Page:The Specimen Case.djvu/120

Rh the broad moonlit forecourt and then through several lofty galleries. Pausing before a massive door he unlocked it, pushed me inside, and I heard the fastening close to again with a soft metallic click.

Never before had the mysterious gloom of that ghostly rendezvous of the long-forgotten dead seemed so shadow-laden.

Sybil—it was she—came towards me with a glad cry.

"You are here!" she exclaimed. "How splendid; but I never for a moment doubted it."

"But why here?" I ventured to inquire, in my obtuse blundering way. “Would not Moggridge's or the Azalea Court of the Frangipane have been more up-to-date?"

She gave me a reproachful glance.

"Surely by this time you know that I am the most hunted woman in Europe, my good man," she answered with a touch of aristocratic insouciance. "My footsteps are being dogged by anarchists, vendettaists, Bolsheviks, Czecho-Slovaks, Black Hands, Hidden Hands, Scotland Yard, the Northcliffe Press and several of the more ambitious special constables. This is literally the one spot in London where we are safe from observation."

"How wonderful you are!" was wrung from me. "But will you not tell me what it all means?"

In her usual cryptic fashion Sybil answered one question by another.

"Will you do something for me?"

"Can you doubt it?" I asked reproachfully.

"I don't," she replied. "But all so far is insignificant compared with this. It will demand the reticence of a Government official combined with the resourcefulness of a District Messenger boy. This packet must be delivered to-night to the Admiral of the Fleet, stationed at Plyhampton. The fate of the navy, the army and the air service are all bound up in its safe arrival."