An entirely modern electric button was installed there, beneath a now
merely ornamental knocker in grotesque gargoyle form. I pressed it,
peering through the iron latticework at the stately court. The answer
was prompt. Down the steps of the hotel came a white-headed majordomo,
gorgeously arrayed, and so pictorial that he might have been a family
retainer stepping from the pages of an old tale.
There was something queer about him, I thought, as he crossed the
courtyard; just as there was about the house, I appended doggedly, with
growing belief. His air was tremulous, his step slow, his gaze far-off
and anxious.
"For Miss Falconer, who waits for me," I announced in French, offering
him my card through the grille.
He bowed to me with the deference of a Latin, the grand manner of an
ambassador; but he made no motion to let me in.
"Mademoiselle," he replied, "sends all her excuses, all her regrets to
monsieur, but she leaves Paris within the hour and, therefore may not
receive."
I had feared it for a good sixty seconds. None the less, it was a blow
to me.
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