Perhaps he had gone back to the _portier's_ office, for explanations.

Perhaps it had not even been Pobloff--merely a drunken stranger, mistaken in his room number, or servants with a message or with linen.
She groped softly across the room, until she came to the door.

She found it draped and covered with a heavy blanket.

Holding this back, she slipped under it, and peered through the keyhole into the illuminated hallway.

There seemed to be nobody outside.
"It is a rule of the game, I believe, never to shoot the rabbit until it is on the run!" The words, spoken in excellent English, and barbed with a touch of angry cynicism, smote on her startled ears like an Alpine thunderclap.
She emerged from under the blanket, slowly, ignominiously, ashamed of even her Peeping-Tom abandonment of dignity.
As she did so she saw herself being looked at with keen but placid eyes.