Sylvia & Michael: The later adventures of Sylvia ScarlettMacKenzie, Compton
General
Sylvia & Michael: The later adventures of Sylvia Scarlett
MacKenzie, Compton
Fiction
The more Sylvia pondered the coincidence of Queenie's flight with the
loss of Maud's passport the more positive she became that Zozo had
committed the theft. And with what object? It seemed unlikely that the
passport could be altered plausibly enough to be accepted as Queenie's
own property in these days when so much attention was being given to
passports and their reputed owners. Probably he had only used it as a
bait with which to lure her in the first instance; he would have known
that she could not read and might have counted upon the lion and the
unicorn to impress her with his ability to do something for her that
Sylvia had failed to do. Queenie must have been in a state of
discouragement through her not having come back to Avereshti on the
Sunday evening, as she had promised. The telegram she sent had really
been a mistake, because Queenie would never have asked any one in the
hotel to read it for her, and Zozo would assuredly have pretended
whatever suited his purpose if by chance it had been shown to him.
At first Sylvia had been regretting that she had not divined sooner the
explanation of Maud's missing passport, so that she could have warned
Mr. Mathers; but now she was glad, because whatever Queenie did, the
blame must be shared by herself and the British regulations. She
reproached herself for the attitude she had taken toward Queenie's
disappearance; she had done nothing in these days at Bucharest to help
the poor child, not even so much as to find out where she had gone. If
Zozo were indeed a German agent, what might not be the result of that
callousness? Yet, after all, he might not be anything of the kind; he
might merely have been roused by her own opposition to regain possession
of Queenie. Really it was difficult to say which explanation was more
galling to her own conscience. However, it was useless to do anything
now; there was as little probability of Queenie's being still in
Bucharest as of her being anywhere else. If Zozo were in German pay he
would find it easy enough to secure Queenie's entrance into a neutral
country; and if he were once more enamoured of his power over her, he
would certainly have taken precautions against any new intervention by
herself.
Late in the afternoon of Saturday, the 3d of October, Sylvia arrived at
Giurgiu, the last station in Rumania before crossing the Danube to enter
Bulgaria. It had been a slow journey, owing to the congestion of traffic
caused by the concentration of Rumanian troops upon the frontier. When
she was leaving the station to take the ferry she caught sight of
Philidor upon the platform.
"You here? I thought you were at Bralatz," she cried.
She was thinking that Philidor's presence was of good omen to her
journey; and as they walked together down to the quay she was glad that
her last memory of Rumania should be of this tall figure in his
light-blue cloak appearing indeed of heroic mold in the transuming fog
of the Danube that enmeshed them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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