A Butterfly on the Wheel Part 17

"h.e.l.lo, Ellerdine!" he said. "What are you doing here?"

The voice was deep and mellow, informed with weight and gravity, though pleasantly musical.

Lord Ellerdine looked hurriedly round the room. It might have been thought he was seeking an avenue of escape.

There was no one to help him, however, and he began to stutter horribly, while his eyes wore the look of a startled hare. "Here?" he gasped out.

"Oh!" His eyes fell upon the breakfast-table, and an inspiration came to him. "Oh," he stuttered, "just had breakfast, don't you know."

"Early for you, isn't it?" said the big man, looking the wretched object before him full in the face.

"It is rather early," Lord Ellerdine replied. "Been travelling all----"

"All what?" Admaston asked quickly.

The other was in despair. He realised what he had done. He looked hopelessly round the room for Alice Attwill.

"Where's Lady Attwill gone?" he gasped.

Never relaxing his gaze for a single instant, and standing in the middle of the room without advancing further, Admaston continued: "Is she here?"

"Oh yes," replied Lord Ellerdine. "She's here. In fact, we're all here."

"Where's my wife?"

"In her room. Changing her gown. She's going for a walk."

"But I thought you went to Switzerland," Admaston went on.

"Did you really?" Ellerdine answered, with a ghastly a.s.sumption of ingratiating affability, though his hands were shaking, his mouth worked, and beads of perspiration were plainly rolling down his face.

Again came the grave, persistent voice: "Yes. That was the plan, wasn't it?"

"Oh! Yes--of course. But we all got on the wrong train."

"What?" Admaston said sharply, and a new note in his voice made the ex-diplomatist jump from the floor.

"We all got on the wrong train," he repeated.

"Who are we?"

"Collingwood and Peggy----"

"And what train did you and Lady Attwill get on?"

"The wrong one. Stupid mistake, wasn't it?"

"Very," Admaston answered.

Lord Ellerdine brightened a little. He thought he was carrying things very well now. "Yes," he said, "and so we all stayed the night at this hotel."

"Indeed!" Admaston replied.

The other put his shaking hands into his trousers pockets. "Oh yes!

all," he said. "The proprieties were most carefully observed, Admaston."

"Now, that is very interesting," Admaston remarked; and if the other had been a member of the Lower House instead of the Upper, which he never entered, he would have known what that bland suavity of voice portended when the Cabinet Minister rose to speak.

Lord Ellerdine nodded. "Yes," he said. "But what the deuce are you doing here in Paris?"

"Oh! a whim."

"Didn't expect to find us here," the wretched fool continued--"did you?"

"There's something on?" Admaston answered, going towards the window and talking as he went. "Racing or something, isn't there?"

"Yes," Lord Ellerdine said. "Auteuil. Going out?"

Lady Attwill appeared at the window. "Oh! Alice," Admaston said.

She smiled brightly, extending her little manicured hand, upon which diamonds and sapphires flashed and sparkled in the brilliant light of the sun. "How do you do, George?" she said. "Who ever expected to see you here?"

"I don't run over often," Admaston answered, just taking her hand and no more. "But I thought you were at St. Moritz?"

"St. Moritz? Oh!--no. We changed our minds and came on to Paris."

"Then _you_ didn't get on the wrong train?" Admaston said with grim politeness.

The wretched Ellerdine, who had retreated to the breakfast-table and sank down upon a chair, heard this, and was about to lay his head in the bacon dish with alarm, when Lady Attwill's next words did a little to rea.s.sure him.

"Oh yes," she said easily, going into the centre of the room; "we all got on the wrong train, but we changed our minds when we discovered our mistake."

"Good thing you did it before it was too late."

"Did what?" she asked in a flat voice.

"Why, changed your minds before you could change on to the right train."

"Wasn't it!" she replied. "And, by the way, I saw an old friend of yours on the train, George."

"And who was that?" Admaston asked.

"Sir Peter Stoke," she answered.

"Really! But he must have been on the right train. He was going to the Conference at Geneva."

"Oh!" she replied, "I met him at Boulogne."

There was a pause, and when he spoke again Admaston's voice grew colder and colder with every sentence.