"And Goritz?" she said anxiously. "Surely tonight he cannot be sleeping."
"Perhaps he is so sure of himself—yes—in the passage below I heard—there was to be a signal—one stroke of the postern bell——"
"But if the man sleeps——"
"If they come again—no matter what happens, we must warn him," he decided.
"Sh——"
Renwick felt his arm seized suddenly by Marishka's icy fingers and turned, following her wild gaze into the room behind them listening. The anxieties of the night had made Marishka's senses keen. "The door!" she whispered. "The secret door by which you came!"
Renwick listened. In a brief lull in the commotion outside, he heard a slight sound, near and startlingly distinct like that of a rat in a partition. Then in the blackness of the room, a gray streak appeared, slowly widening. The door into the secret passage had opened, and the starlight from the loophole beyond now showed a dusky silhouette. Renwick felt Marishka's arm clutch his in terror, as Goritz noiselessly stepped forward into the room. Renwick had instinctively drawn the hanging behind him, and he and Marishka were in deep shadow while every move that Goritz made was clearly defined. First he took a pace toward the bed, then paused and turning struck a match and searched for the candle.
He was in shirt sleeves. Renwick had drawn his automatic and could have shot him easily. But murder, in cold blood—even when his life and Marishka's depended upon it! Renwick could not. He saw Goritz turn from the lighted candle and stare toward the empty bed and then quickly search the shadows of the room. It was a long moment before he saw the blaze of the candle beside him reflected in Renwick's eyes which peered down the barrel of his automatic.
"What nonsense is this—Marishka——?" he began.
But Renwick's voice cut the darkness like a steel blade.