She opened the window and looked below.  The seven stories made her dizzy.  Nevertheless, she looked with a curious fascination to the stone courtyard immediately underneath the window.  Death would probably be instantaneous.  She leaned a little further out and then started suddenly back into the room.  A revulsion of feeling had overtaken her.  It was a hideous idea, this.  For the sake of the others she must put it away from her.  She walked up and down the narrow confines of her room, and then the necessity for action of some sort drove her out into the street.  Curiously enough, though she was being searched for by at least half a dozen detectives and inquiry agents, she had taken no particular pains to conceal herself beyond the fact that she had chosen a crowded and low-class neighbourhood, and had seldom ventured out before dark.  She walked now to the office of a shipping agent which she had noticed on her way here, and addressed herself to the clerk who hastened forward to ascertain her wishes.

“I want,” she said, “to get to America, and have no money.  All that I had has been stolen.  Could I get a passage and pay for it when I arrive?  A second class passage, of course.”

The clerk shook his head dubiously.

“Have you no friends in London,” he asked, “to whom you could apply for a loan?”

“Not a single one,” she answered.

“Why not cable?” he suggested.  “You could have money wired over here to your credit.”

“I do not wish to do that,” Virginia answered.

The young man shrugged his shoulders.

“The only other course,” he said, “would be to apply to the Embassy.  They might advance the money.”

Virginia walked out thoughtfully.  After all, why not?  Mr. Deane, she knew, was a friend of her uncle’s.  He would perhaps let her have the money, and she could send it back later on.  She walked to the great house in Ormande Gardens and asked to see Mr. Deane.  The servant who admitted her hesitated a little.

“There is no one in just now, miss,” he said, “except Mr. Deane, and he is busy with a gentleman.  If you will come into the waiting-room, I will ask him whether he can spare you a moment when the gentleman has gone.”

Virginia sat upon a very hard horsehair chair in a barely furnished room, and waited.  The table was covered with magazines, but she did not touch them.  She sat nervously twisting and untwisting her fingers.  Then the sudden sound of voices outside attracted her attention.  The door of the room in which she sat had been left ajar, and apparently two men, passing down the hall from a room on the other side, had paused just outside it.

“Of course, I don’t know what you will do with it, Vine,” she heard some one say, “but if you take my advice, you will find a secure hiding place without a moment’s delay.  I am very sorry indeed that I cannot help you out any longer, but I know you don’t want me to run risks.”