St. George hesitated. The hall-boy listened with an air of polite concern, and there were curious over-shoulder glances from the passers-by. Suddenly St. George's face lighted and he went swiftly through his pockets and produced a scrap of paper—the fragment that had lain that morning on the floor of the prince's deserted apartment, and that bore the arms of the King of Yaque. It was the strangers' turn to regard him with amazement. Immediately, to St. George's utmost embarrassment, they both bowed very low and pronounced together:
"Pardon, adôn!"
"My name is St. George," he assured them, "and let's get into a cab."
They followed him without demur.
St. George leaned back on the cushions and looked at them—lean lithe little men with rapid eyes and supple bodies and great repose. They gave him the same sense of strangeness that he had felt in the presence of the prince and of the woman in the Bitley Reformatory—as if, it whimsically flashed to him, they some way rhymed with a word which he did not know.
"What is it," St. George asked as they rolled away, "what is it that you have come to tell Miss Holland?"
Only one of the men spoke, the other appearing content to show two rows of exceptionally white teeth.
"May we not know, adôn," asked the man respectfully, "whether the prince has given her his news? And if the prince is still in your land?"
"The prince's servant, Elissa, has tried to stab Miss Holland and has got herself locked up," St. George imparted without hesitation.
An exclamation of horror broke from both men.