"You will
find my head chauffeur a most responsible man. He will, I am
sure, give them every possible information. So far as I am aware,
however, there is no strange car in the garage. Do you know of
any, Julian?"
"Only Miss Abbeway's," his son replied. "Her little Panhard was
out in the avenue all night, waiting for her to put some plugs in.
Every one else seems to have come by train."
The Colonel raised his eyebrows very slightly and moved slowly
towards the door.
"The matter is in the hands of my police," he said, "but if you
could excuse me for half a moment, Lord Maltenby, I should like to
speak to your head chauffeur."
"By all means," the Earl replied. "I will take you round to the
garage myself."
CHAPTER VI
Julian entered the drawing-room hurriedly a few minutes later. He
glanced around quickly, conscious of a distinct feeling of
disappointment. His mother, who was arranging a bridge table,
called him over to her side.
"You have the air, my dear boy, of missing some one," she remarked
with a smile.
"I want particularly to speak to Miss Abbeway," he confided.
Lady Maltenby smiled tolerantly.
"After nearly two hours of conversation at dinner! Well, I won't
keep you in suspense. She wanted a quiet place to write some
letters, so I sent her into the boudoir."
Julian hastened off, with a word of thanks. The boudoir was a
small room opening from the suite which had been given to the
Princess and her niece a quaint, almost circular apartment, hung
with faded blue Chinese silk and furnished with fragments of the
Louis Seize period,--a rosewood cabinet, in particular, which had
come from Versailles, and which was always associated in Julian's
mind with the faint fragrance of two Sevres jars of dried rose
leaves.
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