Try as I would, I could not rid myself of the recollection of that face. Now that I reflected, I remembered that when I saw her on the railway-platform I noticed she was dark-eyed, with a thin, elongated, rather striking, careworn face; a figure almost tragic in expression, yet evidently that of a woman of the world Her nationality was difficult to distinguish, but by her tailor-made travelling-dress and her rather severe style, I had put her down as English. Her glance in the semi-darkness had, however, been a curious one, and the reason was rendered the more puzzling by her sudden disappearance.
As we reached the pier at Dover I stationed myself at the gangway, and closely scrutinised every person who went ashore, waiting there until the last passenger had left. But no one resembling her appeared. She seemed to have vanished from the boat like a shadow.
I went ashore, and ran from end to end of both trains, the Chatham and Dover and South Eastern, but could not find her. Then, entering a compartment in the latter train, I travelled to Charing Cross, much puzzled by the incident. I could not doubt but that this thin-faced woman had followed me for some mysterious purpose.
Chapter Sixteen.
Dawn.
When in the early morning I drove into Downing Street and entered the office of the chief of the night staff, I was informed that the Marquess of Malvern was in town; therefore I drove on to Belgrave Square.
The Prime Minister’s house was a large, old-fashioned, substantial-looking mansion, devoid of any outward show or embellishment, and with very little attempt at ornamentation in the interior. Everything was solid and good, but long out of date. The gimcrack painted deal abominations, miscalled art-furniture, had not been invented in the day when the town house of the great family had been renovated in honour of the marriage of the fourth Marquess, the present Prime Minister’s grandfather, and very little had been altered by the two generations who had succeeded him. The time-mellowed stability of the place was one of its greatest charms. The footman led me upstairs through the great reception-room which every foreign diplomatist in London knows so well, where the furniture was at present hidden beneath holland shrouds, and down a long corridor, till we found the valet, who, in obedience to the strict orders of his master, went and awakened him. The Marquess, attentive to the affairs of State by night as well as by day, was always awakened on the arrival of a crossed despatch from any of Britain’s representatives at the Foreign Courts.
“His lordship will see you in his dressing-room in a few moments, sir,” the valet said when he returned, as he ushered me into a small room close at hand.