What, I wondered, had occurred?
I said nothing to Natalia, but, recollecting that there was an express just after six o’clock which would land me at Victoria at half-past seven, I cut short her visit and duly arrived in London, unaware of the reason why I was so suddenly summoned.
I crossed the big, walled-in courtyard of the Embassy, and entering the great sombre hall, where an agent of Secret Police was idling as usual, the flunkey in green livery showed me along to the secretary’s room, a big, gloomy, smoke-blackened apartment on the ground floor. The huge house was dark, sombre and ponderous, a house of grim, mysterious shadows, where officials and servants flitted up and down the great, wide staircase which led to His Excellency’s room.
“His Excellency left for Paris to-day,” the footman informed me, opening the door of the secretary’s room, and telling me that he would send word at once of my arrival.
It was the usual cold and austere embassy room—differing but little from my own den in Petersburg. Count Kourloff, the secretary, was an old friend of mine. He had been secretary in Rome when I had been stationed there, and I had also known him in Vienna—a clever and intelligent diplomat, but a bureaucrat like all Russians.
The evening was a warm, oppressive one, and the windows being open, admitted the lively strains of a street piano, played somewhere in the vicinity.
Suddenly the door opened, and instead of the Count, whom I had expected, a stout, broad-shouldered, elderly man in black frock-coat and grey trousers entered, and saluted me gaily in French with the words:
“Ah, my dear Trewinnard! How are you, my friend—eh? How are you? And how is Her Imperial Highness—eh?”
I started as I recognised him.
It was none other than Serge Markoff.