Save for Martha’s lamp, the lobby was in darkness, but light was streaming into the hall from the half open door of a room leading off it at the far end. While Martha, wheezing asthmatically, bolted the front door, Desmond went towards the room where the light was and walked in.
It was a small sitting-room, lined with bookshelves, illuminated by an oil lamp which stood on a little table beside a chintz-covered settee which had been drawn up in front of the dying fire.
On the settee Nur-el-Din was lying asleep.
CHAPTER X.
D. O. R. A. IS BAFFLED
When Barbara reached the Chief’s ante-room she found it full of people. Mr. Marigold was there, chatting with Captain Strangwise who seemed to be just taking his leave; there was a short, fat, Jewish-looking man, very resplendently dressed with a large diamond pin in his cravat and a small, insignificant looking gentleman with a gray moustache and the red rosette of the Legion of Honor in his button-hole. Matthews came out of the Chief’s room as Barbara entered the outer office.
“Miss Mackwayte,” he said, “we are all so shocked and so very, sorry...”
“Mr. Matthews,” she said hastily in a low voice, “never mind about that now. I must see the Chief at once. It is most urgent.”
Matthews gesticulated with his arm round the room.
“All these people, excepting the officer there, are waiting to see him, Miss, and he’s got a dinner engagement at eight...”
“It is urgent, Mr. Matthews, I tell you. If you won’t take my name in, I shall go in myself!”