“Your friend was a banker?” Waldron remarked. “Perhaps the man had received some inside knowledge from Vienna for the purpose of operating on the Bourse?”
“He may have done,” replied the other thoughtfully. “But really I don’t know. I didn’t take much notice of his words.”
Waldron said nothing for a few moments.
“And your reply to Mam’zelle?” he asked at last.
“If I bring it to you at the Grand by three o’clock will that be convenient to you?”
“Quite,” was the reply, and then the two men parted, Hubert taking a taxi up to the British Legation in the Rue de Spa, where he had a pleasant luncheon with Hugh Bennett, the Minister, and his wife, returning to the Grand at three o’clock, where in his room he received a sealed letter from the Frenchman’s hand.
It was addressed “To Mademoiselle Lola Duprez” and not to the Princess Luisa of Savoy, as Hubert had half expected.
“I can, alas! do no more than thank you most warmly and deeply both on my own behalf and upon Mam’zelle’s,” said Pujalet in his polite Parisian manner. “By coming here you have rendered a great service to us both—one that I can never in all my life forget.”
But Hubert Waldron, though he placed the letter in his pocket, held the man in distinct antipathy. He could read men’s minds better than most of his fellows. It was his profession as a diplomat.
And in the heart of Henri Pujalet, that man who had come up out of the desert from nowhere, he felt that there was a hidden yet distinct evil.