The stranger stopped at a door next a shop in the Edgware Road; knocked, waited, and was admitted. Then the door was shut again.
It was obviously a private lodging-house. He took a half-crown in his hand to bribe the maid-servant, and walked boldly up to the door and knocked. It was not a maid-servant who answered, however; it was a man who looked something like an English butler, and yet there was a foreign touch about his dress—probably, Brand thought, the landlord. Brand pulled out a card-case, and pretended to have some difficulty in getting a card from it.
"The lady who came in just now—" he said, still looking at the cards.
"Madame Berezolyi? Yes, sir."
His heart jumped. But he calmly took out a pencil, and wrote on one of the cards, in French, "One who knows your daughter would like to see you."
"Will you be so kind as to take up that card to Madame Berezolyi? I think she will see me. I will wait here till you come down."
The man returned in a couple of minutes.
"Madame Berezolyi will be pleased to see you, sir; will you step this way?"