The pressure of those behind drove them apart so that Beatrice was lost to view round the bend in the staircase. Wilfrid had passed in to the theatre itself, but Russell lingered.
"Ours are about the only two seats left," he explained, "and they are in one of the front rows in the stalls. I have my own reasons for staying here till most of the guests have arrived. A man I know promised me, if he could, to get us on to the stage after dancing began. At any rate, it is worth waiting on the off-chance of seeing him. So that was Miss Galloway you were talking to, eh? Why wasn't she in fancy dress? I can understand Flower coming in ordinary evening attire; I can't imagine his being so frivolous as to get himself up as a courtier or anything of that kind."
Wilfrid made no reply for the simple reason that he was not listening. He was too concerned about Beatrice to think of anything else. He was shocked to see what a change so short a time had brought about in the girl's appearance. He wondered what she could have to worry her. Therefore it was, that the stream of people in all sorts of grotesque and fancy dresses passed him as if he were in a dream. They came flowing along, laughing and chattering, all the favourites that have done duty over and over again ever since fancy dresses were first invented. Some were beautiful, some frankly ugly, and hardly one realistic. Russell kept up a constant stream of criticisms, to most of which Wilfrid replied more or less vaguely.
"You can't say that about that little man yonder," he said presently. "It is funny that he should be made up like an inhabitant of Borneo when our heads are full of the Malay Peninsula. Whoever dressed him was an artist and understood what he was doing. That is the man I mean, going up the stairs with the tall lady in yellow."
Russell looked in the direction pointed out by Mercer. He grabbed an opera-glass which some one had left on the table by his side. He turned eagerly to Wilfred.
"Made up be hanged," he whispered excitedly. "That man isn't made up at all. He is the real thing, my friend. It seems to me that the plot is thickening."
It was not difficult to watch the slender figure of the stranger as he made his way leisurely up the staircase. In the ordinary course Mercer would have hardly recognized him at all. There were hundreds of people there in all kinds of the extravagant fancy dress which one usually associates with theatrical enterprise. But the more Mercer looked at the little man the more convinced was he that the stranger was not disguised at all. He was slight and slender, his dress-clothes fitted him to perfection, and he wore the air of a man who was accustomed to that kind of thing. As to his head it was small and lean, his skin glistened like polished parchment, his dark, restless eyes were turned from side to side, though he did not appear in the least degree excited.