The look in her eyes stifled his eloquence. He broke off in his speech--became dumb and voiceless.
“Mr. Fenn,” she said, “once and for all this sort of conversation is distasteful to me. A great deal of what you say I do not understand. What I do understand, I dislike.”
She left him, with an inscrutable look. He made no effort to open the door for her. He simply stood listening to her departing footsteps, listened to the shrill summons of the lift-bell, listened to the lift itself go clanging downwards. Then he resumed his seat at his desk. With his hands clasped nervously together, an ink smear upon his cheek, his mouth slightly open, disclosing his irregular and discoloured teeth, he was not by any means a pleasant looking object.
He blew down a tube by his side and gave a muttered order. In a few minutes Bright presented himself.
“I am busy,” the latter observed curtly, as he closed the door behind him.
“You’ve got to be busier in a few minutes,” was the harsh reply. “There’s a screw loose somewhere.”
“Any one been disagreeable?” he asked, after a moment’s pause.
“Get down to your office at once,” Fenn directed briefly. “Have Miss Abbeway followed. I want reports of her movements every hour. I shall be here all night.”
“Go to Hell, and do as you’re told!” was the fierce reply. “Put your best men on the job. I must know, for all our sakes, the name of the neutral whom Miss Abbeway sees to-night and with whom she is exchanging confidences.”
Bright left the room with a shrug of the shoulders. Nicholas Fenn turned up the electric light, pulled out a bank book from the drawer of his desk, and, throwing it on to the fire, watched it until it was consumed.
The Baron Hellman, comfortably seated at the brilliantly decorated round dining table, between Catherine, on one side, and a lady to whom he had not been introduced, contemplated the menu through his immovable eyeglass with satisfaction, unfolded his napkin, and continued the conversation with his hostess, a few places away, which the announcement of dinner had interrupted.
“You are quite right, Princess,” he admitted.
“The position of neutrals, especially in the diplomatic world, becomes, in the case of a war like this, most difficult and sometimes embarrassing. To preserve a correct attitude is often a severe strain upon one’s self-restraint.”