Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/303

Rh need for you to do that; Madame Bailey will kindly take it for me."

And again Sylvia felt surprised. Surely he had said—or was it Madame Wachner?—that they had arranged for a man to call for it.

His wife shouted out his name imperiously from the dark passage, "Fritz! Fritz! Come here a moment; I want you."

He hurried out of the room, and Sylvia and the servant were thus left alone together for a few moments in the dining-room.

The woman went to the buffet and took up a plate; she came and placed it noisily on the table, and, under cover of the sound she made, "Do not stay here, Madame," she whispered, thrusting her wrinkled, sharp-featured face close to the Englishwoman's. "Come away with me! Say you want me to wait a bit and conduct you back to the Villa du Lac."

Sylvia stared at her distrustfully. This femme de ménage had a disagreeable face; there was a cunning, avaricious look in her eyes, or so Mrs. Bailey fancied; no doubt she remembered the couple of francs which had been given to her, or rather extorted by her, on the occasion of the English lady's last visit to the Châlet des Muguets.

"I will not say more," the servant went on, speaking very quickly, and under her breath. "But I am an honest woman, and these people frighten me. Still, I am not one to want embarrassments with the police."

And Sylvia suddenly remembered that those were exactly the words which had been uttered by Anna