Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/333

Rh had very little doubt Anna Wolsky had been done to death, then he would die too. What was the vice which had meant all to him for so many years compared to his love for Sylvia?

The gendarmes murmured together in quick, excited tones. They scented that something really exciting, something that would perhaps lead to promotion, was going to happen.

At last, as the carriage turned into a dark road, Count Paul suddenly began to talk, at the very top of his voice.

"Speak, Mr. Chester, speak as loud as you can! Shout! Say anything that you like! They may as well hear that we are coming"

But Chester could not do what the other man so urgently asked him to do. Not to save his life could he have opened his mouth and shouted as the other was now doing.

"We are going to pay an evening call—what you in England call an evening call! We are going to fetch our friend—our friend, Mrs. Bailey; she is so charming, so delightful! We are going to fetch her because she has been spending the evening with her friends, the Wachners. That old she-devil—you remember her, surely? The woman who asked you concerning your plans? It is she I fear"

"Je crois que c'est ici, Monsieur?" the man turned round on his seat. "I have done it in six minutes!"

The horse was suddenly brought up short opposite the white gate. Was this where the Wachners lived? Chester stooped down. The place looked very different now from what it had looked in the daylight.