—he could not explain why—and with this idea filling his mind he entered his room, seated himself by the open window, and picked up the packages of personal papers belonging to Wildresse and taken from his safe by Asticot.
There were three packets of documents, each packet tied separately with pink tape and sealed twice.
Running over the first packet like a pack of cards, he found that every paper had been endorsed on the outside and dated, although the dates were not arranged in proper sequence.
On the first document which he read without unsealing the packet was written, "Affaire Schnaeble, 1887." On the next he read, when he parted the papers, "Affaire de Clermont-Ferrand, 1888." The next, however, bore the inscription, "Affaire Panitza" and bore an earlier date. Beneath this caption was written: "Prince Ferdinand and the Oberanovitch Dynasty. Dossier of Draga. The Jockey Club and King Milan. Queen Natalie and her dossier. The Grand Duke Cyril."
He turned over document after document, all bearing endorsements, but the majority of the captions meant nothing to him, such as "Abdul Hamid and Marmora," "The Greco-Italian Proposition for an International Gendarmerie," "Ali Pasha, Saïd Pasha, and the Archives of Tenedos," "The Hohenzollern-Benedetti Affair."