"Is there anything more I can do before I go to bed, sir?" he asked, with his usual reverential little bow.
"Hurt?" Nikasti replied wonderingly. "Oh, no!"
"Weren't you knocked down by a taxicab," Pamela asked, "outside the hotel?"
Nikasti looked from one to the other with an air of gentle surprise.
"I have been to my rooms in the servants' quarters," he told them, "on the upper floor. I have not been downstairs at all. I have been unpacking and arranging my own humble belongings."
"Let me get this!" he exclaimed. "You haven't been down in the lobby of the hotel, you haven't been knocked down by a taxicab that skidded, you haven't lost a pocketbook which you had previously stolen from my sister?"
Nikasti shook his head. He seemed completely mystified. He watched Pamela's face carefully.
"Perhaps there has been some mistake," he suggested quietly. "My English is sometimes not very good. I would not dream of trying to rob the young lady. I have not lost any pocketbook. I have not descended lower down in the hotel than this floor."
Van Teyl waved him away, accepted his farewell salutation, and waited until the door was closed.
"Look here, Pamela," he protested, turning almost appealingly towards her, "my brain wasn't made for this sort of thing. What in thunder does it all mean?"
Pamela looked at the fragments of paper upon the floor and sank back in an easy chair.
Pamela opened her eyes the next morning upon a distinctly pleasing sight. At the foot of her bed was an enormous basket of pink carnations. On the counterpane by her side lay a smaller cluster of twelve very beautiful dark red Gloire de Dijon roses. Attached to these latter was a note.
"When did these flowers come, Leah?" Pamela asked the maid who was moving about the room.
"Read the name on the card," Pamela directed, pointing to the mass of pink blossoms.
"Mr. Oscar H. Fischer," the girl read out, "with respectful compliments."
"He doesn't know, then," she murmured to herself. "Get my bath ready, Leah."
The maid disappeared into the inner room. Pamela tore open the note attached to the roses by her side, and read it slowly through:
I am so very sorry, but the luncheon we had half-planned for to-day must be postponed. I have an urgent message to go south; to inspect--but no secrets! It's horribly disappointing. I hope we may meet in a few days.