"I have done a crazy thing," he muttered as he strode away from the postoffice through the darkness, breathing deep the cool night air that calmed his passion and cleared his brain. "I have done a fool thing and it's too late to change it."
Meantime Hester, tingling with wrath after this hard encounter, had gone back to her room with a new problem that held her anxious thoughts far into the night. Had she made a mistake in defying this man? Should she have controlled her anger and somehow gained a little time? Perhaps a day would have been enough. If Miss Thompson came at once by the morning train she would be at Ipping House soon after luncheon, and an hour later Hester Storm might have been free, speeding toward London and New York, with all this trouble left behind.
Whereas, now what would happen? Suppose Anton had carried out his threat and posted the letter to Scotland Yard? He was just fool enough and drunk enough to do it—perhaps. And perhaps not. It might have been all a bluff, the letter and his talk. Anyway, she was glad she had called him down. He was a beast, all right.
But suppose he had posted the letter? Suppose a detective came prowling around? Suppose it was Grimes, who had seen her in Charing Cross station that day of the robbery, and who knew all about the Storm girl's record? Then what?
In snatches of tortured sleep Hester dreamed that she was trying to escape from a room with two doors, at one of which she met the cold gray eyes of Grimes, and at the other the twisted smile of Anton. She rose soon after daybreak, unrefreshed, and, having dressed, she spent an hour packing her things, so that if the chance came she could leave at a moment's notice. Then she knelt down at her bedside and said the prayer that Merle had taught her.
A few minutes later Hester's attention was caught by sounds from below, the unbolting of heavy doors, then an echo of footsteps and low voices. She looked at her watch and saw that it was a quarter past six. Anton was opening the house. It was Friday morning. The great day, with its promise of momentous happenings, had begun. And the sun was shining.
Lightly the Storm girl descended the stairs, and pausing at the first landing, listened to the chauffeur, who was talking to a telegraph boy.
"Yes, this is Mr. Baxter's house. Let me have it," he was saying.
Whereupon the boy searched in his cap and produced the familiar yellow envelope of a telegram or a cablegram.
"There!" grumbled the chauffeur as he signed the boy's book. "Here's a sixpence for you."