Anthony Trent permitted himself to smile faintly.
“I’ve come for my coat, Ma’am,” he said, and glanced at the raiment d’Aucquier had thrown carelessly over a chair, the coat now laden with such precious cigarettes.
Carr Faulkner was growing impatient at this interruption. He could not understand the look of anger on his wife’s face.
“Don’t you understand,” he exclaimed, “that the man merely wants to go home and take his coat with him?”
He turned to the deferential Trent.
“All right, all right,” Trent moved to the chair and took the garment. At the door he turned about and bowed profoundly.
In the lower hall he found the cynical butler whose ideas on matrimony were so decided. He startled that functionary by thrusting into his hand the ten dollars d’Aucquier had forced upon him.
“What’s this for?” demanded the butler. When piano tuners came with gifts in their hands he was suspicious. “I don’t understand this.” He observed that the affability which had made the tuner seem kin to himself was vanished. A different man now looked at him.
“It’s for you,” said Trent. “I’m not a piano tuner. I’m a detective and I came here after that ex-valet who pretends to be a French nobleman.”
The butler breathed hard.