“When will Madame Demidoff return?” I inquired, amazed at this reception.
“To-morrow—at this hour,” was her rather hesitating reply.
“Then I shall be glad if you will give her my card, and say I will call,” I said; “that is if you still deny having met me in Tirnovo and in Palermo?”
“I really do not know what you are talking about, m’sieur,” she answered, and then, without further parley, closed the door in my face. I stood still, staggered.
Surely my reception at Toddington Terrace was the reverse of cordial.
Next afternoon at the same hour I called at Number 10, but there was no response to my ring, and the blinds were all down again. The place was deserted, for the tenants had evidently fled.
That same night as I sat in my rooms, a short, thick-set man, who gave the name of Payne, was ushered in.
“I think,” he said, “your Highness happens to know something of an old lady named Demidoff and her friends who live in Toddington Terrace?”
“Yes,” I replied, much surprised.
“Well,” he explained, “I’m a police officer, and I watched you go twice to the house, so I thought you knew something about them. Are they your friends?”