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He said he had had experience of crooks of all kinds, in top hats and in rags; he wasn't so green as to expect suspicious characters to look suspicious; he looked out for anybody, and, so help him, there had been nobody. And when all three men gathered round the gilded commissionaire, who still stood smiling astride of the porch, the verdict was more final still.
Paul is located. "He is a commissionaire, interpreter, or valet de place. Many travellers regard such men as swindlers; but for my own part I have found them very useful. When I first visited Antwerp I employed one. I found him intelligent and gentlemanly, and, so far as I could judge, not disposed to swindle me himself or to let others do so.
A new personage here entered the room, and put an end to this situation, which was embarrassing enough for the two young girls. It was a commissionaire, with a letter in his hand. "What is it, sir?" asked Mother Bunch. "A very pressing letter from the good man of the house; the dyer below stairs told me to bring it up here."
But she checked him almost at the outset. "It is I who am to blame for an unusual weakness," she said. "Let us both forget it. And don't you find this place hot? Let us get outside and walk." They found a soft misty rain falling. The commissionaire called a hansom. She moved her skirts to make room for him.
So did they pass, unarrested and unhindered, through corridor and rotunda to the outer portals of the great hotel. Beside the door of the Palaver as they passed out was a tall official with a uniform and a round hat. He was called by the authorities a chasseur or a commissionaire, or some foreign name to mean that he did nothing.
There came a knock at the door, and Sylvia jumped up from her chair. No doubt this was Anna herself in response to the note. "Come in," she cried out, in English. There was a pause, and another knock. Then it was not Anna? "Entrez!" The commissionaire by whom Sylvia had sent her note to Madame Wolsky walked into the room. To her great surprise he handed her back her own letter to her friend.
"I was becoming restless, when a commissionaire, one morning, brought me a letter. It was Miss Brandon who wrote. She asked me to be that very day, at four o'clock, in the Bois de Boulogne, near the waterfalls; that she would ride out in the afternoon with Sir Thorn; that she would escape from him, and meet me.
He hands me an envelope. I tear it open, roughly and unwillingly. It contains half-a-sovereign no note, not a word. I look at the man, and ask: "What tomfoolery is this? Who is the letter from?" "Oh, that I can't say!" he replies; "but it was a lady who gave it to me." I stood still. The commissionaire left.
Late that afternoon the hall-porter at the Milan Hotel, the commissionaire, and the chief maitre d'hotel from the Café, who happened to be in the hall, together with several others around the place who knew Stephen Laverick by sight, were treated to an unexpected surprise. A large closed motor-car drove up to the front entrance and several men descended, among whom was Laverick himself.
"There's a lady and a gentleman to see me, isn't there?" he asked the commissionaire. "Show them in." May came first, saw the little tableau, and stopped, knowing instinctively all that it portended. Jasper followed her. The girl, who had been watching Frank, shifted her eyes for a moment to the visitors, and at sight of Jasper flung across the room.
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