Was this what Sophie had noticed? Had she likewise, perhaps, received some secret signal from the guardian of the lower gateway?
A signal possibly indicating that Ekstrom had arrived
They met at last, those two, and discreetly confabulated, the maître d'hôtel betraying welcome mitigation of that nervous tension which had heretofore so palpably affected him; and, as the other stepped back into the elevator, Lanyard saw this one's glance irresistibly attracted to the table dedicated to the service of the Princess de Alavia. Something much resembling satisfaction glimmered in the fellow's leaden eyes: it was apparent that he anticipated early relief from a distasteful burden of responsibility.
Then, at ease in the belief that he was unobserved, he turned to a near-by table round which four sat without the solace of feminine society--four men whose stamp was far from reassuring despite their strikingly quiet demeanour and inconspicuously correct investiture of evening dress.
Two were unmistakable sons of the Fatherland; all were well set up, with the look of men who would figure to advantage in any affair calling for physical competence and courage, from coffee and pistols at sunrise in the Parc aux Princes to a battle royal in a Tenderloin dive.
Their table commanded both ways out, by the stairs and by the elevator, much too closely for Lanyard's peace of mind.
And more than one looked thoughtfully his way while the maître d'hôtel hovered above them, murmuring confidentially.
Four nods sealed an understanding with him. He strutted off with far more manner than had been his at any time since the arrival of Lanyard, and vented an excess of spirits by berating bitterly an unhappy clown of a waiter for some trivial fault.
The first bars of another dance number sang through the confusion of voices: truly, as Sophie had foretold, a waltz.
Trained in the old school of the dance, Lanyard was unversed in that graceless scamper which to-day passes as the waltz with a generation largely too indolent or too inept of foot to learn to dance.
His was that flowing waltz of melting rhythm, the waltz of yesterday, that dance of dances to whose measures a civilization more sedate in its amusements, less jealous of its time, danced, flirted, loved, and broke its hearts.