Crespin whispered to Dr. Traherne sharply: “That’s not a service call!”
But neither of them had at all confidently expected it would be, and Traherne merely nodded grimly.
There was a pause. The room ached with the silence—it was so intense—the three waiting there so wrought, so desperate, determined.
Watkins, in the wireless room, sat “listening in,” his cat-like head bent over the instruments, his face smooth and blank.
“Right!” he said suddenly. “Got them, sir. Now the message.”
He began to work the key, and as it fell at his fingers’ tips, Crespin spelt out to Traherne slowly, softly, word by word the message Watkins was sending. “‘The—white—goats—are—ready—for—’ No, but the black sheep is! Come on!”
Traherne did, almost before the two words were out. Without one shimmer of sound they moved. As they passed her, Lucilla Crespin, with a death-like, quivering face, but a hand that never trembled, held out her scarf. Traherne took it—he already held his own handkerchief ready. The woman pressed her hand to her mouth, to prison in the scream that was choking her.
Watkins wired methodically on.
Close behind him stole the two men—and death.
They swooped upon him without so much as noising the air.