Although he spoke his thoughts half aloud, as men sometimes get into the habit of doing who have lived much alone, and have been debarred by circumstances from that amount of human companionship which is needful for every one’s health of mind, yet any one who might have wished to overhear what he was saying, would have had to be in very close proximity to him indeed. It is not impossible that at some period of his life this man may have undergone a long term of solitary confinement, and that his habit of talking aloud to himself dated its origin and growth from that time.
Whether this Mr Santelle was an Englishman or a foreigner was a question which might well have puzzled many people, especially those individuals whose travels had never extended beyond their own insular boundaries. If his English differed by certain fine shades from that which a cultured Londoner speaks, it was certainly in no point like the English of Northumberland or Devon. Mr Santelle spoke with very slight traces of an alien accent; the difference in his case consisted chiefly in an almost imperceptible lengthening of some of the vowels, and a slightly more emphatic enunciation of certain syllables over which the native tongue glides as if they had no separate existence.
Mr Santelle flung away the end of his cigarette and drew a small memorandum book from his pocket. ‘What was the name of the man I was to ask for?’ he said as he turned over the leaves of the book.—‘Ah, here it is. Jules Decroze, waiter at the Palatine Hotel. Good.’
He shut up the book and put it away, and then he turned his head in the direction of the main entrance to the hotel. An open carriage was standing there containing two travellers, who were on the point of departure. There too stood Jules the waiter, superintending the arrangements. ‘Yonder man looks somewhat like the one I want,’ murmured Mr Santelle. ‘We shall soon find out.’
He sat watching till the carriage which held the travellers drove away. Then he held up a finger in readiness to catch the eye of Jules, should the latter look his way. As if unwittingly magnetised, Jules a moment or two later turned and looked in the direction of the stranger. Then the finger beckoned him. He crossed the lawn leisurely with his napkin thrown over his arm after the manner of his class.
‘A votre service, m’sieur,’ he said with a little bow and a smile. He seemed instinctively to recognise that the stranger who had summoned him was not an Englishman.
‘Oblige me with your name, my friend,’ said Mr Santelle in French. ‘When I require a person, I like to know how to ask for him.’
‘My name is Jules Decroze, at monsieur’s service.’
‘Once on a time passing under the name of Jean Reboul, and previously to that known to the world as Pierre Lebrun.’
‘How! monsieur knows’—— exclaimed the little Frenchman with a gasp.