Richard Hartley said, “Thank God!” He spoke to some one outside, and then turning about let himself down to arm’s-length and dropped to the ground.  “Thank God!” he said again.  “The two men who were to have come with me didn’t show up.  I waited as long as I dared, and then came on with only the chauffeur.  He’s waiting outside by the car ready to crank up when I give the word.  The car’s just a few yards away, headed out for the road.  How are we to get back over the wall?”

Ste. Marie explained that Arthur Benham was to come out to join them at the wooden door, and doubtless would bring a key.  If not, the three of them could scale fifteen feet easily enough in the way soldiers and firemen are trained to do it.  He told his friend all that was necessary for the time, and they went together along the wall to the more open space beside the little door.

They waited there in silence for five minutes, and once Hartley, with his back toward the house, struck a match under his sheltering coat, looked to see what time it was, and found it was three minutes past two.

“He ought to be here,” the man growled.  “I don’t like waiting.  Good Lord, you don’t think he’s funked it, do you?  Eh?”

Ste. Marie did not answer, but he was breathing very fast and he could not keep his hands still.

The dog which he had heard from his window began barking again very far away in the night, and kept it up incessantly.  Perhaps he was barking at the moon.

“I’m going a little way toward the house,” said Ste. Marie, at last.  “We can’t see the terrace from here.”

But before he had started they heard the sound of hurrying feet, and Richard Hartley began to curse under his breath.  He said: 

“Does the young idiot want to rouse the whole place?  Why can’t he come quietly?”

Ste. Marie began to run forward, slipping the pistol out of his pocket and holding it ready in his hand, for his quick ears told him that there was more than one pair of feet coming through the night.  He went to where he could command the approach from the house and halted there, but all at once he gave a low cry and started forward again, for he saw that Arthur Benham and Coira O’Hara were running together, and that they were in desperate haste.  He called out to them, and the girl cried: 

“Go to the door in the wall!  The door in the wall!  Oh, be quick!”

He fell into step beside her, and as they ran he said,

“You’re going with him?  You’re coming with us?”

The girl answered him, “No, no!” and she sprang to the little, low door and began to fit the iron key into the lock.

The three men stood about her, and young Arthur Benham drew his breath in great, shivering gasps that were like sobs.

“They heard us!” he cried, in a whisper.  “They’re after us.  They heard us on the stairs.  I—­stumbled and fell.  For God’s sake, Coira, be quick!”