He waited until the train moved on again and then brought the paper close to the ventilator to read the penciled scrawl.
"Patience," he read. "Before daylight."
That was all. But it was eloquent enough. He lay flat again, puzzled but jubilant. She had been looking for him as she came forward to Von Stromberg's compartment and had seen him crouching in the gloom above. She had guessed what he would do. That was clever of her. The old pelican wasn't the only one who could guess. Rowland suddenly had a sense of doing Zoya a great injustice, a great wrong. He had been brutal with her back there in the room in the Schwaiger Strasse, because he had thought that what she had done was beneath contempt--forgetting her wound, her weariness, and the fear she had for this sardonic old brute who even now was talking of committing her to prison. She could be no less weary now than she had been four hours ago and yet he found her planning to save him and to save those others from the results of her treachery. What was she going to do? Not murder--that would be a Boche vengeance. He couldn't consent to that. But even if he wanted to prevent, what could he do unless he came down and revealed himself and that would make an end of them both.
And so Rowland waited, his ear close to the ventilator, listening. The sounds of their voices, Zoya's laugh, the clink of glasses--was this the weak link in the old man's armor? "Wein, weib----" And after a while he heard no sound of any kind. What was happening? The train was winding laboriously up through a narrow dark valley beside a mountain tarn. From time to time a red glare shot from the furnace doors of the locomotive and then a shower of cinders fell upon him. The air was chill and Rowland shivered with the cold. A glance at the East alarmed him, for the first signs of the coming dawn had appeared. It would not be long before daylight would come and with it discovery of his position by some switchman or station agent. He crouched lower clinging to the ventilator and listened again. A sound, repeated at regular intervals and growing in volume ... a snore, a man's snore. Von Stromberg slept. And then he heard Zoya's voice close at his ear.
"Philippe," it said. "He sleeps. You must come down. But wait a moment. I will see."
He waited breathless and in a moment heard her at the window of the compartment. Then her voice again.
"There is no stop for half an hour yet. You must descend."
"Where is the guard?" he asked.
"In the carriage in front. Descend by the rear and enter. The window is open."
"Good."