"Can't return before to-morrow. Make inquiries after a certain person's luggage. If necessary provide other clothes. Prepare for departure.—WALLION."
Tom called Mrs. Toby out of the bedroom and showed her the telegram.
"Yes, surely, that's right enough," Mrs. Toby said in her usual quiet but decisive tone. "She must be got away to-morrow morning at latest, and that can be managed all right. She was awake a little while ago; it seems she left a box of clothes at the Central Station—the receipt was in the pocket of her jacket—and I have sent for it."
Mrs. Toby's presence went a good way towards soothing Tom, she took everything so naturally, with so much practical good sense, it made him laugh. He answered:
"You say that Miss Robertson woke up. Well, what did she say?"
"Nothing. She looked round as if she didn't quite know where she was, and I noticed that she seemed rather frightened at not being able to locate herself. I comforted her, though she was for getting up and going away at once, but she is terribly weak, poor little soul, and now she has fallen asleep again."
"Can't I see her and speak to her?"
Mrs. Toby shook her head, smiled, and returned to her patient.
* * * * *
During these days Tom Murner studied the papers with eagerness. Every time he opened one he did so with as much care as one would handle a dead snake. But in 1918 the press concerned itself chiefly with news of the Great War, the latest sanguinary encounter, and it was only in a mid-day edition of August the third that he came upon a short paragraph reporting that the photographer, Victor Dreyel, had been "found dead in his studio on the night of the day before yesterday, under circumstances which pointed to robbery. Examination by the police is proceeding." Maurice Wallion's own paper, the Daily Courier, was silent on the subject, and when no further allusion was made to it on the fourth, Tom began to suspect that the "Problem-Solver" had a hand in its suppression. It was a foregone conclusion that the affair would be kept dark for a few days in order that Elaine Robertson's hiding place should not be discovered, which was also the reason why Wallion wished to hasten her departure, for sooner or later the bomb was bound to explode. It was not that Wallion's conduct perplexed Murner; he knew the journalist would never work in opposition to the police. Had the search for the girl in gray been totally abandoned? Perhaps.