Walking to and fro as if for exercise, Irma Valaska also was plainly seen, with her hands clasped behind her and her graceful, sinuous figure clad in a close-fitting blue street costume. Madame Valaska always made it a point to be prepared for the street at a moment’s notice. It was the precaution of conscious peril.
“By Jove, there they are,” thought Chick, when his gaze fell upon them. “That big fellow must be the Baron Esterveldt. There’s no question as to the identity of the woman. If anything comes off here this morning, it’s a safe gamble that one or both of them will figure in it. Having got my eye on them, therefore, I’ll find a concealment from which I can safely watch them.”
Chick did not find it difficult to do so. Cautiously scaling the wall near one corner of the rear grounds, he found a shelter back of a thick hedge dividing the estate from that adjoining it, a point enabling him to easily see the house and the entire rear grounds.[{36}]
“Now, by Jove, I’m ready for whatever turns up,” he said to himself. “If Nick is right, and it’s long odds that he is not far from the truth, there ought to be something doing this morning.”
Nearly two hours passed, however, before his vigil was rewarded.
The Baron Esterveldt had, in the meantime, finished reading his newspaper. He lingered briefly to talk with his companion, then arose ponderously and entered the house.
Chick was too far away to hear anything that passed between them, but their earnestness during the brief conversation convinced him that they were anxious and apprehensive.
Left alone on the veranda, Irma Valaska took the chair the man had vacated and began to read the newspaper he had left for her.
Something like a quarter hour passed and then the ball began rolling in earnest.
Glancing toward the back street, Chick discovered a man moving cautiously near the wall, pausing at intervals to gaze over it in the direction of the house, and acting in a way much too suspicious to be disregarded.