"They shall leave it at once, Johann."
"We'll discuss that directly. You will find that the letters you so neatly put away here are just flung in anyhow in order to suggest that whoever did it was surprised and had to act in a hurry."
She unlocked the drawer then with shaky fingers and there lay the letters as I had told her. "Nessa shall leave the house to-morrow, Johann," she cried immediately.
"But it wasn't Miss Caldicott at all, aunt; it was Gretchen;" and I described what I had witnessed and went on to advise her not to take any open notice of the matter at all. "You know now who it is and can be on your guard, keeping such papers as are of no account here and putting others in a safer place."
"But to have such a person in the house, Johann!"
"She can't do any harm now; and you must remember this. You don't know who has put her here nor the reason. It might do much more harm than good if you were to make any disturbance about it. These are curious times, and the fact that you have an English girl in the house may be the reason. By sending Gretchen about her business you may only have some one else put here, or one of the other servants bribed or forced to take her place;" and I hammered away at this until I persuaded her to adopt the suggestion.
I had a strong object in taking this line. I was sure that Gretchen was von Erstein's creature, and that if she remained in the house, we might find her very useful in putting him off the scent by letting her find out some false facts in case of trouble.
During the night I thought carefully over our conspiracy scheme. It looked good; very good indeed; perhaps too good, and in the end I decided to prepare for a possible hitch in case the unexpected happened.
I couldn't see one anywhere; but you can never be prepared for an air pocket, as I knew well enough; so I resolved not to be caught unawares. If anything went wrong on the journey, it was on the cards that we might be able to dodge the trouble and get away, if we were provided with good disguises. I worked on that idea and thought of several other items which would probably come in handy.
I adopted the notion of turning myself into an aero mechanic and changing Nessa into my young assistant. There wasn't much about any sort of flying machine I didn't know—except Zeppelins, of course; so I could keep my end up all right, and could easily coach "my assistant" well enough to pass muster.