I groped on the right-hand side of the passage and found a handle.  It opened upon what seemed to be a dining-room, for there was a faint smell of food.  Again I had the impression of people near, who for some unknown reason did not molest me.  At the far end I found another door, which led to a second room, which I guessed to be adjacent to the library.  Beyond it again must lie the passage from the chamber with the rack.  The whole place was as quiet as a shell.

I had guessed right.  I was standing in the passage where I had stood the night before.  In front of me was the library, and there was the same chink of light showing.  Very softly I turned the handle and opened it a crack . . .

The first thing that caught my eye was the profile of Ivery.  He was looking towards the writing-table, where someone was sitting.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Underground Railway

This is the story which I heard later from Mary . . .

She was at Milan with the new Anglo-American hospital when she got Blenkiron’s letter.  Santa Chiara had always been the place agreed upon, and this message mentioned specifically Santa Chiara, and fixed a date for her presence there.  She was a little puzzled by it, for she had not yet had a word from Ivery, to whom she had written twice by the roundabout address in France which Bommaerts had given her.  She did not believe that he would come to Italy in the ordinary course of things, and she wondered at Blenkiron’s certainty about the date.

The following morning came a letter from Ivery in which he ardently pressed for a meeting.  It was the first of several, full of strange talk about some approaching crisis, in which the forebodings of the prophet were mingled with the solicitude of a lover.

‘The storm is about to break,’ he wrote, ’and I cannot think only of my own fate.  I have something to tell you which vitally concerns yourself.  You say you are in Lombardy.  The Chiavagno valley is within easy reach, and at its head is the inn of Santa Chiara, to which I come on the morning of March 19th.  Meet me there even if only for half an hour, I implore you.  We have already shared hopes and confidences, and I would now share with you a knowledge which I alone in Europe possess.  You have the heart of a lion, my lady, worthy of what I can bring you.’

Wake was summoned from the Croce Rossa unit with which he was working at Vicenza, and the plan arranged by Blenkiron was faithfully carried out.  Four officers of the Alpini, in the rough dress of peasants of the hills, met them in Chiavagno on the morning of the 18th.  It was arranged that the hostess of Santa Chiara should go on a visit to her sister’s son, leaving the inn, now in the shuttered quiet of wintertime, under the charge of two ancient servants.  The hour of Ivery’s coming on the 19th had been fixed by him for noon, and that morning Mary would drive up the valley, while Wake and the Alpini went inconspicuously by other routes so as to be in station around the place before midday.