The Professor had locked her in, though she had called to him. So he had known that she was there. He was not deaf, so he had locked her in on purpose. That was the first thought which came at all clearly to her mind. The second was more puzzling still—why had he done it? Joey never knew exactly at what moment it was that a suspicion about the Professor crossed her mind. Her mind had travelled quite a long way first—as far as Mote. What would Cousin Greta say when the car came back without her? Oh, but it wouldn't—somebody would look for her. Yes, they would look, but would they look in the right place, for no one knew where she had gone—no one but little Tiddles? All the girls would have gone by the time Cousin Greta's car came for her. Syb and Barbara most likely, and Gabrielle and Noreen most certainly, would never have given up hunting for her if she were missing in a mysterious way; but then they were her friends. The maids were very kind and good-natured—they would look for her in the Blue Dorm and the playroom, and one or two more likely places of that kind, but it was not to be expected they would go on looking after that.
They would probably think she had changed her mind, and gone off in one of the brakes, and tell Cousin Greta's chauffeur so. He would go back to Mote without her, and Cousin Greta would think her a girl who had been even ruder than on the former occasion, with less excuse; and John would think her a slacker, which was worse. Joey felt despairingly miserable at the thought of John's contempt; and with that misery came naturally the thought why John had wanted her to come to-day. She was not very clear as to the reason herself; but it was certainly something to do with the Professor's signalling. And somewhere at that point a suspicion lifted its head.
Joey groped for a box in the darkness, and sat down to consider. All kinds of queer things about the Professor kept shifting in a muddled kaleidoscopic whirl across her memory—his curious anger on the first day they had met, the afternoon when she had tried to perform the duties of a scholarship kid by tidying the Lab; the violet handkerchief he used, with the queer marks on it; his prowls and signalling at night.
Sitting there in the darkness, with her fingers pressed tightly on her eyeballs to help her to think, Joey saw again that handkerchief hung out to dry upon the nursery guard of the First Form Room, and the little yellow marks that came out with the heat, and disappeared when the handkerchief was cool again. They might just have been washing marks—if washing marks ever did a thing like that.
Joey pressed so hard upon her eyeballs that she saw violet stars instead of handkerchiefs, and then, in the midst, she saw again distinctly those funny little marks which had shown themselves between the red-worked initials of the Professor's name, —.—...—
Dash, dot, dash, and dot, dot, dot, dash—that was Morse, and it spelt two letters, K and V. What could they stand for? The Professor's name was Achille, so he had informed Noreen, when, greatly daring, she had inquired one day a week or so back, after a particularly peaceful "stinks" class, when she had not been addressed as Fathead. Besides, what person in their senses would have a name first worked, and then fixed on in some kind of invisible ink, and in Morse?
K V! K stood for Kenneth or Kitten or Kultur, or Kamerad, or Kaiser. (It was odd how many German words came unbidden to her mind.) And V might be Vauxhall or Vaterland! Yes, Vaterland was spelt with a V, though it sounded as if it were an F. Joey found that the two words Kaiser and Vaterland fixed themselves in her mind, and joined together with John's odd tone about the signalling, and the Professor's midnight expedition, and that lettering that she had read—the figures—31, and then the answer Ja. The 31st was to-day, and Ja, as Noreen had used it in the wonderful charade, meant Yes. What was going to happen to-day, and who had answered the Professor's signal?
Joey's mind went back slowly over the ground of this exciting month at Redlands, till it reached that Sunday spent at Mote, when she had come back to school alone, and been caught by the sea-roke, and had taken shelter in the Round Tower. The jumpy young man had certainly been doing odd things down below, and he had not been at all pleased to see her there at first; that was certain, though he had been quite kind and nice afterwards, and told such interesting stories. It had never occurred to Joey that the stories might have been intended to have a deterrent effect upon her.
But could the young man's obvious jumpiness have anything to do with the mysterious business? Noreen had thought so, but Joey hoped it hadn't, for if it were he who had answered Ja it meant he was a German, and she didn't want him to be that. It was much easier to think of the Professor as a German; Joey had rather liked the young man, in spite of a slight natural contempt for his nervousness. And then, quite suddenly it all came over her; a sense of some great danger, which was none the less frightful, but rather the more, because it was all so vague.
Colonel Sturt had thought that Germans were creeping back into the country—Germans in no way altered by the wars, inside. And they were clever, everyone knew that—quite clever enough to call themselves French, and talk with a French accent that was good enough to take people in. Suppose she were right in what she guessed, and the Professor was not French at all but German, what was he doing in the school Lab? And what had he taken away with him from the Lab this 31st October, when the only person who could see what he was doing was locked into the closet, and likely to remain there till the girls came home from the match, and a proper search was instituted? Joey remembered that curious little box which through the keyhole she had seen the Professor fit so carefully into his cigar case. It was not only something precious to him, but it was something he did not wish anybody else to see. And if he were a German, it was something that no one must see, because it was something that would do harm—not just to an insignificant person like herself, but to England. When Joey thought that she had to hold herself in, hard; or she would have flung herself upon the door, and beaten upon it in a frenzy till she was worn out. For everybody who might look for her was away, and no one knew anything except her imprisoned self; and the Professor was probably away by now with the mysterious box, putting every minute more distance between himself and Redlands.