At last his patience was rewarded. A brougham drove up past him at a
smart pace, stopped before the door and waited. He turned back and
wheeled round, crossing and re-crossing the street, so as to keep
behind the carriage. As it was impossible to continue this singular
exercise without attracting the attention of a policeman who came in
sight just then, he rode on towards the Batignolles station. Just then,
when his back was turned, he heard the door of the brougham sharply
shut, and as he quickly turned again he saw the carriage driving off in
the opposite direction. It was driving fast, but he overtook it in a
couple of minutes and passed close to the window, which was half up,
against the rain. He almost looked in as he went by, and suddenly he
met Logotheti's almond eyes, looking straight at him, with an air of
recognition. He bent his head, swerved away from the brougham and took
the first turning out of the wide street. But he had seen that the
Greek was alone in his carriage. Margaret had not lunched at the house
in the Boulevard Péreire.
During the next few days Lushington did not lead a life of idle repose;
in fact, he did not remember that he had ever taken so much exercise
since his Oxford days. On an average he must have bicycled twenty or
thirty miles between breakfast and dinner, which is not bad work for a
literary man accustomed to spend most of his time at his writing-table
and the rest in society. Unknown to himself, he was fast becoming one
of the sights on the Versailles road, and the men at the octroi station
grinned when he went by, and called him the crazy professor.
More than once he met the motor, bringing Margaret to town or taking
her back, and though he did not again chance upon it when Logotheti was
without his glasses and shield, he felt tolerably sure that he was the
chauffeur, and Margaret was always alone in the body of the car. Twice
he was quite certain that the two were talking when he saw them in the
distance coming towards him, but when they passed him Margaret was
leaning back quietly in her place, and the chauffeur merely glanced at
him and then kept his eyes on the road. Margaret looked at him and
smiled faintly, as if in spite of herself, most probably at his
appearance.
He ascertained also that after one more rehearsal at the Opéra,
Margaret did not go there again. The newspapers informed him very soon
that Schreiermeyer had got his own company together and had borrowed
the stage of an obscure theatre in the outskirts of Paris for the
purpose of rehearsing. It had been an advantage for the young prima
donna to sing two or three times with the great orchestra of the Opéra,
but the arrangement could of course not continue. Margaret's début
was to take place in July in a Belgian town.