Masking his excitement with a yawn, he turned his back on the window and stepped toward the door, opening it sufficiently to thrust his head into the passage, but not wide enough to permit the watcher in the bushes to learn anything of the person with whom he talked. He found his captress standing just beyond the threshold, carrying a tray, which accounted for her awkwardness.
“You won't have to dine in the village,” she explained. Then, catching his strange expression, “What has happened?”
“Some one was to come to-night,” he whispered: “the person who gave orders for my kidnaping. Isn't that so? She was to enter through the window from the lawn, while you held me prisoner at the revolver's point.”
“Is she here?”
“No, but a man who is her enemy—a Major Cleasby. He's hiding directly in her path. He supposed you were she when you tried the door. He showed his face. Is there any way in which we can warn her?”
The widow set down her tray. Her eyes met his searchingly. “If the man were there, you wouldn't want to save her.”
“Why not? You think I've invented the man in the bushes in order that Santa may be scared away? I'm no more afraid of Santa than I was of you. Besides, in your absence I've stolen your revolver. Ah, that convinces you! The man's her husband and a secret service agent. I can feel his eyes in my back. If you don't warn her, she'll be caught. There must have been some prearranged signal. What was it?”
Instead of answering, she pressed nearer, glancing fearfully across her shoulder into the unlighted hall. Her voice came so faintly that he could only just hear her.
“She wouldn't spare us. Why should you and I—? You don't know what she intended.”
He smiled grimly. “I can guess. I was to have been her scapegoat for the Rogovich murder. She was staging a new version of what happened in the woods of Vincennes. Whether she escaped or was brought to trial, I was to have been arrested. By that time she would have clothed me with the appearance of her guilt. I was to have figured as her lover and the Prince's rival. The motive for my crime was to have been jealousy. The old story—an innocent man dying in her stead!”