Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/339

Rh as if she saw something, which the others could not see, written on the distempered wall.

L'Ami Fritz entered the room quietly. He looked even stranger than usual, for while in one hand he held Mrs. Bailey's pretty black tulle hat and her little bag, in the other was clutched the handle of a broom.

"I did not think you would want to go back into my wife's bed-room," he said, deprecatingly; and Mrs. Bailey, at last turning her head round, actually smiled gratefully at him.

She was reminding herself that there had been a moment when he had been willing to let her escape. Only once—only when he had grinned at her so strangely and deplored her refusal of the drugged coffee, had she felt the sick, agonising fear of him that she had felt of Madame Wachner.

Laying the hat and bag on the table, L'Ami Fritz began sweeping the floor with long skilful movements.

"This is the best way to find the pearls," he muttered; and three of the four people present stood and looked on at what he was doing. As for the one most concerned, Sylvia had again begun to stare dully before her, as if what was going on did not interest her one whit.

At last Monsieur Wachner took a long spoon off the table; with its help he put all that he had swept up—pearls, dust, and fluff—into the little fancy bag.

"There," he said, with a sigh of relief, "I think they are all there."

But even as he spoke he knew well enough that some of the pearls—perhaps five or six—had found their way up his wife's capacious sleeve.