"Devilish incomprehensible! They must
know we're here. Been waiting fifteen minutes now, begad! Getting
beyond a joke--deuced exasperating, Perry, y' know. Dammit, man, why
can't you say something, do something, instead of sitting there so
devilish calm and serene, staring before you like an infernal sphinx?"
At the end of twenty minutes Anthony could wait no more and bidding me
follow, jerked open the door and strode out. But I sat there staring
before me at an empty fireplace and still all my thought was of the
chaise with the red wheels.
But presently my gaze came by chance upon something that lay in a
corner of the hearth, a piece of paper crumpled and rent as in
passionate haste. For a while I viewed it idly, heedlessly, then all
at once I saw a name, a scrawling signature plain to read; next moment
the fragment of paper was in my grasp and I read this:
... confess to find you more bewitchingly beautiful than ever. And
therefore, having regard to what transpired between us in Italy, you
will come this evening without fail to
Your ever adoring slave and master,
HAREDALE.
How long I remained staring at this fragment of paper I do not know,
but I started suddenly to see Atkinson bowing in the doorway and
followed him from the room and downstairs and suddenly found myself in
a polite tumult; silks rustled, feathers nodded, turbans bowed and
jewels glittered.
But almost at once, amid all this throng, my eyes saw but one.
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