"Count Metterheim--he is on the military staff at the German Embassy. Why?"
I looked around. Count Metterheim had passed into the smoking-room, and there was no one else within ear-shot.
"He is also," I said, "on the committee of the No. 1 Branch of the Waiters' Union. I have been up before him at the Café Suisse!"
Madame came alone to luncheon the next morning, and beckoned me to her table. "Well," she said, with her black eyes fixed steadily upon mine, "you are of the same mind, eh?"
"I prefer to think," I said, "that you were joking yesterday."
"So!" she answered, and began to eat. I gathered that I was dismissed. But presently she called me back again.
"You have many friends in London, Herr Paul?" she asked.
"None at all," I answered. "It is very lonely."
"I thought," she said, "that I saw you coming out of some flats in Dover Street the other day."
Madame was a little over-anxious. She was showing her hand too openly.
I leaned over the table, after a cautious glance around.
"I will tell you," I said, "since you are so kind as to be interested. I am looking for another situation. I think that I shall go into a private family."
"Another situation?" she exclaimed. "You are not satisfied here?"
"My uncle," I said, "is a very mean man. He does not like to pay both Karl and myself--and he pays me very little. It is all promises!--and meanwhile Elsie waits."
Madame laughed, not altogether pleasantly.
"Elsie is likely to wait," she said. "You are too scrupulous, Herr Paul. I have shown you how to make a great deal of money."
"The money with which I marry Elsie," I answered, "shall not be blood money."
She let me go then, and I went away well pleased. I fancied that I was holding my own with Madame. And I had left the way clear for my next visit, which was no small thing.
At half-past three the restaurant was almost empty. Very soon after four I rang the bell of Lady Dennisford's town house in Park Lane. The man who opened it stared at my request to see her Ladyship. Eventually, however, I persuaded him to take in a message. I wrote a single word upon a plain card, and in five minutes I was shown into a small boudoir.
Lady Dennisford entered the room almost at the same instant from an opposite door. She was dressed in deep mourning; but it seemed to me that something of the old weariness was gone from her face. She looked at me searchingly, but obviously without recognition.