Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/335

Rh out, peering into the garden with angry, fear-filled eyes.

Both men stopped simultaneously, but neither answered her.

"Who goes there?" she repeated; and then, "I fear, Messieurs, that you have made a mistake. You have taken this villa for someone else's house!" But there was alarm as well as anger in her voice.

"It is I, Paul de Virieu, Madame Wachner."

The Count spoke quite courteously, his agreeable voice thickened, made hoarse by the strain to which he had just subjected it.

"I have brought Mr. Chester with me, for we have come to fetch Mrs. Bailey. In Paris Mr. Chester found news making her return home to England to-morrow a matter of imperative necessity."

He waited a moment, then added, raising his voice as he spoke: "We have proof that she is spending the evening with you," and he walked on quickly to where he supposed the front door to be.

"If they deny she is there," he whispered to his companion, "we will shout for the gendarmes and break in. But I doubt if they will dare to deny she is there unless—unless"

He had hoped to hear Sylvia's voice, but Madame Wachner had shut the window, and a deathly silence reigned in the villa.

The two men stood in front of the closed door for what seemed to them a very long time. It was exactly two minutes; and when at last the door opened, slowly, and revealed the tall, lanky figure of L'Ami Fritz, they both