“We’ve unearthed the rascal,” smiled Otto, as they at last heard footsteps in the house in answer to their second ring.
But when the door was opened, their hearts sank, for there stood before them a woman of forty, at least, small, lean, dowdy, precise of manner and slow of speech, wearing a pair of gardening-gloves and a sunbonnet, who looked at them in some surprise, and asked them stiffly what they wanted.
Otto, who was acute enough to perceive that this must be the colonel’s daughter, apologized for disturbing her, and said they had brought a letter for their friend Jordan, who, they understood, was spending the afternoon with Colonel Bostal. They would not have intruded but that they believed the letter was very important, as it was marked on the envelope “Please deliver immediately.”
And the plotter drew from his pocket, with ostentatious care, a missive which he and Clifford had prepared together, and which, with great ingenuity, had been made to look as if it had passed through the post.
But Miss Bostal glanced at the letter and shook her head.
“There is no one with my father,” she said, “and I don’t know any one of that name. But if you will come into the drawing-room I will ask him.”
“Oh, no, not for the world. We could not think of intruding. We must have made a mistake,” stammered Otto, while Clifford hurriedly passed out by the little wooden gate into the road.
In the meantime, however, Colonel Bostal, having heard the voices, had come through the narrow passage from the garden to learn the meaning of this unusual sound. The matter was explained to him by his daughter, amidst further apologies from Otto.
The colonel, a withered-looking, gray-faced man of about sixty-five, in a threadbare and patched coat and a battered Panama hat, remembered the name at once.
“Jordan? Jordan? Yes, of course I know him,” said he at once. “A little fellow, with a long mustache. Yes, he often walks home with me as far as the bridge, but there he always turns back and excuses himself from coming any farther.”