“I can let myself out. The lady is upstairs, isn’t she?”
“I heard her moving about overhead a little while ago.”
He waited a moment as though listening.
“Your ears are better than mine,” he said, and looked at her warningly. “Do exactly as I told you, and don’t try to double-cross me. You mightn’t succeed. Good-evening.”
The door closed behind him, and she could hear him moving across the hall.
For a moment she hesitated.
Then she crossed the room swiftly and pulled out the drawer of the writing bureau. She felt in the cavity and tugged. When she straightened up there was a small automatic pistol in her hand. She went to the windows at the front, snapping back the jacket of the gun as she did so and pushing over the safety catch.
The heavy curtains swung away as she jerked at the cord that controlled them, and she saw the man hurrying down the drive. Without looking round, he turned and went down the road to the left, and Agatha Girton opened the french windows and stepped out on to the terrace. The range was about twenty-five yards, but the hedge at the bottom of the garden was a low one, and his body could be seen above it from the waist upwards.
Miss Girton raised the gun and extended her arm slowly and steadily, as she might have done in a Bisley competition. At that moment the man turned to the right again into a field, and so his back was squarely presented to her.
The echoes of the two rapid shots rattled clamorously in the still air of the evening. She saw the man fling up his arms, stagger, and fall out of sight.