I did not pursue those questions.  After waiting a little till the foreigner had slowly passed out of sight, I rang the gate bell.  It was then twenty minutes past eleven—­late enough to make it quite easy for the Count to get rid of me by the excuse that he was in bed.

The only way of providing against this contingency was to send in my name without asking any preliminary questions, and to let him know, at the same time, that I had a serious motive for wishing to see him at that late hour.  Accordingly, while I was waiting, I took out my card and wrote under my name “On important business.”  The maid-servant answered the door while I was writing the last word in pencil, and asked me distrustfully what I “pleased to want.”

“Be so good as to take that to your master,” I replied, giving her the card.

I saw, by the girl’s hesitation of manner, that if I had asked for the Count in the first instance she would only have followed her instructions by telling me he was not at home.  She was staggered by the confidence with which I gave her the card.  After staring at me, in great perturbation, she went back into the house with my message, closing the door, and leaving me to wait in the garden.

In a minute or so she reappeared.  “Her master’s compliments, and would I be so obliging as to say what my business was?” “Take my compliments back,” I replied, “and say that the business cannot be mentioned to any one but your master.”  She left me again, again returned, and this time asked me to walk in.

I followed her at once.  In another moment I was inside the Count’s house.

VII

There was no lamp in the hall, but by the dim light of the kitchen candle, which the girl had brought upstairs with her, I saw an elderly lady steal noiselessly out of a back room on the ground floor.  She cast one viperish look at me as I entered the hall, but said nothing, and went slowly upstairs without returning my bow.  My familiarity with Marian’s journal sufficiently assured me that the elderly lady was Madame Fosco.

The servant led me to the room which the Countess had just left.  I entered it, and found myself face to face with the Count.

He was still in his evening dress, except his coat, which he had thrown across a chair.  His shirt-sleeves were turned up at the wrists, but no higher.  A carpet-bag was on one side of him, and a box on the other.  Books, papers, and articles of wearing apparel were scattered about the room.  On a table, at one side of the door, stood the cage, so well known to me by description, which contained his white mice.  The canaries and the cockatoo were probably in some other room.  He was seated before the box, packing it, when I went in, and rose with some papers in his hand to receive me.  His face still betrayed plain traces of the shock that had overwhelmed him at the Opera.  His fat cheeks hung loose, his cold grey eyes were furtively vigilant, his voice, look, and manner were all sharply suspicious alike, as he advanced a step to meet me, and requested, with distant civility, that I would take a chair.