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I had been given the key of my room, and was about to enter the lift, when I noticed seated on a settee in the vestibule a well-dressed woman whose face seemed familiar. And then in a flash I recognized the lady who had been at Overstow Hall on the day I had arrived there!
It was Deinhard I had heard in conversation with Rayne at Overstow Hall! He stood stock-still, staring at me. "Why, Hargreave!" he exclaimed at last. "What in the world are you doing here?" "I am Mr. Rayne's chauffeur and general servant now, captain," I replied. "Mr. Rayne told me to inquire on my arrival here for Monsieur Duperré and hand him that suit-case," and I pointed to it.
Then he went to his room, changed his clothes, and came down to lunch in very bright spirits. It seemed that by the Italian's visit he was now not in the least perturbed. I drove him with Lola to York, where he went to London and Lola to Scarborough. Afterwards I dined at the Station Hotel alone, and returned to Overstow, which seemed chill and lonely.
Outside the little station a magnificent Rolls limousine, colored a dull gray, awaited us, and when the luggage had all been put on it, Mr. Rayne surprised me by asking me to take the wheel then and there. "My chauffeur left last week, but Paul will show you the road," he said, as the valet seated himself beside me. "Overstow is about ten miles off."
And surely enough the visas upon their passports showed that was so, even though I had seen her at Overstow! How I withstood that hour I know not. In the end, however, Monsieur Rodin ceased his questions and we were put into the cells till the next morning. Imagine the sleepless night I spent!
When I returned to Overstow and related my strange adventure, Rayne was furious that just at the very moment when the deal by which he was to reap such a huge profit was complete, our friend the Minister should have been assassinated. Lola was in the room when I described all that had occurred, listening breathlessly to my narrative.
It was on the tip of my tongue to excuse myself, but I remembered that I was in the service of Rudolph Rayne, the country squire of Overstow, and paid handsomely. And, after all, it was no great risk to fling the stuffed dog into the river. I am a lover of dogs, and had the animal been alive nothing would have induced me to carry out his suggestion.
Blumenfeld was much disappointed, but his guest pleaded that he had some very important business to transact with his agent who was over from New York and desired to meet him at once. Therefore to Lola's complete satisfaction the trunks were packed and put into the car, and immediately after luncheon we set forth to Overstow.
Yet, hampered as he was by official red-tape and those regulations which prevented his men from taking a third-class railway ticket when following a thief, unless they waited for weeks for the return of the expenditure from official sources, he was no match for the squire of Overstow, who had a big bank balance, who moved in society, official, political and otherwise, and who actually entertained certain high officials at his table.
As an unwilling assistant of that super-crook whose agents were at work in the various cities of Europe carrying out the amazingly ingenious plans which, with Vincent Duperré, he so carefully formulated in that great old-world library of his at Overstow, I was constantly in peril, for I felt by some inexplicable intuition that the police must, one day or other, obtain sufficient evidence to arrest all of us, Lola included.
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