"Florence has been found, and she is on her way back to New York. She was found by Mr. Norton, the reporter."
"I am so glad! Shall I come up at once and have you tell me the whole amazing story?"
"It would be useless, madam, for I know nothing except what I learned from a telegram I have just received. But no doubt some time this evening you might risk a call."
"Ring up the instant she returns. Did she say what train?"
"No, madam," lied Jones, smiling.
He hung up the receiver and stared at the telephone as if he would force his gaze in and through it to the woman at the other end. Flesh and blood! Well, greed was stronger than that. Treacherous cat! Let her play; let her weave her nets, dig her pits. The day would come, and it was not far distant, when she would find that the mild-eyed mongoose was just as deadly as the cobra, and far more cunning.
The heads of the Black Hundred must be destroyed. Those were the orders. What good to denounce them, to send them to a prison from which, with the aid of money and a tremendous secret political pull, they might readily find their way out? They must be exterminated, as one kills off the poisonous plague rats of the Orient. A woman? In the law of reprisal there was no sex.
Shortly after the telephone episode (which rather puzzled the countess) she received a wire from Braine, which announced the fact that Florence and Norton had escaped and were coming to New York on train No. 25, and advising her to meet the train en route. She had to fly about to do it.
