I nodded, and did not pursue the subject.  On my way back to my rooms half an hour later I stopped to speak for a few minutes with the hall-porter.

“Mr. Delora has not arrived yet, sir,” he remarked.

“No!” I answered.  “I dare say there has been some slight mistake.  I fancy that he has telephoned to his niece.”

The hall-porter looked a little puzzled.

“It is rather a curious thing, sir,” he said, “but there seem to be a good many people who are wanting to see Mr. Delora.  We have had at least a dozen inquiries for him during the last few days, and all from people who refuse to leave their names.”

I nodded.

“Business friends, perhaps,” I remarked.  “Mr. Delora comes over to keep friends with his connections here, I suppose.”

The hall-porter coughed discreetly but mysteriously.

“No doubt, sir,” he remarked.

I went on my way to my rooms, not caring to pursue the conversation.  Yet I felt that there was something beneath it all.  Ashley knew or guessed something which he would have told me with very little encouragement.  Over a final cigarette I tried to think the matter out.  Here were these people, remarkable for nothing except the obviously foreign appearance of the man, and the good taste and beauty of the girl.  I had seen them at every fashionable haunt in Paris, and finally at a restaurant which Louis had frankly admitted to be the meeting-place of people whose careers were by no means above suspicion.  I had crossed with them to England, and if their presence on the train were not the cause for Louis’ insisting upon my hurried departure from Paris, it at any rate afforded him gratification to think that I might, perhaps, make their acquaintance.  During the whole of the journey neither of them had made the slightest overture towards me.  That we had come together at all was, without doubt, accidental.  I did not for a moment doubt the girl’s first attitude of irritation towards me.  It was just as certain that her uncle had shown no desire whatever to make my acquaintance.  I remembered his curious agitation as we had reached London, his muttered excuse of sea-sickness, and his somewhat extraordinary conduct in leaving his niece alone with me—­a perfect stranger—­while he hurried off to the hotel at which he had never arrived.  Presumably, if that was indeed he who had spoken to the girl upon the telephone, she understood more about the matter than I did.  He may have given her some explanation which accounted for his absence.  If so, he had obviously desired it to remain a secret.  What was the nature of this mystery?  Of what was it that he was afraid?  Who was this young man who, after his departure, had taken so much interest in his niece and myself at Charing Cross?  Was it some one whom he had desired to evade?—­a detective, perhaps, or an informer?  The riddle was not easy to solve.  Common-sense told me that my wisest course was to fulfil my original