What Tack had told me naturally increased my apprehension. I informed
the two agents of Russian police who in turn guarded the house in
Brunswick Square.
A whole month went by, bright, delightful autumn days beside the sea,
when I often strolled with my charming little companion across the Lawns
at Hove, or sat upon the pier at Brighton listening to the band.
Sometimes I would dine with her and Miss West, or at others they would
take tea with me in that overheated winter garden of the "Metropole"--
where half of the Hebrew portion of the City of London assembles on
Sunday afternoons--or they would dine with me in the big restaurant. So
frequently was she in and out of the hotel that "Miss Gottorp" soon
became known to all the servants, and by sight to most of the visitors
on account of the neatness of her mourning and the attractiveness of her
pale beauty.
Tack had returned to Petersburg to resume his agency business, and
Hartwig's whereabouts was unknown.
The last-named had been in Brighton three weeks before, but as he had
nothing to report he had disappeared as suddenly as he had come. He was
ubiquitous--a man of a hundred disguises, and as many subterfuges. He
never seemed to sleep, and his journeys backwards and forwards across
the face of Europe were amazingly swift and ever-constant.
I was seated at tea with Her Highness and Miss West in the winter
garden--that place of palms and bird-cages at the back of the
"Metropole"--when a waiter handed me a telegram which I found was from
the secretary of the Russian Embassy, at Chesham House, in London,
asking me to call there at the earliest possible moment.
What, I wondered, had occurred?
I said nothing to Natalia, but, recollecting that there was an express
just after six o'clock which would land me at Victoria at half-past
seven, I cut short her visit and duly arrived in London, unaware of the
reason why I was so suddenly summoned.
I crossed the big, walled-in courtyard of the Embassy, and entering the
great sombre hall, where an agent of Secret Police was idling as usual,
the flunkey in green livery showed me along to the secretary's room, a
big, gloomy, smoke-blackened apartment on the ground floor. The huge
house was dark, sombre and ponderous, a house of grim, mysterious
shadows, where officials and servants flitted up and down the great,
wide staircase which led to His Excellency's room.
"His Excellency left for Paris to-day," the footman informed me, opening
the door of the secretary's room, and telling me that he would send word
at once of my arrival.
It was the usual cold and austere embassy room--differing but little
from my own den in Petersburg. Count Kourloff, the secretary, was an
old friend of mine. He had been secretary in Rome when I had been
stationed there, and I had also known him in Vienna--a clever and
intelligent diplomat, but a bureaucrat like all Russians.
The evening was a warm, oppressive one, and the windows being open,
admitted the lively strains of a street piano, played somewhere in the
vicinity.
Suddenly the door opened, and instead of the Count, whom I had expected,
a stout, broad-shouldered, elderly man in black frock-coat and grey
trousers entered, and saluted me gaily in French with the words:
"Ah, my dear Trewinnard! How are you, my friend--eh? How are you? And
how is Her Imperial Highness--eh?"