e two stand
here this minute, I will put back the German calendar by ten years at
least. They drink 'To the day,' those German Johnnies, but by to-morrow
morning the English hand you are holding will have given them reason to
groan over the night!"

CHAPTER VIII

It was half-past eleven o'clock. Madame la Comtesse, answering a reputed
call to the bedside of a dying friend, had departed early, and was not
to be expected back, she said, until to-morrow noon. The servants--given
permission by the gentleman known in the house as Monsieur Gaston
Merode, and who had graciously provided a huge char-a-banc for the
purpose--had gone in a body to a fair over in the neighbourhood of
Sevres, and darkness and stillness filled the long, broad corridor of
the Chateau Larouge. Of a sudden, however, a mere thread of sound
wavered through the silence, and from the direction of Miss Lorne's room
a figure in black, with feet muffled in thick, woollen stockings, padded
to an angle of the passage, lifted a trap carefully hidden beneath a
huge tiger-skin rug, and almost immediately Cleek's head rose up out of
the gap.

"Thank God you managed to do it. I was horribly afraid you would not,"
said Ailsa in a palpitating whisper.

"You need not have been," he answered. "I know a dozen places beside
'The Inn of the Twisted Arm' from which one can get into the sewers.
I've screwed a bolt and socket on the inner side of this trap in case of
an emergency, and I've carried a few things into the passage for
'afterwards.' I suppose that fellow Merode, as he calls himself, is in
his room, waiting?"

"Yes; and, although he pretends to be alone to-night, he--he has other
men with him, hideous, ruffianly looking creatures, whom I saw him admit
after the servants had gone. The countess has left the house and gone I
don't know where."

"I do, then. Make certain she's at 'The Twisted Arm,' waiting, first,
for the coming of Clodoche, and, second, for the arrival of this
precious 'Merode' with the remaining half of the document. I've sent
Dollops there to carry out his part of the programme, and when once I
get the password Margot requires before she will hand over the paper,
the game will be in my hands entirely. They are desperate to-night,
Miss Lorne, and will stop at nothing--not even murder. There! the rug's
replaced. Quick! lead me to the baron's room--there's not a minute to
waste."

She took his hand and led him tiptoe through the darkne