principal reception-room of the suite, face to face with a frail old man of unpleasant appearance, who, Forsyth noticed with quick intuition, was reclining on a couch that had been drawn across a closed door. There was another—open—door leading into the bedroom, but the closed one must be the same which from the other side of it had confirmed the General’s suspicions of the occupant of the adjoining suite. Forsyth could picture to himself Mrs. Talmage Eglinton’s shell-like ear glued to that door, its fair owner prepared to tap gentle signals by the Morse code on the panels if things did not go to her liking in the audience-chamber.
His conjectures were brought down to the bed-rock of fact by the croaking voice of the invalid on the couch. Mr. Ziegler’s repulsive aspect, his purple cheeks, and green-shaded eyes suggested some horrible cutaneous affection, though Forsyth was not so ingenuous as to accept the disfigurements as genuine.
“I am sorry to have detained you, sir,” Ziegler began, and then paused abruptly. Forsyth wondered if he had been brought up with a round turn by a tap on the door close to his ear. There seemed something tentative, as
[242]
