With a simultaneous crash the door was flung back to the wall. Led by Victor Vassilyevski a dozen men, guests and servants, in various stages of dishabille, streamed into the room.
XX
THE DEVIL TO PAY
When it was all over, when the gravelled drive no longer crunched to wheels that bore away the man Nogam to answer for his misdeeds, when the household had quieted down and the most indefatigable sensation-monger had wearied of singing the praises of the Princess Sofia and, tossing off a final whiskey-and-soda, had paddled sleepily back to bed, lights burned on brightly in two parts only of Frampton Court, in the bedchambers tenanted respectively by Prince Victor Vassilyevski and his reputed daughter.
Alone, Prince Victor sat at the desk where he had, four hours earlier, inscribed those characters which should have hurried Nogam into a premature grave. That they had failed of their mission was something that fretted Victor Vassilyevski, his mind and nerves, to a pitch of exacerbation all but unendurable.
What had become of that sentence to death? And what of that other, the telegram which, forwarded by Nogam’s hand to Sturm, should long since have set in motion the organized machinery of murder and demolition?
Had Nogam, as he had meekly insisted on being questioned subsequent to his subjugation, truly delivered the two messages as directed and, miraculously escaping his fate decreed, returned to Frampton Court by the twelve-three, likewise in strict conformance with instructions?
This statement Nogam had neglected to amplify, and Victor had been chary of too close questioning, lest it elicit too much in the hearing of others. Once overpowered, Nogam had been philosophic about his bad luck; but the eyes in his face of a stoic had held a gleam that Victor didn’t altogether like, a light that seemed suspiciously malicious, a suggestion of spirited humour deplorable to say the least in a self-confessed sneak-thief caught in the very act, deplorable and disturbing; in Victor’s sight a look constructively indicative of more knowledge than Nogam had any right to possess. Take it any way you pleased, something to think about ...
Still more disquieting Victor thought the circumstance that nobody else had seemed to notice that anomalous light in Nogam’s eyes; which of course might mean merely that Victor had worked himself into such a state of nerves that he was seeing things, but equally well that the look was one reserved for Victor alone, intentionally or not holding for him a message, if he had but had the wit to read it, of peculiarly personal import.
It might have implied, for example, that Victor’s half-hearted and paltering distrust of Nogam had all along been only too well warranted. In which case, the fat was already in the fire with a vengeance, and Victor’s probable duration of life was dependent wholly upon the speed with which he could quit Frampton Court and hurl his motor-car through the night to the lower reaches of the Thames.
Envisagement of the worst at its blackest being part of the holy duty of self-preservation, Victor sat fully dressed, with every other provision made for flight at the first flash of warning, only waiting to make sure, and with what impatience was apparent in the working of paste-coloured features, the wincing and shifting of slotted eyes, the incessant shutting and unclosing of tensed fingers.