At the moment it did not strike her as strange that Boris should be throwing gravel at her window at this hour of the night.
“What is it?” she repeated impatiently.
“I come from the Master,” said Boris in a low tone which nevertheless carried perfectly. “He has sent for you.”
He made the statement in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone.
“Sent for me?”
“Yes, I am to bring you to him. There is a note. I will throw it up to you.”
Virginia stood back a little, and a slip of paper, weighted with a stone, fell accurately at her feet. She unfolded it and read:
“My dear (Anthony had written),—I’m in a tight place, but I mean to win through. Will you trust me and come to me?”
For quite two minutes Virginia stood there, immovable, reading those few words over again and again.
She raised her head, looking round the well-appointed luxury of the bedroom as though she saw it with new eyes.
Then she leaned out of the window again.
“What am I to do?” she asked.
“The detectives are on the other side of the house, outside the Council Chamber. Come down and out through this side door. I will be there. I have a car waiting outside in the road.”
Virginia nodded. Quickly she changed her dress for one of fawn tricot, and pulled on a little fawn leather hat.
Then, smiling a little, she wrote a short note, addressed it to Bundle and pinned it to the pincushion.
She stole quietly downstairs and undid the bolts of the side door. Just a moment she paused, then, with a little gallant toss of the head, the same toss of the head with which her ancestors had gone into action in the Crusades, she passed through.
202
