‘His train is due at seven-thirty.’
‘These are trying moments for you, my dear friend.’
‘I would not live the last five days over again for—well, not for a very great deal,’ answered Madame De Vigne as she stepped from the veranda into the room.
‘Here am I, the sister of a quiet country parson,’ remarked Miss Gaisford to herself as she lingered behind for a moment, ‘who never had a love affair of my own, made a confidant in the love affairs of two other people! It’s delightful—it’s bewildering—it’s far better than any novel. Two plots in real life working themselves out under my very eyes! My poor stories will seem dreadfully tame after this.’ She smiled and shook her curls, and then went in search of a cup of tea.
While this had been going on, a stranger had stepped out of the hotel and sauntered across the lawn, and sat down on the seat erstwhile occupied by Mr Dulcimer. There was nothing in his appearance calculated to draw the special attention of any one to him, and no one seemed to bestow more notice on him than they might have done on any other commonplace tourist. He was a tall, thin man, with sandy hair, and a reddish, close-cropped beard and moustache. An artist who might have scanned his features with a view to painting them, would probably have said that his eyes were too close together, and that they were deeper set in their orbits than is at all common. Their habitual expression, when he was not talking to any one, seemed to be one of listening watchfulness, as though he were continually expecting some tidings, or some strange event to happen of which he might hear the news at any moment. He was dressed in an ordinary tourist suit, with a large, soft felt hat. He sat down on the bench, crossed his legs, and lit a cigarette.
He went on smoking for a few moments, as if in contemplative enjoyment of his cigarette. Then he extracted from his pocket a telegram in cipher, which had reached him that morning at a little country post-office some fifty miles away. The telegram was headed, ‘From John Smith, London, to Cornelius Santelle, Post-office, Morsby-in-the-Marsh.’
The stranger proceeded to read the telegram, translating it slowly word by word.
“You will take up your quarters at the Palatine Hotel, Windermere, at which place you will be joined in the course of to-morrow by B. and K., who will arrive at different times by different trains.”—B. and K. must mean Borovski and Koriloff.—“They will place themselves unreservedly at your disposal, their orders being to take the whole of their instructions from you. Meanwhile, you will make all needful inquiries as instructed, so that no unnecessary time may be lost. You are fully aware of the arrangements that are always made in circumstances of a similar kind.”’
He folded up the telegram and put it away again. ‘Well, here I am at the Palatine Hotel, and a very pretty place it is, and quiet—oh, very quiet. Perhaps before next week at this time, the good people—and they all look very good—may have something to talk about—something to wake them up a little, and stir the torpid current of their lives. Who knows?’