ED CHEQUE

While the Princess Sofia, Sybil Waring, and Prince Victor motored down from
London in the lilac dusk of that dim September day, and the maid Chou Nu
accompanied them, riding in front beside a newly engaged Chinese chauffeur,
the man Nogam made the journey to Frampton Court by train, and alone.

Alone, at least, in the finer shading of that adjective; aside from the
usual assortment of self-contained fellow-travellers in the third-class
carriage, he had no company other than his thoughts; a gray and meagre
crew, if that pathetic face of middle-age furnished trustworthy reflection
of his mind.... So absolute was the submergence of that ardent adventurer
who, overnight, had lain awake for hours, a dictograph receiver glued to
his ear, eavesdropping upon the traffic of those malevolent intelligences
assembled in Prince Victor's study, and alternately chuckling and cursing
beneath his breath, aflame with indignation and chilled by inklings of
atrocities unspeakable abrew!

If he surmised that he travelled alone in appearance only, it was with no
evident concern or astonishment. If his mind was uneasy, oppressed by a
nightmarish burden of half-knowledge, guesses, and premonition, it was not
apparent to the general observer. His most eloquent gesture was when, from
time to time, he tamped an ancient wooden pipe with a fingertip that wasn't
as calloused as he could have wished, philosophically sucked in strangling
fumes of rankest shag and, ignoring his company in the carriage as became a
British-made manservant, returned jaded, gentle eyes to those darkling
vistas of autumnal landscape that were forever radiating away from the
window like spokes of a gigantic wheel.

Alighting in the first dark of evening at the station for Frampton Court,
he suffered himself to be herded, with a half-score more, into the omnibus
provided for other bodyservants to arriving guests. Even to these compeers
he found little to say: a loud lot, imbued with the rowdy spirit of the new
day; whereas Nogam was hopelessly of the old school--in the new word, he
dated--though his form was admittedly unimpeachable. And if because of this
he was made fun of more or less openly, to an extent that added shades of
resignation to his countenance, secretly he commanded considerable respect.

Neither was Victor, with all the ill-will in the world, able to find fault
with Nogam's services in his new office. The most finished of self-effacing
valets,