When, in response to her question, I had told her my name, she said:
"I've been sent by the Baron to tell you he wishes to see you very particularly to-night at nine o'clock, at this address."
She handed me an envelope with an address upon it, and then went down the stairs.
The address I read was: "4A Bishop's Lane, Chiswick."
The mysterious appointment puzzled me, but after spending a very cheerless day, I hailed a taxi-cab at eight o'clock and set forth for Chiswick, a district to which I had never before been.
At length we found ourselves outside an old-fashioned church, and on inquiry I was told by a boy that Bishop's Lane was at the end of a footpath which led through the churchyard.
I therefore dismissed the taxi, and after some search, at length found No. 4A, an old-fashioned house standing alone in the darkness amid a large garden surrounded by high, bare trees—a house built in the long ago days before Chiswick became a London suburb.
As I walked up the path the door was opened, and I found the old man Van Nierop standing behind it.
Without a word he ushered me into a back room, which, to my surprise, was carpetless and barely furnished. Then he said, in that strange croaking voice of his:
"Your master will be here in about a quarter of an hour. He's delayed. Have a cigarette."