Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/316

306 She straightened herself and looked sharply round.

L'Ami Fritz was still holding in his hand the small pair of nail scissors with which he had snipped asunder her necklace; with the other he was in the act of taking out something from the drawer of the buffet.

She suddenly saw what that something was.

Sylvia Bailey's nerves steadied; her mind became curiously collected and clear. There had leapt on her the knowledge that this man and woman meant to kill her—to kill her for the sake of the pearls which were still bounding about the floor, and for the comparatively small sum of money which she carried slung in the leather bag below her waist.

L'Ami Fritz now stood staring at her. He had put his right hand—the hand holding the thing he had taken out of the drawer—behind his back. He was very pale; the sweat had broken out on his sallow, thin face.

For a horrible moment there floated across Sylvia's sub-conscious mind the thought of Anna Wolsky, and of what she now knew to have been Anna Wolsky's fate.

But she put that thought, that awful knowledge, determinedly away from her. The instinct of self-preservation possessed her wholly.

Already, in far less time than it would have taken to formulate the words, she had made up her mind to speak, and she knew exactly what she meant to say.

"It does not matter about my pearls," Sylvia said, quietly. Her voice shook a little, but otherwise she spoke in her usual tone. "If you are going into Paris to-morrow morning, perhaps you would take them to be restrung?"