Suddenly a shaft of bright light pierced the moonlit darkness. The shutters of the dining-room of the Châlet des Muguets had been unbarred, and the window was thrown wide open.
"Qui va là?" the old military watchword, as the Frenchman remembered with a sense of terrible irony, was flung out into the night in the harsh, determined voice of Madame Wachner.
They saw her stout figure, filling up most of the window, outlined against the lighted room. She was leaning out, peering into the garden with angry, fear-filled eyes.
Both men stopped simultaneously, but neither answered her.
"Who goes there?" she repeated; and then, "I fear, Messieurs, that you have made a mistake. You have taken this villa for someone else's house!" But there was alarm as well as anger in her voice.
"It is I, Paul de Virieu, Madame Wachner."
The Count spoke quite courteously, his agreeable voice thickened, made hoarse by the strain to which he had just subjected it.
"I have brought Mr. Chester with me, for we have come to fetch Mrs. Bailey. In Paris Mr. Chester found news making her return home to England to-morrow a matter of imperative necessity."
He waited a moment, then added, raising his voice as he spoke: "We have proof that she is spending the evening with you," and he walked on quickly to where he supposed the front door to be.
"If they deny she is there," he whispered to his companion, "we will shout for the gendarmes and break in. But I doubt if they will dare to deny she is there unless—unless—"