whiskey-and-soda, had paddled sleepily back to bed, lights burned on
brightly in two parts only of Frampton Court, in the bedchambers tenanted
respectively by Prince Victor Vassilyevski and his reputed daughter.

Alone, Prince Victor sat at the desk where he had, four hours earlier,
inscribed those characters which should have hurried Nogam into a premature
grave. That they had failed of their mission was something that fretted
Victor Vassilyevski, his mind and nerves, to a pitch of exacerbation all
but unendurable.

What had become of that sentence to death? And what of that other, the
telegram which, forwarded by Nogam's hand to Sturm, should long since have
set in motion the organized machinery of murder and demolition?

Had Nogam, as he had meekly insisted on being questioned subsequent to his
subjugation, truly delivered the two messages as directed and, miraculously
escaping his fate decreed, returned to Frampton Court by the twelve-three,
likewise in strict conformance with instructions?

This statement Nogam had neglected to amplify, and Victor had been chary of
too close questioning, lest it elicit too much in the hearing of others.
Once overpowered, Nogam had been philosophic about his bad luck; but the
eyes in his face of a stoic had held a gleam that Victor didn't altogether
like, a light that seemed suspiciously malicious, a suggestion of spirited
humour deplorable to say the least in a self-confessed sneak-thief caught
in the very act, deplorable and disturbing; in Victor's sight a look
constructively indicative of more knowledge than Nogam had any right to
possess. Take it any way you pleased, something to think about ...

Still more disquieting Victor thought the circumstance that nobody else had
seemed to notice that anomalous light in Nogam's eyes; which of course
might mean merely that Victor had worked himself into such a state of
nerves that he was seeing things, but equally well that the look was one
reserved for Victor alone, intentionally or not holding for him a message,
if he had but had the wit to read it, of peculiarly personal import.

It might have implied, for example, that Victor's half-hearted and
paltering distrust of Nogam had all along been only too well warranted. In
which case, the fat was already in the fire with a vengeance, and Victor's
probable duration of life was dependent wholly upon the speed with which he
could quit Frampton Court and hurl his motor-car through the nig