The party broke up, the Stantons and Weldons going to their rooms.  Beth also rose.

“Are you coming to bed, Patsy?” she inquired.

“Not just now,” her cousin replied.  “Between us, we’ve rubbed Uncle John’s fur the wrong way and he won’t get composed until he has smoked his good-night cigar.  I’ll sit with him in this corner and keep him company.”

So the little man and his favorite niece were left together, and he did not seem in the least ruffled as he lit his cigar and settled down in a big chair, with Patsy beside him, to enjoy it.

CHAPTER XIV

ISIDORE LE DRIEUX

Perhaps the cigar was half gone when Patsy gave a sudden start and squeezed Uncle John’s hand, which she had been holding in both her own.

“What is it, my dear?”

“The man I told you of.  There he is, just across the lobby.  The man with the gray clothes and gray hair.”

“Oh, yes; the one lighting a cigar.”

“Precisely.”

Uncle John gazed across the lobby reflectively.  The stranger’s eyes roved carelessly around the big room and then he moved with deliberate steps toward their corner.  He passed several vacant chairs and settees on his way and finally paused before a lounging-chair not six feet distant from the one occupied by Mr. Merrick.

“Pardon me; is this seat engaged, sir?” he asked.

“No,” replied Uncle John, not very graciously, for it was a deliberate intrusion.

The stranger sat down and for a time smoked his cigar in silence.  He was so near them that Patsy forbore any conversation, knowing he would overhear it.

Suddenly the man turned squarely in their direction and addressed them.

“I hope you will pardon me, Mr. Merrick, if I venture to ask a question,” said he.

“Well, sir?”

“I saw you talking with Mr. Jones this evening—­A.  Jones, you know, who says he came from Sangoa.”

“Didn’t he?” demanded the old gentleman.

The stranger smiled.

“Perhaps; once on a time; allowing such a place exists.  But his last journey was here from Austria.”

“Indeed!”

Mr. Merrick and Patsy were both staring at the man incredulously.

“I am quite sure of that statement, sir; but I cannot prove it, as yet.”

“Ah!  I thought not.”

Patsy had just told her uncle how she had detected this man stealthily watching Jones, and how he had followed the boy when he retired to his room.  The present interview had, they both knew, something to do with this singular action.  Therefore Mr. Merrick restrained his indignation at the stranger’s pointed questioning.  He realized quite well that the man had come to their corner determined to catechise them and gain what information he could.  Patsy realized this, too.  So, being forewarned, they hoped to learn his object without granting him the satisfaction of “pumping” them.