“Quite so,” the Earl acceded, still a little puzzled. “You will find my head chauffeur a most responsible man. He will, I am sure, give them every possible information. So far as I am aware, however, there is no strange car in the garage. Do you know of any, Julian?”
“Only Miss Abbeway’s,” his son replied. “Her little Panhard was out in the avenue all night, waiting for her to put some plugs in. Every one else seems to have come by train.”
The Colonel raised his eyebrows very slightly and moved slowly towards the door.
“The matter is in the hands of my police,” he said, “but if you could excuse me for half a moment, Lord Maltenby, I should like to speak to your head chauffeur.”
“By all means,” the Earl replied. “I will take you round to the garage myself.”
Julian entered the drawing-room hurriedly a few minutes later. He glanced around quickly, conscious of a distinct feeling of disappointment. His mother, who was arranging a bridge table, called him over to her side.
“You have the air, my dear boy, of missing some one,” she remarked with a smile.
“I want particularly to speak to Miss Abbeway,” he confided.
“After nearly two hours of conversation at dinner! Well, I won’t keep you in suspense. She wanted a quiet place to write some letters, so I sent her into the boudoir.”
Julian hastened off, with a word of thanks. The boudoir was a small room opening from the suite which had been given to the Princess and her niece a quaint, almost circular apartment, hung with faded blue Chinese silk and furnished with fragments of the Louis Seize period,--a rosewood cabinet, in particular, which had come from Versailles, and which was always associated in Julian’s mind with the faint fragrance of two Sevres jars of dried rose leaves. The door opened almost noiselessly.
Catherine, who was seated before a small, ebony writing table, turned her head at his entrance.
Julian listened for a moment and then closed the door. She sat watching him, with the pen still in her fingers.
“Miss Abbeway,” he said, “have you heard any news this evening?”
The pen with which she had been tapping the table was suddenly motionless. She turned a little farther around.
“News?” she repeated. “No! Is there any?”
“A man was caught upon the marshes this morning and shot an hour ago. They say that he was a spy.”