Page:Lawrence Lynch--The last stroke.djvu/301

Rh Robert Brierly came up the piazza steps, where Ruth sat alone, and dropped upon the topmost one, at her feet. "I have just received a note from Ferrars."

Ruth looked up from her bit of needlework. There was a note of suppressed excitement in his tone, which she was quick to observe.

"He seems to have changed his mind," Brierly went on, "and bids me come up with Myers."

"To-day?" The work fell from her hands.

"Now. In half an hour."

"But Robert, after all his caution!"

"Let me read the note, dear," he said, unfolding the sheet he had held in his hand. "It is very brief and pointed:

"',—Come up with Myers, and be sure that you are not observed when you enter Haynes' office. He will know what to do with you. If I have not been an awful bungler—and I don't think I have this time—you will stand a free man to-night, able to go up and down the earth without menace from the assassin's knife, and will have come into your own, which means a fortune. "'.'"

"Ruth," he spoke softly, "Do you know what that means?"