Frank rose from his seat quietly, stepped noiselessly to the door, and suddenly threw it open. To his surprise his mother’s maid was sitting in a chair against it, knitting.
“It is all right, Hannah,” he said, as she started to her feet. “I did not know you were there. I thought that fellow might be listening again,” and he closed the door.
“I asked her to sit there this evening, Frank,” Mrs. Percival said. “I knew that we should be talking this matter over, and thought it better to take the precaution to ensure our not being overheard.”
“Quite right, mother; I am glad you did so. Then you think that that plan will answer?”
“Yes, I think so; but you must be sure and take care of yourself, just as if you had the money about you.”
“That I will, mother; you can rely upon that.”
“And above all,” Signora Forli said, “you must beware, when you go to the Countess for the money, that you take every possible precaution. Call in the daytime, go in a carriage and drive straight from her place to the Villa Spinola; better still, go first to Garibaldi, tell him where the money is, and ask him to send three of his officers to your hotel on the following morning. Then take a carriage, drive to the Countess’s, and take it to the general with four of you in the carriage. They would not dare to attack you in broad daylight.”
“That is an excellent plan,” Mrs. Percival said, in a tone of great relief. “Certainly, if they do manage to search him on the way, and find that he has not got the bills upon him, they will watch him closely at Genoa, where, no doubt, they will get the assistance of some of Francisco’s agents. There are sure to be plenty of them in Genoa at present; but however many of them there may be, they would not venture to attack in daylight four men driving along what is no doubt a frequented road, more especially as they would know that three of them were Garibaldi’s men, which is as much as to say desperate fellows, and who would, no doubt, like yourself, be armed with pistols.”
“We had better take one more precaution,” Signora Forli said. “It is believed that you are going to start on Thursday morning. Your packing can be done in five minutes; and I think that it would be a good plan for you to have everything ready to-night, and send Mary out for a hansom to-morrow morning, so that you could, when it comes up to the door, go straight down, get into it, and drive to the station. I don’t say that they might not be prepared for any sudden change of our plans; but at least it would give you a chance of getting a start of them that they can never recover—at any rate, not until you get to Paris.”
“How could they catch me there?” Frank said.