Jonah!  He and Harry were due to arrive any moment!

Hope leaped up within me, and my heart began to beat violently.  I glanced at the silver, still lying upon the rugs.  Slowly it was diminishing, and the services of a second suit-case would soon be necessary.  I calculated that to complete the bestowal would take the best part of an hour, and began to speculate upon the course events would take when the travellers appeared.  I began to pray fervently that Harry would be unable to get in at the Club....

“Now, then, you three,” said a reproving voice.  “I’m surprised at you.”

Daphne!

The rogues were trained to a hair.

Before she was framed in the doorway, the cold steel of another weapon was pressing against my throat, and the master was bowing in her direction.

“Madam, I beg that you will neither move nor cry out.”

My sister stood like a statue.  Only the rise and fall of her bosom showed that she was alive.  Pale as death, her eyes riveted on the speaker, who was holding his right hand markedly behind him, her unbound hair streaming over her shoulders, she made a beautiful and arresting picture.  A kimono of softest apricot, over which sprawled vivid embroideries, here in the guise of parti-coloured dragons, there in that of a wanton butterfly, swathed her from throat to foot.  From the mouths of its gaping sleeves her shapely wrists and hands thrust out snow-white and still as sculpture.

For a moment all eyes were upon her, as she stood motionless....  Then the man with the eye-glass screwed it back into his eye, and resumed his dictation....

The spell was broken.

The packer left his work and, lifting a great chair bodily with apparent ease, set it noiselessly by my side.

The master bowed again.

“I congratulate you, madam, upon your great heart.  I beg that you will join that gentleman.”

With a high head, My Lady Disdain swept to the spot indicated and sank into the chair.

“Please lean right back....  Thank you.”

The cold steel was withdrawn from my throat, and I breathed more freely.

Nobby wriggled to get to my sister, but I held him fast.

“So it was burglars,” said Daphne.

“Looks like it,” said I.

I glanced at the leader, who had taken his seat upon the club-kerb.  His right hand appeared to be resting upon his knee.

“I think,” said my sister, “I’ll have a cigarette.”  I handed her one from the pile and lighted it from my own.  As I did so—­

“Courage,” I whispered. “Jonah ne tardera pas.”

“I beg,” said the spokesman, “that you will not whisper together.  It tends to create an atmosphere of mistrust.”

My sister inclined her head with a silvery laugh.

“You have a large staff,” she said.

“That is my way.  I am not a believer in the lone hand.  But there you are. Quot homines, tot sententicae," and with that, he spread out his hands and shrugged his broad shoulders.