She had, she remembered, addressed the envelope to Mr. Godfrey Brown, at the Poste Restante in Brussels.
Was it possible that the torn fragments had fallen into the hands of the police? She knew that they had been watching her closely. Her surmise was, as a matter of fact, the correct one. Ogier had employed the head chambermaid to give him the contents of Dorise's waste-paper basket from time to time, hence the knowledge he had gained.
"Are you actually going to Malines?" asked Dorise of the girl.
"Yes. As your messenger," the other replied with a smile. "I am leaving to-night. If you care to write him a letter, I will deliver it."
"Will you come with me over to the Empress Club, and I will write the letter there?" Dorise suggested, still entirely mystified.
To this the stranger agreed, and they left the tea-shop and walked together to the well-known ladies' club, where, while the mysterious messenger sipped tea, Dorise sat down and wrote a long and affectionate letter to her lover, urging him to exercise the greatest caution and to get back to London as soon as he could.
When she had finished it, she placed it in an envelope.
"I would not address it," remarked the other girl. "It will be safer blank, for I shall give it into his hand."
And ten minute later the mysterious girl departed, leaving Dorise to reflect over the curious encounter.
So Hugh was in Malines. She went to the telephone, rang up Walter Brock, and told him the reassuring news.
"In Malines?" he cried over the wire. "I wonder if I dare go there to see him? What a dead-alive hole!"
Not until then did Dorise recollect that the girl had not given her Hugh's address. She had, perhaps, purposely withheld it.
This fact she told Hugh's friend, who replied over the wire: "Well, it is highly satisfactory news, in any case. We can only wait, Miss Ranscomb. But this must relieve your mind, I feel sure."
"Yes, it does," admitted Dorise, and a few moments later she rang off.
That evening Il Passero's chic messenger crossed from Dover to Ostend, and next morning she called at Madame Maupoil's, in Malines, where she delivered Dorise's note into Hugh's own hand. She was an expert and hardened traveller.
Hugh eagerly devoured its contents, for it was the first communication he had had from her since that fateful night at Monte Carlo. Then, having thanked the girl again, and again, the latter said: "If you wish to write back to Miss Ranscomb do so. I will address the envelope, and as I am going to Cologne to-night I will post it on my arrival."