She went to her desk and wrote:
“Dear Potter,—I can’t stand it any longer. I sha’n’t live another day with my father. He’s a savage and I’m afraid of him.” She was not in the least afraid of him, but feminine instinct told her this would be an appealing touch. Her hand traveled to the arm her father had clutched and she became conscious that it pained her. She stood up and removed her waist to examine the arm. It was bruised, swollen, rapidly blackening, and the marks of his ruthless fingers were plain. She sat down to write again. “My arm,” she wrote, “is nearly wrenched off, and you can see the mark of every one of his fingers on it. I’m locked in my room. Won’t you help me get away? My room is on the lake side of the house, the corner with the tower. If you’ll help me, come to-morrow night about ten, and be careful. I’ll be watching out of my window for you, and I’ll be all ready. I won’t stand it another day.”
She signed this, sealed it, and affixed a stamp. Then she replaced her waist and concealed the note in her bosom.
“He’ll have sense enough to know what to do.” she told herself.
She tried to read, but could not, and hurled the book across the room angrily. She could do nothing but brood and toy with her anger, keeping it alive and pouring fuel upon its flames. Again she occupied the window-seat and stared out at the wintry landscape.
Dinner hour came, but she did not leave her room. She could not bear the thought of sitting at the same table with her father, of seeing him, of breathing the same air he breathed. Nor did he summon her. She did not expect him to send a tray to her room; that would be a courtesy so utterly foreign to him that she did not even give it a thought. Besides, she was not hungry. She could not have eaten. So she sat and waited—waited for darkness and for that stillness which tells of a sleeping house. When it came she would steal out of her room and out of the house to the near-by mail-box to post her letter to Potter Waite.
Hours went by. The house was very still. Though she opened the door a crack and listened, she could not hear a sound. It was after ten o’clock, and her father was probably at the Harmonie Society drinking beer and smoking those pudgy black cigars without which he was seldom seen. She threw a wrap over her head and tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs. Very cautiously she passed along the hall, but stopped before she reached the door of the library, for the room was lighted. She drew against the wall and stood very still, listening. Some one was there, for she heard voices.
Step by step she drew nearer, and the voices became more distinct, her father’s voice and the voice of a stranger. She believed it to be a stranger, for she did not recognize it. Both voices were muffled by the walls and hangings, yet she could overhear what was said, if not wholly, at least in major part.
“Boy-Ed and von Papen were clumsy fools,” said the strange voice, “and this man Paul Koenig, that got himself arrested the other day, wasn’t much better. But those things were to be expected. It wasn’t the ridiculous Secret Service of this idiotic country that did it, even then. It was English agents.”
Hildegarde realized suddenly that German was being spoken. It had not surprised her or caught her attention in the beginning, for she was accustomed to hear as much German spoken in that house as English.