to
his family, she didn't press for explanation. "He'll very likely call
round to see your young man, chick, when he's done with Pilkington."
To which Sally replied, "Oh, _he'll_ come round here. Told him to!"
Which he did, at about ten o'clock. But Fenwick had never called at
Iggulden's, neither had he come back to his own home. It was after
midnight before his foot was on the stairs, and Sally had retired
for the night, telling her mother not to fidget--Jeremiah would be
all right.

CHAPTER XLIII

OF AN OBSERVANT AND THOUGHTFUL, BUT SNIFFY, WAITER; AND HOW HE OPENED
A NEW BOTTLE OF COGNAC. HOW THE BARON SAW FENWICK HOME, WITHOUT HIS
HAT. AN OLD MEMORY FROM ROSALIND'S PAST AND HIS. AND THEN FACE TO FACE
WITH THE WHOLE. SLEEP UPON IT! BUT WHAT BECAME OF HIS HORRIBLE BABY?

At eleven o'clock that night a respectable man with weak eyes and
a cold was communing with a commanding Presence that lived in a
bureau--nothing less!--in the entrance-hall of the big hotel at the
new St. Sennans. It was that of a matron with jet earrings and
tube-curls and a tortoise-shell comb, and an educated contempt for
her species. It lived in that bureau with a speaking-pipe to speak
to every floor, and a telephone for the universe beyond. He that now
ventured to address it was a waiter, clearly, for he carried a
table-napkin, on nobody's behalf and uselessly, but with a feeling
for emblems which might have made him Rouge Dragon in another sphere.
As it was, he was the head waiter in the accursed restaurant or
dining-_salon_ at the excruciating new hotel, where he would bring you
cold misery from the counter at the other end, or lukewarm depression
_a la carte_ from the beyond--but nothing that would do you any good
inside, from anywhere.

"Are those parties going, in eighty-nine, do you make out?" The
Presence speaks, but with languid interest.

"Hapathetic party, and short customer. Takes you up rather free.
Name of Pilkington. Not heard 'em say anything!"

"Who did you say was going?"

"The German party. Party of full 'abit. Call at seven in the
morning. Fried sole and cutlets _a la_ mangtynong and sweet omelet
at seven-thirty sharp. Too much by way of smoking all day, in my
thinking! But they say plums and greengages, took all through meals,
is a set-off."

"I don't pretend to be an authority. Isn't that him, in the
smoking-room?"

"Goin' on in German? Prob'ly." Both stop and listen. What they hear
is the Baron,