Page:The Duke Decides (1904).djvu/197

 room, Mayne; but there’s no need to disturb your wife. If you’ll show me up we’ll soon put the room to rights. Good-night, sir, and thank you for your courtesy.”

With which he signed to the keeper to lead the way and followed him out, casting a glance at the American to see how he took the arrangement. Diagnosis of the man’s face was, however, impossible, for he had already turned to the window and was drawing aside the curtain—to signal to his fellows, Beaumanoir had no doubt.

Mayne mounted the steep cottage staircase, Beaumanoir limping awkwardly in his wake into one of two rooms on the tiny landing. The moment they had crossed the threshold he perceived that the chamber was little better than a trap. The man downstairs would simply have him at his mercy, after admitting his companions and probably screwing up the door of the keeper’s sleeping apartment. Locks and bolts to the primitive doors there were none. He recognized all too late that it would have been better to have insisted on the Yankee occupying this room and on remaining downstairs himself, when he would at least