She went down to join the others on the terrace outside. Through the branches of mimosa, she looked out over the blue of the Mediterranean, and, whilst listening with half an ear to Lady Tamplin’s chatter, she was glad that she had come. This was better than St. Mary Mead.
That evening she put on the mauvy pink dress that went by the name of soupir d’automne, and after smiling at her reflection in the mirror, went downstairs with, for the first time in her life, a faint feeling of shyness.
Most of Lady Tamplin’s guests had arrived, and since noise was the essential of Lady Tamplin’s parties, the din was already terrific. Chubby rushed up to Katherine, pressed a cocktail upon her, and took her under his wing.
“Oh, here you are, Derek,” cried Lady Tamplin, as the door opened to admit the last comer. “Now at last we can have something to eat. I am starving.”
Katherine looked across the room. She was startled. So this—was Derek, and she realised that she was not surprised. She had always known that she would some day meet the man whom she had seen three times by such a curious chain of coincidences. She thought, too, that he recognised her. He paused abruptly in what he was saying to Lady Tamplin, and went on again as though with an effort. They all went in to dinner, and Katherine found that he was placed beside her. He turned to her at once with a vivid smile.
“I knew I was going to meet you soon,” he remarked, “but I never dreamt that it would be here. It had to be, you know. Once at the Savoy and once at Cook’s—never twice without three times. Don’t say you can’t remember me or never noticed me. I insist upon your pretending that you noticed me, anyway.”
“Oh, I did,” said Katherine; “but this is not the third time. It is the fourth. I saw you on the Blue Train.”
“On the Blue Train!” Something undefinable came over his manner; she could not have said just what it was. It was as though he had received a check, a setback. Then he said carelessly:
“What was the rumpus this morning? Somebody had died, hadn’t they?”
“Yes,” said Katherine slowly; “somebody had died.”
“You shouldn’t die on a train,” remarked Derek flippantly. “I believe it causes all sorts of legal and international complications, and it gives the train an excuse for being even later than usual.”
“Mr. Kettering?” A stout American lady, who was sitting opposite, leaned forward and spoke to him with the deliberate intonation of her race. “Mr. Kettering, I do believe you have forgotten me, and I thought you such a perfectly lovely man.”
Derek leaned forward, answering her, and Katherine sat almost dazed.
Kettering! That was the name, of course! She remembered it now—but what a strange, ironical situation! Here was this man whom she had seen go into his wife’s compartment last night, who had left her alive and well, and now he was sitting at dinner, quite unconscious of the fate that had befallen her. Of that there was no doubt. He did not know.
A servant was leaning over Derek, handing him a note and murmuring in his ear. With a word of excuse to Lady Tamplin, he broke it open, and an expression of utter astonishment came over his face as he read; then he looked at his hostess.
“This is most extraordinary. I say, Rosalie, I am afraid I will have to leave you. The Prefect of Police wants to see me at once. I can’t think what about.”
“Your sins have found you out,” remarked Lenox.
“They must have,” said Derek; “probably some idiotic nonsense, but I suppose I shall have to push off to the Prefecture. How dare the old boy rout me out from dinner? It ought to be something deadly serious to justify that,” and he laughed as he pushed back his chair and rose to leave the room.
XIII
Van Aldin Gets a Telegram
On the afternoon of the fifteenth February a thick yellow fog had settled down on London. Rufus Van Aldin was in his suite at the Savoy and was making the most of the atmospheric conditions by working double time. Knighton was overjoyed. He had found it difficult of late to get his employer to concentrate on the matters in hand. When he had ventured to urge certain courses, Van Aldin had put him off with a curt word. But now Van Aldin seemed to be throwing himself into work with redoubled energy, and the secretary made the most of his opportunities. Always tactful, he plied the spur so unobtrusively that Van Aldin never suspected it.
Yet in the middle of this absorption in business matters, one little fact lay at the back of Van Aldin’s mind. A chance remark of Knighton’s, uttered by the secretary in all unconsciousness, had given rise to it. It now festered unseen, gradually reaching further and further forward into Van Aldin’s consciousness, until at last, in spite of himself, he had to yield to its insistence.
He listened to what Knighton was saying with his usual air of keen attention, but in reality not one word of it penetrated his mind. He nodded automatically, however, and the secretary turned to some other paper. As he was sorting them out, his employer spoke:
“Do you mind telling me that over again, Knighton?”
For a moment Knighton was at a loss.
“You mean about this, sir?” He held up a closely written Company report.
“No, no,” said Van Aldin; “what you told me about seeing Ruth’s maid in Paris last night. I can’t make it out. You must have been mistaken.”
“I can’t have been mistaken, sir; I actually spoke to her.”
“Well, tell me the whole thing again.”
Knighton complied.
“I had fixed up the deal with Bartheimers,” he explained, “and had gone back to the Ritz to pick up my traps preparatory to having dinner and catching the nine
