This statement Nogam had neglected to amplify, and Victor had been chary of too close questioning, lest it elicit too much in the hearing of others.  Once overpowered, Nogam had been philosophic about his bad luck; but the eyes in his face of a stoic had held a gleam that Victor didn’t altogether like, a light that seemed suspiciously malicious, a suggestion of spirited humour deplorable to say the least in a self-confessed sneak-thief caught in the very act, deplorable and disturbing; in Victor’s sight a look constructively indicative of more knowledge than Nogam had any right to possess.  Take it any way you pleased, something to think about ...

Still more disquieting Victor thought the circumstance that nobody else had seemed to notice that anomalous light in Nogam’s eyes; which of course might mean merely that Victor had worked himself into such a state of nerves that he was seeing things, but equally well that the look was one reserved for Victor alone, intentionally or not holding for him a message, if he had but had the wit to read it, of peculiarly personal import.

It might have implied, for example, that Victor’s half-hearted and paltering distrust of Nogam had all along been only too well warranted.  In which case, the fat was already in the fire with a vengeance, and Victor’s probable duration of life was dependent wholly upon the speed with which he could quit Frampton Court and hurl his motor-car through the night to the lower reaches of the Thames.

Envisagement of the worst at its blackest being part of the holy duty of self-preservation, Victor sat fully dressed, with every other provision made for flight at the first flash of warning, only waiting to make sure, and with what impatience was apparent in the working of paste-coloured features, the wincing and shifting of slotted eyes, the incessant shutting and unclosing of tensed fingers.

All rested with the telephone that stood mockingly mute at the man’s elbow, callous alike to his anxiety and the rancorous regard in which he held it.  His call for the house near Queen Anne’s Gate had now been in for more than forty minutes; in that interval he had no less than three times pleaded its urgency to the trunk-line operator.  And still the muffled bell beneath the desk was dumb.

And the worst of it was, fatal though the delay might prove, he dared not stir a hand to save himself until he knew....

In the taut torment of those long-drawn minutes a sound of circumspect scratching was enough to bring Victor to his feet in one startled bound.

He stood for a moment, a-twitch, but intent upon the corridor door, then composed himself with indifferent success, approached and opened the door.  The girl Chou Nu slipped in, offered a timid courtesy, and awaited his leave to speak.

“Well?  What is it?”

“Excellency:  the Princess Sofia refuses to let me stay in the room with her.”