At that she leaned toward me, laying her hand on my arm.

“Please do not be so cruel,” she whispered, “as to drag me into a matter with which truly I have no concern.  Believe me, you are utterly mistaken.  Wait one moment, and I will prove it.”

She rose, and before I could make move to detain her, quitted the room; but the door scarcely had closed ere I was afoot.  The corridor beyond was empty.  I ran on.  The lift had just descended.  A dark man whom I recognized stood near the closed gate.

“Quick!” I said, “I am Cavanagh of the Report!  Did you see a lady enter the lift?”

“I did, Mr. Cavanagh,” answered the hotel detective; for this was he.

In such a giant inn as this I knew full well that one could come and go almost with impunity, though one had no right to the hospitality of the establishment; and it was with a premonition respecting what his answer would be, that I asked the man—­

“Is she staying here?”

“She is not.  I have never seen her before!”

The girl with the violet eyes had escaped, taking all her secrets with her!

CHAPTER IX

SECOND ATTEMPT ON THE SAFE

“You see,” said Bristol, “the Hashishin must know that the safe won’t remain here unopened much longer.  They will therefore probably make another attempt to-night.”

“It seems likely,” I replied; and was silent.  Outside the open windows whispered the shrubbery, as a soft breeze stole through the bushes.  Beyond, the moon made play in the dim avenue.  From the old chapel hard by the sweet-toned bell proclaimed midnight.  Our vigil was begun.  In this room it was that Professor Deeping had met death at the hands of the murderous Easterns; here it was that Marden and West had mysteriously been struck down the night before.

To-night was every whit as hot, and Bristol and I had the windows widely opened.  My companion was seated where the detective, Marden, had sat, in a chair near the westerly window, and I lay back in the armchair that had been occupied by West.

I may repeat here that the house of the late Professor Deeping was more properly a cottage, surrounded by a fairly large piece of ground, for the most part run wild.  The room used as a study was on the ground floor, and had windows on the west and on the south.  Those on the west (French windows) opened on a loggia; those on the south opened right into the dense tangle of a neglected shrubbery.  The place possessed an oppressive atmosphere of loneliness, for which in some measure its history may have been responsible.

The silence, seemingly intensified by each whisper that sped through the elms and crept about the shrubbery, grew to such a stillness that I told myself I had experienced nothing like it since crossing with a caravan I had slept in the desert.  Yet noisy, whirling London was within gunshot of us; and this, though hard enough to believe, was a reflection oddly comforting.  Only one train of thought was possible, and this I pursued at random.