Page:William Le Queux - The Czar's Spy.djvu/284

266 "To give information regarding Miss Elma Heath."

This I enclosed in the envelope he handed to me, when, ringing a bell, he handed it to the footman who appeared, with orders to take it to His Excellency and await a reply.

The response came in a few minutes.

"His Excellency will give audience to the English m'sieur."

Then I rose and followed the footman through several wide corridors filled with palms and flowers, which formed a kind of winter-garden, until we crossed a red-carpeted ante-room, where two statuesque sentries stood on guard, and the man conducting me rapped at the great polished mahogany doors of the room beyond.

A voice responded, the door was opened, and I found myself in a high, beautifully-painted room, with long windows hung with pastel-blue silk with heavy gilt fringe, a pastel-blue carpet, and upon the opposite wall a great canopy of rich purple velvet bearing the double-headed eagle embroidered in gold. The apartment was splendidly decorated, and in the centre of the parquet floor, with his back to the light, was the thin, wiry figure of an elderly man in a funereal frock-coat, in the lappel of which showed the red and yellow ribbon of the Order of Saint Anne.

His hands were behind his back, and he stood purposely in such a position that when I entered I could at first not see his face against the strong grey light behind.