"Well, Sir Knight Errant," he said lightly; "so you could not free the maiden?"

"I was made to feel and look like a fool, of course," I answered, "but I don't mind about that. To tell you the truth, I am not satisfied now.

The man says that he is her guardian, and that he has just brought her from a convent, where she has lived all her life. He vouchsafed to explain things to me to avoid a row, but he was desperately angry. She has never been out of the convent since she was three years old, and she is very nervous and shy. That was his story, and he told it plausibly enough. I could not get anything out of her, except an admission that what he said was the truth."

Mr. Grooten nodded thoughtfully.

"After all," he said, "she is only a child, fourteen or fifteen at the most, I should suppose. I have paid the bill, and, as you see, I have my coat on. Are you ready?"

"Directly I have finished my coffee," I answered. "It looks too good to leave."

"Finish it, by all means," he answered. "I am in no particular hurry.

By-the-bye, I forget whether I showed you this."

He drew a small shining weapon, with rather a long barrel, from his pocket, but though he invited me to inspect it, he retained it in his own hand.

"I bought it in New York a few months ago," he remarked; "it is the latest weapon of destruction invented."

"Is it a revolver?" I asked, a little puzzled by its shape.

"Not exactly," he answered, fingering it carelessly; "it is in reality a sort of air-gun, with a wonderful compression, and a most ingenious silencer; quite as deadly, they say, as any firearm ever invented. It ejects a cylindrically-shaped bullet, tapered down almost to the fineness of a needle. Now," he added, with a faint smile and a rapid glance round the room, "if only one dared--" he turned in his chair, and I saw the thing steal out below his cuff, "one could free the child quite easily--quite easily."

It was all over in a moment--a wonderful, tense moment, during which I sat frozen to my chair, stricken dumb and motionless with the tragedy which it seemed that I alone had witnessed. For there had been a little puff of sound, so slight that no other ears had noticed it. The seat in front of me was empty, and the man on my right had fallen forwards, his hand pressed to his side, his face curiously livid, patchy with streaks of dark colour, his eyes bulbous. Waiters still hurried to and fro, the hum of conversation was uninterrupted. And then suddenly it came--a cry of breathless horror, of mortal unexpected agony--a cry, it seemed, of death. The waiters stopped in their places to gaze breathlessly at the spot from which the cry had come, a silver dish fell clattering from the fingers of one, and its contents rolled unnoticed about the floor. The murmur of voices, the rise and fall of laughter and speech, ceased as though an unseen finger had been pressed upon the lips of everyone in the room. Men rose in their places, women craned their necks. For a second or two the whole place was like a tableau of arrested motion.

Then there was a rush towards the table across which the man had fallen, a doubled-up heap. A few feet away, with only that narrow margin of table-cloth between them, the girl sat and stared at him, still white and panic-stricken, yet with a curious change in her face from which all the dumb terror which had first attracted my attention seemed to have pa.s.sed away.

CHAPTER IV

The manager, who was very flurried, closed the door of the little room into which the wounded man had been carried.

"Can you tell me his name, or shall we look for his card-case?" he asked.

I glanced towards the child. She was by far the most composed of the three. Only she remained with her back turned steadily upon the sofa.

"His name is Delahaye," she said; "Major Sir William Delahaye, I think they called him."

"And where does he live--in London? Tell me his address. I will send a cab there at once!"

"I do not know his address," the child answered. "I do not know where he lives."

The manager stared at her.

"You were with him, were you not?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Then surely you must know something more about him than just his name?"

"He called himself my guardian. I believe that when I was very young he took me to the convent where I have been ever since. Two days ago he came to fetch me away."

"What is your name?"

"Isobel de Sorrens!"

"You are not related to him, then?"

She shuddered a little.

"I hope not," she said simply.

"Well, where was he taking you to?" the manager asked impatiently.

"Surely there must be someone I can send to."

"I believe that he has a house in London," the child said. "I really do not know anything more. You could send to Madame Richard at the Convent St. Argueil. I suppose she knows all about him. She told me that I was to consider him my guardian."

The manager turned to me. I was an occasional customer, and he knew who I was.

"Can you tell me anything about him, Mr. Greatson? The doctor will be here in a moment, but I feel that I ought to be sending for some of his friends. I am afraid that he is very ill."

"You were not in the room at the time it happened?" I remarked.

The manager shook his head.

"No, I was in the office."

"Have you sent for the police?" I asked.

"Police, no!" he exclaimed. "What have the police to do with it? It was an ordinary fit, surely."

I felt that I had held my peace long enough.

"It was not a fit at all," I said gravely. "He was shot with a sort of air-gun by a man sitting at my table. I think that you ought to send for the police at once. The man's name was Grooten, but I know nothing else about him."

The manager was for a moment speechless. The child looked at me eagerly.

"It was the little old gentleman who was sitting with you who did it,"

she exclaimed. "I saw him at Charing Cross."

"Yes, it was he!" I answered.

The child turned away.

"Perhaps after all, then," she murmured to herself, "I may have friends in the world."

The manager, whose name was Huber, was inclined to be incredulous.

"An air-gun would have made as much noise as a revolver," he said. "Are you sure of what you say, Mr. Greatson?"