An unusual sound disturbed the even tenor of her meditations. She
lifted her head with a start. Her little gold clock showed the hour to
be after one. Nearly two hours she had sat here thinking.
Again the sound was repeated. A sharp tap on the window-pane. Virginia
went to the window and opened it. Below on the pathway was a tall
figure which even as she looked stooped for another handful of gravel.
For a moment Virginia’s heart beat faster—then she recognized the
massive strength and square-cut outline of the Herzoslovakian, Boris.
“Yes,” she said in a low tone. “What is it?”
At the moment it did not strike her as strange that Boris should be
throwing gravel at her window at this hour of the night.
“What is it?” she repeated impatiently.
“I come from the Master,” said Boris in a low tone which nevertheless
carried perfectly. “He has sent for you.”
He made the statement in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone.
“Sent for me?”
“Yes, I am to bring you to him. There is a note. I will throw it up to
you.”
Virginia stood back a little, and a slip of paper, weighted with a
stone, fell accurately at her feet. She unfolded it and read:
“_My dear_ (Anthony had written),—_I’m in a tight place, but I mean to
win through. Will you trust me and come to me?_”
For quite two minutes Virginia stood there, immovable, reading those
few words over again and again.
She raised her head, looking round the well-appointed luxury of the
bedroom as though she saw it with new eyes.
Then she leaned out of the window again.
“What am I to do?” she asked.
“The detectives are the other side of the house, outside the Council
Chamber. Come down and out through this side door. I will be there. I
have a car waiting outside in the road.”
Virginia nodded. Quickly she changed her dress for one of fawn tricot,
and pulled on a little fawn leather hat.
Then, smiling a little, she wrote a short note, addressed it to Bundle
and pinned it to the pincushion.
She stole quietly downstairs and undid the bolts of the side door. Just
a moment she paused, then, with a little gallant toss of the head, the
same toss of the head which her ancestors had gone into action in the
Crusades, she passed through.
26