Said the Chief, moving sharply towards where the Wireless mast straddled over the telegraph-cabin:
"He has adopted the only means of exit by which it was possible for him to escape. All railways stations are being watched, all highways patrolled by our agents, travelling in high-powered motor-cars. We are on the look-out for him at every ocean shipping-port. One road we left open, not having the means to block it—and that is the road of the stork and the swan! Decidedly, I might have guessed that he would play Young Lochinvar after this fashion. But until I left the ground an hour ago I did not know of the theft of the Clanronald Plan."
"The Clanronald—" Sherbrand was beginning, when the Chief cut him short.
"I had forgotten that you are as little wise as I was an hour back. Better glance at this paragraph while I make use of your O. T. installation and Wireless, and put the fear of Heaven into Macrombie, incidentally and by the way."
He thrust a tightly-folded copy of the Evening Wire upon Sherbrand and vanished into the rum-flavoured stuffiness of the cabin, with the pallid telegraph clerk close upon his heels. And upon Sherbrand, in the act of unfolding the newspaper, rushed his Fate, in a hat of silver spangles: challenging the knowledge in him with blazing eyes well upon the level of his own.
"Mr. Sherbrand.... Tell me what has happened? Why do you look so—queer and—white?"
She herself was whiter than her narrow dress, and the mouth the eager rush of words poured from was pale under its rose-tinted salve. She hurried on breathlessly:
"They show no signs of coming back—it fidgets me horribly. And—I was looking—from over there, where I was with Uncle Owen,—when you called out, 'Stole away!' and waved your arm." She glanced at the sky, shuddered and looked back at him. "Am I silly? But all the same, the General told you something! I don't ask what! But I funk—I don't know why, but it's beastly—the sensation! Tell me I've nothing to be afraid of—I swear I'll take your word!"
That she was just then a creature full of fears was written large upon her. She might have quoted Queen Constance, who I think was also a galumpher, meaning a woman of big build and sweeping gestures, and an imperious temper withal. Sherbrand feared also, and the pang of solicitude for the pretty boy so unexpectedly dragged into the vortex of a diplomatic and political felony was, to do him credit, quite as sharp as the pang caused him by the rape of the Bird.
He answered: