CHAPTER IV
A VOICE FROM THE LAKE
I ran to the window and peered out into the night. The wood through which we had approached the house seemed to encompass it. The branches of a great tree brushed the panes. I was tugging at the fastening of the window when I became aware of Bates at my elbow.
“Did something happen, sir?”
His unbroken calm angered me. Some one had fired at me through a window and I had narrowly escaped being shot. I resented the unconcern with which this servant accepted the situation.
“Nothing worth mentioning. Somebody tried to assassinate me, that’s all,” I said, in a voice that failed to be calmly ironical. I was still fumbling at the catch of the window.
“Allow me, sir,”—and he threw up the sash with an ease that increased my irritation.
I leaned out and tried to find some clue to my assailant. Bates opened another window and surveyed the dark landscape with me.
“It was a shot from without, was it, sir?”
“Of course it was; you didn’t suppose I shot at myself, did you?”