Of course, when I saw the older Piatti standing in the hall of the Hotel Hungaria at Budapest I realised that I had been followed from the moment that Emily and I ran out of the house at Bread Street. The son had obviously kept me in view whilst I was still in London, and the father had travelled across Europe, unperceived by me, in the same train as myself, had seen me step into the fiacre at Budapest, and heard me tell the smart coachman to drive to the Hungaria. I made hasty arrangements for my room, and then asked if “Mrs. Carey,” from London, was still at the hotel with her maid--for that was the name under which Mrs. Tadworth was to travel--and was answered in the affirmative. “Mrs. Carey” was even then supping in the dining-room, whence the strains of beautiful Hungarian melodies played by Berkes’ inimitable band seemed to mock my anxiety. “Mrs. Carey’s maid,” they told me, was having her meal in the steward’s room. I tried to prosecute my hasty inquiries as quietly as I could, but Piatti’s eyes and sarcastic smile seemed to follow me everywhere, whilst he went about calmly ordering his room and seeing to the disposal of his luggage. Almost every official at the Hungaria speaks English, and I had no difficulty in finding my way to the steward’s room. To my chagrin Lady Molly was not there. Someone told me that no doubt “Mrs. Carey’s maid” had gone back to her mistress’s room, which they told me was No. 118 on the first floor. A few precious moments were thus wasted whilst I ran back towards the hall; you know the long, seemingly interminable, corridors and passages of the Hungaria! Fortunately, in one of these I presently beheld my dear lady walking towards me. At sight of her all my anxieties seemed to fall from me like a discarded mantle. She looked quite serene and placid, but with her own quick perception she at once guessed what had brought me to Budapest. “They have found out about the coat,” she said, quickly drawing me aside into one of the smaller passages, which fortunately at the moment was dark and deserted, “and, of course, he has followed you----” I nodded affirmatively. “That Mrs. Tadworth is a vapid, weak-kneed little fool,” she said, with angry vehemence. “We ought to be at Cividale by now--and she declared herself too ill and too fatigued to continue the journey. How that poor Shuttleworth could be so blind as to trust her passes belief.” “Mary,” she added more calmly, “go down into the hall at once. Watch that idiot of a woman for all you’re worth. She is terrified of the Sicilians, and I firmly believe that Piatti can force her to give up the proofs of the crime to him.” “Where are they--the proofs, I mean?” I asked anxiously. “Locked up in her trunk--she won’t entrust them to me. Obstinate little fool.”