That she was just then a creature full of fears was written large upon her. She might have quoted Queen Constance, who I think was also a galumpher, meaning a woman of big build and sweeping gestures, and an imperious temper withal. Sherbrand feared also, and the pang of solicitude for the pretty boy so unexpectedly dragged into the vortex of a diplomatic and political felony was, to do him credit, quite as sharp as the pang caused him by the rape of the Bird.
"Miss Saxham, I do not believe that there is any danger of an accident. But—that there will be delay—I shall not try to disguise. The fact is——"
A guttural, Teutonic voice said close at Sherbrand’s shoulder.
"_Gnädiges Fräulein_ will wish to return home? It is getting late, so very late! I haf instructions from my master to drive the _Fräulein_ back to her address."
Sherbrand wheeled, to be confronted by the thickset figure of the moustached and uniformed attendant who had occupied the seat beside the chauffeur of the big blue F.I.A.T. car.
"Who is this?" he demanded in a look, and Patrine, her pallor drowned in a scarlet blush of horrible embarrassment, stammered:
"You hear!" Sherbrand’s tone was not pleasant. "The lady does not know you—that ought to be enough!"
Patrine felt herself drowning in chill waves of horror. The man persisted:
"The lady is a friend of the gentleman who brought her here.... I haf my orders to drive the lady home in the yellow car!"
In his muddy eyes there flickered a leer or a menace. Patrine saw the Doctor coming and flew to his side. Sherbrand said, looking sternly at the German:
"You understand, your orders are nothing to the lady. She does not choose to be driven home by you!"
"Who is your master?" Then a sudden light dawned upon him, and he turned and knocked sharply at the cabin-door. At which the liveried attendant, as a man who finds hesitancy a double-edged weapon, wheeled in military fashion and retreated, casting a surly glance over his shoulder, and quickening his heavy footsteps to a jog-trot as the General’s active person appeared at Sherbrand’s side.
"That man, Sir Roland!" Sherbrand’s slight gesture indicated the thickset figure now getting hurriedly into the yellow Darracq. He added, as the car swirled round the corner of the restaurant and vanished in the direction of the entrance-gates, "Ought I to have grabbed the brute, and hung on to him? He was certainly with a party of foreign-looking people, who interviewed von Herrnung just before he got away. You saw them?"