"I daresay we are making much ado about nothing," he said. "Don't you think you had better go to bed? I must finish some work before we return to Maldon Grange to-morrow."
"Are we going back to-morrow?" Beatrice asked.
"I think so," Flower said moodily. "On the whole, it is safer—I mean I prefer the country to London."
Beatrice gathered up her wraps and departed, the old sense of coming tragedy stealing upon her again. But she was too tired to think about anything but bed. She touched her guardian's cheek with her lips, but he did not seem conscious of her presence. No sooner had she gone than Cotter came into the room. He stood as if waiting for orders, his teeth chattering, his whole aspect one of ludicrous terror.
"Well, you blockhead," Flower cried, "why don't you speak? Why stand there in that ridiculous attitude? Anybody would think you a child frightened by a bogie. Where is your pluck, man? You used to have plenty of it."
"Never a man with more," Cotter said half defiantly. "But I have seen what I have seen and I know what I know, and I will never possess even the nerve of a rabbit. Oh, why didn't we leave well alone? Why couldn't we be satisfied with our ill-gotten gains? Surely you had more than enough. For years I have been dreaming about this danger. For years I have known that it was coming. Sooner or later it was bound to find us out. And the worst of it is, you can't fight it. It is miles away one day and the next it stands grinning at your elbow. It may be in the house at the present moment for all I know, just as it was at Maldon Grange."
"Drop that!" said Flower fiercely. "Drop that, you lily-livered coward, or I will do you a mischief. Is there nothing in the world worth speaking about except those yellow-faced devils who are after us now? Isn't it bad enough that Jansen should turn up at this moment?"
Flower paused as an electric bell in the basement purred loudly and a sort of muffled cry came from Cotter as if he had been listening to his death-knell. He stood gazing abjectly into Flower's face, his own white and sweat-bedabbled.
"Wake up, idiot," Flower said savagely. "Go and let him in. It is only Jansen."
CHAPTER XXVI