“We are in time.  Thank God we are in time,” said the Count, with a queer break in his voice.  “If we were not in time, there would be no light.  The house of the wicked ones would be in darkness.”

And then, in French, he added, turning to the gendarmes: 

“You had better all three stay in the garden, while my friend and I go up to the house.  If we are gone more than five minutes, then you follow us up to the house and get in somehow!”

In varying accents were returned the composed answers, “Oui, M’sieur.”

There came a check, for the little gate was locked.  Each man helped another over very quietly, and then the three gendarmes dispersed with swift, noiseless steps, each seeking a point of vantage commanding the house.

Chester and Paul de Virieu walked quickly up the path.

Suddenly a shaft of bright light pierced the moonlit darkness.  The shutters of the dining-room of the Chalet des Muguets had been unbarred, and the window was thrown wide open.

“Qui va la?” the old military watchword, as the Frenchman remembered with a sense of terrible irony, was flung out into the night in the harsh, determined voice of Madame Wachner.

They saw her stout figure, filling up most of the window, outlined against the lighted room.  She was leaning out, peering into the garden with angry, fear-filled eyes.

Both men stopped simultaneously, but neither answered her.

“Who goes there?” she repeated; and then, “I fear, Messieurs, that you have made a mistake.  You have taken this villa for someone else’s house!” But there was alarm as well as anger in her voice.

“It is I, Paul de Virieu, Madame Wachner.”

The Count spoke quite courteously, his agreeable voice thickened, made hoarse by the strain to which he had just subjected it.

“I have brought Mr. Chester with me, for we have come to fetch Mrs. Bailey.  In Paris Mr. Chester found news making her return home to England to-morrow a matter of imperative necessity.”

He waited a moment, then added, raising his voice as he spoke:  “We have proof that she is spending the evening with you,” and he walked on quickly to where he supposed the front door to be.

“If they deny she is there,” he whispered to his companion, “we will shout for the gendarmes and break in.  But I doubt if they will dare to deny she is there unless—­unless—­”

He had hoped to hear Sylvia’s voice, but Madame Wachner had shut the window, and a deathly silence reigned in the villa.

The two men stood in front of the closed door for what seemed to them a very long time.  It was exactly two minutes; and when at last the door opened, slowly, and revealed the tall, lanky figure of L’Ami Fritz, they both heard the soft, shuffling tread of the gendarmes closing in round the house.

“I pray you to come in,” said Monsieur Wachner in English, and then, addressing Bill Chester,