The other hesitated a moment, then wrote rapidly on the board:
“You are unfair, but I am unable to help myself.”
And then, as Verbeck started forward, the other saluted and darted out of the door, to hurry down the dusty hall. Roger returned to the table. He half wished he had forced the other man to remove his mask.
Ten-thirty o’clock brought a woman. Verbeck knew she was a woman because he could see her hands, the fingers covered with rings and the bottom of her skirts showed beneath the robe. Her writing on the blackboard was unmistakably feminine, too. The Black Star had said that women belonged to his organization, but Verbeck had not anticipated meeting one in this house; he had believed they worked on orders transmitted by others.
“Everything arranged,” the woman wrote on the board. “It will be easy. I’ll get the necklace about three o’clock in the morning and hide it where you ordered. It may be found there any time after four o’clock.”
Here Verbeck found himself facing something of which he knew nothing, some crime already outlined by the Black Star.
“Disregard all previous orders,” he wrote, “for the time being. I have new orders for you, and you’ll attend to them first. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she wrote.
He threw her envelope on the table, and she read the instructions it contained. She, too, scribbled a protest on the blackboard.
“Isn’t it dangerous?” she wrote.