of Beaumanoir, to see Mr. Ziegler by appointment on a matter of private business.
“Mr. Ziegler is expecting you,” Benzon replied, scrutinizing the visitor’s face narrowly. “Unfortunately he is not so well as usual this morning, and is not yet dressed. I must ask you to wait a little till he is ready to receive you.”
Forsyth bowed and took the chair offered him, not without an inward chuckle at the discrepancy between the haste of the bell-boy’s summons to the suite and the delay in receiving him. To his mind the position was clear. Mrs. Talmage Eglinton desired to keep up the polite fiction of her innocence to the end, yet Ziegler was apparently not prepared to go forward with the business without an opportunity of consulting her. She had come up to town for the express purpose of advising, perhaps supervising, her colleagues at an important crisis, and was doubtless on her way to the hotel after the diversion he had created, so that it was necessary to get him out of the entrance-hall before she passed up to her suite.
“I shouldn’t wonder if she isn’t the boss of the show, with Zeigler, who is probably her
[240]
