Marion has evidently left Cunnington’s and disappeared! He tried to think to whom she would go in her distress. There was her Aunt Anne at Wimborne, her cousin Lucy who had married the bank manager at Hereford, and there was her old schoolfellow Mary Craven who had only recently married Pelham, the manager of an insurance company in Moorgate Street.
Those three addresses he wrote on a telegraph form, urging Max to make inquiry and report progress. This he despatched, and again threw himself down, full of dark forebodings.
If Marion had really been discharged, she was in some disgrace. What could it possibly be? That it was something which she dared not face was proved by the fact that she had not confided in Max. She knew Maud’s place of concealment, without a doubt; therefore, what more natural than she should have joined her?
The whole affair was a complete enigma, rendered the more tantalising by the distance which now separated him from London.
Next morning he rose, took his coffee, and went out along the broad central boulevard, gay and lively in the sunlight, thronged by well-dressed ladies and smart officers in uniforms on the Russian model—as bright and pleasant a scene as can be witnessed anywhere outside Paris. Up the hill, past the royal palace, he went. In the royal garden, separated from the roadway by high iron railings, the band of the Guards were playing, and over the palace floated the royal standard, showing that his Majesty was in residence.
Adjoining the palace was a large square castellated building, painted white, and into this he turned, saluted by the gendarmes on duty. Ascending a broad flight of steps, he passed through the swing doors, presented his card, and was shown into the large antechamber of the President of the Council of Ministers, the strongest man in Servia, Monsieur Nicholas Pashitch.
The long windows commanded a wide view of the tows and of the broad Danube shining in the morning sun, while upon the walls of the sombre apartment with its floor of polished oak and antique furniture covered with crimson plush, was a portrait of King Peter and several full length paintings of dead and gone statesmen.
“His Excellency is engaged for a few moments with the Turkish Minister,” exclaimed a frock-coated secretary in French. “But he will give m’sieur audience almost immediately. His Excellency was going to Pirot, but has remained in order to see you. He received your telegram from Budapest.”
And so Charlie Rolfe remained, gazing out of the window upon the quaint eastern town, watching the phantasmagoria of life up and down its principal thoroughfare. A company of infantry, headed by their band, marched past, hot and dusty, on their return from the early morning manoeuvres which the King had attended, as was his daily habit; and as it passed out of his sight the long doors opened, and he was ushered into the adjoining room, the private cabinet of his Excellency the Premier, an elderly, pleasant-faced old gentleman with a long grey beard, who rose from his big writing-table to greet his visitor. The meeting was a most cordial one, his Excellency inquiring after the health of his old personal friend Mr Statham.
Then, at the Prime Minister’s invitation, Charlie seated himself, and explained the nature of his mission. Monsieur Pashitch heard him with interest to the end. Then he said: “Only yesterday his Majesty expressed to me his desire that we should attract British capital into Servia, therefore all that you tell me is most gratifying to us. Mr Statham, on his last visit here, had audience of his Majesty—on the occasion of the loan—and I think they found themselves perfectly in accord. The development of the Kaopanik has long been desired, and I will this afternoon inform his Majesty of your visit and your proposals.”