Page:Flying Death.pdf/172

 they meant to me that someone in the house was secretly scheming forme. And this someone, I believed to be Sally Gessler.

I knew that Helen Lacey would help me, if she could; and it might be that she had pencilled these figures; but they attached in my mind to Sally and her particular sort of scheming against Bane.

I dampened the center of the napkin, obliterated the figures and ate supper with better appetite than I would have credited a few minutes before. Something more promising than the chance of my removing a stone mullion in a tower window, was afoot in the house.

The same servants who had brought the tray, removed it together with the tableware and the napkin now innocent of numerals. Nothing else was sent me; no one else called. Night spread over the cloudless and moonless sky.

The first hour of darkness continued like the day; airplanes pushed into the water, rose and were tested; airscrews drummed and droned; lights streaked across the stars and the spread of wings eclipsed the constellations.