ht to the
lower reaches of the Thames.

Envisagement of the worst at its blackest being part of the holy duty of
self-preservation, Victor sat fully dressed, with every other provision
made for flight at the first flash of warning, only waiting to make sure,
and with what impatience was apparent in the working of paste-coloured
features, the wincing and shifting of slotted eyes, the incessant shutting
and unclosing of tensed fingers.

All rested with the telephone that stood mockingly mute at the man's elbow,
callous alike to his anxiety and the rancorous regard in which he held it.
His call for the house near Queen Anne's Gate had now been in for more than
forty minutes; in that interval he had no less than three times pleaded its
urgency to the trunk-line operator. And still the muffled bell beneath the
desk was dumb.

And the worst of it was, fatal though the delay might prove, he dared not
stir a hand to save himself until he _knew_....

In the taut torment of those long-drawn minutes a sound of circumspect
scratching was enough to bring Victor to his feet in one startled bound.

He stood for a moment, a-twitch, but intent upon the corridor door, then
composed himself with indifferent success, approached and opened the door.
The girl Chou Nu slipped in, offered a timid courtesy, and awaited his
leave to speak.

"Well? What is it?"

"Excellency: the Princess Sofia refuses to let me stay in the room with
her."

"Why? Don't you know?"

"I think she means to run away. She would not go back to her bed, but
walked up and down, till I ventured to urge her to take rest, when she
turned on me in a rage and bade me be gone. Then I came to you."

Victor took thought and finished with a dour nod.

"You have done well. Return, keep watch, let me know if she leaves--"

"The door is locked, Excellency: she will not let me in."

"Spy through the keyhole, then; or hide in one of the empty rooms across
the corridor, and watch--"

A muted mutter from the direction of the desk dried speech on Victor's
lips. He started hastily toward the source of the sound, midway wheeled,
and dismissed the maid with a brusque hand and monosyllable--"Go!"--then
fairly pounced upon the telephone.

But all he heard, in the course of the ensuing five minutes, was the voice
of the trunk-line operator advising him, to begin with, that she was ready
to put him through to Westminster, then maddeningly punctuating the buzz
and whine of the e