Like a flash she planted her foot squarely on it. Colonel Mitchell had risen to help Mrs. Warren into her wrap; the senator was busy talking to a newcomer. None of them had noticed her quick action. Dare she stoop over and pick up the paper? As she hesitated, their waiter, Sam, returned with the colonel's change. Mitchell waved the tray away impatiently, and the negro stepped back, dropping his napkin over Nancy's foot as he did so.
"Please 'scuse me, missy." Stooping swiftly, he deftly lifted her foot and removed the paper as he picked up the cloth. "Hyar's yo' napkin," laying it back in her lap; then in a voice that reached her ear alone, "Look out, yo' am bein' watched."
"Thank you, Sam." Nancy's voice was unruffled as her fingers closed spasmodically over the paper concealed in the napkin. Seeing her friends were still occupied, she seized her chance, and whispered rapidly: "Go to Mr. Shriver's room at Wormley's, search behind the glass in the mirror over his bureau; then bring the paper you will find concealed there to me at the Perrys' to-night." Sam nodded understandingly. Nancy rose. "Senator Warren, will you help me on with my coat."
CHAPTER VI
THE SIGNAL LIGHT
"Are you sure you have made no mistake, Lloyd?" whispered Colonel Baker in his companion's ear.
"Positive, Colonel; I have laid my plans too carefully for that."
The two men were crouching behind a corner of a tumbled-down stone wall. Their position commanded a full view of an old square mansion standing some little distance from B Street. The galleries on the south side of the house overlooked a low, rolling meadow which ran down to the Potomac River.
"Have you no proof against the girl?"