The girl Chou Nu slipped in, offered a timid courtesy, and awaited his
leave to speak.
"Well? What is it?"
"Excellency: the Princess Sofia refuses to let me stay in the room with
her."
"Why? Don't you know?"
"I think she means to run away. She would not go back to her bed, but
walked up and down, till I ventured to urge her to take rest, when she
turned on me in a rage and bade me be gone. Then I came to you."
Victor took thought and finished with a dour nod.
"You have done well. Return, keep watch, let me know if she leaves--"
"The door is locked, Excellency: she will not let me in."
"Spy through the keyhole, then; or hide in one of the empty rooms across
the corridor, and watch--"
A muted mutter from the direction of the desk dried speech on Victor's
lips. He started hastily toward the source of the sound, midway wheeled,
and dismissed the maid with a brusque hand and monosyllable--"Go!"--then
fairly pounced upon the telephone.
But all he heard, in the course of the ensuing five minutes, was the voice
of the trunk-line operator advising him, to begin with, that she was ready
to put him through to Westminster, then maddeningly punctuating the buzz
and whine of the empty wire with her call of a talking doll--"Are you
theah?... Are you theah?... Are you theah?"
At length, however, the connection was established; and Victor, hearing the
falsetto of Chou Nu's second-uncle cheerily respond to the operator's
query, unceremoniously broke in:
"Shaik Tsin? It is I, Number One.
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