"Let's start. It—it frightens me here."
The leader opened the door.
"It's time," he said. "They're asleep in the house by now."
They followed him, threading obscure spaces and alleyways to the unlighted end of a street which deployed into a stone mason's yard, and always Garth asked:
"Will she whisper my life away to the others?"
A taxicab waited there. Garth manœuvred so that he had a seat by the window. He let his hand, which clenched the piece of paper, dangle through. Such policemen as he saw were indifferent until crossing One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street he noticed one who looked straight at the cab. He let the paper flutter from his fingers, but he did not dare glance back to see if the policeman had picked it up.
The cab halted in a dark side street off Lexington Avenue. A man stepped from the shadows and waved his hand. They alighted and walked with an unconcern that surprised Garth to the servants' entrance of a large house. This Nora unlocked. They entered and waited in the alley while one by one the four from the boat slipped through after them.
Garth understood what these numbers meant. In order that Nora, George, and he might accomplish their task undisturbed, these men would bear to each inmate of the house chloroform, or, under necessity, something more permanently silencing.
Walking heavy-hearted through the alley at
