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 set-back. 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 other 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.
Chapter 13. Van Aldin Gets a Telegram
On the afternoon of the 15th 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 inobtrusively 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 o'clock rrain from the Gare du Nord. At the reception desk I saw a woman whom I was quite sure was Mrs. Kettering's maid. I went up to her and asked if Mrs. Kettering was staying there.”
“Yes, yes,” said Van Aldin. “Of course. Naturally. And she told you that Ruth had gone on to the Riviera and had sent her to the Ritz to await further orders there?”
“Exactly that, sir.”
“It is very odd,” said Van Aldin. “Very odd, indeed, unless the woman had been impertinent or something of that kind.”
“In that case,” objected Knighton, “surely Mrs. Kettering would have paid her down a sum of money, and told her to go back to England. She would hardly have sent her to the Ritz.”
“No,” muttered the millionaire; “that's true.”
He was about to say something further, but checked himself. He was fond of Knighton and liked and trusted him, but he could hardly discuss his daughter's private affairs with his secretary. He had already felt hurt by Ruth's lack of frankness, and this chance rination which had come to him did nothing to allay his misgivings.
Why had Ruth got rid of her maid in Paris? What possible object or motive could she have had in so doing?
He reflected for a moment or two on the curious combination of chance. How should it have occurred to Ruth, except as the wildest coincidence, that the first person that the maid should run across in Paris should be her father's secretary? Ah, but that was the way things happened. That was the way things got found out.
He winced at the last phrase, it had arisen with complete naturalness to his mind. Was there then “something to be found out”? He hated to put this question to himself; he had no doubt of the answer. The answer was – he was sure of it – Armand de la Roche.
It was bitter to Van Aldin that a daughter of his should be gulled by such a man, yet he was forced to admit that she was in good company – that other well-bred and intelligent women had succumbed just as easily to the Count's fascination. Men saw through him, women did not.
He sought now for a phrase that would allay any suspicion that his secretary might have felt.
“Ruth is always changing her mind about things at a moment's notice,” he remarked; and then he added in a would-be careless tone “The maid didn't give any – er – reason for this change of plan?”
Knighton was careful to make his voice as natural as possible as he replied:
“She said, sir, that Mrs. Kettering had met a friend unexpectedly.”
“Is that so?”
The secretary's practised ears caught the note of strain underlying the seemingly casual tone.
“Oh, I see. Man or woman?”
“I think she said a man, sir.”
Van Aldin nodded. His worst fears were being realized. He rose from his chair, and began pacing up and down the room, a habit of his when agitated. Unable to contain his feelings any longer, he burst forth:
“There is one thing no man can do, and that is to get a woman to listen to reason. Somehow or other, they don't seem to have any kind of sense. Talk of woman's instinct – why, it is well known all the world over that a woman is the surest mark for any rascally swindler. Not one in ten of them knows a scoundrel when she meets one; they can be preyed on by any good-looking fellow with a soft side to his tongue. If I had my way...”
He was interrupted. A page-boy entered with a telegram. Van Aldin tore it open, and his face went a sudden chalky white. He caught hold of the back of a chair to steady himself, and waved the page-boy from the room.
“What's the matter, sir?”
